I suspect that at this point "The Family Guy" is pretty much unkillable; just like Jerry Lee Lewis. Every time you start throwing dirt on its coffin it somehow manages to claw its way back to the surface.
Re:Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk! Rejoice, Beantown Knuckleheads!
on
New Years Marathons
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· Score: 1
Not to mention the mid-'80s "Lenny Clarke Show," a locally-produced late-nite weekly comedy show that was actually kinda bizarre at times and, as far as I could tell, only ran on 38.
Yeah, the Movie Loft was great. Hersey was a great host. You still hear him on the radio from time to time, but it's a real shame that 38 pulled the plug.
If I don't end up going out, Boston's WSBK (channel 38) always runs an annual New Year's Eve Three Stooges marathon from 10pm to 2am that'll do me just fine.
that said, it's a sad comment on society (especially geek society here on/.,) that you're more likely to find someone fluent in klingon and tengwar than esperanto. it's a beautiful language with good ideals behind it, and it's dead easy to learn.
Well, what tended to happen was that we would accept the return from the customer, then ship it back to our one-stop with a detailed explanation of precisely what was wrong with the CD. I don't know what the one-stop did with it at that point.
In all fairness to Sony, their production methods actually were pretty good. Most of the problems we saw with Sony discs were along the lines of the wrong music being on the disc; Mariah Carey's music on what otherwise appeared to be a Santana album, for instance.
1.) The thing is labeled as CD Digital Audio (CDDA), which is in violation of logo, because in order to be CDDA, it must be red-book compliant, (or whatever book it is), and this copy protected CD is most definately NOT compliant.
Speaking as someone who ran a record store for eight years, my prediction is that at some point in the next year Universal and the other labels involved in this scam will do two things:
1) They'll stop accepting returns on all copy-protected CDs. If you don't like it, go pound sand. Sony stopped accepting returns on opened CDs several years back because they felt that their production methods had improved to the point where genuinely defective CDs represented a "statistically insignificant" percentage of their output. The reality from where I was standing was that Sony's defective CDs were coming in at about the same clip as always; Sony just didn't want to deal with them.
2) Universal (and other companies involved in similar practices) will either a) ignore the CDDA red-book standards and dare them to just try and do something about it, b) bail on the CDDA and create their own in-house red-book standards, or c) lobby the people in charge of the CDDA standards to change the red book.
One or both of these things will happen, but labels will not accept an unlimited number of returns forever, particularly if they start seeing large quantities of CDs coming back to them.
Incidentally, anyone know when those animated "Hobbit" and LOTR films were made? (late 70's? Early 80's?) I'll bet people had some bad things to say about those. I remember orcs singing cheesy songs like "Where there's a whip ! There's a way !"
Ralph Bakshi's rotoscoped "The Lord of the Rings" (which covered "Fellowship..." and the first half of "The Two Towers") came out in 1978; the same year as Rankin-Bass' made-for-TV version of "The Hobbit." Finally, "The Return of the King" (also made by Rankin-Bass) came out in 1980
Between avionics, engines, stealth requirements, software, etc., designing and building new fighters and bombers is an extremely costly proposition these days. It's also highly political since, when you're talking about a weapons system that will cost tens of billions of dollars to field, you can be sure that every state will want their turn at the trough.
Having said that, a number of new fighters are in the works. The US has the F-22 Raptor entering service in a couple of years, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will be fielded towards the end of this decade, the European Typhoon will enter service next year, the Russians are working on several interesting designs (though whether any of them will get past the prototype stage due to funding problems is another question entirely), the Chinese have their own programs, etc.
New manned bombers are a thornier problem due to escalating costs (B-1B cost $200 mil per plane in the '80s; B-2 cost ten times that in the '90s), but I think if the USAF can design something that manages to keep the costs down, they'll always have a need for something that can haul a lot of explosive power over intercontinental distances.
However, the Russians generally build the more aesthetic aircraft, top-of-the-line being the Mach 2 heavy strategic bomber Tupolev Tu-160 [uni-bonn.de]. True aesthetics of death. Scares the hell out of me.:-)
I'd be a lot more scared if there actually many Tu-160s in flying condition.
To say that the Tu-160 was something of a disappointment to the Soviets/Russians would be a huge understatement. Although it's the largest operational strategic bomber in the world, it carries about half the weapons load of the smaller B-1 (which it closely resembles), is far less stealthy, is reportedly difficult to maintain, and, of the 40 or so that were built (out of a planned production of 100), only about 15-20 are flyable today. Its greatest assets are that it's pretty fast (mach 2+) and has decent range. It's certainly an impressive-looking aircraft, and the Russians deserve a lot of credit for keeping it active since the fall of the USSR. But it's not much of a threat considering the small number of flyable examples that have survived.
