Funny, I first saw the Star Wars films as the Special Editions in late high school.
I enjoyed the first two but hated the second. I didn't feel the first two were pandering to kids at all.
The prequels, on the other hand, definitely are--but schizophrenically. "The taxation of trade routes is in dispute..." Give me a break. Council meetings? Weirdness that flew over kids' heads (and ended up in the much more serious yet crappy Matrix sequels). Lucas can't even write a good kids' movie.
Noone had really used special effects to that degree before 1977(to my knowledge)
Interestingly enough, the effects guys working on Superman were really hyped about their film because of their use of miniatures to create the still realistic-looking Krypton, the work to make Christopher Reeves look like he was really flying most of the time, and so on. It was state-of-the-art pushing of the envelope.
Halfway through production, Star Wars came out and made it all commonplace. Plus, Star Wars used more of it than Superman did. Nonetheless Superman is still impressive (and if you watch it today, it's amazing how much it feels like it came out today, complete with 3D zooming credits--Spider-man's plotline is almost a point for point ripoff).
Interestingly enough, those are the same reasons Lord of the Rings did so well. The first movie in a long, long time to come out and give everyone good fun and hope. You could anabashedly cheer for the good guys (and in my screenings, they did--they even cheered when Sam got married and had kids! People love these characters to death). It's completely out of left field for the...er...00s.
NT isn't a microkernel. It's a mix of architectures.
Honestly, I think it's insane that to you have to compile the Linux kernel just to get drivers, but that's just me thinking all modern and against the hivemind grain...
Remember when you expected huge epic space battles from Star Wars? I'm tired of these CG ground-based battles. Only one we've gotten so far, and it's a kid and his "cute" accidents that win the battle.
Where are the X-Wings? The Tie Fighters? The space battles?
Where is the history of the Rebellion, and their first design prototypes of the Y-Wings, X-Wings, and so forth? The creation of the Rebel fleet and bases on Hoth and so forth? I'd rather see Hoth again, not Tattooine.
You know, actual prequels to the storyline we know in the original movies. If Lucas wants to jerk off over CG--where is the absolutely monstrous, record-breaking spaceship battle taking place between Star Destroyers, fighter ships, and so forth that shows everyone how it's done?
Nah, lets watch a bunch of Gungans and some CG clones shoot through clouds of dust instead.
AOTC and ESB are also events, and ROTJ and BOTE are also action.
You're reading too much into it. I doubt George Lucas sat down and said, "Hmm, how can I tie these titles in so that they are events, actions, or things?" He was too busy thinking lava planets, water-core planets, and city planets were cool ideas.
"Hmm, I need a swamp...I know! A swamp planet! Dagobah it is!"
"I need Ani to fall into lava...I'll just have to create a lava planet! Get ILM on the phone!"
I never complained about the lava battle. Everyone knows about the volcano.
I'm complaining about the goddamned "extreme" surfing that will apparently be taking place in a battle that should be serious and epic, two former Jedi partners fighting each other in a conflict of Light and Dark Force!
Nope, let's CG lava, CG platforms, and greenscreen our actors instead so we have no class left.
If that's the case, those planets would have been the first places Vader would have searched. "Dark force auras...the ability to hide there undetected as a result...I probably outta check it out since I'm hunting and killing all Jedi in the universe."
Oh, yeah, I forgot, George Lucas had the logic and continuity sense of a high school fiction writer when he wrote these prequels.
As to it not making sense for Luke going to Tatooine, I thought it actually did - wasn't Luke given to "Uncle Owen" (whom I presume is Anakin's half brother) to be raised?
Yeah, real clever, let's raise Darth Vader's son using HIS OWN LAST NAME OF SKYWALKER ON HIS HOME PLANET.
Screw the title, is anyone else worried about this cheesy-sounding fight on lava surfboards? Surfboards?!
God, Lucas, please stop! Give me a dignified sword fight in the vein of the OT. Nope, we need green-screened, CG'd light saber battles on top of lava with the two combatants using them like surfboards!!!
This is just really cool. I like the idea that some kids are going to have some fun playing Gameboy games like the rest of us because of this. Good work, guys!
Slashdot posts silly articles like this one, where Linux is "Improving Life of Poor In India," yet posts articles like the infamous "Microsoft Violates Human Rights In China," based on the fact that Windows is used by the government there which somehow equates to Microsoft oppressing the people.
But the Chinese government has its own custom Linux distribution, and Red Hat removed the Taiwanese flag to sell there. So, why is it Microsoft violates human rights in China while Linux improves the life of the poor in India?
