Sci-Fi has changed how they do programming, from what I've read/heard. Now, instead of doing series (we'll mention a few I loved that were cancelled - G vs. E, Invisible Man, Farscape), they'll do events (Dune, Taken, Firestarter), and apparently they can make enough money off of it to stop doing series (except for Stargate - add obligatory "how the frell did Farscape get canned and this piece of drek extended?" reference here).
And I'll breeze by the fact that Straczynski's "Legend of the Rangers" never went beyond the pilot, due to the fact that they're moving away from Space Opera.
But, we have a way to stop this. And I'm deadly serious. Don't watch the events. It's that simple. Show them that you don't care that they spent x million dollars on , that you want series. And do it by not watching the events initially. If you want, watch it the second time around. It's not like they're not going to show it a few more times, before the DVD release.
So, sit back, and wait 3 more months for Taken, Firestarter Remake 3, etc. And then tell them why you're not watching.
Fortunately, there's been a good amount of science fiction on for the past couple of years, and not on the Sci-Fi channel. But if they can survive by doing one gigantic event a quarter (read the old press releases), then they won't do series. Personally, I wish they could do like the Brits - a 6-episode run of a show. If it does well, another "season" next year. The problem is that Science Fiction is expensive to do, sets and all. They might need to avoid space opera, do more like I-man.
Anyhow, time to go watch last night's tape of Firefly - 2nd time will hopefully be even better.
I like Smith, but the ideal actor for this role would be "impassive" (I think that's the word) without being wooden.
Hmmm... the scary part is that I just realized who could probably pull it off - Kevin Kline. Of course, back to the last movie those two were in together: Wild Wild West (where Kline was the only watchable part of the movie)
Plus: Alex Proyas (Dark City, The Crow) Minus: Will Smith
Plus: Asimov premise Minus: Hollywood adaptation
Plus: Will Smith as a robot wouldn't strain his acting ability Minus: Smith might play the human
Plus: clever ideas, cool story Minus: probably will be shot as a scifi/comedy
This could be interesting. For the love of god, though, don't let Will Smith play his "normal" character (remember Wild Wild West? That was supposed to be Jim West?). Give him someone else to play - we know he can act, even if he chooses not to.
Hey, Asa, someone brought up a good point - why not just release a patch or delta or something? I haven't gotten it yet, so maybe it's more complicated than that, but if only a couple of files have changed, why not release that also?
What may be happening is that Microsoft is trying to prove that they should keep the name, and is trying to coerce all these companies so they can say to the judge that they're going after other companies, so (1) they are attempting to protect their name, and (2) they're not just going after Lindows.
If trying to prove #1 is their idea, I hope the Judge realizes what a BS move this is, and that it's too late for them to do this.
Mozilla used to have a bug where going to certain web sites with logins would cause it to die. I remember that SQLServerInsider and New York Times would both cause it to crash, and so I _really_ loved the (blah blah blah Free Reg), since then I'd know to avoid those links. It's been fixed for a while, though, and aside from that it's been pretty damn stable since M18 or M19. Oh, and a day after 1.0 came out. (1.0 was buggy, but the nightly fixed the biggest crashes - I plan on waiting for tonight's nightlies so that any stoppers will have been fixed)
Yeah, but then you'd want to show a friend, you'd tell him to put them on, he'd say no, you'd say yes, and then you'd have to wrestle, secure in the knowledge that if you lose, he'll put them on anyway.
ObRef: the long, drawn out "Cripple Fight" in South Park was based on the They Live fight scene.
A system like MyLifeBits was first suggested in 1945, when presidential technology adviser Vannevar Bush hatched the then farsighted idea of an infinite personal archive based on the emerging digital computer.
Hmmm, sounds like the Farleyfile. (copied from Jerry Pournelle's page): Big Jim Farley was a New York Tammany Hall politician whose success was partly due to the "Farleyfile": a collection of facts about everyone he ever met. If you went to see Big Jim, by the time you got into his office he knew your name, your birthday, the names of your spouse and children, and what you liked for lunch. It was all on file.
