"Why turn our phones into games consoles, video cameras, mp3 players, computers and whatever else we can fit into it, if it doesn't do anything well?"
For the simple reason that something is better than nothing.
Game consoles: My phone goes with me everywhere. My DS doesn't. I ain't playing Mario 64 on my phone, but the pool game on my phone is good enough to eat up about 10 minutes while waiting for a movie to start or something.
Video cameras: I don't carry around my Mini-DV camera like anywhere. My phone, again, is with me all the time. My phone has an amusing video of my dog pouncing my cat. (admittedly, phones need better storage and processing before this feature is really useful.)
Cameras: I have a ton of spur-of-the-moment photos I've taken with my phone. Sometimes I see funny things and I can capture them. Just the other day at Walmart I found a Yoda toy where, in the packaging, Yoda was handling his goodies much like Michael Jackson does. I snapped a photo, sent it off, a few friends had a good laugh at it. Since I don't habitually take my digital camera everywhere, 640 by 480 is better than 0.
Mp3 Players: I don't have an MP3 player because I don't want to keep one in my pocket all the time. My phone, as mentioned several times before, is with me all the time. Even if it only had 100 songs, it'd be useful. I won't go spend $400 for a phone like this, though, so maybe I shot that point down. Still, as memory gets better on these phones, why not?
Computers: I think I'm in the minority here, but I check the news on my phone's net connection all the time. (Usually in the bathroom, heh.) Okay, I'm not posting on Slashdot or browsing porn, but it's better than staring at the cracks on the floor.
Day Planners etc: One of the reasons I never really took advantage of the PocketPC I had was because the last two cell phones I have/had have a calendar with alarm capability. Because the phone is with me all the time, reminders on it are useful. I've set it for things like having to wake up early on a Saturday to get some work done to catching a TV show I wanted to watch 2 weeks later. It's very easy to set up and my phone's always near by. Very useful.
I only paid $130 for my phone. (Actually, it was only $30 after a $100 rebate. 2 year contract etc.) I don't even have a top of the line phone. (No MP3 player on it, everything else is there though.) Frankly, if I had a phone like you described it wouldn't hold as high of value with me. Okay, maybe I'd be able to go 2 weeks without charging it instead of 1, but that isn't a huge selling point for me. The fact of the matter is that the things you described are all pretty simple to do. Yes, the stand-alone more expensive units would do each of those jobs better. But they're only as good as you use them.
So, no, I don't think the 'endless pushing of features onto mobile phones is stupid'. Every new cell phone I get becomes more and more useful. I ain't gonna to whine in every single fucking thread about cell phones about that.
"Digital cable (even basic cable) is getting extremely high priced, and this is with no DVR style record feature. Not keen on a satelite dish either, heard some horror stories from other family members and friends."
I'm paying $80 a month right now for digital cable (including HBO and Showtime) and a DVR. Could I be doing much better than that with satellite? I don't know if it helps, but I'm just north of Santa Barbara in California. I say 'much better' because I also have a cable modem (that's another $40/$50) and that'll climb in price a bit if I ditch the cable. I did a little research on my own and I'm not sure I'd be doing much better with satellite. I have two TVs and a dual-tuner DVR to worry about here...
I guess what I'm really asking is whether or not Digital Cable is that much more expensive than satellite. I compared bills with a friend of mine and he's not doing much better. Maybe I'm wrong?
"ReplayTV also requires a subscription and they reserve the right to change your software whenever you connect to their server."
I've had a Replay for 2 years now, haven't had any problems with them removing services or anything. Commercial skip still works, etc. It even has a network port. If I download the right software I can grab those shows. They even have a website where you can set your unit. (it takes 24 hours for the changes to take effect, though. It makes sense considering it only calls home once a day.)
With that said, though, I think the unit is going bye bye. It's not out of disatisfaction, though. Comcast has a DVR option now. I've had it for a couple of months and I like it. There are some downsides to it. I cannot hit it over the network. It doesn't have auto commercial skip. I think it has less capacity than the Replay, though it has enough I haven't noticed much. I liked Replay's interface better, it handles categorization etc. (I.e. My girlfriend had her own group and I had mine.) Sounds like a crummy unit, right? Nah. Thing is, I have digital cable. I couldn't get the Replay to work with the digital cable. (well... supposedly I can get an IR thingy for it, but as I say more here you'll understand why it's not of much importance to me.) So I cannot record HBO etc with the Replay. The Replay lets you watch TV and pause etc, but it's not as elegant as Comcast's DVR does it. It's slower to change channels etc. Even when I only had analog cable, I despised using the Replay this way. I think the Replay I have only has one tuner. The Comcast box I have now has two, and it's come in handy. I also like that the Comcast DVR doesn't eat up a network port. That's the main reason I'm seriously considering getting a second unit for the bedroom. I only wish those two units would talk to each other so that stuff I record in the bedroom could be watched in the living room. It doesn't auto skip commercials but fast fowarding is easy enough. To make a long story short, the Replay has merits above the Comcast DVR, but I'm happier with the Comcast box. Mainly, though, the difference is my preference for digital cable.
