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User: Sancho

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  1. Re:What makes a good show? on Buffy Staked Again By Emmys · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'll start with a technicality first. Buffy rarely kills vampires any more, it's all ghouls and zombies and the like.

    You're saying this inherently makes it a bad show? It was established in the first episode that vampires weren't all that Buffy would be fighting. They don't even call her a Vampire Slayer anymore, it's down to just Slayer. That you are using this as the opening to your argument makes the rest of it really weak.

    Second, the acting is absolutely terrible. I can't remember his name, but the tall guy with the shifty mouth that's friends with buffy needs serious acting lessons. He's from the Ben Affleck squint-squirm-mumble and act-threw-your-teeth school of acting. Then, you've got Sara Michelle Gellar, who just sticks out her chest instead of getting into character, and her magical friend Willow who says every line with the same delivery, no matter if it's comical or dramatic it's always the same. Third, the writing is not good. Now, this is a tender subject because of the huge creative control from the creator and his love of the show, but his ego is just getting in the way.

    Xander, the first character you refer to, is one of the most real and honest characters on TV. He doesn't act like any other character on TV. Neither do any of my friends act like any characters on TV. Or my parents. Or my parents friends. Think about it next time you watch a television show. Do people really talk like that? Do they deliver snappy dialogue? Do they get serious all of a sudden and say something important with gusto? I highly doubt it.
    As for Sarah Michelle Gellar.... well this past season hasn't been a good one for her, I'll admit. The entire show seemed very blah, except for a very few episodes. Sarah was attempting to play someone who had given up on life, and in my opinion she just didn't do it. The mood of the show conveyed it more than she did. But in previous seasons her acting was excellent. She is very capable of relying on her acting ability instead of her breasts, and it has shown through time and again.
    As for Willow. I think that's the actress. Watch her in American Pie or anything else she's done. That's the way she delivers all her lines. She made a breakthrough in the season finale and did something different, and it was the best acting job I've ever seen her (the actress) do.

    Third, the writing is not good. Now, this is a tender subject because of the huge creative control from the creator and his love of the show, but his ego is just getting in the way. The snappy one liners after a vampire skewing were campy at first, but every character vomiting at least 6-7 of those things every episode for half a decade? Give me a break.

    That's part of a comedy show. Ever watch Simpsons, another favorite around Slashdot?
    As for the writing itself...there are ups and downs. Most of the time the writing is average, but occasionally it is superb. How many e you watched? If it's just a few here and there, you're not doing the show justice. Buffy isn't written a show at a time, it's written a SEASON at a time, with the expectation being that you will watch them all, and mostly in order. This creates a completely different effect, and I could see where the writing would be called into question as such.

    This isn't a fourth since it's still about creative control. The movie was better.

    I don't even feel the need to reply to this.

    Fourth, what's with the geek patrol villians? I thought /.ers hated when hollywood got the geek image wrong, yet you buy this stereotype? I don't expect a tv show to be as realistic as the sugar in coffee, but we've gotta draw a line somewhere.

    Most fans of the show believe that the geeks were the worst thing to happen to it. You have to look at it from Joss' perspective, though. The season before, Buffy defeated a god. Where do you go from there?
    This season was all about growing up and fighting inner demons. The people who didn't get this probably understood during the final 4 episodes when one of the inner demons almost literally came out. The geeks were there to act as a catalyst for the final episodes, as well as add a bit of comic relief in an otherwise depressing season.

  2. Re:Buffy is the best writing on TV on Buffy Staked Again By Emmys · · Score: 2

    No kidding. People complain about the popular OS, popular movies, popular music...and then use the argument that because a show is popular it must be better.
    Hypocracy is everywhere, though, so this shouldn't be unexpected.

  3. Re:News, not opinion please on Buffy Staked Again By Emmys · · Score: 2

    Well for starters, they can post whatever they please. Essentially this is a site for Taco and a few others to post things they find intersting, and most of what they're interested in is "nerdy."

    Second, there is a good reason for this story, that being that people were told they could vote for this show, but had to jump through hoops to do so. It's a classic example of The Man keeping down what they don't like, sorta like stopping black voters from getting to the ballot boxes in Florida.

  4. Re:It's not clear what was meant. on Why Magic Online Will Suck · · Score: 2

    Buy "having to buy new cards" I thought it was probably pretty obvious that he meant the Type II (Standard) tier.