They were retired in 1970. It was a very fast, attractive plane, but tended to crash a lot (20% attrition over about ten years!), was difficult to maintain, and - since it was only capable of carrying nuclear weapons - not all that versatile. It was replaced by the FB-111A.
Of 119 B-58s built, 8 still exist in various static displays (though the one at Edwards is in extremely poor condition). The rest were scrapped in the late '70s.
My dad used to fly B-52s and FB-111s in the USAF and knew a few guys who had flown the Hustler. They said that when everything was working correctly the B-58 was a great plane. Unfortunately, that wasn't all that often. The plane was considered state-of-the-art for its day and, as a result, was less reliable than planes with older, but proven technology. The avionics had a lot of problems with overheating, for example. It also crashed a lot. Of the 116 B-58s built, 20% crashed. Considering that it was only in service for a little more than ten years, that's a lot of planes. It also didn't have great range and was only designed to carry nuclear weapons, so it wasn't that versatile. The B-58 was retired in 1970 to make room for the FB-111A, which was even faster, more versatile (could carry SRAMS as well as gravity bombs), and probably more survivable.
Having said that, the Hustler was a beautiful plane, and at mach 2.1+, the fastest nuclear bomber of its day.
Word is that all of the other movies will be upgraded to 2-disc sets similar to the new "ST: TMP" set starting in 2002. If anyone's planning on buying the other titles, I'd recommend waiting.
Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the rollout of the first B-52 prototype at the Boeing plant in Seattle.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,39681,00.htm l
Though unfortunately not available online, the June/July 2001 issue of Air & Space has a nice article on NASA's B-52B that's used for launching experimental aircraft. According to the piece the plane is a vintage plane buff's wet dream, with the vast majority of the avionics dating back to the '50s, unlike its younger USAF siblings, whose electronics have been pretty regularly upgraded since rolling off the assembly line in the '50s and early '60s.
Apparently NASA has been in the market for a newer B-52 for some time since their plane is so old that spare parts are becoming something of a concern, but so far the USAF hasn't lent them a potential replacement that they've really liked.
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Coming next: Nano-smokestacks and nano-steel furnaces.
On the other hand, the '60s and '70s-vintage Pioneer 6, 7, 8, and 10 probes are all still active, with 6 and 10 still contacted on occasion.
I suspect that at this point "The Family Guy" is pretty much unkillable; just like Jerry Lee Lewis. Every time you start throwing dirt on its coffin it somehow manages to claw its way back to the surface.
Not to mention the mid-'80s "Lenny Clarke Show," a locally-produced late-nite weekly comedy show that was actually kinda bizarre at times and, as far as I could tell, only ran on 38.
Yeah, the Movie Loft was great. Hersey was a great host. You still hear him on the radio from time to time, but it's a real shame that 38 pulled the plug.
If I don't end up going out, Boston's WSBK (channel 38) always runs an annual New Year's Eve Three Stooges marathon from 10pm to 2am that'll do me just fine.
The last thing we need is a race of Cthulhu-beings involved with the RIAA or marketing companies.
You mean they're not already?!?!
that said, it's a sad comment on society (especially geek society here on /.,) that you're more likely to find someone fluent in klingon and tengwar than esperanto. it's a beautiful language with good ideals behind it, and it's dead easy to learn.
Check out this story from the Onion.
Well, what tended to happen was that we would accept the return from the customer, then ship it back to our one-stop with a detailed explanation of precisely what was wrong with the CD. I don't know what the one-stop did with it at that point.
In all fairness to Sony, their production methods actually were pretty good. Most of the problems we saw with Sony discs were along the lines of the wrong music being on the disc; Mariah Carey's music on what otherwise appeared to be a Santana album, for instance.
1.) The thing is labeled as CD Digital Audio (CDDA), which is in violation of logo, because in order to be CDDA, it must be red-book compliant, (or whatever book it is), and this copy protected CD is most definately NOT compliant.
Speaking as someone who ran a record store for eight years, my prediction is that at some point in the next year Universal and the other labels involved in this scam will do two things:
1) They'll stop accepting returns on all copy-protected CDs. If you don't like it, go pound sand. Sony stopped accepting returns on opened CDs several years back because they felt that their production methods had improved to the point where genuinely defective CDs represented a "statistically insignificant" percentage of their output. The reality from where I was standing was that Sony's defective CDs were coming in at about the same clip as always; Sony just didn't want to deal with them.
2) Universal (and other companies involved in similar practices) will either a) ignore the CDDA red-book standards and dare them to just try and do something about it, b) bail on the CDDA and create their own in-house red-book standards, or c) lobby the people in charge of the CDDA standards to change the red book.
One or both of these things will happen, but labels will not accept an unlimited number of returns forever, particularly if they start seeing large quantities of CDs coming back to them.