In any event, you have choices out there. I don't know if your cable company has a DVR. If you don't, the Replay is a fine unit. Honestly, I prefer the Replay over TiVo to begin with. I know a guy with a DVR on his satellite reciever. He's happy with it, though I'd highly recommend one with two tuners. That's bitten him a few times.
"Umm, what if you become unhappy with their service and want to opt-out? Anytime you lock-in a consumer you're not being reasonable in my opinion. I mean, if I'm unhappy why shouldn't I be able to change service?"
Hypothetically speaking: It depends on what's being offered. Cellular providers, for example, will often give you a free phone for a 1 or 2 year contract. This seems reasonable to me, they're giving you an up front savings. They also give you a month to back down, although I think this is a recent development. The big factor being that the cell company would lose money if they gave you this deal and you backed out within a month. Personally, I don't have a problem with this.
With TiVo, though, I have concerns about a couple of things. 1.) This may affect people who did NOT enjoy such a deal. They had to pay for their hardware etc and they didn't get a deal for it. 2.) I haven't found out for certain if the 1 year service agreement means that the features they have now won't go away until after that year is gone. (Nope, I haven't read the article.) If Tivo was saying "well give you a $400 unit for $100 if you sign this contract and you're guaranteed this level of service during the contract" I wouldn't have a problem with it.
":) I guess the personal attacks mean I touched a hot button. What is elitist about liking an improvement in the stagnant old TV SciFi format?"
There's nothing elitist about liking an improvement in the format, but that's not what I was replying to.
"Drag yourself into the late 20th century, guy. We have neat little time-shifting devices with names like VCR and Myth TV..."
Reread the paragraph from the line you quoted.
"You really just like your SciFi bland and easily palatable, while real science fiction should give you mental indigestion (IMHO, of course)."
Um, no and no. Actually my complaint wasn't so much about the sci-fi'ness of the show. I'm not sure it's worth going into, though, since it's pretty clear from that last bit that you didn't pay a lot of attention to what I said. You know damn good and well what I was replying to. Being defensively deflective isn't getting us anywhere.
"As you've said repeatedly. People who want to have their SciFi spoon-fed to them with a predictable Star Trek space opera format will not like Farscape. Something original is out of many viewers' comfort zone, but it's too bad that it resulted in the cancellation of a show that appealed to fans of real science fiction."
Oh brother. First, Farscape died because it was too dependent on cathing every single episode. Second, enough of the elitist bullshit. I can't believe how obnoxious the Farscape fans I've talked to are. I'm sorry that a show you loved died, I truely am. It really sucks when a good show (Futurama, Miracles, Firefly, Quantum Leap, etc) has its life tragically cut shot. But to act as though you're opearting on some higher level is irritating. You may have made the time to watch and fully appreciate Farscape, but not everybody can. Star Trek was more accessible, that's why it was successful. TV is a luxury. Tastes are wildly diverse. If you catch a bizarre show and you have no fucking clue what's going on, it's not because you're simple. It's hard for a show to work if it demands that you stick to its schedule.
In any event, these are fortunate times for sci-fi. Lots of people have DVRs and entire seasons of TV shows are selling well on DVD. It's difficult to imagine a show like BSG making it 10 years ago. Just this week I finally talked a friend of mine into catching an episode of it. He was really really confused. He didn't understand who the Cylons were. (it worked a lot better on the original series where the Cylons were all big toasters.) He didn't understand what the conflict was about. Well I could keep going. But at the very least he has a DVR. Maybe when the show runs its course again he can catch it and fully appreciate it. It would be awful, though, to judge him harshly for not being in his 'comfort zone'. It's not his fault. Fortunately, BSG stands to succeed.
Before I start, I'd like to apologize for my harsh words. I appreciate you keeping your cool.
" The writers didn't even address the issue of whether she was telling the truth about being sentenced to execution in the first place."
