There was 'Bob and Margaret' which was alright, but nothing special. Not 'laugh out loud' funny like the Simpsons or Family Guy, but more satirical.
Then there was Monkey Dust which was like a sketch-show but in cartoon form. Quite dark and hilarious. I don't know what happened to it.
2DTV is good as well. A sort of political satire thing, like those impression shows (Dead Ringers etc.) but a cartoon. Short sketches of various politicians (mainly British), but often Bush, Saddam and bin Laden.
Those dancing programmes are crap. If you want reality TV you can't go far wrong with Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, and that's on Channel 4. Unlike most it actually has useful content rather than ratings grabbing.
Remember the BBC had Fame Academy. And it has Top of the Pops (dumbed-down TV at its worse. Cancel it and put Jools Holland in its place. That doesn't need constant noise, flashy graphics and attention-whoring presenters.)
If the BBC wants to save money, they could cut a lot of those useless presenters. Top of the Pops doesn't need two presenters. They barely say anything. It doesn't even need one, they could just play the songs after each other. The news only needs one person to read. The weather doesn't need someone on the screen, just a voice-over so the map can take up the full screen. Graham Norton and Natasha Kaplinksi can be sacked. They eat money and contribute less than zero.
What the BBC should not be doing is spending money on broadcasting sports, soap operas, by-the-numbers drama, blockbuster films and yet more tedious reality TV.
So you're saying they shouldn't broadcast things we actually want to watch? Why shouldn't we get sports on the BBC? It's the only place we can watch sport that isn't inundated with awful adverts. ITV's coverage of anything sporting is useless. Channel 5 is even worse. Sky is only available to those who want to pay for it (and still watch awful adverts).
Us people who like sports and 'blockbuster' films pay our licence fee as well you know, we don't all want to watch documentaries all day. You can't justify taxing us all just for the BBC to show 'high brow' programmes for anoraks and pseudo-intellectuals.
On another note, can the BBC please stop advertising itself? I'm already watching the BBC, you don't need to tell me how great you are. I pay my licence fee, I don't need you to tell me how I'm going to Death Row for not paying it. And I don't need to hear how great your digitial service is (which it isn't). And don't tell us how great your weather service is when it clearly isn't. And when you do something wrong, actually admit it rather than trying to make up reasons as to why it's actually good (i.e. the new 'improved' weather service).
If the media companies want to waste their money on that, fine, but don't expect us to wait out 90+ years (when everyone who saw the movie when it was made) is dead.
If you hate the films, think they're badly-acted, and unoriginal, why are you so desperate to see them?
It seems that on one hand, the pirates say it serves the industries right for making crap, but they want to break the law to acquire said crap? If it's bad, don't buy it, don't pirate it, just ignore it. The argument rings hollow when it's clear you actually like it and just want to save money.
And often these same people who won't pay a few quid for a CD are the same who'll pay £4000 on a TV to watch a film, whilst simultaneously saying they are justified in pirating the DVD because it's rubbish.
No, because they'd be in the background, like the costume designer and the make-up artists, and so completely anonymous.
As for no actors, remember that Gollum had an actor behind it, albeit a bad one. And the golden rule of CGI still applies: you should only use it when you ABSOLUTELY have to. When you can use real actors, there's no need in using CGI to replace it.
Only because they insist on a model of business that focuses on flash and hotbutton formula's (eg brad pitt, angelina jolie heat up on screen) big names, high software costs, and feeding everyone's ego is what drives the cost up.
You think that making non-flashy games don't cost? You think that creating good AI, immersive worlds, intelligent gameplay, not to mention years of bug-fixing and testing, don't cost millions of pounds to do? It's not all on graphics. But then again people who buy games want graphics, so why would they make a game no-one wants to buy? You seem to want them to spend years and millions making a game just for you. And then you'll pirate it.
You think that camera men don't cost? Costumes? Makeup? Hardware? Taxes? Editing? Sets? Location shooting? Distribution? Marketing? Big names bring in the viewers, whether you like it or not. No-one's going to make a film that's anywhere decent unless they think they're going to get a return. Otherwise you end up with the Blair Witch Project and Super Size Me.
Personally I'm looking forward to a day when indie films are readily available and the big studios have been put in their place.
Of course, the people who hate the big studios and say they prefer 'indie' films are also the sort who think piracy is OK, so the indie film producers will lose all their money and won't be able to make any more films, because 'information wants to be free'.
Maybe the studios should be looking at ways to cut costs to save their industry?
What's the point? Pirates are pirates, they're not going to stop pirating and start paying for things legally because the films have lower production values.
Back then they didn't have extortionate costs with producing works either. It was cheap to write a book on paper. But the costs for making a film or TV programme can be in the hundreds of millions. No-one's going to put that sort of money down without being able to profit from the distribution.
From all those poor artists, ever wondered how much more art they could have created if they didn't have to work a day job?
Don't forget that bald 'Abiword' man. Can't find an link, but I saw a picture of him on the Internet and he looks like he hasn't seen a bath or a barber's in at least 5 years.