I'll tell you why--propaganda and bias. This place is a caricature of the website it was seven years ago. Just had to say my piece.
Because a small niche of people considering a show "good" isn't enough to combat the other 90% of the population who couldn't care less. If people aren't watching, it's an expense to the network to keep producing the show.
Where is the flood of Noah in the fossil record? Is carbon dating wrong? Where are the cave drawings of dinosaurs? How do you explain the proven movement of the continents over time?
You're arguing with science just to bolster your looney religious worldview. You're searching the entire Bible for one vague word and declaring that it's describing dinosaurs. I think if dinosaurs were roaming around Jerusulem, we'd have known about it. Or do you think the authors of the Bible were morons?
Someday, you should try reading up on how there were dozens upon dozens of Gospels coming out after the fact, and how a certain monk decided on four of them to represent "the Four Winds of the Earth--North, South, East, and West." Your Bible is a mish-mash of mistranslations and subjective editing. This is all proven historical fact.
Unlike one single word that magically becomes dinosaurs in your mind.
I was correctly pointing out the original meaning of the word in the original Hebrew texts. There is absolutely no concrete mention of dinosaurs in the Bible unless you actually go looking for things to fit onto it. I could find something to describe vampires if I wanted to and argue that the Bible is saying vampires existed.
Don't get me started on the original source of the word Lucifer and how it was twisted to become the anthropomorphic image of Satan we have now.
At least learn to spell. No wonder you couldn't find the text! (-:
I can spell just fine. Sorry, I have a life and don't waste my time proofreading hastily written Slashdot posts.
Linux copying the behavior of various UNIXes is stealing, but Microsoft copying the behavior of the Mac or Xerox Star is not. And Compaq's reverse engineering of IBM PC BIOS is what caused the death of the PC industry!
Except that Apple had a deal with Xerox (so it's bizarre that people keep mentioning "stealing" from Xerox), and Apple's lawsuit against Microsoft was thrown out on a mere technicality.
Nobody ever said the Mac's copying of Xerox was okay, or that Microsoft's was okay. After all, you guys rip off taskbars, start menus, integrated filesystem/net browsers and more. There's this continous ego battle with Windows 98 going on in the Linux desktop world, and it's really really strange.
I'd consider the Linux community to be the least down-to-earth in the computer industry. To them, computer operating systems are religions, and Open Source is the one true way in all cases, and you are "evil" if you think otherwise. The rival religion, the one the majority of the world believes in--Windows--is always labelled evil, does everything wrong, is blamed for everything.
It's all the same symptoms of an organized religion, but under the guise of a technology movement--people who are so arrogant to think that their beliefs are more true than everyone else's, and who will ridicule you and knock you down if you suggest otherwise.
OK, I'm sorry I don't have a lot of time to debate this. But I will say the following. What Dawkins writes is typical of the intellectually lazy attacks that science has for religion, because he is dismissing the discipline out of hand. He may as well say that we should ask the gardener or the chef about questions of sociology rather than a faculty member of the sociology department.
You completely missed the point. You're assuming to begin with that a priest automatically has validity in answering the whys.
The point Dawkins was making is that a priest is no different from a random man on the street claiming to have spoken to God and giving the answers. You have no way of knowing if any of it is true. You and most other people simply accept what is said as truth because you were raised to believe it. Dawkins merely challenged that given by asking the question--"Why are we asking priests? They've never proven anything."
For example, let's start with the following axioms: God exists, God created the universe, God loves all humans. I should point out that none of these contradict anything that science knows.
I believe a rock in my backyard speaks to me and created all of existence by will alone. None of that contradicts anything that science knows. Your point is an intellectually lazy retort that's often given by religious nuts. "But you can't prove God doesn't exist!" No, and you can't prove the tooth fairy doesn't either, or that you'll reincarnate into an elephant when you die, or that those nuts claiming to be Jesus aren't Jesus.
To believe your religion is somehow more true than all the others of the world, with all their holy messengers, holy books, martyrs, and belief systems, is completely arrogant. If you had been born in Iraq, you'd have a completely different religion and worldview right now. Same as if you had been born into a primitive African tribe.
Your religion is a result of coincidental geography and therefore your childhood upbringing. Ask any child psychologist. Isn't that cause to make you curious about the validity of your beliefs? Of course not. You were raised to believe that they were true by default, before any proof has been given. Suddenly to you, the burden of proof goes on those pointing out that your claims have not been proven. Your post reaks of this mindset.