They really didn't need to. Here's the problem: If she made good on it, we'd basically have to follow the rest of her life to know if it was true or not. If she didn't make good on it, they could easily depict that, but then where would we be? The Doctor made a really good point about that question. "So, you occasionally let one go in order to justify yourself." That was where they got into the bit about why they're not so different. (err I'm trying to avoid spoilers here, sorry for being vague.)
But, ya know, they did resolve it. A solution came up that satisfied both parties. It was an intriguing solution which, btw, led to a rather interesting finale for this season. Remember what happened? More interestingly, it opened a door that we may very well get to step through down the road.
"I do realise opinions differ, but the writing of the last series was not top notch. Too many plot holes and unresolved/totally ignored issues, too many cheap devices to establish and further the plot. In my opinion."
I really can't argue with an opinion like that. I mean, I could try, but the problem is I've had the same opinion of other well loved movies. I have similar criticisms of the Matrix. A lot of people saw some big illustration to an enlightening philosophy or some such, but all I saw was a contrived attempt at making a live action movie look like anime. How can I say I'm right about the Matrix and that you're wrong about Doctor Who? Seems better just to understand where you're coming from.
Have a good weekend, man. Again, thanks for keeping cool.
"Science fiction needs two elements - *science* and *fiction*. Everything else is just fluff."
Are we really going to be this nitpicky about TV Shows made for mass audiences? I wouldn't mind if we were talking about novels, but TV is such a different animal. All a show has to do is have space ships in it and that'll dramatically affect what types of people watch it. It doesn't matter if those ships are simply a setting that could easily be replaced with modern airplanes, it won't make a difference to those watching it. I cannot, for example, get my gf to watch BSG2005. She can't get me to watch Big Brother. Why? Niether of us feels comfortable with the settings of those shows. Is it shallow? Perhaps. But it's true.
This is why I've always been annoyed at the "Star Wars isn't scifi!" argument. It's not because I'm defending those movies (actually, I despised the prequals), it's because it's scifi setting is what is attracting and repelling audiences. Sure, you could translate the stories into modern day settings and they wouldn't be any better, but at least they'd have a different audience giving it another shot.
It just seems so pointless to fling karma around for getting into the minutia over what to categorize shows/movies we don't like.
"Yes. A plot that revolves around an alien, disguised as an overweight farting human with a zip in their head, planning to blow up Earth and surf to their own planet. That's a sure sign of quality writing if ever I saw one."
You're kidding, right? That episode wasn't about her plans to destroy the planet, it was about her capture. She said a lot of that shed the Doctor into a really dark light. In turn, it created a conflict for him about what to do with her. Does he take her to her planet where she'll be executed, or does he let her go an the off-chance that she might be telling the truth about wanting to change. Does, in performing either action, make him a monster. Does he even have the right? Are they really alike? That episode featured some of the best dialogue in the whole season.
Did you actually watch the episode? When I say watch, I don't mean have it on in the background while you're listening to your iPod. I mean, did you actually pay attention and listen to what was said? I wouldn't mind, but you picked probably the worst episode to make your point. More amusingly, I could take *any* series you like and come up with a grossly over-simplified description to make it sound foolish. "Farscape is Sesame Street in Space. Tee hee giggle snort."
"Doctor Who was resurrected in 2005; 2006 is in production, and has been green-lighted through 2007."
Not only that, but the resurrection also brought in a munch needed jump in the quality of the show. The filming is better, the writing is better, and the effects don't look like MST3K anymore. Hehe.
I'm starting to realize that a lot of complaints about these shows are by people who haven't invested in them. I didn't like Farscape or B5, but man, I honestly can't say I've seen more than 5 eps of either. So who am I to make declaritive comments about either? (Sorry, this isn't in reply to your comment, I've just seen a flood of bickering over all of the shows sucking.)
I meant to say 'sci fi', not soap opera. (Haven't had my coffee yet.) I guess either statement is true.:)
DS9 was a good blend of the two. One of my favorite episodes was about Ben Sisko getting 'trapped' in time. His son spent the rest of his life trying to figure out how to retrieve him. It was a wonderful episode because it used a sci-fi event to bring out something very near and dear for characters that fans of the show cared about. I remember a lot of chatter about that episode shortly after it aired.
There have been some comments to the tune of "it was just a soap oprea!". Ooo kay. Maybe if you focused in on Odo's pursuit of Kira and filtered out a lot of the events that couldn't have happened to a regular soap opera you could say that. It would be like me taking a handful of things about Babylon 5 that I simply couldn't stand and saying the show was utter shit. I'd sound stupid to somebody who enjoyed the show.
