I've downloaded the laserdisc rips you refer to, or at least, "some laserdisc version of the original Star Wars trilogy ripped from laserdisc and available online through various p2p applications." Disclaimer done.
Anyway, the version I looked at was pretty crappy; it was blurry like I would expect a VHS version to be.
I'd rather see a couple apocryphal scenes (obligatory reference to Han vs. Greedo) than look at grainy 200-lines-of-resolution rips.
Seriously, at this stage of my life, I understand the nostalgia, and I'll gladly trade 480p and surround sound for the price of Han vs. Greedo and the other additions of questionable worth. I *want* the cleaned up special effects transparencies, and I don't mind a little cleaning up here and there, although I would prefer the original soundtrack, not any substituted audio or music.
On another topic, at the risk of being shouted down by hordes of fanboys, the original Star Wars is overrated. It was a great trilogy (I was disappointed by Jedi, but it was Completion to the series, and I am a forgiving person), but there was something more behind it that caused all of us kids growing up seeing the movies to become fans like we did: marketing.
The marketing juggernaut behind Star Wars is what got the hundreds of action figures and model sets, fast food cups and posters and toys, t-shirts, towels, lunchboxes, watches, cookie jars, etc. etc. into our homes.
I would argue that the toys themselves are what kept Star Wars alive much longer had there been a mediocre marketing campaign behind it. When the movie was out of the theater (after an amazingly long run IIRC), we still had our action figures and toy sets to put them in. Personally, I had several friends with Star Wars figures, and we would pool our Star Wars toy resources and set up bases and enact elaborate battle scenes, scenes from the movies, and scenes we would create on our own. We still had the posters, the magazines, the watches, the lunchboxes (I had the original metal Star Wars lunch box, but the last time I saw it (about 15 years ago) it had already rusted up pretty badly.) the bedsheets, etc., etc., to remind us and keep Star Wars close in our thoughts.
This indoctrination of a whole generation in the Star Wars mythos created the best ongoing Star Wars marketing; fans who had SW so ingrained in their life that their favorite philosopher wasn't Socrates or Plato; philosophy and wisdom meant Yoda. Kids (mostly kids, some weird adults) who saw these movies as they were growing up, took Star Wars almost as a replacement for religion or oral tradition, or as a replacement for every Mother Goose story their parents never read them because they were too busy working overtime because they were single parents, or because dad was an emotional cripple as a result of his dad being an emotional cripple.
I'm sure if some interested college psych major wanted to, he could interview hundreds of 30-something children who gravitated to Star Wars and come up with a great dissertation subject about marketing and the psychological effects on young children who become overdoctrinated with commercialized fictional characters.
I've been reading all these responses by self-assumed authorities on science fiction or literature who claim to know what science fiction "is".
Science Fiction is a generic term used for fiction that takes place in the future or using technology that doesn't currently exist.
When you computer-chair critics try to state authoritatively that "Science Fiction is about how technological advances affect people," or whatever other label you want to use, you put an artificial limitation on something that is supposed to be free-ranging and unlimited. Our imagination and creativity are beautiful, precious things, and attempting to shoehorn the unborn manuscripts of budding authors who want to write their story their way is just plain wrong.
Science Fiction can be...
- An exploration of possible technological advances
- Shoot'em'ups in space
- The affect of future technology on society/politics/individuals/religion
- Pulp trash
- Satire
- Comedy
- And lots more..
Any writing can be written any way the author wants. The results will be according to its worth, hopefully. The only real problem is there's so much competition to be published that good manuscripts can sit in the slush pile for years.
Of course current fashions and trends are going to affect what gets published. Ultimately, most book publishing is for the entertainment of the ordinary person, and the book publishing industry succeeds in doing that.
Publishing "important" work with real literary impact is a hit-and-miss proposition, and always will be, regardless of the genre.
Your argument doesn't hold water. When I'm having sex with your girlfriend, sister, and mother, I usually close my eyes.
Seriously, though, when I watch porn, I'm paying for, among other things, flawless bodies and cute faces. At least magazines can bust out the airbrush on that leaky anus, blatant boob-job scar, razor burn, ass pimple, etc.
