Agreed! The book series lends itself to a series format.
They (the studios) probably didn't think the books were strong enough to hold viewer interest over a series of movies but then again I doubt the studios thought that Star Wars was going to go beyond one movie either.
I just rented ND last night and it is pretty good. I did get a kick out of ND's half asleep, vaguely anti-social mannerisms. The time-machine was a hoot (I've seen enough schizo-science websites to appreciate it). The whole jock vs. dork thing is getting a bit tired though, they've been doing it since Revenge of the Nerds. And yes, I went to High School in the 80's and I was forced to eat tater-tots.
As far as reviews go I've learned to go with the rules of statistics, the more reviews that point in one direction then the likelier that they are right. If the reviews are muddled and go both ways then it ends up being a matter of personal taste. I once took a date, who was into arty foreign films, to a movie called "Burnt By the Sun" that got a single strong review in a local arts & entertainment paper. The reviewer must've seen a different movie because by the end of the movie I was apologizing profusely for taking her to such an awful movie. We both got a good laugh out of it at least.
I agree with you on Penny Arcade. I think I can count the number of funny strips on one hand. The guy's audience must be 13 yr olds who live in front of their x-boxes or employees of video game companies. PVPOnline is MUCH better.
- Turn the eyes into drive indicator lights - Put a speaker in the head so it can make witty Benderisms on power-up, etc. - Make the arms semi-rigid with steel cable shielding in them for action posing! - Stick a popcorn maker in the head
Unfortunatly as long as the motherboard and ps have to sit in the body you can't add a beer cooler in there. Condensation and electronics don't mix.
Now the guy should make a Leela PC with ultra-realtisic silicon body parts.
"Forcing light to bend around corners is difficult. A waveguide must have a very high index of refraction if it is to be used to bend light within a reasonable radius."
"you'll never fly, its impossible. harharharharhar"
In DaVinci's case they would have been right, based on HIS plans. They would be wrong in general though (obviously). Once something is shown to be possible physically, and it is possible on a human scale, then engineering can chew on it until it becomes real. Whether it feasable economically is an entirely different matter.
I can think of some TV PPs that made me cringe. "Seinfeld" jumps to mind. I recall seeing Jason Alexander (George) standing in Jerry's apt in one show with a bag of Rold Gold pretzels, oh so coincidentally facing the camera square on. This was at a time when he was doing ads for them on TV. That struck me as obvious and sleazy, like some sort of advertising conspiracy.
I think the worst one ever though was when AMC got their clunky cars in the James Bond movie "The Man With the Golden Gun". Yah, nothing says sexy hotrod like AMC. Moore also plugged Brut-33 by Fabergé who he did ads for at the time.
What you really need is something that can reduce a washing machine to thumb sized chunks in little more than a minute. Check out these hungry machines. SSI
"we deserve to have our asses handed to us for our laziness"
According to every stat I've seen Americans are some of the hardest working people on earth. Maybe we work too hard based on our lack of vacations, crazed schedules, and heart disease.
It is a matter of going over the top. Everything else sounds ridiculous but just barely plausible. The last bit about the leopard though tosses it completely out of reality. It is a kind of dry humor that is very English.
Sometimes the movie version improves on the book. Steven King's "The Shining" is a case in point. After seeing Kubrick's version, reading the book, then seeing the TV "S.K. approved" version I can definitely say that King's book was ridiculous in it's original form and the TV version was awful (including it's casting). Kubrick improved the story.
Lynch's Dune didn't communicate the story well but how do you communicate it's dense pseudo-religious mumbo-jumbo in 3 hours or less? Lynch's movie had a far superior look and feel than the Sci-Fi channel's awful Versacesque designs.
A lot of the time it seems to boil down to what your first experience of the story was. I first experienced THGTTG from watching the BBC TV version and in the process became enamored with the Dr Who-like budget effects that let your mind just enjoy the great story. The story and the actors have to carry the movie, special effects are just icing on the cake.
"The most surefire way of tracking is with user logins."
I agree. If a site provides enough value I'll take the time to create an account (though I'll limit info not related to my login such as address, phone, etc). Slashdot makes it worthwhile having a login so I do it and they can use that info for their business. The same goes for places that have "wish lists" such as Amazon and REI that make it easy for me to keep lists of items I'm interested in but not ready to buy.
