Doyle was the high school star Everybody said that he'd go far But he wasn't very good in the classes he took No, he just wasn't interested in his books
Aimee was the smartest girl in school Not very popular, not very cool Two kids will be chosen from Earth To go to school at Galaxy High
Travelling millions of miles in space To go to school in a far-off place Aimee is the sweetheart, Doyle's got a lot to learn Here at Galaxy High
(Galaxy High! Galaxy High! Galaxy High!)
Thank you for the spark of recognition here so I could relieve my brain of that useless bit of theme song. Now if you'll please tell me when my important appointment is today (I believe the theme song memory blocked out anything reasonably short-term), I'd be grateful.
If, as Jack Valenti and his lawyers say, this is the same as having it hosted at the 2600.com domain, this *could* have implications toward deep-linking.
One would hope that, in that case, the judge realizes Valenti's argument holds about as much water as a cheesecloth (and is about as practical as wet cheesecloth, too.) A link on one site to another site cannot in any way constitute ownership or responsibility for the content found in the link. It's fundamentally incorrect, dammit. If Valenti truly believes this to be so, his worldview is incredibly screwed. If Valenti believes this, then we should all only have links to our own content and material to avoid getting in trouble if we, god forbid, link to something questionable. I better remove any Slashdot links I have on any of my personal web stuff cause I sure as hell don't want to be the one who ends up owning all the troll stuff.
Between this and the Eyes Wide Shut debacle, I've decided that the MPAA does not exist for any kind of practical good in this country.
Yes, the designers of the game themselves can't get around Level 2. What this says about the designers, well, can't all be good. The only decent part of this episode was the Gunman who was wearing the Ozomatli t-shirt.
I also can't believe a bunch of designers who didn't include some kind of cheat code in the game other than the SHUT DOWN THE GAME AND BY THE WAY THAT MEANS IT WILL BE LOST FOREVER code. What a crock.
The entire episode just reeked of horrid, horrid fan fiction. I think I've found the original script treatment...
---------------- "OH NO" said Muldur as he swung his sword at the hot computer chyk in tight leather so you can see her but. "She is invincibul and I am in trouble!"
"Thats level 2!!!!" said the game designer's. "Nobodys ever beaten Level 2 befor. Muldur, be careful!"
Suddenly and without warning Scully burst in to the game! "I'm here to save you Mulder!" she said as she was dressed up in real bad ass cyber gear. She had a machine gun and she fired it and it was real cool and the hot leather chyk started to die.
"Wow Sculy you saved my life!" said Mulder. "I'm bleding bad and now I got my sword stuck in the dor." Scully dident say nothing she just kept firing at the hot chyk in lether who by now was riding a big tank. Bam bam bam bam bam bam went the machine gun!
Meanwhile in RL (thats "Real Life"), the Lon Gunmen were all angry. The game writer's were arguing over the secret k0dez. "I can save them!" sayd one. "Just hold down shift and alt and control and space bar and then type D-E-L-E-T-E-T-H-E-G-A-M-E." "No!" said the other one, huging the keyboerd. "You cant do that! We work so hard on the game, we can't lose it!" Then the Loen Gunmen took the keyboard away and made them type in the special password to delete the game. Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooorp went the computer. That meant it was deleteing everything.
Then the door opened and out walks Mulder and Scully. "We have survived the Cyber Game!" Muldur said. "Scully will you marry me?" Scully put down the real-life machine gun and gave Mulder a big kiss. That meant "Of course I will." All the Lone Gunmen looked at each other and smile. Five months later they were marred in a beautiful ceremony and they had a baby girl who Muldur named Samantha.
Henious.net is a Pokemon BBS!!! Can we please keep Japan's latest attempt to brainwash American Children off slashdot??
Wow. You gathered all that from just gazing at the BBS' login screen, did you? Didn't even check the messages. The next time I have a book that needs to be judged, I'm sending you the cover and you can tell me all about it, OK? Thanks!
Heinous (that's h-e-i-n-o-u-s, by the way) has a motto: Fewer cretins. By your refusal to even log in and peruse the BBS' content, you've helped keep the place true to its motto. Again, thank you.
What a wacky movie that was for its time. Presented some good ideas, too, as far as hacks go -- but in the strictest MIT definition, they wouldn't be hacks, just plain vandalism (property damage, no easy way to remove the changes.)
Still, one guy who can deface an entire subway car sitting yards away from a public gathering can't be all that bad.
Oh, and that "10 Tricks For The Digital Prankster" article is horrid and obviously written on a slow news day. The electronic equivalent of someone removing your textbook cover in Junior High and putting it back on upside down.
Kids! Here's how to be a great digital prankster! Change people's Windows password! Take them off your ICQ list! Oh, the hilarity!!
Remember Phil Hartman? Futurama's Captain Zap Branigan was sooo meant for Phil. Whoever does his voice is trying hard to be Phil.
That's Billy West. He also does the voice of Fry and his nephew and a ton of other incidental characters on the show. He's also been the voice of Ren and Stimpy (I felt bad for him taking over Ren's voice when John K. got the shaft) as well as the Honey-Nut Cheerios bee, among others. Also hands-down the funniest of Howard Stern's on-air pals, though it's been years since he was on the show.