And btw, I lost my virginity before many of you young punks on here were born.
Unfortunately, porn in high res it not the panacea you imply. Even on DVD I can see waaaaay too much detail. (think: sores, pimples, rashes, bruises, and surgery scars)
I mis-spoke about Horizons. They're not dead... yet. Give them a month or two to admit they're hemhorraging so much money that they've decided to cut out the middleman and just burn the checks from their investers directly.
Unfortunately, even waiting until they were in Alpha wouldn't prevent the proliferation of MMO game cancellation notices. Horizons, Dragon Empires, Uru (the multiplayer Myst game), and quite a few others have all been very late in development before they were canned.
I was wondering when someone was going to bring up HDTV. I've got a 65" HDTV, and I can't stand watching pixellated SD (standard definition, as opposed to HD - high definition) anymore.
I've got Time Warner cable in Fayetteville, NC, and I recently upgraded to their HD PVR. It's been working pretty darn well, except for one show that was cut 10 minutes short. I recorded all of the Olympics, in HD, and every segment turned out beautifully, with only slight and infrequent artifacts on the water activities. I am very satisfied with my new PVR.
Also, my new PVR has dual tuners. I can record two shows and watch a third, theoretically, but I did get some slight pauses one time while watching what I was recording on HD - which most of the time I wouldn't do anyway.
HD is a big deal, and for a lot of home theater people, is a crucial component in their PVR/DVR wish list.
Aren't Juniper -- oops typo -- Jupiter and Earth in the same elliptical plane? That would mean it's much more likely to sweep up relatively close debris than say, some random object out of the elliptical plane.
Of course I may just be barking at the moon; I'm not ejimicated in astronomy.
This is a valid concern that will be faced by our children's children's children, possibly.
Visual and aural nerve stimulators are already being used today. Primitively, of course, as the technology and understanding of direct neural stimulation is still in its infancy.
In the future, when direct neural stimulation provides sight, sound, smell, taste, and feeling that is identical to the Real Thing, many people will elect to spend as much of their time in "VR" as they can. Games today have nothing on the addictive nature of endless and unlimited simulations that fulfill our most farfetched dreams.
Lawrence Manning wrote about this in part of his future crises that mankind will face. In "The Man Who Awoke," Manning's protagonist takes the few remaining unwired people from one city to found a new city without virtual living. This theme has been echoed in many works of fiction, including Star Trek (people get addicted to the holodeck; same principle), The Matrix, and many many others.
My interpretation was that Picard had likely defined his own custom temperature settings in the database. When he said "hot," the computer would refer to Picard's personal preferences for "hot" versus the standard generic "hot", which might be much cooler (ie, a safety feature of the replicator) than the hot that I would predict Picard to prefer, just based on his personality.
Nothing revolutionary that I can think of off the top of my head.
Every technological advance from the last 10 years that I can think of is evolutionary in nature (smaller, cheaper, faster, better) instead of revolutionary. I would refer to something as revolutionary if it involved improvements of two or more orders of magnitude in a single iteration (data storage, processing speed, reductions in manufacturing costs, display technology, energy production, etc) or, deity forbid, NEW technology. I want fusion, or cheap spaceflight, or total elimination of pervasive health problems like heart disease and cancer. I want cars that can run for a month on 50 cents worth of fuel, or a computer the size of my pinky that can store the equivalent of 300 motion pictures in high definition. I want the blind to see again, in full color. I want Christopher Reeves to stand up and walk around. I want sewage to be transformed into pure water AND generate electricity from the destruction of the impurities. I want ONE MILLION DOLLARS! Yeah, I know, I want a lot. But when I was growing up, the changes seemed more radical and impressive than they do today. Look at computers from 1984 (Commodore 16, Macintosh) compared to computers from 1994 (Intel Pentium 100). Look at computers from 1994 compared to computers 2004 (still called Pentium, just faster). I hate to use an overused and often abused word, but there's been no paradigm shifts.
Technology companies keep promising us the moon (and we see these promises posted on Slashdot (sometimes the same article on a yearly basis)) but none of the really big promises ever bear fruit.
If anyone can think of a really huge leap in some technology in the last 10 years, I'd like to hear it.