I'll make myself accessable if your website makes it worthwhile.
You must be either a liberal commie or a right-wing nazi (sorry, had to add in those two predictable comments also).
Hoi Polloi's Law: The time it takes before someone says that an act or an invention could be used by terrorists. Conversely, the time it takes before someone says it could be used to stop terrorists.
I've actually been wondering about creating my own "TV Station". My wife and I have a pretty good collection of DVDs going with many of them being TV show collections. I was thinking if I had a bunch of big hard drives I could copy them onto, why couldn't I then run some sort of programming software to create my own tv programming and feed it to the TV? Does anything like this already exist? It could even be set up to only run during prime viewing hours for weeks at a time on a preset channel (ch 3 probably). So you always know that something you like will be on one of the channels but it will have the spontanious feel of real TV that you don't get when picking out a DVD.
I could even make my own commercials, "Nothing to do? Give your husband a back rub!"
Not only that but now teachers are judged based on standardized test scores so they teach the kids to do well on the tests instead of actually understanding the material or going outside of the boundaries of the test material.
"you go to a trade/vocational type school and learn how to weld."
Judging from the money people in the construction business make in the US (or at least in the NE US) compared to the erosion of IT jobs I'd say failing and being sent to a trade school would be a big plus.
And, as peculiar it may sound, both competitors are holding their breath to see what the pornographic industry will decide.
Interesting, both the American voter and the electronics industry both just throw their hands up in the air and let a bunch of dicks make their decisions for them.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed! The book series lends itself to a series format.
They (the studios) probably didn't think the books were strong enough to hold viewer interest over a series of movies but then again I doubt the studios thought that Star Wars was going to go beyond one movie either.
I just rented ND last night and it is pretty good. I did get a kick out of ND's half asleep, vaguely anti-social mannerisms. The time-machine was a hoot (I've seen enough schizo-science websites to appreciate it). The whole jock vs. dork thing is getting a bit tired though, they've been doing it since Revenge of the Nerds. And yes, I went to High School in the 80's and I was forced to eat tater-tots.
As far as reviews go I've learned to go with the rules of statistics, the more reviews that point in one direction then the likelier that they are right. If the reviews are muddled and go both ways then it ends up being a matter of personal taste. I once took a date, who was into arty foreign films, to a movie called "Burnt By the Sun" that got a single strong review in a local arts & entertainment paper. The reviewer must've seen a different movie because by the end of the movie I was apologizing profusely for taking her to such an awful movie. We both got a good laugh out of it at least.
I agree with you on Penny Arcade. I think I can count the number of funny strips on one hand. The guy's audience must be 13 yr olds who live in front of their x-boxes or employees of video game companies. PVPOnline is MUCH better.
At least the Unix version of "Oracle 8.5" is true to the book.
I've moved onto the sequel, "Oracle 9i, The Wrath of Larry Ellison" myself.
Damn, you could go nuts with this thing.
- Turn the eyes into drive indicator lights
- Put a speaker in the head so it can make witty Benderisms on power-up, etc.
- Make the arms semi-rigid with steel cable shielding in them for action posing!
- Stick a popcorn maker in the head
Unfortunatly as long as the motherboard and ps have to sit in the body you can't add a beer cooler in there. Condensation and electronics don't mix.
Now the guy should make a Leela PC with ultra-realtisic silicon body parts.
"Forcing light to bend around corners is difficult. A waveguide must have a very high index of refraction if it is to be used to bend light within a reasonable radius."
How about reflection instead of refraction? MEMs?
"you'll never fly, its impossible. harharharharhar"
In DaVinci's case they would have been right, based on HIS plans. They would be wrong in general though (obviously). Once something is shown to be possible physically, and it is possible on a human scale, then engineering can chew on it until it becomes real. Whether it feasable economically is an entirely different matter.
So should I hold off on building that AMD64 system I'm planning? I guess I'll wait 10 years for that optical AMD256.
I can think of some TV PPs that made me cringe. "Seinfeld" jumps to mind. I recall seeing Jason Alexander (George) standing in Jerry's apt in one show with a bag of Rold Gold pretzels, oh so coincidentally facing the camera square on. This was at a time when he was doing ads for them on TV. That struck me as obvious and sleazy, like some sort of advertising conspiracy.
