Granted it's just for Windows, but I find Modplug Tracker to be an excellent composition tool. I still do some composing on occasion.
And yes, I do date back to the old demoscene on the Amiga and Atari ST... ahh... fond memories of the original Soundtracker and (eventually) TCB Tracker on the Atari ST (which sucked, but it was really the first tracker I remember for the Atari).
1) Ozymandias comes across in the movie as ethically wrong, lanky, and not really someone to be rooted for with.
Unless you watch the end of the movie... you know, the bit where his motivations were revealed? Actually, I felt for him throughout the movie, he was very compelling for me. And at the end, the feeling of the pain he felt was quite striking.
2) The ending no longer really makes much logical sense (hard to explain w/o spoiler).
Hmm... again I'd disagree a little here. To the average movie-goer the new ending makes more sense because it deals only in the established characters... it does not introduce new ones. Of course, I think that the original ending would've been good as well... and in some ways better (more "lasting" ability)... but in terms of the movie narrative it made sense to me.
3) They changed RR to Ronald Regan not Robert Redford.
Which I thought was amusing as hell. Hardly a major plot point, but the way it was played was nice.
LOL... yes... I was typing for so long that I thank you for making the third point I meant to make somewhere in my tirade:)
I did address it a little; The Incredibles were all icons... they all represented the characters we're all familiar with from our childhood, from TV and from comic books. It had nothing to do with the specifics of the characters, it had more to do with the fact that they were archetypes with which we connected. That, and the fact that it was a cartoon that was heavily marketed to kids didn't hurt (see my point RE: the 30 and 40 somethings taking their kids to the movies)
Watchmen are not archetypal characters; they're all based on archetypes but far more ambiguous in their motives and ideals.
In the case of Watchmen the R rating was necessary. It conveyed the sense of moral ambiguity on the part of the "heroes" and "villains" alike... and that they lived in the real world, not some fantasy. Finally, it also conveyed that there is a cost to every action, even when done with good intentions (in some cases, especially).
The R rating allowed showing superheroes as human, sexual creatures... and the horrible, angry side of humans that we all know exists. It put a microscope on our own personalities... and made much of the audience uncomfortable (as did the source material).
It also allowed the nudity of Doc Manhattan... which some people focus on as being something that made them uncomfortable... but to me it just highlighted how remote from human beings he has become, how his vision has become so broad that he barely sees human beings at all any more and considers their morals and social ideals, petty in the grand scheme of things (which they are).
If an 11 year old girl or boy doesn't know the physical differences between the genders, then something's really wrong with that child's upbringing.
I have two kids... 10 and 8... both of whom know the differences. No, they're not yet sexually aware... nor have I talked to them about it, but if they were to see nudity on screen (and who's to say they already haven't?) then I actually find it highly unlikely they'd ask any questions.
Is Watchmen really a failure? I mean, for an R-rated comic book movie, it's doing pretty well in my opinion. But that's not really the subject of the article.
The problem with Watchmen is not the R rating, at least in my opinion. The problem is the changes made to the ending that really changed the tone of it, and thus changed the meaning of the ending.
Let's look at it this way. Watchmen is a source material about which people are passionate. It was a seminal piece of comic book art, a graphic novel before there were graphic novels, and as the first of a genre it has a rather devout following. I know, I read it on first release... and re-read it... and re-read it... and yes, I loved it. However, in the intervening years (decades? OMG... I'm old!) I have not touched the source material and as such somewhat grew away from it. I re-read it last year as an adult and although I still found it to be an incredible piece of art, I found that it didn't resonate with me the same way it did when I was 13 and 14 (when it was first released). I still loved it, but in the way you do an ex girlfriend with whom you had a "soft breakup" because you grew apart instead of a difficult one.
I went to see the movie, and was blown away. 90% of the movie was damned close to the comic book... closer than I would've expected from Hollywood... and it would've been impossible to get that close without an R rating. The original comic book should have had an R rating as well! The ending though, had a different meaning for me than the comic. I won't spoil it here, but it IS different. However, for me it did not fundamentally change the tone of the entire movie... and in fact I think the comic book ending would've been less accessible to a more general audience and probably would've looked somewhat ridiculous on screen.
OK, call me an heretic. I enjoyed both of them but for different reasons. But the R rating is not the reason for the lackluster box office!