    For those not in the know, in Type II, only the two most recent expansions classes and the most recent Basic set are allowed to be used. An expansion class is generally one major expansion (Ice Age was one) and any of it's sub-expansions (Alliances was one of Ice Age's sub-expansions). This means that at any time, only 6 expansions are legal. The key is that when a new major expansion comes out, 3 total expansions leave the rotation (the major expansion and its two sub-expansions). Great moneymaker.

  5. [OT] Re:Sounds great for the movies... on Low-Tech Cell Phone Blocking · · Score: 2

    Actually, except for digitally projected movies (which I simply don't know about) "rewinding" a movie simply isn't possible. To rewind would take approximately an hour. Most theaters these days splice all the reels of a film onto a single, continuous reel that is just replayed constantly. Rewinding isn't an option, most places, because it is very time consuming.

  6. Re:Minority Report was not very good (spoilers) on Minority Report · · Score: 2

    I'll tell you what.. The grainy looks makes it harder to encode the movie at low bitrates. Even harder is the scene in the auto factory where it looked like the cameraman was having a seizure. I have a strange feeling that this was an attempt to make encoding the movie more difficult.

  7. Re:It seems obviously you don't read carefully... on Minority Report · · Score: 2

    My mistake, sorry Tim!
    peterwayner has obviously not read the short story....

  8. Re:Minority Report was not very good (spoilers) on Minority Report · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Assuming that there was anyone in the audience unfamiliar with the premise, was it necessary to set up the premise in at least four repetative sequences, any one of which would have done the job:

    Each of these had a different purpose:

    1. In the 15 minute opening arrest sequence.
    This is to grab the audience. Most good action movies start out with this.

    2. In the 5 minute discussion following that sequence.
    This showed alternating viewpoints, something which was important, and also told a few intricacies in the system.

    3. In the Robocop-like "Precrime" commercial.
    This showed the propoganda in the world, which is important because in out world, this system would never be allowed.

    4. AGAIN by the tour guide?
    And finally, this was to handle the public's assumed outcry over the treatment of the Precogs. If they thought the Precogs were happy and healthy, there wouldn't be none.

    A few others:
    5. "If you don't wait twelve hours... you'll go blind." Or... maybe six.
    I assume that he went blind in that eye.

    9. Wouldn't the revelation of PSYCHICS have tremendous scientific reprocussions beyond precrime?
    The movie just isn't about that. You're looking for something to complain about here.

    11. Did anyone else get the feeling that this future had about 50 people in it total? I did not feel like this was a "real" world at all.
    That could be said of a lot of movies, since most movies only involves a few people.

    3. "Surely by now the precogs have predicted you're going to kill me. So you're caught in a paradox.. bwahaha" How the hell did Tom know what they predicted? They could have predicted what enivitably happened.
    If Max wasn't going to kill him, there wasn't a problem. This was an effort to stave off his own death.

    4. The surgeon who replaces Tom's eyes gives a big speech about getting screwed over, then does....nothing bad. Fixes the eyes, leaves a nice sandwich.
    YES YES YES YES YES. Absolutely. This annoyed me to no end, and the only thing I can think of is that perhaps he tipped off precrime that Anderton was there.

    3. The extra 20 minutes or so following that, which like was totally unnecessary and cheesy.
    Typical Spielberg. Did you see A.I.?

    4. What is the point of putting the precogs in a barn somewhere?
    If they're far enough away from civilization, they won't get the nightmares.

    I still don't see why murders stopped by precogs NECESSARILY need to lead to arrests and prosecutions. I mean, say they had stopped the murder of passion at the top of the story-- rather than putting the dreaded headphones on the husband, couldn't they have gotten him into some family counceling? I mean, having a precog to stop a murder doesn't automatically mean you have to prosecute the pre-murderer.
    This was the point of the book, but it got lost in the translation.

    You want a problem? Why is it that the precrime agency gets notifications that Anderton has gotten on a Metro (due to the retina scanners that are EVERYWHERE) but when he uses his old eyes to get into precrime, they see nothing. They don't even go looking for him until they see Agatha in the prediction and realize that he will eventually come back to get her.