West is an incredibly versatile voice actor, and it's pretty obvious he's doing the voice of Zap Brannigan in a Phil Hartman style as sort of an homage. Hartman was meant to voice Zap before his wife cut things short -- Matt Groening has also gone on the record to say that Fry's first name is 'Phil' in honor of Hartman as well.
I miss Phil Hartman, too. I'll miss Mary Kay Bergman as well, but always felt her voices on South Park at least were more or less one-note voices (slight Jewish mother accent for Kyle's mom, boorish tone for the mayor, Minnesotan accent for the principal, but behind it all, I always heard the same voice.) Still, anyone who can put on those subtle accents and create characters out of that is unique and talented. It will be interesting to see how South Park copes with this sad loss.
If you want a high-tech theme park, go to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure. The Spider-Man ride, for example.
Ah, yes, Spider-Man. Ride vehicles on a motion base and on-board audio coupled with sophisticated 3D film, fire and water effects, and a simulated 400-foot freefall. It's the best theme park ride I've ever been on.
Technologically incredible it is, but it's also astonishingly temperamental. This past weekend I rode Spider-Man twice -- it broke down three times while I was there (two times while I was waiting in line, once while I was actually riding.) The third time I tried to ride, the whole thing was shut down "for at least a half an hour" according to the college student guarding the entrance. She admitted to me "there's a problem with the ride they've never seen before." On one hand, this is a new kind of ride and there hasn't been any real precedent for it, so they know not what to expect, but on the other hand, witnessing the truly aggravating downtimes can affect guests negatively. On the third hand, it's just a freakin' incredible ride.
The rest of IOA's ride complement is equally amazing. The Dueling Dragons coaster features two trains that are weighed as they are dispatched and the lift hill speeds adjusted accordingly, so that they leave the top of the lift at the same time. This is no "dispatch one and wait a few seconds" guesswork here. This is on-the-fly. And when the trains drop at the same time, they're set up for three near-misses on the track layout. As an added bonus, if you stand at the right place outside the ride, you see all three near-miss points perfectly lined up.
The Hulk coaster uses a tire drive to launch the train with an acceleration nearly topping that of an aircraft carrier's launch. Tires!
(I'll add right now that the major roller coasters at IOA were designed by Bolliger & Mabillard, a Swiss firm whose innovative coaster designs are exceptional. They're pure geniuses from an engineering standpoint. They devised the first inverted coaster, the first "floorless" coaster, and almost all of their coasters ride glass-smooth.)
IOA is an example of how to use technology in an entertainment context for the forces of good. IOA doesn't claim to manufacture precious family memories, as Disney wants to do (really - watch the Disney commercials. All they want to do is make sure you exchange enough money for family togetherness and "magical memories that last a lifetime.") That's new-age bullshit. Islands of Adventure takes your money and lets you go crazy in a fully-immersive themed environment.
Some might argue this isn't right, that this kind of artificial reality is not needed. And in a way, they're right. Disney's artificial reality strives to be real - the World's Fair schlock that is EPCOT, the "African safai adventures" of Animal Kingdom. This from the company that fully believes that when a college student puts on that Donald Duck suit, he or she is, for all intents and purposes, THE Donald Duck.
IOA has artificial reality, but it's different. It strives to be fantastical. This I can deal with a bit more, seeing as how I've never personally been in a comic book or a bustling Greco-Arabian-Medieval marketplace. The only place they really do blur the line between escapism and controlled artificial reality is at Jurassic Park, where they sincerely want you to believe the dinosaurs are alive and can be replicated through DNA techniques already in place. This is quite dangerous and IOA blows it in that regard -- the first "dinosaur" we saw on the River Adventure this weekend was broken and just sat there, unmoving, in the water.
Other effects at IOA, though, are astounding. A group of my geekier friends sat around after witnessing "Poseidon's Fury" and discussed the details behind the swirling water vortex you step through and the show's ending, which for the sake of spoilers I'll say involves a very very extensive set change in a very very short amount of time. Silently.
All in all, it's one heck of a place, and just watching them iron the kinks out is fascinating. Disney is being given a run for its money -- finally. The Mouse House was lazy and complacent, secure in its #1 ranking. IOA's expensive technological marvels are grabbing at Disney's bottom line. You can see Disney try to recoup this gap in thrill rides by adding the Rock & Roller Coaster to their MGM Studios park (speaking of MGM, the ride program on the Tower of Terror is changed. I'm impressed by the fact that the drop sequences can be rearranged on whim, and randomly selected for each ride. It's fun.)
But right now, in terms of sheer amusement value and complex technology being used just to entertain, IOA rules. There are a million other things to do in Orlando, some of which don't involve giving a red cent to the tourist trade. But on the other hand, I went expressly for the theme parks and the experience they could provide. At Universal, I wasn't disappointed.
I make no effort to hide the fact that I enjoy roller coasters. Hence, a few names I've already taken for machines at home and work, plus a few I plan to use Any Day Now:
cyclone phoenix alpengeist comet magnum medusa steelforce twister
phoenix was given to a machine that had suffered a nasty meltdown (it rose from the ashes, natch) and alpengeist's nickname was "alpie". Makes learning fun!
Then one day I wanted to name a cluster of four:
pestilence famine death war
but then I realized those names would be better suited to a basket of kittens. Really! Who could resist the cute charms of the Four Kittens of the Apocalypse?