DS9 was a great show. It was quite satisfying to a large group of fans. Some people didn't like it. Whoop-de-fuck. I didn't like Farscape and there are people that agree with me. Was the show bad, or is it simply a matter of "to each is own"?
"Not to be rude, but for the love of God, don't you have something to do besides write 1-bit bitmaps by hand?"... said the guy being needlessly critical on Slashdot.
"It's funny how reduced functionality can be a bonus when 'goooogle' do it. If Microsoft had made you jump through hoops to perform simple functions they'd be slated. I for one don't like someone telling me what to do with my own e-mails as if I can't think for myself, it's patronising."
Well, I agree with you on the point that Slashdot would have a field day if Microsoft tried this before Google. (Suddenly Bill Cosby's skit about children having brain damage popped into mind.) However, I think you should understand that part of the disconnect here is that GMail's approach (which is actually a lot like Opera's built in mail client, btw...) is a difference in philosophy, not in feature set. Google has addressed the lack of a delete feature by providing tagging features as well as a really powerful search engine. This little detail probably isn't brought up as often as it should, as a result I can see why you'd see it as patronizing.
I know it may not sound like it, but I'm trying to tell you that you're right. Sometimes people just don't explain their views well enough (especially on Slashdot) and as a result they're fucking obnoxious. I remember my early days on Slashdot. Everybody earned karma for telling me I should switch to Linux despite the defficiencies it had. Their reason? I can go out write all the functionality I need! I'm sitting here thinking "Um, I'm not a programmer, nor am I interested in putting all that energy into re-inventing the wheel.' What they really should have said was "Linux is friendly to garage development, so the problems you have are either already solved or will be solved soon. You may even find yourself making your own tools!" Again, difference in philosophy. It's certainly more attractive in that light.
"Yes, if I need to migrate my mail or back it up for some reason, do I want to have to worry about whether I 've gotten all of the 1,800 emails, most of which are junk? Or do I want to rest assured knowing that yes, there's those 200 emails that are really worth saving, and sigh it's so much easier to know I've backed them up safely."
I'm kind of in the middle on this. On the one hand, I think deletion of email is important. On the other hand, Google has one hell of a search feature. The labels feature more or less work like folders. So the need to delete email from Google hasn't been particularly high for me.
With that said, though, I'm not actively making backups of the email through the Google account. If I were, I'd probably be more in tuned with your line of thought here. However, I have taken steps in case this does happen. I get a LOT of email through web forums like Slashdot. Whenever somebody replies to my posts, I get an email notification. I'm using a seperate GMail account to hold those. My private personal important email has its own GMail account. So there's a lot less 'junk' in there. I also have a lot of mail forwarders organizing the email. Slashdot email goes to one forwarder, CGTalk email goes to another. In the event that I feel I need to do a massive POP3 download to backup my stuff, I can filter out the email to those addresses I really don't care about.
With these things in mind, yes, I'm a GMail fanboy.
"Off Topic, but I find it hilarious that the first 6 comments all focus on the 'No details are emitted' phrase. And I was going to make a snide reference to it as well, but I'd prefer to be modded 'Off Topic' rather than 'Redundant', since at least I have something (slightly) useful to say."
Hehe. What's funnier is when you see a story with 10 or so comments (modded up, of course) bitching about it being a dupe. They never realize that they're not better at spotting dupes than the Slashdot editors are.
"Opera is seen as more secure but doesn't allow you to use many useful websites."
Many? Opera may not be as 'compatible' as FireFox, but it's still quite adoptable. I use Opera almost exclusively and once in a greaaaaat while I have to fire up IE or FF. I'm sure there are plenty of others that would share my sentiment.
Slashdot Mirror
"Why turn our phones into games consoles, video cameras, mp3 players, computers and whatever else we can fit into it, if it doesn't do anything well?"
For the simple reason that something is better than nothing.
Game consoles: My phone goes with me everywhere. My DS doesn't. I ain't playing Mario 64 on my phone, but the pool game on my phone is good enough to eat up about 10 minutes while waiting for a movie to start or something.
Video cameras: I don't carry around my Mini-DV camera like anywhere. My phone, again, is with me all the time. My phone has an amusing video of my dog pouncing my cat. (admittedly, phones need better storage and processing before this feature is really useful.)