I think the worst one ever though was when AMC got their clunky cars in the James Bond movie "The Man With the Golden Gun". Yah, nothing says sexy hotrod like AMC. Moore also plugged Brut-33 by Fabergé who he did ads for at the time.
What you really need is something that can reduce a washing machine to thumb sized chunks in little more than a minute. Check out these hungry machines. SSI
"Hey Fred, wasn't the Spirit of St Louis hanging up there before?"
"Ahhhh, I think it is out at the cleaners."
By the way, if anyone approaches you in a parking lot with a genuine V2 rocket in the back of their van it is ok to be suspicious.
"They've found strains that can be CULTURED IN CLOROX BLEACH right from the bottle"
I can finally get my bacteria their whitest!
"we deserve to have our asses handed to us for our laziness"
According to every stat I've seen Americans are some of the hardest working people on earth. Maybe we work too hard based on our lack of vacations, crazed schedules, and heart disease.
"'Beware of the leopard' pushes it too far."
It is a matter of going over the top. Everything else sounds ridiculous but just barely plausible. The last bit about the leopard though tosses it completely out of reality. It is a kind of dry humor that is very English.
Sometimes the movie version improves on the book. Steven King's "The Shining" is a case in point. After seeing Kubrick's version, reading the book, then seeing the TV "S.K. approved" version I can definitely say that King's book was ridiculous in it's original form and the TV version was awful (including it's casting). Kubrick improved the story.
Lynch's Dune didn't communicate the story well but how do you communicate it's dense pseudo-religious mumbo-jumbo in 3 hours or less? Lynch's movie had a far superior look and feel than the Sci-Fi channel's awful Versacesque designs.
A lot of the time it seems to boil down to what your first experience of the story was. I first experienced THGTTG from watching the BBC TV version and in the process became enamored with the Dr Who-like budget effects that let your mind just enjoy the great story. The story and the actors have to carry the movie, special effects are just icing on the cake.
Chikan
Grope-fest
Pervert Express
"The most surefire way of tracking is with user logins."
I agree. If a site provides enough value I'll take the time to create an account (though I'll limit info not related to my login such as address, phone, etc). Slashdot makes it worthwhile having a login so I do it and they can use that info for their business. The same goes for places that have "wish lists" such as Amazon and REI that make it easy for me to keep lists of items I'm interested in but not ready to buy.
I'll make myself accessable if your website makes it worthwhile.
Consider yourself mod +5 Funny
Instead of emigrating Tuvalu should use the $50 mill or so that they got for their .tv domain to buy rocks and dirt from other countries.
"Can DNA be spoofed?"
Not sure how much you'd need to copy but there is a thing called PCR.
You must be either a liberal commie or a right-wing nazi (sorry, had to add in those two predictable comments also).
Hoi Polloi's Law: The time it takes before someone says that an act or an invention could be used by terrorists. Conversely, the time it takes before someone says it could be used to stop terrorists.
I've actually been wondering about creating my own "TV Station". My wife and I have a pretty good collection of DVDs going with many of them being TV show collections. I was thinking if I had a bunch of big hard drives I could copy them onto, why couldn't I then run some sort of programming software to create my own tv programming and feed it to the TV? Does anything like this already exist? It could even be set up to only run during prime viewing hours for weeks at a time on a preset channel (ch 3 probably). So you always know that something you like will be on one of the channels but it will have the spontanious feel of real TV that you don't get when picking out a DVD.
I could even make my own commercials, "Nothing to do? Give your husband a back rub!"
Newcastle for me (even before they started a big ad campaign)
Not only that but now teachers are judged based on standardized test scores so they teach the kids to do well on the tests instead of actually understanding the material or going outside of the boundaries of the test material.
"you go to a trade/vocational type school and learn how to weld."
Judging from the money people in the construction business make in the US (or at least in the NE US) compared to the erosion of IT jobs I'd say failing and being sent to a trade school would be a big plus.
Interesting, both the American voter and the electronics industry both just throw their hands up in the air and let a bunch of dicks make their decisions for them.