I think most of that article is crap for reasons expressed in my post, and in the posts of others. 10 years is not enough time to see most of those changes. 50 years maybe.
Good point. I'm running two processes (in a futile attempt to monitor two Gmail accounts) and one is using 8.7MB of RAM and the other is using around 8MB.
By contrast, I'm using the Java based Jabber IM program; it's using 8MB of RAM, and it has full IM functionality.
I have three Google accounts. I have one super-secret account that nobody knows so I can... uh... tell people that I have a super secret account that nobody knows. I have one that's close to my real name, so I can use it for a backup for work. And I have one generic one for normal everyday use and storage.
Unfortunately, now I have three different Gmail accounts to track.
For those of you with two more Gmail accounts who haven't had a chance to try out the Gmail Notifier yet, it doesn't work for multiple accounts. You can have multiple copies running simultaneously, but it will only refer to the first one you signed in as, even though it *will* prompt you for a new username/password on the second copy you run.
If you are monitoring more than one Gmail account, what solution have you come up with?
It's tiny; 2.7" by 3" by 1". It's got USB 2.0 and *ethernet*. The unfortunate thing is, the ethernet connectivity requires proprietary software, it's not just an SMB server on ethernet, and it's not a mass storage device with USB. However, there is a Java version of the software, and it runs on just about any platform that can run Java.
Battery life is fifteen hours, about double the iPod's.
It comes with a DOCK so you don't have to plug in power, usb, whatever, every time you go home. It's got a rechargable battery, and you just put it in the dock to charge and connect to your LAN/PC. The dock has RCA out, ethernet, and USB.
MSRP is $399, but you should be able to get better deals online, and there's a $20 rebate right now.
This is an interesting subject, particularly for me. I believe I have some symptoms of ADHD.
Specifically, sometimes, even after a good night's sleep, I find it difficult to focus on *any* task, even several different things I am interested in doing.
Given a free day, with no work demands or housework demands, sometimes I can just sit at my desk with a web browser open, and not think clearly enough to decide what to do next.
In my work (network engineering, system administration) I have previously worked on complicated tasks, sometimes multitasking separate unrelated network outages and system problems. I have the intelligence and the capability to do so.
But I find that as I get older, I drift into fogs more and more frequently, where I can't seem to sort through the mass of information floating hazily through my brain.
I am 31, almost 32.
I blame it on the Diet Coke. I've been an addict for years, and I think perhaps the Nutrasweet is blocking some receptors in my brain or something. Seriously, I've noticed that my head is clearer when I don't drink it. So I'm trying to quit.
Fayetteville, North Carolina Time Warner/"Roadrunner"
I've done testing in the past and more recently, and I think our area was upgraded in the past 3 months.
I used to cap out at around 1.5mbps with a 128kbps upstream.
Now, I can achieve over 2.0mbps and 384kbps upstream, which I think is amazing. I love it.
Of course, this all depends on what sites I am accessing. But the standard sites for game demo downloads, Microsoft (ConXion), etc., are all up near the 2mbps limit, which is very nice indeed.
A couple months ago (which in hindsight I believe was the upgrade period), we had frequent outages. One week we would have them for hours at a time. But in the past month, the cable hasn't gone "out" once, and I believe we had an upstream problem like once or twice (nothing would resolve, at least).
So, all in all I am very happy with the current state of my cable, although it was painful going through (what I presume to be) the upgrade process. Some feedback from the cable company would have been nice; ie, mass email to customers saying "Hey, we're upgrading your area."
Slashdot Mirror
I've downloaded the laserdisc rips you refer to, or at least, "some laserdisc version of the original Star Wars trilogy ripped from laserdisc and available online through various p2p applications." Disclaimer done.
Anyway, the version I looked at was pretty crappy; it was blurry like I would expect a VHS version to be.
I'd rather see a couple apocryphal scenes (obligatory reference to Han vs. Greedo) than look at grainy 200-lines-of-resolution rips.
Seriously, at this stage of my life, I understand the nostalgia, and I'll gladly trade 480p and surround sound for the price of Han vs. Greedo and the other additions of questionable worth. I *want* the cleaned up special effects transparencies, and I don't mind a little cleaning up here and there, although I would prefer the original soundtrack, not any substituted audio or music.