Here's my theory; the box office taking are low because of two things; (1) The Watchmen is a comic book that appealed to a niche, and (2) that niche is typically the very technically savvy.
OK, let's expand on that a little:
(1) Watchmen didn't appeal to a wider audience because it had a lot less exposure. Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Iron Man... all highly identifiable characters with a long history in print. All of them are part of the common consciousness that we have in the Western world, and all are characters we can visualize easily. Rorschach, Nite Owl, Doc Manhattan... who? These were all characters created for Watchmen because Alan Moore wasn't given the go-ahead to use the characters he wanted to... those with an history.
The upshot of this is that we have characters that only a small subsection of our society identifies with because they never really got into the social consciousness the way the more "iconic" characters did. This means that Hollywood produces a Watchmen movie, and the characters are new to the average viewer... and the average viewer doesn't want new; they want more of the same.
There's also this idea in the public consciousness that superhero's are always good, always doing the right thing. Watchmen's moral ambiguity on the part of ALL of the characters means that the average viewer won't identify their icons within the context of the movie, and thus won't connect with them. They're looking for simple... black and white. Watchmen is full of shades of grey.
(2) Because the subset of society is mostly tech-savvy, it means that they are going to read reviews of the movie before they go see it, usually written on websites by people with similar tastes... the blind leading the blind in a sense. This leads to one or two slightly negative reviews driving away the very core audience that was most likely to see it.
I refer in part to Massawyrm's review of Watchmen on Aint It Cool News (for which I can't find a direct link right now, sorry!) in which he slammed the movie
Disclaimer: Outside of the Slashdot Virtual Reaility, I do purchase CDs, AACs, MP3s. I use licensed MS software at work and home and even buy video games now and then. I do NOT, however, pay for bottled water at the movie theater. Preposterous!
Quite right, too... I drink my water out of the toilet just as Dog intended.
Damn... I would have had the first post if it hadn't been for trying to navigate in Pocket IE on my smartphone...;)
Am I saying the phone is too slow? Hmm...
Seriously? The universal remote is a simple, hardware, battery-easy solution to a problem. Phones are already getting too complex, and speed is an issue.
Here's a hint for the article author; I don't ever remember having to reboot my universal remote. Or wait for a page to come up. And no, the iPhone isn't any better; I own one and use my WinMo device because of flexibility... but I'd never use either of them as a remote.
Can you imagine the juggling you'd have to do when a call comes in to (a) answer the phone and (b) mute the telly?
Uhm... my digital climate control is in fahrenheit and has half-degree increments. I always thought that was a bit odd.
Of course... I'm an ex pat British guy living in the USA, and the climate control in my German car is in celsius... and damnit it's staying that way, even when my friends look at me funny:D
Nothing stopping you landing en-route and filling up... like a car:)
Honestly, a 550 mile range at 115mph... that's about what I'd expect from an LSA (Light Sport Aircraft); about 4 hours. You measure in fuel burn, not distance, because range in distance can change with wind.
But yeah... the two kids, dogs and luggage... yeah, this isn't your aircraft:)
Then they'll never get even a sport pilot license... problem solved I think.
Doesn't stop some nimrod getting in one and trying to fly it... but then again, it never stopped anyone from doing that with light aircraft either (and it has happened... just not often)
LOL... how true. But really, isn't that just an example of why the old money-making model is dying? It's not because of bittorrent; it's because those people have lost touch with their audience to the point that they are actively driving them away.
Pretty soon, the networks will have no product left to sell the advertisers. Then what will they do?
I find it ironic that these same people making these decisions are probably the same right-wing conservative christians who denounce Darwinian-style evolution...
It's because you're less likely to spend money in response to advertising.
Hmm... I'd disagree with your assertion there. GP said himself he's a father of four... I'd presume that since he's here he's probably somewhere in the 18-45 range, so his kids are probably pre-teen... just like mine.
Kids will respond to advertising... and that response to advertising is infectious. I find that I respond far better to advertising when I'm watching something I enjoy... like Battlestar Galactica... particularly when I've been watching TV or playing games with my kids. Their excitement rubs off on you... and as a result yes, I do tend to look first at items that are advertised during my favourite shows.