Cameras: I have a ton of spur-of-the-moment photos I've taken with my phone. Sometimes I see funny things and I can capture them. Just the other day at Walmart I found a Yoda toy where, in the packaging, Yoda was handling his goodies much like Michael Jackson does. I snapped a photo, sent it off, a few friends had a good laugh at it. Since I don't habitually take my digital camera everywhere, 640 by 480 is better than 0.
Mp3 Players: I don't have an MP3 player because I don't want to keep one in my pocket all the time. My phone, as mentioned several times before, is with me all the time. Even if it only had 100 songs, it'd be useful. I won't go spend $400 for a phone like this, though, so maybe I shot that point down. Still, as memory gets better on these phones, why not?
Computers: I think I'm in the minority here, but I check the news on my phone's net connection all the time. (Usually in the bathroom, heh.) Okay, I'm not posting on Slashdot or browsing porn, but it's better than staring at the cracks on the floor.
Day Planners etc: One of the reasons I never really took advantage of the PocketPC I had was because the last two cell phones I have/had have a calendar with alarm capability. Because the phone is with me all the time, reminders on it are useful. I've set it for things like having to wake up early on a Saturday to get some work done to catching a TV show I wanted to watch 2 weeks later. It's very easy to set up and my phone's always near by. Very useful.
I only paid $130 for my phone. (Actually, it was only $30 after a $100 rebate. 2 year contract etc.) I don't even have a top of the line phone. (No MP3 player on it, everything else is there though.) Frankly, if I had a phone like you described it wouldn't hold as high of value with me. Okay, maybe I'd be able to go 2 weeks without charging it instead of 1, but that isn't a huge selling point for me. The fact of the matter is that the things you described are all pretty simple to do. Yes, the stand-alone more expensive units would do each of those jobs better. But they're only as good as you use them.
So, no, I don't think the 'endless pushing of features onto mobile phones is stupid'. Every new cell phone I get becomes more and more useful. I ain't gonna to whine in every single fucking thread about cell phones about that.
"C:\>rm -rf/mnt/windows
'rm' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file."
Funny, you'd expect a Linux user to write cross-platform code!
"has to be said."
Why? Does the one millionth copycat get a free iPod or something?
"I'm not sure if you're kidding or not, but dogs have been trained to find cancers, so it's not that out of reach."
;)
Nar, I was joking about the use of the word 'finding' in that sentence. Unfortunately I posted about 30 seconds too late for it to be funny.
"There have been several tries for an Electronic nose that seek out various airborne elements - they can finding cancer..."
That's unpossible!
"Digital cable (even basic cable) is getting extremely high priced, and this is with no DVR style record feature. Not keen on a satelite dish either, heard some horror stories from other family members and friends."
I'm paying $80 a month right now for digital cable (including HBO and Showtime) and a DVR. Could I be doing much better than that with satellite? I don't know if it helps, but I'm just north of Santa Barbara in California. I say 'much better' because I also have a cable modem (that's another $40/$50) and that'll climb in price a bit if I ditch the cable. I did a little research on my own and I'm not sure I'd be doing much better with satellite. I have two TVs and a dual-tuner DVR to worry about here...
I guess what I'm really asking is whether or not Digital Cable is that much more expensive than satellite. I compared bills with a friend of mine and he's not doing much better. Maybe I'm wrong?
"ReplayTV also requires a subscription and they reserve the right to change your software whenever you connect to their server."
I've had a Replay for 2 years now, haven't had any problems with them removing services or anything. Commercial skip still works, etc. It even has a network port. If I download the right software I can grab those shows. They even have a website where you can set your unit. (it takes 24 hours for the changes to take effect, though. It makes sense considering it only calls home once a day.)
With that said, though, I think the unit is going bye bye. It's not out of disatisfaction, though. Comcast has a DVR option now. I've had it for a couple of months and I like it. There are some downsides to it. I cannot hit it over the network. It doesn't have auto commercial skip. I think it has less capacity than the Replay, though it has enough I haven't noticed much. I liked Replay's interface better, it handles categorization etc. (I.e. My girlfriend had her own group and I had mine.) Sounds like a crummy unit, right? Nah. Thing is, I have digital cable. I couldn't get the Replay to work with the digital cable. (well... supposedly I can get an IR thingy for it, but as I say more here you'll understand why it's not of much importance to me.) So I cannot record HBO etc with the Replay. The Replay lets you watch TV and pause etc, but it's not as elegant as Comcast's DVR does it. It's slower to change channels etc. Even when I only had analog cable, I despised using the Replay this way. I think the Replay I have only has one tuner. The Comcast box I have now has two, and it's come in handy. I also like that the Comcast DVR doesn't eat up a network port. That's the main reason I'm seriously considering getting a second unit for the bedroom. I only wish those two units would talk to each other so that stuff I record in the bedroom could be watched in the living room. It doesn't auto skip commercials but fast fowarding is easy enough. To make a long story short, the Replay has merits above the Comcast DVR, but I'm happier with the Comcast box. Mainly, though, the difference is my preference for digital cable.