I learned years ago the crucial secret of the Weekly World News. It's not real news. It doesn't think it is. With vague "sources" and interviews, just about the only folks left who could actually take these stories seriously are those who still think actual people write in those letters to Penthouse Forum from small Midwestern colleges.
The brilliance of the WWN, though, is that it's incredibly subversive. It neatly packages up stale, outdated urban legends into cautionary tales that make folks feel better about themselves after they've read it. And if they improve themselves, they feel even better because, heck, "I done read it in thuh News."
The base concept of this article is "Gals! Here's how to make yourself look and feel more self-confident." But that sentiment alone isn't going to be noticed, not in a world full of gal mags with ludicrous articles like "Tone Your Buttocks While Watching TV" and "10 Steps To Giving Him A Better Orgasm" (on second thought, maybe that article ain't such a bad idea.)
At any rate, what the WWN has done has taken these "tips" (however general they can be) and given them a different slant. Gals! Here's how to improve yourself so you don't get hit on by nerds! Never mind the fact that the "nerd" stereotype so expertly described hasn't surfaced since "Saved By The Bell" went off the air. Never mind the fact that "Dr. Rachel Carmotta" does not seem to exist (at least, not in Altavista or Google's eyes) nor there does not seem to be any information available about her upcoming book, neither.
Then there's their old chesnut, angry right-wing columnist Ed Anger, whose rants are written with such wonderful satire inherent that it really puts The Onion to shame. And, like wrestling fans, the idiots of the world flock to Ed and claim him as their hero... or so the WWN would tell us.
The Weekly World News appears to be totally concerned feeding folks the same kind of odd information most rational people would just brush off. But just what group is behind all this subversive behavior? Maybe someday I'll open up the WWN and see the fnords.
I'm pretty sure the President himself would have better things to do with his time than masquerade as Joe Schmoe on some "MTV Yak Live" project. Y'know? It just don't make sense.
I'd personally think the IP logging would be to keep tabs on Joe Schmoe who'd want to try to masquerade as the President. As we have learned through countless "celebrity chat" sessions, it's not so easy to pick out the famous, respected person through use of proper grammar and spelling.
On a similar note, what's the name of the actor who played the air force pilot in Dr. Stranglove? The one that ends up sitting on top of his plane's H-bomb.
Well, I checked the whois record of a domain I own (and, frankly, would like to get back from the clutches of the Duh Com people, since all their info is horribly out of date and I have no way of contacting 'em) and I tried logging in under every combination of every piece of information I could find in the whois record.
No luck.
Then I tried just my last name. I got in, and thanked the nice people at Network Solutions for giving me such a nice email address. But they seemed to call me "Fred", though.
I have faith in Orson Scott Card. He consistently turns out decent work and, if anything else, seems to learn from his mistakes. "Heartfire" was a far better book in the Alvin Maker series than the other two that preceded it (once they started in on all the singing, I got bored pretty quickly.)
Here it seems Card's taken a supporting character and expanded him exponentially, giving him the point of view for us. I really like this concept. It's rarely done and when it is, it's rarely done well. Once I finish the fifteen other books in my todo pile, I'll be well advised to take a look at this one. Thanks, Slashdot.
If it's anything like the real AOL, the picture will be letterboxed and it'll have a commercial ticker running across the top and bottom of the screen. Let's just hope AOL doesn't decide to televise their chat rooms, though..
At best, sounds like "Bloomberg Financial Television" or any other easily-confusing television "program" with stock/commercial/weather tickers cluttering up the screen.
At worst, they could let the "AOL Community" make the programming decisions.
As long as you view the file on a Windows(tm) system, all looks fine. But if you happen to be using Unix(tm) or Linux(tm), it doesn't understand the funny character code and renders it as "?".
Hell, even the Token NT Machine in this room displayed the marks as ?. Nice to see Microsoft so carefully adhering to the standards it shoves into the community.
I hate to play the Nitpicker's Game, even with a target such as Jon Katz, but "Disney Land" has never existed. Disneyland, on the other hand, has been around since 1955. There's never been a space in the name. Never will.
*shrug*
I don't care, as long as I get to ride the Haunted Mansion.
Now me, I loved BWP (finally a horror movie that actually tries to scare you for once! The audacity!) and hype is neither here nor there for me, but one thing I do wish is that all filmmakers would simply know when to stop.
Amen to that. If there is anything that can take the Blair Witch Project and turn it from the underground sleeper hit it was to a true cog in the stupid Hollywood Hit Machine, it's a goddamn sequel. (Second is superfluous merchandising, and the "Songs That Were Found On A Mix Tape In Josh's Car, No, Really" concept ably proves this point.)
Hollywood's bright lights in the producers' eyes must really be sparkling if they plan to ruin such a great concept of the Blair Witch Project with a sequel, especially if indeed the plan is to "show more lost footage" as Katz mentioned. This'll be awful to watch because, as I felt, while the scary bits of the movie were excellent, they were wrapped around large hard-to-swallow doses of The Real World: In The Woods.
Here's my one-line review of Blair Witch Project (may be more than one line in some states, your mileage may vary):
I daresay there's anything scary left from the footage to re-use. I also daresay there's anything truly interesting left from the footage to use -- Heather Donohue said at the San Diego Comic Con that the final cut had a toned-down and less bitchy (!!!) Heather than what was actually really filmed. Sure. I'll pay $8 to hear her screech more, and screech louder.