Thankfully, those favourite shows are all ending... that way I can just focus on my kids and get my entertainment elsewhere... and maybe drop down to a cheaper cable package:)
Agreed. Isn't it funny that they do this the same week that the top two movies at the box office are "Race to Witch Mountain" and "Watchmen"? Both of these movies are the kind of movies that appeal to "dysfunctional, antisocial boys". For the record though, the only reason I think it's that way around is because an R rated movie always has lower box office than a PG-13 one...
Well you know what? Those "dysfunctional, antisocial boys" grew up a decade ago and are now the parents of (let's face it) spoiled kids, drive nice cars and still tend to go out and spend money on things they really like just because they can.
Don't worry about them... their opinion is at least a decade or more out of date. Being a geek is no longer seen as some sort of social disease... and geeks typically earn significantly more than their non-geek counterparts. Howe and Brooks clearly don't understand the "tech-savvy" crowd... and so their ignorance is obviously reflected in their statements. Don't stress about that... they'll learn the hard way.
On the bright side, this gives me one more reason to drop cable entirely... if it weren't for the kids channels now I'd probably just say goodbye to cable entirely.
I should. But it's hard to feel indignant when the SciFi channel hasn't been a serious SciFi channel in damn near a decade. They used to show collections of all the great old SciFi TV shows and movies with some (often quite good) original new series and movies thrown into the mix.
I'll have to agree with this sentiment. I remember a LONG time ago watching the SciFi Channel for a lot of the original movies they made... they were interesting, often well written and charming. Sometimes they were a little odd but highly enjoyable... I still have Mr Stitch recorded on VHS somewhere in a box (though whether it's watchable or not is a matter of debate...:) )
Still, SciFi pretty much died when Farscape was canceled in my opinion. It was about that time they stopped doing ANY Science Fiction or Science Fantasy shows and started just rehashing old ideas. Stargate SG-1 kept going for a few more years... but let's be honest; it ended at Season 8... it just kept moving like the zombies in the latest "original movie" from SciFi. It had some charm in the last couple of seasons, but really it had been done for a long time. And I don't think Atlantis (underrated in my opinion) or BSG would have even gotten a shot had it not been for the fact that they weren't even SciFi original properties; both were made by other networks and syndicated in the US by SciFi.
If SciFi went under, I'd dearly miss Stargate and Eureka. But that's about it.
Thankfully, Stargate has reached its end, and the DVD sets aren't badly priced in my opinion... I've purchased up to Season 5 of SG-1 and plan to add Season 6 to my collection soon:)
Knight Rider was a re-imagining, not a resurrection. At least, that's what I got from the pitifully small amount of the show I could stand:)
Doctor Who was actually pretty damned consistent for a UK show, where normal rules of television do not apply (disclaimer: I'm British... I grew up with it!)
Doctor Who ran from (ISTR) 1963 until 1989 with only a few breaks due to writers strikes, political upheavals in the BBC and so forth. So yes... longest running science fiction show is a valid comment. The new series is a true resurrection because it's a continuation... not a re-imagining. Thematically it differs a little from its predecessor, but not THAT much. At least no more than a change in Doctor actor usually changed things in the past. In fact, the exception to that rule of change seemed to be the change from Ecclestone to Tenant, when thematically the show didn't change while the Doctor himself did.
With Who, the only giant gap in execution was the 16 years between the old series and the new.
Now, in terms of hours of TV... yes... I think Stargate SG-1 has it.
They also turned Eureka into nothing more than an huge product placement experiment. OK, I sort of support the idea in a way because they were realistic that traditional "break-in" advertising is dying... but the experiment was horrible.
When you're taken completely out of the narrative because Degree is identified as the saviour of the day, then this is NOT a good narrative. Now, do it tongue-in-cheek like the movie Evolution and it's fun... do it totally seriously like Eureka and it's not.
I loved Eureka until that... once the product placement became the ONLY visible thing in the show, I lost interest because it felt like an hour of commercials.
If you REALLY like to punish your Mac... you can also get Gentoo for OSX. Of course, to some Gentoo is punishing yourself, too... but personally I love having the prefixed Gentoo environment for all my Linux-style tools, while still being able to run my Mac tools in the same terminal window.