So in effective, you're saying it's OK to take things from people in they're rich? The equivalent to that is taking away country estates or other large parts of land held by individuals, or successful businesses. They're already successful so they don't need them as incentives anymore. In fact, why not just follow this anti-copyright crusade to its natural conclusion and revert to communism?
Problem with that is then you lose the GOOD amusing comments. I just want the decent ones, and the crap filtered. But the moderation system doesn't work because it relies on the idiot moderators.
You will be rewarded with page after page of Informative, Insightful posts.
I think it destroys the whole argument that piracy leads to sales. "Oh, I download music but then buy the CD." People on here say they download something, then go and buy it. However in this case, they download it, then DON'T buy the DVD. This means his business has failed, and piracy DOES hurt.
I'm not sure about that. The bit in Kill Bill was OK, but it worked in the excessive, over-the-top context of the whole film. I don't think you could make it last an hour without losing its effect. I think that even after ten minutes you'd be sick of the animation.
What's the point? You've already got it as live-action. If it works as live-action then there's no benefit to making it as a cartoon. I thought the whole point of a cartoon is that it's not gritty and realistic, but hyper-realistic.
When you can actually type properly, it's actually faster to write proper English than SMS-speak. You can type as you think, which is easier than having to think about which abbreviation to use. And things like 'l8r' involve a number key which slows you down. I'd bet at least £3 that people who type in sms-speak hunt and peck.
The objective of communication is to efficiently convey meaning between speaker and listener. To do this, you need to know your audience; for some audiences, these abbreviations ARE the most effective means of communication.
To who? Illiterates? Are you telling me, there are people who have trouble reading normal English, and need the words abbreviated and replaced with numbers before they can understand it? Perhaps it's time to bring back the cane.
When you take out the ambiguities and subtleties of language, you turn it into a dry, mechanical thing. That would only be beneficial to lawyers and computer programmers. For everyone else it would be a terrible thing.
Words don't need to be regular, if you learn them. I have no problem remembering the preterite of 'run', or 'shun'. Nor the pronunciation of 'knight'. It might be hard for foreigners to learn, but language is there for its speakers, not its learners. You learn the inconsistencies as you use the language, you don't learn it by reading mechanical rules in a book. English isn't a weekend project.
I wouldn't say that. Newtonian physics exists in three-dimensional space. The brain thinks in three dimensions. Eisteinium physics exists in at least four-dimensional space. Understanding it is not really possible to the human brain.
Well then, if we haven't discovered it, it obviously doesn't exist. I mean, out understanding of physics is complete and perfect, as explained in that unified theory of everything which we have discovered and is proven beyond all doubt.
Exceeding c (speed of light in vacuum) would involve all sorts of disruption to our understanding of space and time;
God forbid someone would prove that we don't actually know everything. That would be a big blow to the pride.
If it can only render at 5 frames per second, and needs to be displayed at 60 frames per second, then it's not being rendered real time. Rendered real time means it's being rendered as it's being displayed. I.e. if it's playing at 60 fps then it's being rendered at 60 fps. By your logic, if I use a tiny computer that takes six hours to render each frame, and then put them all together at 24fps, it's being rendered in real time...
The problem with understanding relativity is that, not only is it not apparent in observable reality like Newton's Laws, but it goes against everything we see. It's completely incongruent with the way our mind works. Our brain can't understand time and distance being warped, and that a linear increase in speed doesn't actually mean a linear increase in speed.
You'd have more luck trying to explain how colours have different sounds, or how each day of the week has a flavour.
Usually all it takes is for them to watch a movie or football game at a friends house on a big wide-screen set to get them saying, "I think I should start saving up for one of those."
If you have to save up for something like that, then perhaps a fancy digital TV isn't something you should be spending your money on.
As for turning off the analogue signal, I think it's disgusting that the government is mandating something in order to cost us all money for something we don't want or need, just to make money for big business. That's what you get with a system where the government is in the pockets of the corporations.
It happens with all vaguely-science related articles. Most Slashdotters are just kids who've managed to install Linux, they don't know much about science and technology. So when an article like this comes up, they've nothing informed to say. But they treat Slashdot as a chatroom, the social life they don't get in the real world. And they're desperate for attention, so they HAVE to post. Even if they have nothing to say. Especially if they have nothing to say.
So we have kids, desperate to get a +5 funny to validate themselves, on an article they know nothing about. So what do they do? They try posting something 'hilarious', like a play on words of something in the article, or something starting with 'Did anyone else read this as...', or a reference to one of the tired slashdot memes, as if quoting Douglas Adams makes them one of the Slashdot 'in crowd'.
It ruins it for the rest of us, as on any science article, we have to scroll half way down the page to get to the first person who actually says something relevent to the article.
Didn't some guy come up with a rule about this? (My local library was all out of copies of that issue of the magazine)
That law is for transistors, not RAM. RAM doesn't double every 18 months. Otherwise we'd all be on 5GB now or something. For only 64MB of RAM, consoles definitely cut the mustard.
Sure, right now, 512mb sounds great... But then 64mb sounded good five years ago too.
They still play well today. These new ones will be 8 times better?