In any event, you have choices out there. I don't know if your cable company has a DVR. If you don't, the Replay is a fine unit. Honestly, I prefer the Replay over TiVo to begin with. I know a guy with a DVR on his satellite reciever. He's happy with it, though I'd highly recommend one with two tuners. That's bitten him a few times.
"Umm, what if you become unhappy with their service and want to opt-out? Anytime you lock-in a consumer you're not being reasonable in my opinion. I mean, if I'm unhappy why shouldn't I be able to change service?"
Hypothetically speaking: It depends on what's being offered. Cellular providers, for example, will often give you a free phone for a 1 or 2 year contract. This seems reasonable to me, they're giving you an up front savings. They also give you a month to back down, although I think this is a recent development. The big factor being that the cell company would lose money if they gave you this deal and you backed out within a month. Personally, I don't have a problem with this.
With TiVo, though, I have concerns about a couple of things. 1.) This may affect people who did NOT enjoy such a deal. They had to pay for their hardware etc and they didn't get a deal for it. 2.) I haven't found out for certain if the 1 year service agreement means that the features they have now won't go away until after that year is gone. (Nope, I haven't read the article.) If Tivo was saying "well give you a $400 unit for $100 if you sign this contract and you're guaranteed this level of service during the contract" I wouldn't have a problem with it.
":) I guess the personal attacks mean I touched a hot button. What is elitist about liking an improvement in the stagnant old TV SciFi format?"
There's nothing elitist about liking an improvement in the format, but that's not what I was replying to.
"Drag yourself into the late 20th century, guy. We have neat little time-shifting devices with names like VCR and Myth TV..."
Reread the paragraph from the line you quoted.
"You really just like your SciFi bland and easily palatable, while real science fiction should give you mental indigestion (IMHO, of course)."
Um, no and no. Actually my complaint wasn't so much about the sci-fi'ness of the show. I'm not sure it's worth going into, though, since it's pretty clear from that last bit that you didn't pay a lot of attention to what I said. You know damn good and well what I was replying to. Being defensively deflective isn't getting us anywhere.
"As you've said repeatedly. People who want to have their SciFi spoon-fed to them with a predictable Star Trek space opera format will not like Farscape. Something original is out of many viewers' comfort zone, but it's too bad that it resulted in the cancellation of a show that appealed to fans of real science fiction."
Oh brother. First, Farscape died because it was too dependent on cathing every single episode. Second, enough of the elitist bullshit. I can't believe how obnoxious the Farscape fans I've talked to are. I'm sorry that a show you loved died, I truely am. It really sucks when a good show (Futurama, Miracles, Firefly, Quantum Leap, etc) has its life tragically cut shot. But to act as though you're opearting on some higher level is irritating. You may have made the time to watch and fully appreciate Farscape, but not everybody can. Star Trek was more accessible, that's why it was successful. TV is a luxury. Tastes are wildly diverse. If you catch a bizarre show and you have no fucking clue what's going on, it's not because you're simple. It's hard for a show to work if it demands that you stick to its schedule.
In any event, these are fortunate times for sci-fi. Lots of people have DVRs and entire seasons of TV shows are selling well on DVD. It's difficult to imagine a show like BSG making it 10 years ago. Just this week I finally talked a friend of mine into catching an episode of it. He was really really confused. He didn't understand who the Cylons were. (it worked a lot better on the original series where the Cylons were all big toasters.) He didn't understand what the conflict was about. Well I could keep going. But at the very least he has a DVR. Maybe when the show runs its course again he can catch it and fully appreciate it. It would be awful, though, to judge him harshly for not being in his 'comfort zone'. It's not his fault. Fortunately, BSG stands to succeed.
Before I start, I'd like to apologize for my harsh words. I appreciate you keeping your cool.
" The writers didn't even address the issue of whether she was telling the truth about being sentenced to execution in the first place."