On the other hand, the producers might want to re-shoot and add new stuff. This, of course, completely ruins the improvised spontaneity of the first shoot (was that redundant? Oh well) and any feeling that what we are seeing is original, fresh, and unique anymore.
Then again, that's what Hollywood is good at. Sucking all the originality and uniqueness out of projects and spoon-feeding us the watered-down, easily-marketable tripe that's left over.
Thanks, guys. While I didn't think Blair Witch Project deserves 100% of the accolades it's getting, I definitely don't think it deserves such crummy sequel treatment.
If anybody wants me, I'll be in a tent over there.
I was most disturbed by this little piece in the Wired article:
When Microsoft shuts down Firefly.com next week, it will mean the end of one of the Net's oldest and most historically significant communities.
The article then goes on to mention that Firefly started in 1996. This makes it one of the "oldest and most historically significant"?!
Must've been a newbie reporter trying to put things into perspective. One of the oldest? Don't even get me started -- on laUNChpad, nyx and the Well and echo and the ISCABBS and Quartz Paradise, even. Some are still around and struggling; others are long gone. Hell, even Wired's own little computer-klatsch commune is older than Firefly. And historically significant? Um. Other than the fact that Firefly seemed to be the first recommendation agent that made it "big".
Remember when personalized agents were gonna be the Next Really Big Thing? We'd turn our computer on in the morning and our agents, usually in the form of a cute cartoon dog or something, would report back to us that our plane tickets had been reserved, the cab to the airport booked, and here is the weather in Albuquerque today.
Agents might not be so personal now, granted, but they do work in their mysterious ways. amazon.com tracks my orders for me via email. I get weekly listings of "cyberfares" custom-picked for destinations I frequent, and I've tried eBay once or twice. Perhaps we owe a bit of credit to Firefly for taking us down the personalized info route, but I'm not going to laud it as one of the defining concepts behind the Internet As We Know It Today.
Personalized recommendation services are a strange breed, anyhow. I echo the sentiments of several folks who've already mentioned that it took Firefly entirely too long to return the simple message that I should be interested in bands I already liked. amazon's recommendation service is entirely way too obvious or inexplicably false and motivated by items Amazon wants to push. How else can I explain their insistence that, among recommendations for Mel Brooks movies and Terry Pratchett novels and MST3K episodes and Beautiful South albums (the kinds of which I've purchased from Amazon in the past) that I'd "really like" the Tony Blanks Tae-Bo tape?! (Maybe it's a subtle hint from Amazon considering I've bought lots of videos from them?)
I see I'm losing track of the main point here. It sure is sad to see a 3-year-old Internet company go (especially when, yes, it has been around longer than many) but we can't let the fact that their sad decline and their entrails being feasted upon by Shub-Microsoft make us believe Firefly was something greater than it was.
If anything, Firefly and SixDegrees (which debuted at roughly the same time, IIRC) seemed nothing more to me than an attempt to get personal marketing information out of me in exchange for something they promised was "really really cool", yet never seemed to be. It shall be missed, but not in a sniffly "It was soooooo visionary" mindset. Not from me, at least. Sorry.
I can't wait! We'll broadcast our spam out into space, and a zillion light-years away, some intelligent beings running their own SETI@Home project will pick it up and invade our planet in hopes of finding EASY MONEY and hot girl-girl action!
Well, I mean, it's only a while before we start colonizing and physically screwing up the moon and Mars, might as well begin electronically.
I'm glad I popped over and read the Slashdot comments before I checked the site out. A porn site, even one disguised, is not a good site to look at from work. And here I thought Slashdot wouldn't hand me blind links. *sigh* Would it have been tough to mention it was lame smut (as opposed to good smut, eh) when the disclaimer was posted that said "yes, we knew it was a bad site"? At least some kind of "This isn't exactly office-friendly" warning, perhaps.
Those of us in offices with curious cow orkers and large monitors would indeed thank you, Rob.
In other words, if the goal of this site was to make fun of script kiddies and Microsoft sycophants, then the author hit the nail on the head. The placement of slobbering, non-sensical prose was masterful. The misspelled words were placed in just the right places. It's REALLY convincing.
It appeared to me that nowhere on the site is the actual word "Microsoft" used. It's always spelled 'Micorsoft'. A very clever way to avoid some possible legal reprisals down the road...
But the misspelled run-on sentences are priceless. I have to deal with folks who write like that normally, so you'd think I'd be sick of seeing it used in satire. Not so. It still makes me laugh like a loon, especially the last paragraph of Gerald's "Hobbies" section where he complains that birds aren't teaching him how to fly. Oh, man.
TRON in the some of the Atari Basics 8-bit stood for "Trace On" as I recall. It would display at the top of the screen the line number and the BASIC statement of a program written in BASIC as it was executed as an debuging aid.
In that case, the sequel should logically be called TROFF.
I remember using this command with the TRS-80 as well...
Slashdot Mirror
Doyle was the high school star
Everybody said that he'd go far
But he wasn't very good in the classes he took
No, he just wasn't interested in his books
Aimee was the smartest girl in school
Not very popular, not very cool
Two kids will be chosen from Earth
To go to school at Galaxy High
Travelling millions of miles in space
To go to school in a far-off place
Aimee is the sweetheart, Doyle's got a lot to learn
Here at Galaxy High
(Galaxy High! Galaxy High! Galaxy High!)