Also, there's a program (Lifesigns?) that's based around a chronological history of data (there's a PC version, and there was a Newton version). You don't go searching for "Letter about Enron", you remember that it was 7 or 8 months ago, and look at email then. Clever premise, loved by all the people who adopted it. Never could get the hang of it myself.
At Texas A&M, one of the local CS students was doing his Thesis on some sort of large math problem in HRBB. He had two choices for writing the code to provide the solution. He could either write it in Fortran and use the Cray Y-MP we had (which, 10 years ago, was a fairly big deal). OR, he could use a high level language and use Zilla and our NeXT lab to solve it. He chose the second.
Amazing to see - you'd tell the Cubes to run Zilla in the background, feed it the problem, and away you go. We had 6 computers in the lab, and you could tell he was working on it when you first logged in - it would be a bit sluggish. IIRC, he later took over the NeXT lab downstairs, which had 30 NeXT "pizza boxes". Not bad, especially for 1991-1992.
And this paper says: Parallelization: with a NeXTstep application called Zilla, multiple Mathematica sessions may be invoked on networks of NeXT computers to allow the simultaneous solution of different parts of a large problem.
BTW: anyone happen to know if they're doing Zilla on OS X? I remember reading something about an easy way to cluster Macs for performance, but I forget the details. It just involved running a client on each workstation.
and that's pretty much it. Hell, I use cygwin half the day, to parse things, write scripts, etc. But I need both to do my job. So that's simple
Home:
Games
Internet Surfing
Newsgroup downloading
Watching downloaded TV Shows, or capping my own (I HATE ATI on Linux! Gatos is getting closer, but dammit, release some frickin real drivers for the damn things!)
Of all those, the only two that I'd have issues with would be the Newsgroup (BRN2 isn't there yet, though Newsbin is working on either getting it working great on Wine, or an actual version) and, most importantly, Games. The rest of it is all minor stuff I can work around, or find better options for (on Linux or Mac).
Just an FYI - the radio shows ROCK. Many are written by former writers of the show, they have the actual actors performing their original roles (one with the Brigadier, even!). This is as close to the show as you'll get.
Operating system aside, the form factor _is_ similar. I have my 2k here with me now. The Stepup's will be 8x10, 2.5 pounds. It's actually quite a good size- it'll be obvious if you're carrying it around, but should fit in the crook of the arm nicely. And the price is good, too - $800 is the price of a low-end laptop, and I think this could be more useful. Add a wifi card and VNC, and all of a sudden you have the web pad that MS goes on about, but take it on the road as a separate machine. Could work.
Ditto what others have said - what kind of HWR will this thing have that'll run on Linux?
IIRC, one of the first movies to actually SHOW a profit was, of all things, Ishtar! (remember it?)
From what I remember, the reason it showed a profit was that all the people who would normally cook the books, so that it didn't make money, wanted nothing to do with it. They were afraid it would taint their name, so they stayed away from it. So it earned money.
I think any cross examination should include the dividends that are given out - after all, if there's no profit, why should they give out dividends, and where's the money coming from?
1) One of the only times I've downloaded Telecines/CAMs/CAPs, whatever, was "Episode I - The Duel". It had this file in it: "No frog men, no kids who can't act. Just THE DUEL.". It was great. I think it was either 2 or 3 minutes long. I'd seen the movie already, and there was absolutely no way I was going to see it again. But the Duel itself was sublime. Between the music and the poetry, and without any dialog... wow.
2) That scene was more impressive in the theater. Yeah, seeing it on my 17" monitor is cool, but 75 feet across is better. With some movies, you want to be wowed by the effects, since the story sure as hell ain't going to do it. Witness Godzilla, Mission Impossible 2, Star Wars I & II - a blast to see in a theater, but MAN it would suck to see on a tiny screen.