On another topic, at the risk of being shouted down by hordes of fanboys, the original Star Wars is overrated. It was a great trilogy (I was disappointed by Jedi, but it was Completion to the series, and I am a forgiving person), but there was something more behind it that caused all of us kids growing up seeing the movies to become fans like we did: marketing.
The marketing juggernaut behind Star Wars is what got the hundreds of action figures and model sets, fast food cups and posters and toys, t-shirts, towels, lunchboxes, watches, cookie jars, etc. etc. into our homes.
I would argue that the toys themselves are what kept Star Wars alive much longer had there been a mediocre marketing campaign behind it. When the movie was out of the theater (after an amazingly long run IIRC), we still had our action figures and toy sets to put them in. Personally, I had several friends with Star Wars figures, and we would pool our Star Wars toy resources and set up bases and enact elaborate battle scenes, scenes from the movies, and scenes we would create on our own. We still had the posters, the magazines, the watches, the lunchboxes (I had the original metal Star Wars lunch box, but the last time I saw it (about 15 years ago) it had already rusted up pretty badly.) the bedsheets, etc., etc., to remind us and keep Star Wars close in our thoughts.
This indoctrination of a whole generation in the Star Wars mythos created the best ongoing Star Wars marketing; fans who had SW so ingrained in their life that their favorite philosopher wasn't Socrates or Plato; philosophy and wisdom meant Yoda. Kids (mostly kids, some weird adults) who saw these movies as they were growing up, took Star Wars almost as a replacement for religion or oral tradition, or as a replacement for every Mother Goose story their parents never read them because they were too busy working overtime because they were single parents, or because dad was an emotional cripple as a result of his dad being an emotional cripple.
I'm sure if some interested college psych major wanted to, he could interview hundreds of 30-something children who gravitated to Star Wars and come up with a great dissertation subject about marketing and the psychological effects on young children who become overdoctrinated with commercialized fictional characters.
I've been reading all these responses by self-assumed authorities on science fiction or literature who claim to know what science fiction "is".
Science Fiction is a generic term used for fiction that takes place in the future or using technology that doesn't currently exist.
When you computer-chair critics try to state authoritatively that "Science Fiction is about how technological advances affect people," or whatever other label you want to use, you put an artificial limitation on something that is supposed to be free-ranging and unlimited. Our imagination and creativity are beautiful, precious things, and attempting to shoehorn the unborn manuscripts of budding authors who want to write their story their way is just plain wrong.
Science Fiction can be...
- An exploration of possible technological advances
- Shoot'em'ups in space
- The affect of future technology on society/politics/individuals/religion
- Pulp trash
- Satire
- Comedy
- And lots more..
Any writing can be written any way the author wants. The results will be according to its worth, hopefully. The only real problem is there's so much competition to be published that good manuscripts can sit in the slush pile for years.
Of course current fashions and trends are going to affect what gets published. Ultimately, most book publishing is for the entertainment of the ordinary person, and the book publishing industry succeeds in doing that.
Publishing "important" work with real literary impact is a hit-and-miss proposition, and always will be, regardless of the genre.
Your argument doesn't hold water. When I'm having sex with your girlfriend, sister, and mother, I usually close my eyes.
Seriously, though, when I watch porn, I'm paying for, among other things, flawless bodies and cute faces. At least magazines can bust out the airbrush on that leaky anus, blatant boob-job scar, razor burn, ass pimple, etc.
And btw, I lost my virginity before many of you young punks on here were born.
Porn is what runs most of the internet.
Unfortunately, porn in high res it not the panacea you imply. Even on DVD I can see waaaaay too much detail. (think: sores, pimples, rashes, bruises, and surgery scars)
But Q is one of those wierd things that can be both singular and plural at the same time.
Anyway, the programmers, developers, and GMs are going to be Q.
You'll have your Apprentice Q, which are only barely demigods, and then your full Q, which is preferred.
I mis-spoke about Horizons. They're not dead... yet. Give them a month or two to admit they're hemhorraging so much money that they've decided to cut out the middleman and just burn the checks from their investers directly.