Thank you for the spark of recognition here so I could relieve my brain of that useless bit of theme song. Now if you'll please tell me when my important appointment is today (I believe the theme song memory blocked out anything reasonably short-term), I'd be grateful.
One would hope that, in that case, the judge realizes Valenti's argument holds about as much water as a cheesecloth (and is about as practical as wet cheesecloth, too.) A link on one site to another site cannot in any way constitute ownership or responsibility for the content found in the link. It's fundamentally incorrect, dammit. If Valenti truly believes this to be so, his worldview is incredibly screwed. If Valenti believes this, then we should all only have links to our own content and material to avoid getting in trouble if we, god forbid, link to something questionable. I better remove any Slashdot links I have on any of my personal web stuff cause I sure as hell don't want to be the one who ends up owning all the troll stuff.
Between this and the Eyes Wide Shut debacle, I've decided that the MPAA does not exist for any kind of practical good in this country.
I read a sentence like that and whether or not the AC really means it, I instantly realize that Andy Kaufman did his job and he did it well.
Rock on, Andy, wherever you are.
Was this just a cute way of saying the TiVo queries the coax input or does one have to hook the phone up into the box as well?
After the DIVX disaster, I'm rather leery about any device which wants to make my viewing habits known to anyone with deep enough pockets.
Yes, the designers of the game themselves can't get around Level 2. What this says about the designers, well, can't all be good. The only decent part of this episode was the Gunman who was wearing the Ozomatli t-shirt.
I also can't believe a bunch of designers who didn't include some kind of cheat code in the game other than the SHUT DOWN THE GAME AND BY THE WAY THAT MEANS IT WILL BE LOST FOREVER code. What a crock.
The entire episode just reeked of horrid, horrid fan fiction. I think I've found the original script treatment...
----------------
"OH NO" said Muldur as he swung his sword at the hot computer chyk in tight leather so you can see her but. "She is invincibul and I am in trouble!"
"Thats level 2!!!!" said the game designer's. "Nobodys ever beaten Level 2 befor. Muldur, be careful!"
Suddenly and without warning Scully burst in to the game! "I'm here to save you Mulder!" she said as she was dressed up in real bad ass cyber gear. She had a machine gun and she fired it and it was real cool and the hot leather chyk started to die.
"Wow Sculy you saved my life!" said Mulder. "I'm bleding bad and now I got my sword stuck in the dor." Scully dident say nothing she just kept firing at the hot chyk in lether who by now was riding a big tank. Bam bam bam bam bam bam went the machine gun!
Meanwhile in RL (thats "Real Life"), the Lon Gunmen were all angry. The game writer's were arguing over the secret k0dez. "I can save them!" sayd one. "Just hold down shift and alt and control and space bar and then type D-E-L-E-T-E-T-H-E-G-A-M-E." "No!" said the other one, huging the keyboerd. "You cant do that! We work so hard on the game, we can't lose it!" Then the Loen Gunmen took the keyboard away and made them type in the special password to delete the game. Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooorp went the computer. That meant it was deleteing everything.
Then the door opened and out walks Mulder and Scully. "We have survived the Cyber Game!" Muldur said. "Scully will you marry me?" Scully put down the real-life machine gun and gave Mulder a big kiss. That meant "Of course I will." All the Lone Gunmen looked at each other and smile. Five months later they were marred in a beautiful ceremony and they had a baby girl who Muldur named Samantha.
THE END.
----------------
Henious.net is a Pokemon BBS!!! Can we please keep Japan's latest attempt to brainwash American Children off slashdot??
Wow. You gathered all that from just gazing at the BBS' login screen, did you? Didn't even check the messages. The next time I have a book that needs to be judged, I'm sending you the cover and you can tell me all about it, OK? Thanks!
Heinous (that's h-e-i-n-o-u-s, by the way) has a motto: Fewer cretins. By your refusal to even log in and peruse the BBS' content, you've helped keep the place true to its motto. Again, thank you.
Zimmerman flew! Tyler knew!
What a wacky movie that was for its time. Presented some good ideas, too, as far as hacks go -- but in the strictest MIT definition, they wouldn't be hacks, just plain vandalism (property damage, no easy way to remove the changes.)
Still, one guy who can deface an entire subway car sitting yards away from a public gathering can't be all that bad.
Oh, and that "10 Tricks For The Digital Prankster" article is horrid and obviously written on a slow news day. The electronic equivalent of someone removing your textbook cover in Junior High and putting it back on upside down.
Kids! Here's how to be a great digital prankster! Change people's Windows password! Take them off your ICQ list! Oh, the hilarity!!
Sheesh.
Remember Phil Hartman? Futurama's Captain Zap Branigan was sooo meant for Phil. Whoever does his voice is trying hard to be Phil.
That's Billy West. He also does the voice of Fry and his nephew and a ton of other incidental characters on the show. He's also been the voice of Ren and Stimpy (I felt bad for him taking over Ren's voice when John K. got the shaft) as well as the Honey-Nut Cheerios bee, among others. Also hands-down the funniest of Howard Stern's on-air pals, though it's been years since he was on the show.
West is an incredibly versatile voice actor, and it's pretty obvious he's doing the voice of Zap Brannigan in a Phil Hartman style as sort of an homage. Hartman was meant to voice Zap before his wife cut things short -- Matt Groening has also gone on the record to say that Fry's first name is 'Phil' in honor of Hartman as well.