The one killer app theaters have is that they can create a better experience than you can get at home. Huge screens, GOOD sound systems (not LOUD! but good quality - I saw Fifth Element 13 times, in 5 different theaters. ALL of them had bass issues during the opening scene. My NHT sub/speakers performed flawlessly), no cell phones, no idiots talking through the movie, etc. Then you're not paying for the movie, but the experience of having watched the movie.
All that being said, I also downloaded part of Battlefield Earth. There's no way the movie could be any worse, big screen or not. I loved the book, but Ebert's review (http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert_reviews/2000/ 05/051202.html) was on the nose.
One of the things that came with the cuecat kit was a rca cable that was meant to go from your computer to your sound card. Apparently, while watching TV they'd embed a signal into the audio that the cuecat software would pick up, and it would take you to their site.
Since one of our local channels was owned by the Belo corp (who owned a LOT of Digital Convergence stock), they pushed it HEAVILY, and embedded URLs in the news program.
I've gone out looking for the Leonids for 4 years now. Unless I'm willing to drive several hours from where I live, I'm screwed. And each year they hype this thing more and more. Wasn't last year supposed to be amazing because of some other asteroid thingie? And the year before that... _that_ was supposed to be huge. Oh, and wait, the one before _that_ was supposed to be momentous. Damn nerd hype.
So, what kind of HA (High-Availability) or Failover turnkey clusters are available for Linux? I'm curious, not trolling... I'd love to get one. I know Red Hat Advanced Server does it, and there are some projects out. (SuperMonkey? LVS?)
Time to go back a little in the Wayback machine. I have a set of Rhapsody CDs, which (as I understand it) was Darwin + Mac_goodness, basically NeXTStep + Mac stuff. Now, I don't have the floppies for it, so I've never been able to test it. But, would anyone like to comment on how well it works, the state of Pre-Aqua on X86, etc, etc?
Slashdot Mirror
Sci-Fi has changed how they do programming, from what I've read/heard. Now, instead of doing series (we'll mention a few I loved that were cancelled - G vs. E, Invisible Man, Farscape), they'll do events (Dune, Taken, Firestarter), and apparently they can make enough money off of it to stop doing series (except for Stargate - add obligatory "how the frell did Farscape get canned and this piece of drek extended?" reference here).
And I'll breeze by the fact that Straczynski's "Legend of the Rangers" never went beyond the pilot, due to the fact that they're moving away from Space Opera.
But, we have a way to stop this. And I'm deadly serious. Don't watch the events. It's that simple. Show them that you don't care that they spent x million dollars on , that you want series. And do it by not watching the events initially. If you want, watch it the second time around. It's not like they're not going to show it a few more times, before the DVD release.
So, sit back, and wait 3 more months for Taken, Firestarter Remake 3, etc. And then tell them why you're not watching.
Fortunately, there's been a good amount of science fiction on for the past couple of years, and not on the Sci-Fi channel. But if they can survive by doing one gigantic event a quarter (read the old press releases), then they won't do series. Personally, I wish they could do like the Brits - a 6-episode run of a show. If it does well, another "season" next year. The problem is that Science Fiction is expensive to do, sets and all. They might need to avoid space opera, do more like I-man.
Anyhow, time to go watch last night's tape of Firefly - 2nd time will hopefully be even better.
"Yeah, good goin' there, T.J." -- DeNiro (to Shatner, after he falls off the hood)
"He likes me! He really likes me!"
I like Smith, but the ideal actor for this role would be "impassive" (I think that's the word) without being wooden.
Hmmm... the scary part is that I just realized who could probably pull it off - Kevin Kline. Of course, back to the last movie those two were in together: Wild Wild West (where Kline was the only watchable part of the movie)
Plus: Alex Proyas (Dark City, The Crow)
Minus: Will Smith
Plus: Asimov premise
Minus: Hollywood adaptation
Plus: Will Smith as a robot wouldn't strain his acting ability
Minus: Smith might play the human
Plus: clever ideas, cool story
Minus: probably will be shot as a scifi/comedy
This could be interesting. For the love of god, though, don't let Will Smith play his "normal" character (remember Wild Wild West? That was supposed to be Jim West?). Give him someone else to play - we know he can act, even if he chooses not to.