I'm not quite ready to have that as my default shell environment though... but I do have a shortcut to start up "startprefix.sh" in a terminal window:)
Note that if there's BSD or Linux type software you just HAVE to have and can't live without, but also can't get as an OSX package or Gentoo emerge... there's always DarwinPorts, which is a version of Port for OSX. I have that as well, but I tend to use Gentoo as my first source, Port as my second.
Technically, ESX is a kernel... the Redhat installation (called the Service Console) just bootstraps that kernel.
This has been demonstrated by ESXi, which is effectively the kernel with some minor changes to allow it to boot without a bootstrap. It's sort of the same way Novell used to be bootstrapped using DOS.
Oh come on. Enterprise? That only got an ending because they were given some advance notice and cobbled together an ending as quickly as possible. The entire show was intended to be milked for years, but lack of popularity killed it when the execs decided they'd had enough. It was only because they knew the fanbase was rabid enough that they agreed to let the show end when the season did, thus allowing that rather bolted on ending.
I mean, really. Is there any of the seasons of Enterprise where that ending wouldn't have fit just as well... or just as badly?
Voyager, much the same. That one though only got as far as it did because it was a pet project for people in power... it was in some ways even less successful than Enterprise! And the deux ex machina ending? Urgh!
TOS didn't end. It was terminated because management decided it was too expensive to continue. The movies... well they sort of carried on but were thematically FAR removed from TOS. So much so, the movies can almost be considered a completely different "series" with the same cast.
If you want to see science fiction that "ends" properly, then you're looking in the wrong place in Star Trek. The recent movie that springs to my mind when I try to think of one that really ends was "Sunshine". While it's not without flaws, it does definitely end.
And even sadder, this is not new. In my opinion, Dune never really ended, either. It was only terminated by the death of Frank Herbert, and I know from historical articles that he had other stuff planned. That stuff is all lost, now and will always be.
No, the Brian Herbert books don't count. They're not a continuation of the original in any way; they're inspired by the original and in some ways are a reasonable attempt to close the gaps and tie up the loose ends that were left when Frank died.
The lack of an ending for the sake of telling an ongoing story is not new.
But in counterpoint, I remember in 2004 I saw very few Windows 2003 deployments with lots of people wondering what was better than 2000. This is just history repeating itself.
For my own part, I'm only now starting to get people asking me questions as a consultant about running 2008, and generally I tell them "It can't hurt".
Just recently we've deployed our first truly production systems where I work running 2008 exclusively; specifically Exchange 2007 and a new file services cluster, and both beat the pants off what we had before. I used fully blown 2008 for the Exchange setup, and then 2008 Core for our file services cluster (all tied together with DFS). My user community couldn't be happier right now.
Architecturally I think 2008 is leaps and bounds ahead of 2003, particularly with IIS 7 which I think is a thing of beauty because it seems to abandon a lot of the old IIS 5 and 6 paradigms for a more "Apache-Like" paradigm. It does have some compatibility issues because of this, but you can't argue with the performance or the stability of the platform. Also, the TCP/IP stack seems much improved and more scalable... and generally the fact that they've finally groked the concept of "Basic install with no services" means you can secure it pretty damned nicely.
Not to say I think it's without flaws, but I think it's a nice evolution on what 2003 did... and if 2003 is any indication it'll be next year before we see any significant traction on installs.
Lots of negative commentary here about the concept... but whatever.
Honestly, I can see this being incredibly useful. There are areas in Africa specifically that are almost completely inaccessible, or very hard to access easily for medical or personnel reasons. Something like this I can see being extremely useful (and probably cheaper than an helicopter) because you can take off from any reasonably flat area, land within a mile or so of your destination and then drive to your destination.
This concept takes a lot of the problems out of the equation that are involved in light aircraft (no ground transportation at your destination, needs at least a partially finished runway) or an helicopter (expensive to buy and maintain, pilot training is extremely expensive, sand in the engine is a BAD THING!). This thing could be used in these environments to improve the lot of those people.
I don't see this as being really designed for the Western world, we have great roads and cars designed for that... but we are not "the world"... we are just a small part of it that sometimes thinks we are all there is.
I love this concept... I can see so many practical uses for it... but hell, I'd love to fly one myself.:)
But if your budget is 0, then xenserver is a viable alternative to vmware server.. That it can also compete with esxi while still being free is a big extra point in its favour.
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Granted it's just for Windows, but I find Modplug Tracker to be an excellent composition tool. I still do some composing on occasion.