I believe a rock in my backyard created all of existence.
How very odd. If there is a God, he created you. He gave you a mind and a will. And he sustains your existence this very moment. It seems to me that this question should at least arouse your interest...
How very odd. If there is a holy rock in my backyard, it created you. It gave you a mind and a will. And it sustains your existence this very moment. It seems to me that this question should at least arouse your interest...
See how fun it is to declare that a certain belief "might" be true--as is true of absolutely any random theology you could conjure up, such as belief in the tooth fairy?
What exactly do you mean by "better?" Better implies that there is some "good" that you would like to world to move closer too. And a "bad" that you would like it to move away from.
Good would be whatever benefits society. Bad would be otherwise.
A Christian would say that there is a "good" defined by God's nature from which we can say whether the world is getting "better" or "worse." Without that set point of reference, there's no way to make the kind of judgements you're attempting.
Ah, yes, what you're saying is that without belief in God, you can't have morality or ethics. Which is a twisted looney way of thinking of course, a belief you're told to think.
Do you think dogs belief in God? Yet, dog will gather in packs, protect each other, hunt together, and so on. There are also bad dogs that will be challenged and fought against.
Point is, the concept of ethics and morality in a human society are really the outcome of an evolved set of survival instincts. Humans live longer if they're not killing each other and doing bad things to each other. They have better lives when people treat each other nicely. You don't need belief in Christianity to understand this.
But I certain expect this very simple concept to escape you, because you were raised to believe in Christianity, and therefore your entire worldview for the rest of your life is forever colored. To arrogantly believe that your religion is somehow true amongst millions of others on this big rock in space is insanely ludicrous, but you happened to be born to a Judeo-Christian culture and were raised to believe it, and so you shall.
Never underestimate how easily shaped a person's worldview is through upbringing. But continue to let your mind exist in a vacuous niche of thinking without question, if that's what you want.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny, I first saw the Star Wars films as the Special Editions in late high school.
I enjoyed the first two but hated the second. I didn't feel the first two were pandering to kids at all.
The prequels, on the other hand, definitely are--but schizophrenically. "The taxation of trade routes is in dispute..." Give me a break. Council meetings? Weirdness that flew over kids' heads (and ended up in the much more serious yet crappy Matrix sequels). Lucas can't even write a good kids' movie.
Noone had really used special effects to that degree before 1977(to my knowledge)
Interestingly enough, the effects guys working on Superman were really hyped about their film because of their use of miniatures to create the still realistic-looking Krypton, the work to make Christopher Reeves look like he was really flying most of the time, and so on. It was state-of-the-art pushing of the envelope.
Halfway through production, Star Wars came out and made it all commonplace. Plus, Star Wars used more of it than Superman did. Nonetheless Superman is still impressive (and if you watch it today, it's amazing how much it feels like it came out today, complete with 3D zooming credits--Spider-man's plotline is almost a point for point ripoff).
Interestingly enough, those are the same reasons Lord of the Rings did so well. The first movie in a long, long time to come out and give everyone good fun and hope. You could anabashedly cheer for the good guys (and in my screenings, they did--they even cheered when Sam got married and had kids! People love these characters to death). It's completely out of left field for the...er...00s.
Of course you can't "save" Episode III--it's already been filmed. It's in post-production now.
NT isn't a microkernel. It's a mix of architectures.
Honestly, I think it's insane that to you have to compile the Linux kernel just to get drivers, but that's just me thinking all modern and against the hivemind grain...
Remember when you expected huge epic space battles from Star Wars? I'm tired of these CG ground-based battles. Only one we've gotten so far, and it's a kid and his "cute" accidents that win the battle.
Where are the X-Wings? The Tie Fighters? The space battles?
Where is the history of the Rebellion, and their first design prototypes of the Y-Wings, X-Wings, and so forth? The creation of the Rebel fleet and bases on Hoth and so forth? I'd rather see Hoth again, not Tattooine.
You know, actual prequels to the storyline we know in the original movies. If Lucas wants to jerk off over CG--where is the absolutely monstrous, record-breaking spaceship battle taking place between Star Destroyers, fighter ships, and so forth that shows everyone how it's done?
Nah, lets watch a bunch of Gungans and some CG clones shoot through clouds of dust instead.
AOTC and ESB are also events, and ROTJ and BOTE are also action.
You're reading too much into it. I doubt George Lucas sat down and said, "Hmm, how can I tie these titles in so that they are events, actions, or things?" He was too busy thinking lava planets, water-core planets, and city planets were cool ideas.