I miss Phil Hartman, too. I'll miss Mary Kay Bergman as well, but always felt her voices on South Park at least were more or less one-note voices (slight Jewish mother accent for Kyle's mom, boorish tone for the mayor, Minnesotan accent for the principal, but behind it all, I always heard the same voice.) Still, anyone who can put on those subtle accents and create characters out of that is unique and talented. It will be interesting to see how South Park copes with this sad loss.
If you want a high-tech theme park, go to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure. The Spider-Man ride, for example.
Ah, yes, Spider-Man. Ride vehicles on a motion base and on-board audio coupled with sophisticated 3D film, fire and water effects, and a simulated 400-foot freefall. It's the best theme park ride I've ever been on.
Technologically incredible it is, but it's also astonishingly temperamental. This past weekend I rode Spider-Man twice -- it broke down three times while I was there (two times while I was waiting in line, once while I was actually riding.) The third time I tried to ride, the whole thing was shut down "for at least a half an hour" according to the college student guarding the entrance. She admitted to me "there's a problem with the ride they've never seen before." On one hand, this is a new kind of ride and there hasn't been any real precedent for it, so they know not what to expect, but on the other hand, witnessing the truly aggravating downtimes can affect guests negatively. On the third hand, it's just a freakin' incredible ride .
The rest of IOA's ride complement is equally amazing. The Dueling Dragons coaster features two trains that are weighed as they are dispatched and the lift hill speeds adjusted accordingly, so that they leave the top of the lift at the same time. This is no "dispatch one and wait a few seconds" guesswork here. This is on-the-fly. And when the trains drop at the same time, they're set up for three near-misses on the track layout. As an added bonus, if you stand at the right place outside the ride, you see all three near-miss points perfectly lined up.
The Hulk coaster uses a tire drive to launch the train with an acceleration nearly topping that of an aircraft carrier's launch. Tires!
(I'll add right now that the major roller coasters at IOA were designed by Bolliger & Mabillard, a Swiss firm whose innovative coaster designs are exceptional. They're pure geniuses from an engineering standpoint. They devised the first inverted coaster, the first "floorless" coaster, and almost all of their coasters ride glass-smooth.)
IOA is an example of how to use technology in an entertainment context for the forces of good. IOA doesn't claim to manufacture precious family memories, as Disney wants to do (really - watch the Disney commercials. All they want to do is make sure you exchange enough money for family togetherness and "magical memories that last a lifetime.") That's new-age bullshit. Islands of Adventure takes your money and lets you go crazy in a fully-immersive themed environment.
Some might argue this isn't right, that this kind of artificial reality is not needed. And in a way, they're right. Disney's artificial reality strives to be real - the World's Fair schlock that is EPCOT, the "African safai adventures" of Animal Kingdom. This from the company that fully believes that when a college student puts on that Donald Duck suit, he or she is, for all intents and purposes, THE Donald Duck.
IOA has artificial reality, but it's different. It strives to be fantastical. This I can deal with a bit more, seeing as how I've never personally been in a comic book or a bustling Greco-Arabian-Medieval marketplace. The only place they really do blur the line between escapism and controlled artificial reality is at Jurassic Park, where they sincerely want you to believe the dinosaurs are alive and can be replicated through DNA techniques already in place. This is quite dangerous and IOA blows it in that regard -- the first "dinosaur" we saw on the River Adventure this weekend was broken and just sat there, unmoving, in the water.
Other effects at IOA, though, are astounding. A group of my geekier friends sat around after witnessing "Poseidon's Fury" and discussed the details behind the swirling water vortex you step through and the show's ending, which for the sake of spoilers I'll say involves a very very extensive set change in a very very short amount of time. Silently.
All in all, it's one heck of a place, and just watching them iron the kinks out is fascinating. Disney is being given a run for its money -- finally. The Mouse House was lazy and complacent, secure in its #1 ranking. IOA's expensive technological marvels are grabbing at Disney's bottom line. You can see Disney try to recoup this gap in thrill rides by adding the Rock & Roller Coaster to their MGM Studios park (speaking of MGM, the ride program on the Tower of Terror is changed. I'm impressed by the fact that the drop sequences can be rearranged on whim, and randomly selected for each ride. It's fun.)
But right now, in terms of sheer amusement value and complex technology being used just to entertain, IOA rules. There are a million other things to do in Orlando, some of which don't involve giving a red cent to the tourist trade. But on the other hand, I went expressly for the theme parks and the experience they could provide. At Universal, I wasn't disappointed.
I make no effort to hide the fact that I enjoy roller coasters. Hence, a few names I've already taken for machines at home and work, plus a few I plan to use Any Day Now:
cyclone
phoenix
alpengeist
comet
magnum
medusa
steelforce
twister
phoenix was given to a machine that had suffered a nasty meltdown (it rose from the ashes, natch) and alpengeist's nickname was "alpie". Makes learning fun!
Then one day I wanted to name a cluster of four:
pestilence
famine
death
war
but then I realized those names would be better suited to a basket of kittens. Really! Who could resist the cute charms of the Four Kittens of the Apocalypse?