Incidentally, anyone know when those animated "Hobbit" and LOTR films were made? (late 70's? Early 80's?) I'll bet people had some bad things to say about those. I remember orcs singing cheesy songs like "Where there's a whip ! There's a way !"
Ralph Bakshi's rotoscoped "The Lord of the Rings" (which covered "Fellowship..." and the first half of "The Two Towers") came out in 1978; the same year as Rankin-Bass' made-for-TV version of "The Hobbit." Finally, "The Return of the King" (also made by Rankin-Bass) came out in 1980
Between avionics, engines, stealth requirements, software, etc., designing and building new fighters and bombers is an extremely costly proposition these days. It's also highly political since, when you're talking about a weapons system that will cost tens of billions of dollars to field, you can be sure that every state will want their turn at the trough.
Having said that, a number of new fighters are in the works. The US has the F-22 Raptor entering service in a couple of years, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will be fielded towards the end of this decade, the European Typhoon will enter service next year, the Russians are working on several interesting designs (though whether any of them will get past the prototype stage due to funding problems is another question entirely), the Chinese have their own programs, etc.
New manned bombers are a thornier problem due to escalating costs (B-1B cost $200 mil per plane in the '80s; B-2 cost ten times that in the '90s), but I think if the USAF can design something that manages to keep the costs down, they'll always have a need for something that can haul a lot of explosive power over intercontinental distances.
However, the Russians generally build the more aesthetic aircraft, top-of-the-line being the Mach 2 heavy strategic bomber Tupolev Tu-160 [uni-bonn.de]. True aesthetics of death. Scares the hell out of me. :-)
I'd be a lot more scared if there actually many Tu-160s in flying condition.
To say that the Tu-160 was something of a disappointment to the Soviets/Russians would be a huge understatement. Although it's the largest operational strategic bomber in the world, it carries about half the weapons load of the smaller B-1 (which it closely resembles), is far less stealthy, is reportedly difficult to maintain, and, of the 40 or so that were built (out of a planned production of 100), only about 15-20 are flyable today. Its greatest assets are that it's pretty fast (mach 2+) and has decent range. It's certainly an impressive-looking aircraft, and the Russians deserve a lot of credit for keeping it active since the fall of the USSR. But it's not much of a threat considering the small number of flyable examples that have survived.
what happened to the Hustler?
They were retired in 1970. It was a very fast, attractive plane, but tended to crash a lot (20% attrition over about ten years!), was difficult to maintain, and - since it was only capable of carrying nuclear weapons - not all that versatile. It was replaced by the FB-111A.
Of 119 B-58s built, 8 still exist in various static displays (though the one at Edwards is in extremely poor condition). The rest were scrapped in the late '70s.
My dad used to fly B-52s and FB-111s in the USAF and knew a few guys who had flown the Hustler. They said that when everything was working correctly the B-58 was a great plane. Unfortunately, that wasn't all that often. The plane was considered state-of-the-art for its day and, as a result, was less reliable than planes with older, but proven technology. The avionics had a lot of problems with overheating, for example. It also crashed a lot. Of the 116 B-58s built, 20% crashed. Considering that it was only in service for a little more than ten years, that's a lot of planes. It also didn't have great range and was only designed to carry nuclear weapons, so it wasn't that versatile. The B-58 was retired in 1970 to make room for the FB-111A, which was even faster, more versatile (could carry SRAMS as well as gravity bombs), and probably more survivable.
Having said that, the Hustler was a beautiful plane, and at mach 2.1+, the fastest nuclear bomber of its day.
How long before someone tries hacking it to run Linux?
Plus, if you were at ILM, would you rather work on Episode II or on Star Trek X?
Considering what Episode I was like? Can I think about it and get back to you?
Word is that all of the other movies will be upgraded to 2-disc sets similar to the new "ST: TMP" set starting in 2002. If anyone's planning on buying the other titles, I'd recommend waiting.
Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the rollout of the first B-52 prototype at the Boeing plant in Seattle.m l
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,39681,00.ht
Though unfortunately not available online, the June/July 2001 issue of Air & Space has a nice article on NASA's B-52B that's used for launching experimental aircraft. According to the piece the plane is a vintage plane buff's wet dream, with the vast majority of the avionics dating back to the '50s, unlike its younger USAF siblings, whose electronics have been pretty regularly upgraded since rolling off the assembly line in the '50s and early '60s.
Apparently NASA has been in the market for a newer B-52 for some time since their plane is so old that spare parts are becoming something of a concern, but so far the USAF hasn't lent them a potential replacement that they've really liked.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is all well and good. But when is the DVD of the Star Wars Christmas Special coming out?
s ta r_wars_tv/index.html
http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/feature/2000/12/05/