And yes, I do date back to the old demoscene on the Amiga and Atari ST... ahh... fond memories of the original Soundtracker and (eventually) TCB Tracker on the Atari ST (which sucked, but it was really the first tracker I remember for the Atari).
1) Ozymandias comes across in the movie as ethically wrong, lanky, and not really someone to be rooted for with.
Unless you watch the end of the movie... you know, the bit where his motivations were revealed? Actually, I felt for him throughout the movie, he was very compelling for me. And at the end, the feeling of the pain he felt was quite striking.
2) The ending no longer really makes much logical sense (hard to explain w/o spoiler).
Hmm... again I'd disagree a little here. To the average movie-goer the new ending makes more sense because it deals only in the established characters... it does not introduce new ones. Of course, I think that the original ending would've been good as well... and in some ways better (more "lasting" ability)... but in terms of the movie narrative it made sense to me.
3) They changed RR to Ronald Regan not Robert Redford.
Which I thought was amusing as hell. Hardly a major plot point, but the way it was played was nice.
LOL... yes... I was typing for so long that I thank you for making the third point I meant to make somewhere in my tirade :)
I did address it a little; The Incredibles were all icons... they all represented the characters we're all familiar with from our childhood, from TV and from comic books. It had nothing to do with the specifics of the characters, it had more to do with the fact that they were archetypes with which we connected. That, and the fact that it was a cartoon that was heavily marketed to kids didn't hurt (see my point RE: the 30 and 40 somethings taking their kids to the movies)
Watchmen are not archetypal characters; they're all based on archetypes but far more ambiguous in their motives and ideals.
In the case of Watchmen the R rating was necessary. It conveyed the sense of moral ambiguity on the part of the "heroes" and "villains" alike... and that they lived in the real world, not some fantasy. Finally, it also conveyed that there is a cost to every action, even when done with good intentions (in some cases, especially).
The R rating allowed showing superheroes as human, sexual creatures... and the horrible, angry side of humans that we all know exists. It put a microscope on our own personalities... and made much of the audience uncomfortable (as did the source material).
It also allowed the nudity of Doc Manhattan... which some people focus on as being something that made them uncomfortable... but to me it just highlighted how remote from human beings he has become, how his vision has become so broad that he barely sees human beings at all any more and considers their morals and social ideals, petty in the grand scheme of things (which they are).
If an 11 year old girl or boy doesn't know the physical differences between the genders, then something's really wrong with that child's upbringing.
I have two kids... 10 and 8... both of whom know the differences. No, they're not yet sexually aware... nor have I talked to them about it, but if they were to see nudity on screen (and who's to say they already haven't?) then I actually find it highly unlikely they'd ask any questions.
Is Watchmen really a failure? I mean, for an R-rated comic book movie, it's doing pretty well in my opinion. But that's not really the subject of the article.
The problem with Watchmen is not the R rating, at least in my opinion. The problem is the changes made to the ending that really changed the tone of it, and thus changed the meaning of the ending.
Let's look at it this way. Watchmen is a source material about which people are passionate. It was a seminal piece of comic book art, a graphic novel before there were graphic novels, and as the first of a genre it has a rather devout following. I know, I read it on first release... and re-read it... and re-read it... and yes, I loved it. However, in the intervening years (decades? OMG... I'm old!) I have not touched the source material and as such somewhat grew away from it. I re-read it last year as an adult and although I still found it to be an incredible piece of art, I found that it didn't resonate with me the same way it did when I was 13 and 14 (when it was first released). I still loved it, but in the way you do an ex girlfriend with whom you had a "soft breakup" because you grew apart instead of a difficult one.
I went to see the movie, and was blown away. 90% of the movie was damned close to the comic book... closer than I would've expected from Hollywood... and it would've been impossible to get that close without an R rating. The original comic book should have had an R rating as well! The ending though, had a different meaning for me than the comic. I won't spoil it here, but it IS different. However, for me it did not fundamentally change the tone of the entire movie... and in fact I think the comic book ending would've been less accessible to a more general audience and probably would've looked somewhat ridiculous on screen.
OK, call me an heretic. I enjoyed both of them but for different reasons. But the R rating is not the reason for the lackluster box office!