I learned years ago the crucial secret of the Weekly World News. It's not real news. It doesn't think it is. With vague "sources" and interviews, just about the only folks left who could actually take these stories seriously are those who still think actual people write in those letters to Penthouse Forum from small Midwestern colleges.
... or so the WWN would tell us.
The brilliance of the WWN, though, is that it's incredibly subversive. It neatly packages up stale, outdated urban legends into cautionary tales that make folks feel better about themselves after they've read it. And if they improve themselves, they feel even better because, heck, "I done read it in thuh News."
The base concept of this article is "Gals! Here's how to make yourself look and feel more self-confident." But that sentiment alone isn't going to be noticed, not in a world full of gal mags with ludicrous articles like "Tone Your Buttocks While Watching TV" and "10 Steps To Giving Him A Better Orgasm" (on second thought, maybe that article ain't such a bad idea.)
At any rate, what the WWN has done has taken these "tips" (however general they can be) and given them a different slant. Gals! Here's how to improve yourself so you don't get hit on by nerds!
Never mind the fact that the "nerd" stereotype so expertly described hasn't surfaced since "Saved By The Bell" went off the air. Never mind the fact that "Dr. Rachel Carmotta" does not seem to exist (at least, not in Altavista or Google's eyes) nor there does not seem to be any information available about her upcoming book, neither.
Then there's their old chesnut, angry right-wing columnist Ed Anger, whose rants are written with such wonderful satire inherent that it really puts The Onion to shame. And, like wrestling fans, the idiots of the world flock to Ed and claim him as their hero
The Weekly World News appears to be totally concerned feeding folks the same kind of odd information most rational people would just brush off. But just what group is behind all this subversive behavior? Maybe someday I'll open up the WWN and see the fnords.
I'm pretty sure the President himself would have better things to do with his time than masquerade as Joe Schmoe on some "MTV Yak Live" project. Y'know? It just don't make sense.
I'd personally think the IP logging would be to keep tabs on Joe Schmoe who'd want to try to masquerade as the President. As we have learned through countless "celebrity chat" sessions, it's not so easy to pick out the famous, respected person through use of proper grammar and spelling.
On a similar note, what's the name of the actor who played the air force pilot in Dr. Stranglove? The one that ends up sitting on top of his plane's H-bomb.
That's Slim Pickens.
"Nookler combat toe-to-toe with the Rooskies!"
Well, I checked the whois record of a domain I own (and, frankly, would like to get back from the clutches of the Duh Com people, since all their info is horribly out of date and I have no way of contacting 'em) and I tried logging in under every combination of every piece of information I could find in the whois record.
No luck.
Then I tried just my last name. I got in, and thanked the nice people at Network Solutions for giving me such a nice email address. But they seemed to call me "Fred", though.
Strange.
I have faith in Orson Scott Card. He consistently turns out decent work and, if anything else, seems to learn from his mistakes. "Heartfire" was a far better book in the Alvin Maker series than the other two that preceded it (once they started in on all the singing, I got bored pretty quickly.)
Here it seems Card's taken a supporting character and expanded him exponentially, giving him the point of view for us. I really like this concept. It's rarely done and when it is, it's rarely done well. Once I finish the fifteen other books in my todo pile, I'll be well advised to take a look at this one. Thanks, Slashdot.
If it's anything like the real AOL, the picture will be letterboxed and it'll have a commercial ticker running across the top and bottom of the screen. Let's just hope AOL doesn't decide to televise their chat rooms, though..
At best, sounds like "Bloomberg Financial Television" or any other easily-confusing television "program" with stock/commercial/weather tickers cluttering up the screen.
At worst, they could let the "AOL Community" make the programming decisions.
How do you make a television show IN ALL CAPS?
As long as you view the file on a Windows(tm) system, all looks fine. But if you happen to be using Unix(tm) or Linux(tm), it doesn't understand the funny character code and renders it as "?".
Hell, even the Token NT Machine in this room displayed the marks as ?. Nice to see Microsoft so carefully adhering to the standards it shoves into the community.
I hate to play the Nitpicker's Game, even with a target such as Jon Katz, but "Disney Land" has never existed. Disneyland, on the other hand, has been around since 1955. There's never been a space in the name. Never will.
*shrug*
I don't care, as long as I get to ride the Haunted Mansion.
There could be a thousand of these: "Why being in product support sucks." "Why being a electrical engineer sucks."
Well, yes, but no one ever says "Wow! You're in product support? That's SO COOL! I've got great ideas for the business. How can I get in on it, too?"
Now me, I loved BWP (finally a horror movie that actually tries to scare you for once! The audacity!) and hype is neither here nor there for me, but one thing I do wish is that all filmmakers would simply know when to stop.
Amen to that. If there is anything that can take the Blair Witch Project and turn it from the underground sleeper hit it was to a true cog in the stupid Hollywood Hit Machine, it's a goddamn sequel. (Second is superfluous merchandising, and the "Songs That Were Found On A Mix Tape In Josh's Car, No, Really" concept ably proves this point.)
Hollywood's bright lights in the producers' eyes must really be sparkling if they plan to ruin such a great concept of the Blair Witch Project with a sequel, especially if indeed the plan is to "show more lost footage" as Katz mentioned. This'll be awful to watch because, as I felt, while the scary bits of the movie were excellent, they were wrapped around large hard-to-swallow doses of The Real World: In The Woods.