Hey, Asa, someone brought up a good point - why not just release a patch or delta or something? I haven't gotten it yet, so maybe it's more complicated than that, but if only a couple of files have changed, why not release that also?
What may be happening is that Microsoft is trying to prove that they should keep the name, and is trying to coerce all these companies so they can say to the judge that they're going after other companies, so (1) they are attempting to protect their name, and (2) they're not just going after Lindows.
If trying to prove #1 is their idea, I hope the Judge realizes what a BS move this is, and that it's too late for them to do this.
doh! I could've sworn it worked last time (after 1.0 came out, waited a day or two, then grabbed the nightlies). Oh well. Thanks, Asa.
Mozilla used to have a bug where going to certain web sites with logins would cause it to die. I remember that SQLServerInsider and New York Times would both cause it to crash, and so I _really_ loved the (blah blah blah Free Reg), since then I'd know to avoid those links. It's been fixed for a while, though, and aside from that it's been pretty damn stable since M18 or M19. Oh, and a day after 1.0 came out. (1.0 was buggy, but the nightly fixed the biggest crashes - I plan on waiting for tonight's nightlies so that any stoppers will have been fixed)
Yeah, but then you'd want to show a friend, you'd tell him to put them on, he'd say no, you'd say yes, and then you'd have to wrestle, secure in the knowledge that if you lose, he'll put them on anyway.
ObRef: the long, drawn out "Cripple Fight" in South Park was based on the They Live fight scene.
A system like MyLifeBits was first suggested in 1945, when presidential technology adviser Vannevar Bush hatched the then farsighted idea of an infinite personal archive based on the emerging digital computer.
Hmmm, sounds like the Farleyfile.
(copied from Jerry Pournelle's page): Big Jim Farley was a New York Tammany Hall politician whose success was partly due to the "Farleyfile": a collection of facts about everyone he ever met. If you went to see Big Jim, by the time you got into his office he knew your name, your birthday, the names of your spouse and children, and what you liked for lunch. It was all on file.
Also, there's a program (Lifesigns?) that's based around a chronological history of data (there's a PC version, and there was a Newton version). You don't go searching for "Letter about Enron", you remember that it was 7 or 8 months ago, and look at email then. Clever premise, loved by all the people who adopted it. Never could get the hang of it myself.
At Texas A&M, one of the local CS students was doing his Thesis on some sort of large math problem in HRBB. He had two choices for writing the code to provide the solution. He could either write it in Fortran and use the Cray Y-MP we had (which, 10 years ago, was a fairly big deal). OR, he could use a high level language and use Zilla and our NeXT lab to solve it. He chose the second.
Amazing to see - you'd tell the Cubes to run Zilla in the background, feed it the problem, and away you go. We had 6 computers in the lab, and you could tell he was working on it when you first logged in - it would be a bit sluggish. IIRC, he later took over the NeXT lab downstairs, which had 30 NeXT "pizza boxes". Not bad, especially for 1991-1992.
And this paper says:
Parallelization: with a NeXTstep application called Zilla, multiple Mathematica sessions may be invoked on networks of NeXT computers to allow the simultaneous solution of different parts of a large problem.
BTW: anyone happen to know if they're doing Zilla on OS X? I remember reading something about an easy way to cluster Macs for performance, but I forget the details. It just involved running a client on each workstation.
What I had heard was that Amazon is selling the Industrial Version, not the Consumer Version.
The big rumor has also been that the Consumer Segway will actually be an innovation - it's a segway, but one that runs on a Stirling Engine.
- Outlook on Exchange
- Enterprise Manager (MSSQL)
and that's pretty much it. Hell, I use cygwin half the day, to parse things, write scripts, etc. But I need both to do my job. So that's simpleHome:
Of all those, the only two that I'd have issues with would be the Newsgroup (BRN2 isn't there yet, though Newsbin is working on either getting it working great on Wine, or an actual version) and, most importantly, Games. The rest of it is all minor stuff I can work around, or find better options for (on Linux or Mac).