They really didn't need to. Here's the problem: If she made good on it, we'd basically have to follow the rest of her life to know if it was true or not. If she didn't make good on it, they could easily depict that, but then where would we be? The Doctor made a really good point about that question. "So, you occasionally let one go in order to justify yourself." That was where they got into the bit about why they're not so different. (err I'm trying to avoid spoilers here, sorry for being vague.)
But, ya know, they did resolve it. A solution came up that satisfied both parties. It was an intriguing solution which, btw, led to a rather interesting finale for this season. Remember what happened? More interestingly, it opened a door that we may very well get to step through down the road.
"I do realise opinions differ, but the writing of the last series was not top notch. Too many plot holes and unresolved/totally ignored issues, too many cheap devices to establish and further the plot. In my opinion."
I really can't argue with an opinion like that. I mean, I could try, but the problem is I've had the same opinion of other well loved movies. I have similar criticisms of the Matrix. A lot of people saw some big illustration to an enlightening philosophy or some such, but all I saw was a contrived attempt at making a live action movie look like anime. How can I say I'm right about the Matrix and that you're wrong about Doctor Who? Seems better just to understand where you're coming from.
Have a good weekend, man. Again, thanks for keeping cool.
"Science fiction needs two elements - *science* and *fiction*. Everything else is just fluff."
Are we really going to be this nitpicky about TV Shows made for mass audiences? I wouldn't mind if we were talking about novels, but TV is such a different animal. All a show has to do is have space ships in it and that'll dramatically affect what types of people watch it. It doesn't matter if those ships are simply a setting that could easily be replaced with modern airplanes, it won't make a difference to those watching it. I cannot, for example, get my gf to watch BSG2005. She can't get me to watch Big Brother. Why? Niether of us feels comfortable with the settings of those shows. Is it shallow? Perhaps. But it's true.
This is why I've always been annoyed at the "Star Wars isn't scifi!" argument. It's not because I'm defending those movies (actually, I despised the prequals), it's because it's scifi setting is what is attracting and repelling audiences. Sure, you could translate the stories into modern day settings and they wouldn't be any better, but at least they'd have a different audience giving it another shot.
It just seems so pointless to fling karma around for getting into the minutia over what to categorize shows/movies we don't like.
"Yes. A plot that revolves around an alien, disguised as an overweight farting human with a zip in their head, planning to blow up Earth and surf to their own planet. That's a sure sign of quality writing if ever I saw one."
You're kidding, right? That episode wasn't about her plans to destroy the planet, it was about her capture. She said a lot of that shed the Doctor into a really dark light. In turn, it created a conflict for him about what to do with her. Does he take her to her planet where she'll be executed, or does he let her go an the off-chance that she might be telling the truth about wanting to change. Does, in performing either action, make him a monster. Does he even have the right? Are they really alike? That episode featured some of the best dialogue in the whole season.
Did you actually watch the episode? When I say watch, I don't mean have it on in the background while you're listening to your iPod. I mean, did you actually pay attention and listen to what was said? I wouldn't mind, but you picked probably the worst episode to make your point. More amusingly, I could take *any* series you like and come up with a grossly over-simplified description to make it sound foolish. "Farscape is Sesame Street in Space. Tee hee giggle snort."
"Doctor Who was resurrected in 2005; 2006 is in production, and has been green-lighted through 2007."
Not only that, but the resurrection also brought in a munch needed jump in the quality of the show. The filming is better, the writing is better, and the effects don't look like MST3K anymore. Hehe.
I'm starting to realize that a lot of complaints about these shows are by people who haven't invested in them. I didn't like Farscape or B5, but man, I honestly can't say I've seen more than 5 eps of either. So who am I to make declaritive comments about either? (Sorry, this isn't in reply to your comment, I've just seen a flood of bickering over all of the shows sucking.)
I meant to say 'sci fi', not soap opera. (Haven't had my coffee yet.) I guess either statement is true. :)
DS9 was a good blend of the two. One of my favorite episodes was about Ben Sisko getting 'trapped' in time. His son spent the rest of his life trying to figure out how to retrieve him. It was a wonderful episode because it used a sci-fi event to bring out something very near and dear for characters that fans of the show cared about. I remember a lot of chatter about that episode shortly after it aired.
There have been some comments to the tune of "it was just a soap oprea!". Ooo kay. Maybe if you focused in on Odo's pursuit of Kira and filtered out a lot of the events that couldn't have happened to a regular soap opera you could say that. It would be like me taking a handful of things about Babylon 5 that I simply couldn't stand and saying the show was utter shit. I'd sound stupid to somebody who enjoyed the show.