  9. Re:I hate to be the bad guy here on Minority Report · · Score: 2

    It's even more blatant than that. The movie spells it out several times--Anderton (Cruise) found out about the murder from Agatha, went snooping around and discovered that Agatha's report on the murder was missing. He told Max about this discovery, and that's when the setup was planned.

  10. Timothy has obviously never read the short story on Minority Report · · Score: 2

    Warning, this post will contain spoilers (although if you're read this far, you probably don't care).

    The resonance between this story and the current war is so strong that it's almost impossible to watch it for what it is, a good murder mystery conceived well before September 11th retelling a short story that was published long ago in 1956.

    The movie had almost nothing to do with the short story. It was similar in that it was a murder mystery, there are precogs, and these precogs detect murder. The places where the movie took off from the story are numerable, and the places where the movie actually went against the story starts about 1/3 of the way through and continues until the end.

    The movie is about a guy in charge of precrime who discovers the fallibility of the system and goes out of his way to bring those in charge of it (who were involved in multiple wrongdoings) to justice. The "echos" weren't even addressed in the short story, nor the possibility of faking murders beforehand.
    The short story is about a guy in charge of precrime who discovers a potential fallibility in the system, but goes ahead with the murder because he believes in the system.
    The difference is really quite striking.

  11. Re:Just say NO on Record Industry Wants Royalties for Used CD Sales · · Score: 2

    Not true at all. They just don't like the fact that someone else who /would/ have bought the CD isn't going to now. This is a problem they've been having (and disliking) for years now, before MP3s became so prevalent, and certainly before CD burners became so prevalent.

    And while it's a valid dislike, it's not reasonable to assume you can tax sales of secondary /anything/. You don't see Dell getting royalties off every laptop sold on Ebay. If I sell my truck, I don't have to pay GMC a dime. Yet for some reason the RIAA thinks that they can do this.

  12. Re:Isn't this the exact same crowd... on George Lucas May Be Completely Evil · · Score: 2

    The part about this that bugs /me/ is that I really want the originals on DVD. Not the version 3 releases with Natalie Portman footage, not the version 2 releases with the stupid Ewok song and Greedo shooting first, but the /originals/. With seemless branching available on DVDs, it should be possible to put all three versions on a single DVD without quality or feature loss. But my guess would be that Lucas only releases the version 3 series, which is why I personally am upset at this change.

  13. $500 may not be too much for a cooling system on Extreme Cooling · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Most people would be out of their minds to pay $500 for a fan/heatsink, but $500 for a cooling system may not be out of line. I don't know just how much cooling the CPU would bring down the total system temp.. probably by quite a bit.

    The reason for this is that there are some cases/places where the ambient temperature may be too high for a computer with a normal fan.

    For example, Texas, in the summer, when the AC goes out (or if there is no AC to begin with.)

    Most people would just say, "Hey, turn off the computer then." That doesn't work if you're away :)

  14. Re:Misassessment of the threat on Vivendi Offering MP3 Song for Sale · · Score: 2


    1: People think mainstream is pretty much shit.
    2: People will pay money for GOOD music.


    Give it up.
    Lots of people on here may think that mainstream music sucks. It seems to be a running theme. But step outside your ego--if it wasn't popular, it wouldn't be mainstream. The stuff that sells is the stuff that the MPAA cares about! They don't care if it's 70 minutes of George Strait farting into a microphone; if it makes money, they'll produce/sell it.
    People will pay money for the music that you say is shit. You may not believe it, but Britney Spears albums don't go platinum for nothing.

  15. Re:Per Theater avg: on Episode II Surpasses $116 Million at Box Office · · Score: 2

    Depends on their designation of "theater." It could be that they mean "screens" or it could be that they mean "housing for multiple screens." I had heard that 1500 figure before, however....

    I was pretty shocked. At our local multiplex, Spiderman was on 4 screens when Ep 2 opened--on only 3 screens.

  16. Re:Pffffft! on The Wired Top Twenty Sci-Fi Movies · · Score: 2

    SM? I'm drawing a blank.

    Minority Report is the adaptation of a PKD novel that Tom Cruise will be in.

    Matrix 2 and 3 will be out /next/ summer ;)

  17. Re:This charges people who don't use the service! on Kazaa, Verizon Propose Compulsory Music Licensing · · Score: 2

    That's how it is in Canada. There are extra taxes just about all blank media, that go towards canadian music artists. You pay it whether or not you're pirating/burning music.