Here's my theory; the box office taking are low because of two things; (1) The Watchmen is a comic book that appealed to a niche, and (2) that niche is typically the very technically savvy.
OK, let's expand on that a little:
(1) Watchmen didn't appeal to a wider audience because it had a lot less exposure. Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Iron Man... all highly identifiable characters with a long history in print. All of them are part of the common consciousness that we have in the Western world, and all are characters we can visualize easily. Rorschach, Nite Owl, Doc Manhattan... who? These were all characters created for Watchmen because Alan Moore wasn't given the go-ahead to use the characters he wanted to... those with an history.
The upshot of this is that we have characters that only a small subsection of our society identifies with because they never really got into the social consciousness the way the more "iconic" characters did. This means that Hollywood produces a Watchmen movie, and the characters are new to the average viewer... and the average viewer doesn't want new; they want more of the same.
There's also this idea in the public consciousness that superhero's are always good, always doing the right thing. Watchmen's moral ambiguity on the part of ALL of the characters means that the average viewer won't identify their icons within the context of the movie, and thus won't connect with them. They're looking for simple... black and white. Watchmen is full of shades of grey.
(2) Because the subset of society is mostly tech-savvy, it means that they are going to read reviews of the movie before they go see it, usually written on websites by people with similar tastes... the blind leading the blind in a sense. This leads to one or two slightly negative reviews driving away the very core audience that was most likely to see it.
I refer in part to Massawyrm's review of Watchmen on Aint It Cool News (for which I can't find a direct link right now, sorry!) in which he slammed the movie
Disclaimer: Outside of the Slashdot Virtual Reaility, I do purchase CDs, AACs, MP3s. I use licensed MS software at work and home and even buy video games now and then. I do NOT, however, pay for bottled water at the movie theater. Preposterous!
Quite right, too... I drink my water out of the toilet just as Dog intended.
Damn... I would have had the first post if it hadn't been for trying to navigate in Pocket IE on my smartphone... ;)
Am I saying the phone is too slow? Hmm...
Seriously? The universal remote is a simple, hardware, battery-easy solution to a problem. Phones are already getting too complex, and speed is an issue.
Here's a hint for the article author; I don't ever remember having to reboot my universal remote. Or wait for a page to come up. And no, the iPhone isn't any better; I own one and use my WinMo device because of flexibility... but I'd never use either of them as a remote.
Can you imagine the juggling you'd have to do when a call comes in to (a) answer the phone and (b) mute the telly?
Uhm... my digital climate control is in fahrenheit and has half-degree increments. I always thought that was a bit odd.
Of course... I'm an ex pat British guy living in the USA, and the climate control in my German car is in celsius... and damnit it's staying that way, even when my friends look at me funny :D
According to TFA and the various other articles I've read... 115mph.
Of course, that's in the air speed... your ground speed... well, literally YMMV :)
Nothing stopping you landing en-route and filling up... like a car :)
Honestly, a 550 mile range at 115mph... that's about what I'd expect from an LSA (Light Sport Aircraft); about 4 hours. You measure in fuel burn, not distance, because range in distance can change with wind.
But yeah... the two kids, dogs and luggage... yeah, this isn't your aircraft :)
Then they'll never get even a sport pilot license... problem solved I think.
Doesn't stop some nimrod getting in one and trying to fly it... but then again, it never stopped anyone from doing that with light aircraft either (and it has happened... just not often)
LOL... how true. But really, isn't that just an example of why the old money-making model is dying? It's not because of bittorrent; it's because those people have lost touch with their audience to the point that they are actively driving them away.
Pretty soon, the networks will have no product left to sell the advertisers. Then what will they do?
I find it ironic that these same people making these decisions are probably the same right-wing conservative christians who denounce Darwinian-style evolution...
It's because you're less likely to spend money in response to advertising.
Hmm... I'd disagree with your assertion there. GP said himself he's a father of four... I'd presume that since he's here he's probably somewhere in the 18-45 range, so his kids are probably pre-teen... just like mine.
Kids will respond to advertising... and that response to advertising is infectious. I find that I respond far better to advertising when I'm watching something I enjoy... like Battlestar Galactica... particularly when I've been watching TV or playing games with my kids. Their excitement rubs off on you... and as a result yes, I do tend to look first at items that are advertised during my favourite shows.