"Hmm, I need a swamp...I know! A swamp planet! Dagobah it is!"
"I need Ani to fall into lava...I'll just have to create a lava planet! Get ILM on the phone!"
Where did I condemn the movie? I just pissed all over the idea of extreme lava surfing during a light saber battle. I didn't say the movie sucked.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was an idea floated out on purpose to gauge fan reaction. They do that, you know...
I never complained about the lava battle. Everyone knows about the volcano.
I'm complaining about the goddamned "extreme" surfing that will apparently be taking place in a battle that should be serious and epic, two former Jedi partners fighting each other in a conflict of Light and Dark Force!
Nope, let's CG lava, CG platforms, and greenscreen our actors instead so we have no class left.
If that's the case, those planets would have been the first places Vader would have searched. "Dark force auras...the ability to hide there undetected as a result...I probably outta check it out since I'm hunting and killing all Jedi in the universe."
Oh, yeah, I forgot, George Lucas had the logic and continuity sense of a high school fiction writer when he wrote these prequels.
As to it not making sense for Luke going to Tatooine, I thought it actually did - wasn't Luke given to "Uncle Owen" (whom I presume is Anakin's half brother) to be raised?
Yeah, real clever, let's raise Darth Vader's son using HIS OWN LAST NAME OF SKYWALKER ON HIS HOME PLANET.
Perry Mason couldn't crack this case.
Screw the title, is anyone else worried about this cheesy-sounding fight on lava surfboards? Surfboards?!
God, Lucas, please stop! Give me a dignified sword fight in the vein of the OT. Nope, we need green-screened, CG'd light saber battles on top of lava with the two combatants using them like surfboards!!!
This is just really cool. I like the idea that some kids are going to have some fun playing Gameboy games like the rest of us because of this. Good work, guys!
Slashdot posts silly articles like this one, where Linux is "Improving Life of Poor In India," yet posts articles like the infamous "Microsoft Violates Human Rights In China," based on the fact that Windows is used by the government there which somehow equates to Microsoft oppressing the people.
But the Chinese government has its own custom Linux distribution, and Red Hat removed the Taiwanese flag to sell there. So, why is it Microsoft violates human rights in China while Linux improves the life of the poor in India?
I'll tell you why--propaganda and bias. This place is a caricature of the website it was seven years ago. Just had to say my piece.
Not.
It's been a long time since I really watched any television.
Because a small niche of people considering a show "good" isn't enough to combat the other 90% of the population who couldn't care less. If people aren't watching, it's an expense to the network to keep producing the show.
Yeah, right, I don't know anybody who owns a Tivo or who is going to fire up a VCR every Friday night.
Hell, I barely know anybody who has VCRs anymore instead of DVD players.
Riker: They were just sucked into space.
Data: Blown, sir.
Riker: Sorry, Data.
Data: Common mistake, sir.
(The Naked Now)
Where is the flood of Noah in the fossil record? Is carbon dating wrong? Where are the cave drawings of dinosaurs? How do you explain the proven movement of the continents over time?
You're arguing with science just to bolster your looney religious worldview. You're searching the entire Bible for one vague word and declaring that it's describing dinosaurs. I think if dinosaurs were roaming around Jerusulem, we'd have known about it. Or do you think the authors of the Bible were morons?
Someday, you should try reading up on how there were dozens upon dozens of Gospels coming out after the fact, and how a certain monk decided on four of them to represent "the Four Winds of the Earth--North, South, East, and West." Your Bible is a mish-mash of mistranslations and subjective editing. This is all proven historical fact.
Unlike one single word that magically becomes dinosaurs in your mind.
I was correctly pointing out the original meaning of the word in the original Hebrew texts. There is absolutely no concrete mention of dinosaurs in the Bible unless you actually go looking for things to fit onto it. I could find something to describe vampires if I wanted to and argue that the Bible is saying vampires existed.
Don't get me started on the original source of the word Lucifer and how it was twisted to become the anthropomorphic image of Satan we have now.
At least learn to spell. No wonder you couldn't find the text! (-:
I can spell just fine. Sorry, I have a life and don't waste my time proofreading hastily written Slashdot posts.
Linux copying the behavior of various UNIXes is stealing, but Microsoft copying the behavior of the Mac or Xerox Star is not. And Compaq's reverse engineering of IBM PC BIOS is what caused the death of the PC industry!