DS9 was a great show. It was quite satisfying to a large group of fans. Some people didn't like it. Whoop-de-fuck. I didn't like Farscape and there are people that agree with me. Was the show bad, or is it simply a matter of "to each is own"?
"DS9 wasn't a sci-fi show. It was a soap opera, except for the first couple seasons..."
You have to ignore an awful lot of episodes to claim DS9 wasn't a soap opera.
"If you can land on it and score with an alien chick, it's a planet."
Okay, we're all curious now: What are you calling Earth these days?
"Not to be rude, but for the love of God, don't you have something to do besides write 1-bit bitmaps by hand?"... said the guy being needlessly critical on Slashdot.
"It's funny how reduced functionality can be a bonus when 'goooogle' do it. If Microsoft had made you jump through hoops to perform simple functions they'd be slated. I for one don't like someone telling me what to do with my own e-mails as if I can't think for myself, it's patronising."
Well, I agree with you on the point that Slashdot would have a field day if Microsoft tried this before Google. (Suddenly Bill Cosby's skit about children having brain damage popped into mind.) However, I think you should understand that part of the disconnect here is that GMail's approach (which is actually a lot like Opera's built in mail client, btw...) is a difference in philosophy, not in feature set. Google has addressed the lack of a delete feature by providing tagging features as well as a really powerful search engine. This little detail probably isn't brought up as often as it should, as a result I can see why you'd see it as patronizing.
I know it may not sound like it, but I'm trying to tell you that you're right. Sometimes people just don't explain their views well enough (especially on Slashdot) and as a result they're fucking obnoxious. I remember my early days on Slashdot. Everybody earned karma for telling me I should switch to Linux despite the defficiencies it had. Their reason? I can go out write all the functionality I need! I'm sitting here thinking "Um, I'm not a programmer, nor am I interested in putting all that energy into re-inventing the wheel.' What they really should have said was "Linux is friendly to garage development, so the problems you have are either already solved or will be solved soon. You may even find yourself making your own tools!" Again, difference in philosophy. It's certainly more attractive in that light.
Ah the difference a few well spoken words make.
"Yes, if I need to migrate my mail or back it up for some reason, do I want to have to worry about whether I 've gotten all of the 1,800 emails, most of which are junk? Or do I want to rest assured knowing that yes, there's those 200 emails that are really worth saving, and sigh it's so much easier to know I've backed them up safely."
I'm kind of in the middle on this. On the one hand, I think deletion of email is important. On the other hand, Google has one hell of a search feature. The labels feature more or less work like folders. So the need to delete email from Google hasn't been particularly high for me.
With that said, though, I'm not actively making backups of the email through the Google account. If I were, I'd probably be more in tuned with your line of thought here. However, I have taken steps in case this does happen. I get a LOT of email through web forums like Slashdot. Whenever somebody replies to my posts, I get an email notification. I'm using a seperate GMail account to hold those. My private personal important email has its own GMail account. So there's a lot less 'junk' in there. I also have a lot of mail forwarders organizing the email. Slashdot email goes to one forwarder, CGTalk email goes to another. In the event that I feel I need to do a massive POP3 download to backup my stuff, I can filter out the email to those addresses I really don't care about.
With these things in mind, yes, I'm a GMail fanboy.
"Im sure Nintendo wont give Microsoft Kudos for buying Rare"
Nintendo passed up the opportunity to buy Rare. I doubt they're upset about Microsoft having it.
"Is this really a review of an addon for a game that is waay over exposed and played by millions of people?
Is it really worthy of a review??"
I bolded the part where you answered your own question.
"Off Topic, but I find it hilarious that the first 6 comments all focus on the 'No details are emitted' phrase. And I was going to make a snide reference to it as well, but I'd prefer to be modded 'Off Topic' rather than 'Redundant', since at least I have something (slightly) useful to say."
Hehe. What's funnier is when you see a story with 10 or so comments (modded up, of course) bitching about it being a dupe. They never realize that they're not better at spotting dupes than the Slashdot editors are.
"Any emissions are indicated by a Light Omitting Diode"
Anybody know what type of censors they're using?
"Opera is seen as more secure but doesn't allow you to use many useful websites."
Many? Opera may not be as 'compatible' as FireFox, but it's still quite adoptable. I use Opera almost exclusively and once in a greaaaaat while I have to fire up IE or FF. I'm sure there are plenty of others that would share my sentiment.