Just an FYI - the radio shows ROCK. Many are written by former writers of the show, they have the actual actors performing their original roles (one with the Brigadier, even!). This is as close to the show as you'll get.
Operating system aside, the form factor _is_ similar. I have my 2k here with me now. The Stepup's will be 8x10, 2.5 pounds. It's actually quite a good size- it'll be obvious if you're carrying it around, but should fit in the crook of the arm nicely. And the price is good, too - $800 is the price of a low-end laptop, and I think this could be more useful. Add a wifi card and VNC, and all of a sudden you have the web pad that MS goes on about, but take it on the road as a separate machine. Could work.
Ditto what others have said - what kind of HWR will this thing have that'll run on Linux?
IIRC, one of the first movies to actually SHOW a profit was, of all things, Ishtar! (remember it?)
From what I remember, the reason it showed a profit was that all the people who would normally cook the books, so that it didn't make money, wanted nothing to do with it. They were afraid it would taint their name, so they stayed away from it. So it earned money.
I think any cross examination should include the dividends that are given out - after all, if there's no profit, why should they give out dividends, and where's the money coming from?
1) One of the only times I've downloaded Telecines/CAMs/CAPs, whatever, was "Episode I - The Duel". It had this file in it: "No frog men, no kids who can't act. Just THE DUEL.". It was great. I think it was either 2 or 3 minutes long. I'd seen the movie already, and there was absolutely no way I was going to see it again. But the Duel itself was sublime. Between the music and the poetry, and without any dialog... wow.
/ 05/051202.html) was on the nose.
2) That scene was more impressive in the theater. Yeah, seeing it on my 17" monitor is cool, but 75 feet across is better. With some movies, you want to be wowed by the effects, since the story sure as hell ain't going to do it. Witness Godzilla, Mission Impossible 2, Star Wars I & II - a blast to see in a theater, but MAN it would suck to see on a tiny screen.
The one killer app theaters have is that they can create a better experience than you can get at home. Huge screens, GOOD sound systems (not LOUD! but good quality - I saw Fifth Element 13 times, in 5 different theaters. ALL of them had bass issues during the opening scene. My NHT sub/speakers performed flawlessly), no cell phones, no idiots talking through the movie, etc. Then you're not paying for the movie, but the experience of having watched the movie.
All that being said, I also downloaded part of Battlefield Earth. There's no way the movie could be any worse, big screen or not. I loved the book, but Ebert's review (http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert_reviews/2000
Yup. What I meant.
One of the things that came with the cuecat kit was a rca cable that was meant to go from your computer to your sound card. Apparently, while watching TV they'd embed a signal into the audio that the cuecat software would pick up, and it would take you to their site.
Since one of our local channels was owned by the Belo corp (who owned a LOT of Digital Convergence stock), they pushed it HEAVILY, and embedded URLs in the news program.
So, nothing new.
I've gone out looking for the Leonids for 4 years now. Unless I'm willing to drive several hours from where I live, I'm screwed. And each year they hype this thing more and more. Wasn't last year supposed to be amazing because of some other asteroid thingie? And the year before that... _that_ was supposed to be huge. Oh, and wait, the one before _that_ was supposed to be momentous. Damn nerd hype.
My, that looks a lot like Lycoris! :)
So, what kind of HA (High-Availability) or Failover turnkey clusters are available for Linux? I'm curious, not trolling... I'd love to get one. I know Red Hat Advanced Server does it, and there are some projects out. (SuperMonkey? LVS?)
Time to go back a little in the Wayback machine. I have a set of Rhapsody CDs, which (as I understand it) was Darwin + Mac_goodness, basically NeXTStep + Mac stuff. Now, I don't have the floppies for it, so I've never been able to test it. But, would anyone like to comment on how well it works, the state of Pre-Aqua on X86, etc, etc?
"Best interview ever."