Did you happen to catch the beta and estimated release dates?
You have enough time to court, engage, wed, knock-up, and divorce this so-called woman before the game will be released. If it is ever released.
Unfortunately, even waiting until they were in Alpha wouldn't prevent the proliferation of MMO game cancellation notices. Horizons, Dragon Empires, Uru (the multiplayer Myst game), and quite a few others have all been very late in development before they were canned.
I was wondering when someone was going to bring up HDTV. I've got a 65" HDTV, and I can't stand watching pixellated SD (standard definition, as opposed to HD - high definition) anymore.
I've got Time Warner cable in Fayetteville, NC, and I recently upgraded to their HD PVR. It's been working pretty darn well, except for one show that was cut 10 minutes short. I recorded all of the Olympics, in HD, and every segment turned out beautifully, with only slight and infrequent artifacts on the water activities. I am very satisfied with my new PVR.
Also, my new PVR has dual tuners. I can record two shows and watch a third, theoretically, but I did get some slight pauses one time while watching what I was recording on HD - which most of the time I wouldn't do anyway.
HD is a big deal, and for a lot of home theater people, is a crucial component in their PVR/DVR wish list.
Unfortunately, the "huge scads of bandwidth and server paid by banner ads" business model DOES NOT WORK.
They have to try to recoup their costs somehow, and putting a stranglehold on new files is one logical way to do it.
Hey, I hate it as much as anyone, but I also understand that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Aren't Juniper -- oops typo -- Jupiter and Earth in the same elliptical plane? That would mean it's much more likely to sweep up relatively close debris than say, some random object out of the elliptical plane.
Of course I may just be barking at the moon; I'm not ejimicated in astronomy.
This is a valid concern that will be faced by our children's children's children, possibly.
Visual and aural nerve stimulators are already being used today. Primitively, of course, as the technology and understanding of direct neural stimulation is still in its infancy.
In the future, when direct neural stimulation provides sight, sound, smell, taste, and feeling that is identical to the Real Thing, many people will elect to spend as much of their time in "VR" as they can. Games today have nothing on the addictive nature of endless and unlimited simulations that fulfill our most farfetched dreams.
Lawrence Manning wrote about this in part of his future crises that mankind will face. In "The Man Who Awoke," Manning's protagonist takes the few remaining unwired people from one city to found a new city without virtual living. This theme has been echoed in many works of fiction, including Star Trek (people get addicted to the holodeck; same principle), The Matrix, and many many others.
Well said.
My interpretation was that Picard had likely defined his own custom temperature settings in the database. When he said "hot," the computer would refer to Picard's personal preferences for "hot" versus the standard generic "hot", which might be much cooler (ie, a safety feature of the replicator) than the hot that I would predict Picard to prefer, just based on his personality.
The last 10 years has gotten us...
Nothing revolutionary that I can think of off the top of my head.
Every technological advance from the last 10 years that I can think of is evolutionary in nature (smaller, cheaper, faster, better) instead of revolutionary. I would refer to something as revolutionary if it involved improvements of two or more orders of magnitude in a single iteration (data storage, processing speed, reductions in manufacturing costs, display technology, energy production, etc) or, deity forbid, NEW technology. I want fusion, or cheap spaceflight, or total elimination of pervasive health problems like heart disease and cancer. I want cars that can run for a month on 50 cents worth of fuel, or a computer the size of my pinky that can store the equivalent of 300 motion pictures in high definition. I want the blind to see again, in full color. I want Christopher Reeves to stand up and walk around. I want sewage to be transformed into pure water AND generate electricity from the destruction of the impurities. I want ONE MILLION DOLLARS! Yeah, I know, I want a lot. But when I was growing up, the changes seemed more radical and impressive than they do today. Look at computers from 1984 (Commodore 16, Macintosh) compared to computers from 1994 (Intel Pentium 100). Look at computers from 1994 compared to computers 2004 (still called Pentium, just faster). I hate to use an overused and often abused word, but there's been no paradigm shifts.
Technology companies keep promising us the moon (and we see these promises posted on Slashdot (sometimes the same article on a yearly basis)) but none of the really big promises ever bear fruit.