  18. Re:Class Action Lawsuit! on Post-it Notes vs. Copy-Inhibited CDs · · Score: 2

    It depends.
    First off, there's a warning. I don't recall if they use the Compact Disc logo or not, either. If not, it's "at your own risk" if you put it in a compact disc player, computer or no. And with the warning, you should know better.
    Secondly, we're talking a copy-protection scheme here. Maybe I'm naive, but I figure the "locking up" is a side effect rather than the actual intent.

    But once again, if they don't call it a CD, and if it doesn't conform to the CD spec, it's not a CD. Buyer beware.

  19. Re:Microsoft and the Lemon Law on Free Software at Risk Under Lemon law · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm sorry, let me revise. The current versions of Windows. Windows 95 is no longer supported by Microsoft, and Windows 98 soon won't be (or is it already unsupported?). I can't speak for ME because I don't use it, but 2k has been rock solid for me. Uptimes of over 2 months, and damn near all reboots because I constantly tinker.
    I'm a big Linux advocate. I run an OpenBSD box. The primary reason I have a windows machine at all is because the support still isn't there for gaming and video editing. Yes, there are decent video editing tools for Linux. They're not as good as the Windows equivalents, or they're multimillion dollar software used to edit movies like the Matrix.
    I'm just not a zealot. I recognize where the problems lie, and I recognize when there's a use/market for a particular product. Windows has it's place, and it's current incarnations, it's quite stable. When Linux gets support from software makers, it will have a place on the desktop. Until then, it simply can't give the end users what they want.

  20. Microsoft and the Lemon Law on Free Software at Risk Under Lemon law · · Score: 2

    Ultimately, however, the burden of proof will be where this law fails. Say Windows crashes. Who is at fault? What program were you using when it crashed? Was it Microsoft Certified? What hardware do you have in your system? One slightly faulty RAM chip can cause lots of crashes. Is that Microsoft's fault? Oftentimes Linux will be able to handle the fault better than Microsoft. Does that make Windows a Lemon?
    What about drivers, programs with Ring0 access? Giving a program access to the hardware is an inherent liability because it can cause a crash. Then you get into the interactions of various drivers..I've had cases with DriverA running HardwareA and DriverB running HardwareB. There was a crash, and removing HardwareB solved the problem, but so did simply upgrading DriverA. Who's at fault?

    Windows, by itself, is actually quite stable. If these laws come about, what would end up happening is that Microsoft would always shove off the blame for a "lemon" on a third party, and they'd have the money and lawyers to do it.

  21. Book vs Movie cost on Star Wars Episode II: The Book Review · · Score: 2

    Well the theater we have in town (College Station, Texas) is still $6.50 for a ticket. But I also managed to snag the book for half price at our local Hastings :) I thought it was worth it, and a decent read overall, although the poster is absolutely correct on the overkill and (at times) underkill.

  22. Re:not quite as cool as it sounds. on Quadrilingual Crazy Programming · · Score: 2

    While funny, I gotta call you on that last one. If games with similar premises/engines were not out there, the market would be incredibly smaller. For example, we'd only have Doom.....Ok, so we allow upgrades. We'd have Q3. We'd never have gotten the beauty that is halflife :)

  23. Code includes preprocessor directives on Quadrilingual Crazy Programming · · Score: 4, Interesting

    He uses the fact that # is a comment in Perl VERY frequently to use #defines etc that will allow C to act like Perl. Interesting solution, although I question whether the use of such preprocessor directives REALLY counts as making cross-compatible code. Then again, I nitpick the difference between preprocessor and compiler, so...

  24. Re:GCC is missing stuff? on Standard C++ Moves Beyond Vapor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is the Linux Kernel written in C++? I thought it was straight C.
    Besides, even if it WAS in C++, most likely it would just use features that the compiler could handle.

  25. Re:Instalation... on First Looks at Suse 8.0 / KDE 3.0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Are you kidding? When was the last time you installed Windows?
    XP virtually installs itself. You barely have to be there.
    Win2k is similar, but does have more required user input. Regardless, there are virtually no choices required in either of these two, unlike Linux where you have thousands of software packages to choose from.

    That said, under Linux, you have thousands of software packages to choose from. In Windows, you get a few "applications" like a calculator and notepad.