Except that Apple had a deal with Xerox (so it's bizarre that people keep mentioning "stealing" from Xerox), and Apple's lawsuit against Microsoft was thrown out on a mere technicality.
Nobody ever said the Mac's copying of Xerox was okay, or that Microsoft's was okay. After all, you guys rip off taskbars, start menus, integrated filesystem/net browsers and more. There's this continous ego battle with Windows 98 going on in the Linux desktop world, and it's really really strange.
I'd consider the Linux community to be the least down-to-earth in the computer industry. To them, computer operating systems are religions, and Open Source is the one true way in all cases, and you are "evil" if you think otherwise. The rival religion, the one the majority of the world believes in--Windows--is always labelled evil, does everything wrong, is blamed for everything.
It's all the same symptoms of an organized religion, but under the guise of a technology movement--people who are so arrogant to think that their beliefs are more true than everyone else's, and who will ridicule you and knock you down if you suggest otherwise.
OK, I'm sorry I don't have a lot of time to debate this. But I will say the following. What Dawkins writes is typical of the intellectually lazy attacks that science has for religion, because he is dismissing the discipline out of hand. He may as well say that we should ask the gardener or the chef about questions of sociology rather than a faculty member of the sociology department.
You completely missed the point. You're assuming to begin with that a priest automatically has validity in answering the whys.
The point Dawkins was making is that a priest is no different from a random man on the street claiming to have spoken to God and giving the answers. You have no way of knowing if any of it is true. You and most other people simply accept what is said as truth because you were raised to believe it. Dawkins merely challenged that given by asking the question--"Why are we asking priests? They've never proven anything."
For example, let's start with the following axioms: God exists, God created the universe, God loves all humans. I should point out that none of these contradict anything that science knows.
I believe a rock in my backyard speaks to me and created all of existence by will alone. None of that contradicts anything that science knows. Your point is an intellectually lazy retort that's often given by religious nuts. "But you can't prove God doesn't exist!" No, and you can't prove the tooth fairy doesn't either, or that you'll reincarnate into an elephant when you die, or that those nuts claiming to be Jesus aren't Jesus.
To believe your religion is somehow more true than all the others of the world, with all their holy messengers, holy books, martyrs, and belief systems, is completely arrogant. If you had been born in Iraq, you'd have a completely different religion and worldview right now. Same as if you had been born into a primitive African tribe.
Your religion is a result of coincidental geography and therefore your childhood upbringing. Ask any child psychologist. Isn't that cause to make you curious about the validity of your beliefs? Of course not. You were raised to believe that they were true by default, before any proof has been given. Suddenly to you, the burden of proof goes on those pointing out that your claims have not been proven. Your post reaks of this mindset.
I believe a rock in my backyard created all of existence.
How very odd. If there is a God, he created you. He gave you a mind and a will. And he sustains your existence this very moment. It seems to me that this question should at least arouse your interest...
How very odd. If there is a holy rock in my backyard, it created you. It gave you a mind and a will. And it sustains your existence this very moment. It seems to me that this question should at least arouse your interest...
See how fun it is to declare that a certain belief "might" be true--as is true of absolutely any random theology you could conjure up, such as belief in the tooth fairy?
What exactly do you mean by "better?" Better implies that there is some "good" that you would like to world to move closer too. And a "bad" that you would like it to move away from.
Good would be whatever benefits society. Bad would be otherwise.
A Christian would say that there is a "good" defined by God's nature from which we can say whether the world is getting "better" or "worse." Without that set point of reference, there's no way to make the kind of judgements you're attempting.
Ah, yes, what you're saying is that without belief in God, you can't have morality or ethics. Which is a twisted looney way of thinking of course, a belief you're told to think.
Do you think dogs belief in God? Yet, dog will gather in packs, protect each other, hunt together, and so on. There are also bad dogs that will be challenged and fought against.
Point is, the concept of ethics and morality in a human society are really the outcome of an evolved set of survival instincts. Humans live longer if they're not killing each other and doing bad things to each other. They have better lives when people treat each other nicely. You don't need belief in Christianity to understand this.
But I certain expect this very simple concept to escape you, because you were raised to believe in Christianity, and therefore your entire worldview for the rest of your life is forever colored. To arrogantly believe that your religion is somehow true amongst millions of others on this big rock in space is insanely ludicrous, but you happened to be born to a Judeo-Christian culture and were raised to believe it, and so you shall.
Never underestimate how easily shaped a person's worldview is through upbringing. But continue to let your mind exist in a vacuous niche of thinking without question, if that's what you want.