Thankfully, those favourite shows are all ending... that way I can just focus on my kids and get my entertainment elsewhere... and maybe drop down to a cheaper cable package :)
Agreed. Isn't it funny that they do this the same week that the top two movies at the box office are "Race to Witch Mountain" and "Watchmen"? Both of these movies are the kind of movies that appeal to "dysfunctional, antisocial boys". For the record though, the only reason I think it's that way around is because an R rated movie always has lower box office than a PG-13 one...
Well you know what? Those "dysfunctional, antisocial boys" grew up a decade ago and are now the parents of (let's face it) spoiled kids, drive nice cars and still tend to go out and spend money on things they really like just because they can.
Don't worry about them... their opinion is at least a decade or more out of date. Being a geek is no longer seen as some sort of social disease... and geeks typically earn significantly more than their non-geek counterparts. Howe and Brooks clearly don't understand the "tech-savvy" crowd... and so their ignorance is obviously reflected in their statements. Don't stress about that... they'll learn the hard way.
On the bright side, this gives me one more reason to drop cable entirely... if it weren't for the kids channels now I'd probably just say goodbye to cable entirely.
I should. But it's hard to feel indignant when the SciFi channel hasn't been a serious SciFi channel in damn near a decade. They used to show collections of all the great old SciFi TV shows and movies with some (often quite good) original new series and movies thrown into the mix.
I'll have to agree with this sentiment. I remember a LONG time ago watching the SciFi Channel for a lot of the original movies they made... they were interesting, often well written and charming. Sometimes they were a little odd but highly enjoyable... I still have Mr Stitch recorded on VHS somewhere in a box (though whether it's watchable or not is a matter of debate... :) )
Still, SciFi pretty much died when Farscape was canceled in my opinion. It was about that time they stopped doing ANY Science Fiction or Science Fantasy shows and started just rehashing old ideas. Stargate SG-1 kept going for a few more years... but let's be honest; it ended at Season 8... it just kept moving like the zombies in the latest "original movie" from SciFi. It had some charm in the last couple of seasons, but really it had been done for a long time. And I don't think Atlantis (underrated in my opinion) or BSG would have even gotten a shot had it not been for the fact that they weren't even SciFi original properties; both were made by other networks and syndicated in the US by SciFi.
If SciFi went under, I'd dearly miss Stargate and Eureka. But that's about it.
Thankfully, Stargate has reached its end, and the DVD sets aren't badly priced in my opinion... I've purchased up to Season 5 of SG-1 and plan to add Season 6 to my collection soon :)
Knight Rider was a re-imagining, not a resurrection. At least, that's what I got from the pitifully small amount of the show I could stand :)
Doctor Who was actually pretty damned consistent for a UK show, where normal rules of television do not apply (disclaimer: I'm British... I grew up with it!)
Doctor Who ran from (ISTR) 1963 until 1989 with only a few breaks due to writers strikes, political upheavals in the BBC and so forth. So yes... longest running science fiction show is a valid comment. The new series is a true resurrection because it's a continuation... not a re-imagining. Thematically it differs a little from its predecessor, but not THAT much. At least no more than a change in Doctor actor usually changed things in the past. In fact, the exception to that rule of change seemed to be the change from Ecclestone to Tenant, when thematically the show didn't change while the Doctor himself did.
With Who, the only giant gap in execution was the 16 years between the old series and the new.
Now, in terms of hours of TV... yes... I think Stargate SG-1 has it.
They also turned Eureka into nothing more than an huge product placement experiment. OK, I sort of support the idea in a way because they were realistic that traditional "break-in" advertising is dying... but the experiment was horrible.
When you're taken completely out of the narrative because Degree is identified as the saviour of the day, then this is NOT a good narrative. Now, do it tongue-in-cheek like the movie Evolution and it's fun... do it totally seriously like Eureka and it's not.
I loved Eureka until that... once the product placement became the ONLY visible thing in the show, I lost interest because it felt like an hour of commercials.
If you REALLY like to punish your Mac... you can also get Gentoo for OSX. Of course, to some Gentoo is punishing yourself, too... but personally I love having the prefixed Gentoo environment for all my Linux-style tools, while still being able to run my Mac tools in the same terminal window.