Here's my one-line review of Blair Witch Project (may be more than one line in some states, your mileage may vary):
"Hi, we're lost! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP! Okay, now we're dead."
I daresay there's anything scary left from the footage to re-use. I also daresay there's anything truly interesting left from the footage to use -- Heather Donohue said at the San Diego Comic Con that the final cut had a toned-down and less bitchy (!!!) Heather than what was actually really filmed. Sure. I'll pay $8 to hear her screech more, and screech louder.
On the other hand, the producers might want to re-shoot and add new stuff. This, of course, completely ruins the improvised spontaneity of the first shoot (was that redundant? Oh well) and any feeling that what we are seeing is original, fresh, and unique anymore.
Then again, that's what Hollywood is good at. Sucking all the originality and uniqueness out of projects and spoon-feeding us the watered-down, easily-marketable tripe that's left over.
Thanks, guys. While I didn't think Blair Witch Project deserves 100% of the accolades it's getting, I definitely don't think it deserves such crummy sequel treatment.
If anybody wants me, I'll be in a tent over there.
I was most disturbed by this little piece in the Wired article:
When Microsoft shuts down Firefly.com next week, it will mean the end of one of the Net's oldest and most historically significant communities.
The article then goes on to mention that Firefly started in 1996. This makes it one of the "oldest and most historically significant"?!
Must've been a newbie reporter trying to put things into perspective. One of the oldest? Don't even get me started -- on laUNChpad, nyx and the Well and echo and the ISCABBS and Quartz Paradise, even. Some are still around and struggling; others are long gone. Hell, even Wired's own little computer-klatsch commune is older than Firefly. And historically significant? Um. Other than the fact that Firefly seemed to be the first recommendation agent that made it "big".
Remember when personalized agents were gonna be the Next Really Big Thing? We'd turn our computer on in the morning and our agents, usually in the form of a cute cartoon dog or something, would report back to us that our plane tickets had been reserved, the cab to the airport booked, and here is the weather in Albuquerque today.
Agents might not be so personal now, granted, but they do work in their mysterious ways. amazon.com tracks my orders for me via email. I get weekly listings of "cyberfares" custom-picked for destinations I frequent, and I've tried eBay once or twice. Perhaps we owe a bit of credit to Firefly for taking us down the personalized info route, but I'm not going to laud it as one of the defining concepts behind the Internet As We Know It Today.
Personalized recommendation services are a strange breed, anyhow. I echo the sentiments of several folks who've already mentioned that it took Firefly entirely too long to return the simple message that I should be interested in bands I already liked. amazon's recommendation service is entirely way too obvious or inexplicably false and motivated by items Amazon wants to push. How else can I explain their insistence that, among recommendations for Mel Brooks movies and Terry Pratchett novels and MST3K episodes and Beautiful South albums (the kinds of which I've purchased from Amazon in the past) that I'd "really like" the Tony Blanks Tae-Bo tape?! (Maybe it's a subtle hint from Amazon considering I've bought lots of videos from them?)
I see I'm losing track of the main point here. It sure is sad to see a 3-year-old Internet company go (especially when, yes, it has been around longer than many) but we can't let the fact that their sad decline and their entrails being feasted upon by Shub-Microsoft make us believe Firefly was something greater than it was.
If anything, Firefly and SixDegrees (which debuted at roughly the same time, IIRC) seemed nothing more to me than an attempt to get personal marketing information out of me in exchange for something they promised was "really really cool", yet never seemed to be. It shall be missed, but not in a sniffly "It was soooooo visionary" mindset. Not from me, at least. Sorry.
I can't wait! We'll broadcast our spam out into space, and a zillion light-years away, some intelligent beings running their own SETI@Home project will pick it up and invade our planet in hopes of finding EASY MONEY and hot girl-girl action!
Well, I mean, it's only a while before we start colonizing and physically screwing up the moon and Mars, might as well begin electronically.
I'm glad I popped over and read the Slashdot comments before I checked the site out. A porn site, even one disguised, is not a good site to look at from work. And here I thought Slashdot wouldn't hand me blind links. *sigh* Would it have been tough to mention it was lame smut (as opposed to good smut, eh) when the disclaimer was posted that said "yes, we knew it was a bad site"? At least some kind of "This isn't exactly office-friendly" warning, perhaps.
Those of us in offices with curious cow orkers and large monitors would indeed thank you, Rob.
In other words, if the goal of this site was to make fun of script kiddies and Microsoft sycophants, then the author hit the nail on the head. The placement of slobbering, non-sensical prose was masterful. The misspelled words were placed in just the right places. It's REALLY convincing.
It appeared to me that nowhere on the site is the actual word "Microsoft" used. It's always spelled 'Micorsoft'. A very clever way to avoid some possible legal reprisals down the road...
But the misspelled run-on sentences are priceless. I have to deal with folks who write like that normally, so you'd think I'd be sick of seeing it used in satire. Not so. It still makes me laugh like a loon, especially the last paragraph of Gerald's "Hobbies" section where he complains that birds aren't teaching him how to fly. Oh, man.
TRON in the some of the Atari Basics 8-bit stood for "Trace On" as I recall. It would display at the top of the screen the line number and the BASIC statement of a program written in BASIC as it was executed as an debuging aid.
In that case, the sequel should logically be called TROFF.
I remember using this command with the TRS-80 as well...