If anyone can think of a really huge leap in some technology in the last 10 years, I'd like to hear it.
I think most of that article is crap for reasons expressed in my post, and in the posts of others. 10 years is not enough time to see most of those changes. 50 years maybe.
I checked your other respons in this article, and I don't see where you posted a location to get this HTTPMAIL->Gmail wrapper.
Good point. I'm running two processes (in a futile attempt to monitor two Gmail accounts) and one is using 8.7MB of RAM and the other is using around 8MB.
By contrast, I'm using the Java based Jabber IM program; it's using 8MB of RAM, and it has full IM functionality.
A little bloated?
I have three Google accounts. I have one super-secret account that nobody knows so I can... uh... tell people that I have a super secret account that nobody knows. I have one that's close to my real name, so I can use it for a backup for work. And I have one generic one for normal everyday use and storage.
Unfortunately, now I have three different Gmail accounts to track.
For those of you with two more Gmail accounts who haven't had a chance to try out the Gmail Notifier yet, it doesn't work for multiple accounts. You can have multiple copies running simultaneously, but it will only refer to the first one you signed in as, even though it *will* prompt you for a new username/password on the second copy you run.
If you are monitoring more than one Gmail account, what solution have you come up with?
I'd like to read it from my Blackberry, but last time I tried, it didn't work :(
That is an awesome present. Your wife has a sense of humor at least... do not complain!
Thanks for the spoiler on the front page, asshole.
The Rio Karma is on my Christmas list this year.
Check it out here.
It's tiny; 2.7" by 3" by 1". It's got USB 2.0 and *ethernet*. The unfortunate thing is, the ethernet connectivity requires proprietary software, it's not just an SMB server on ethernet, and it's not a mass storage device with USB. However, there is a Java version of the software, and it runs on just about any platform that can run Java.
Battery life is fifteen hours, about double the iPod's.
It comes with a DOCK so you don't have to plug in power, usb, whatever, every time you go home. It's got a rechargable battery, and you just put it in the dock to charge and connect to your LAN/PC. The dock has RCA out, ethernet, and USB.
MSRP is $399, but you should be able to get better deals online, and there's a $20 rebate right now.
This is an interesting subject, particularly for me. I believe I have some symptoms of ADHD.
Specifically, sometimes, even after a good night's sleep, I find it difficult to focus on *any* task, even several different things I am interested in doing.
Given a free day, with no work demands or housework demands, sometimes I can just sit at my desk with a web browser open, and not think clearly enough to decide what to do next.
In my work (network engineering, system administration) I have previously worked on complicated tasks, sometimes multitasking separate unrelated network outages and system problems. I have the intelligence and the capability to do so.
But I find that as I get older, I drift into fogs more and more frequently, where I can't seem to sort through the mass of information floating hazily through my brain.
I am 31, almost 32.
I blame it on the Diet Coke. I've been an addict for years, and I think perhaps the Nutrasweet is blocking some receptors in my brain or something. Seriously, I've noticed that my head is clearer when I don't drink it. So I'm trying to quit.
If you thought that theme was subtle, you don't get out much.
I've seen numerous movies with more subtle themes. The Matrix is about kicking ass and wearing leather.
Fayetteville, North Carolina
Time Warner/"Roadrunner"
I've done testing in the past and more recently, and I think our area was upgraded in the past 3 months.
I used to cap out at around 1.5mbps with a 128kbps upstream.
Now, I can achieve over 2.0mbps and 384kbps upstream, which I think is amazing. I love it.
Of course, this all depends on what sites I am accessing. But the standard sites for game demo downloads, Microsoft (ConXion), etc., are all up near the 2mbps limit, which is very nice indeed.
A couple months ago (which in hindsight I believe was the upgrade period), we had frequent outages. One week we would have them for hours at a time. But in the past month, the cable hasn't gone "out" once, and I believe we had an upstream problem like once or twice (nothing would resolve, at least).
So, all in all I am very happy with the current state of my cable, although it was painful going through (what I presume to be) the upgrade process. Some feedback from the cable company would have been nice; ie, mass email to customers saying "Hey, we're upgrading your area."