I'm not quite ready to have that as my default shell environment though... but I do have a shortcut to start up "startprefix.sh" in a terminal window :)
Note that if there's BSD or Linux type software you just HAVE to have and can't live without, but also can't get as an OSX package or Gentoo emerge... there's always DarwinPorts, which is a version of Port for OSX. I have that as well, but I tend to use Gentoo as my first source, Port as my second.
Technically, ESX is a kernel... the Redhat installation (called the Service Console) just bootstraps that kernel.
This has been demonstrated by ESXi, which is effectively the kernel with some minor changes to allow it to boot without a bootstrap. It's sort of the same way Novell used to be bootstrapped using DOS.
Oh come on. Enterprise? That only got an ending because they were given some advance notice and cobbled together an ending as quickly as possible. The entire show was intended to be milked for years, but lack of popularity killed it when the execs decided they'd had enough. It was only because they knew the fanbase was rabid enough that they agreed to let the show end when the season did, thus allowing that rather bolted on ending.
I mean, really. Is there any of the seasons of Enterprise where that ending wouldn't have fit just as well... or just as badly?
Voyager, much the same. That one though only got as far as it did because it was a pet project for people in power... it was in some ways even less successful than Enterprise! And the deux ex machina ending? Urgh!
TOS didn't end. It was terminated because management decided it was too expensive to continue. The movies... well they sort of carried on but were thematically FAR removed from TOS. So much so, the movies can almost be considered a completely different "series" with the same cast.
If you want to see science fiction that "ends" properly, then you're looking in the wrong place in Star Trek. The recent movie that springs to my mind when I try to think of one that really ends was "Sunshine". While it's not without flaws, it does definitely end.
And even sadder, this is not new. In my opinion, Dune never really ended, either. It was only terminated by the death of Frank Herbert, and I know from historical articles that he had other stuff planned. That stuff is all lost, now and will always be.
No, the Brian Herbert books don't count. They're not a continuation of the original in any way; they're inspired by the original and in some ways are a reasonable attempt to close the gaps and tie up the loose ends that were left when Frank died.
The lack of an ending for the sake of telling an ongoing story is not new.
But in counterpoint, I remember in 2004 I saw very few Windows 2003 deployments with lots of people wondering what was better than 2000. This is just history repeating itself.
For my own part, I'm only now starting to get people asking me questions as a consultant about running 2008, and generally I tell them "It can't hurt".
Just recently we've deployed our first truly production systems where I work running 2008 exclusively; specifically Exchange 2007 and a new file services cluster, and both beat the pants off what we had before. I used fully blown 2008 for the Exchange setup, and then 2008 Core for our file services cluster (all tied together with DFS). My user community couldn't be happier right now.
Architecturally I think 2008 is leaps and bounds ahead of 2003, particularly with IIS 7 which I think is a thing of beauty because it seems to abandon a lot of the old IIS 5 and 6 paradigms for a more "Apache-Like" paradigm. It does have some compatibility issues because of this, but you can't argue with the performance or the stability of the platform. Also, the TCP/IP stack seems much improved and more scalable... and generally the fact that they've finally groked the concept of "Basic install with no services" means you can secure it pretty damned nicely.
Not to say I think it's without flaws, but I think it's a nice evolution on what 2003 did... and if 2003 is any indication it'll be next year before we see any significant traction on installs.
Lots of negative commentary here about the concept... but whatever.
Honestly, I can see this being incredibly useful. There are areas in Africa specifically that are almost completely inaccessible, or very hard to access easily for medical or personnel reasons. Something like this I can see being extremely useful (and probably cheaper than an helicopter) because you can take off from any reasonably flat area, land within a mile or so of your destination and then drive to your destination.
This concept takes a lot of the problems out of the equation that are involved in light aircraft (no ground transportation at your destination, needs at least a partially finished runway) or an helicopter (expensive to buy and maintain, pilot training is extremely expensive, sand in the engine is a BAD THING!). This thing could be used in these environments to improve the lot of those people.
I don't see this as being really designed for the Western world, we have great roads and cars designed for that... but we are not "the world"... we are just a small part of it that sometimes thinks we are all there is.
I love this concept... I can see so many practical uses for it... but hell, I'd love to fly one myself. :)
But if your budget is 0, then xenserver is a viable alternative to vmware server..
That it can also compete with esxi while still being free is a big extra point in its favour.
ESXi is also free.