HalfLife2's High Dynamic Range lighting model is expecting to need one to two gigabytes of system RAM to work properly.
Nearly all PCs won't be able to play it then. I bet a new console costs less than brand new gaming PC. And you're assuming that we want to play games for which its entire value is based on its graphics. There's no way in the world that giving a game two gigs for its lighting model is going to make it fun to play. What's the point in all those fancy graphic techniques if all you're going to draw the same old bland scenary and monsters you've seen in a thousand games previous?
Doom III on a top-end PC might give you great immersion, but who wants to be immersed in a basement?
Slashdot Mirror
There was 'Bob and Margaret' which was alright, but nothing special. Not 'laugh out loud' funny like the Simpsons or Family Guy, but more satirical.
Then there was Monkey Dust which was like a sketch-show but in cartoon form. Quite dark and hilarious. I don't know what happened to it.
2DTV is good as well. A sort of political satire thing, like those impression shows (Dead Ringers etc.) but a cartoon. Short sketches of various politicians (mainly British), but often Bush, Saddam and bin Laden.
Those dancing programmes are crap. If you want reality TV you can't go far wrong with Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, and that's on Channel 4. Unlike most it actually has useful content rather than ratings grabbing.
Remember the BBC had Fame Academy. And it has Top of the Pops (dumbed-down TV at its worse. Cancel it and put Jools Holland in its place. That doesn't need constant noise, flashy graphics and attention-whoring presenters.)
If the BBC wants to save money, they could cut a lot of those useless presenters. Top of the Pops doesn't need two presenters. They barely say anything. It doesn't even need one, they could just play the songs after each other. The news only needs one person to read. The weather doesn't need someone on the screen, just a voice-over so the map can take up the full screen. Graham Norton and Natasha Kaplinksi can be sacked. They eat money and contribute less than zero.
What the BBC should not be doing is spending money on broadcasting sports, soap operas, by-the-numbers drama, blockbuster films and yet more tedious reality TV.
So you're saying they shouldn't broadcast things we actually want to watch? Why shouldn't we get sports on the BBC? It's the only place we can watch sport that isn't inundated with awful adverts. ITV's coverage of anything sporting is useless. Channel 5 is even worse. Sky is only available to those who want to pay for it (and still watch awful adverts).
Us people who like sports and 'blockbuster' films pay our licence fee as well you know, we don't all want to watch documentaries all day. You can't justify taxing us all just for the BBC to show 'high brow' programmes for anoraks and pseudo-intellectuals.
On another note, can the BBC please stop advertising itself? I'm already watching the BBC, you don't need to tell me how great you are. I pay my licence fee, I don't need you to tell me how I'm going to Death Row for not paying it. And I don't need to hear how great your digitial service is (which it isn't). And don't tell us how great your weather service is when it clearly isn't. And when you do something wrong, actually admit it rather than trying to make up reasons as to why it's actually good (i.e. the new 'improved' weather service).
If the media companies want to waste their money on that, fine, but don't expect us to wait out 90+ years (when everyone who saw the movie when it was made) is dead.
If you hate the films, think they're badly-acted, and unoriginal, why are you so desperate to see them?
It seems that on one hand, the pirates say it serves the industries right for making crap, but they want to break the law to acquire said crap? If it's bad, don't buy it, don't pirate it, just ignore it. The argument rings hollow when it's clear you actually like it and just want to save money.
And often these same people who won't pay a few quid for a CD are the same who'll pay £4000 on a TV to watch a film, whilst simultaneously saying they are justified in pirating the DVD because it's rubbish.
No, because they'd be in the background, like the costume designer and the make-up artists, and so completely anonymous.
As for no actors, remember that Gollum had an actor behind it, albeit a bad one. And the golden rule of CGI still applies: you should only use it when you ABSOLUTELY have to. When you can use real actors, there's no need in using CGI to replace it.
Only because they insist on a model of business that focuses on flash and hotbutton formula's (eg brad pitt, angelina jolie heat up on screen) big names, high software costs, and feeding everyone's ego is what drives the cost up.
You think that making non-flashy games don't cost? You think that creating good AI, immersive worlds, intelligent gameplay, not to mention years of bug-fixing and testing, don't cost millions of pounds to do? It's not all on graphics. But then again people who buy games want graphics, so why would they make a game no-one wants to buy? You seem to want them to spend years and millions making a game just for you. And then you'll pirate it.
You think that camera men don't cost? Costumes? Makeup? Hardware? Taxes? Editing? Sets? Location shooting? Distribution? Marketing? Big names bring in the viewers, whether you like it or not. No-one's going to make a film that's anywhere decent unless they think they're going to get a return. Otherwise you end up with the Blair Witch Project and Super Size Me.
Personally I'm looking forward to a day when indie films are readily available and the big studios have been put in their place.
Of course, the people who hate the big studios and say they prefer 'indie' films are also the sort who think piracy is OK, so the indie film producers will lose all their money and won't be able to make any more films, because 'information wants to be free'.
Maybe the studios should be looking at ways to cut costs to save their industry?
What's the point? Pirates are pirates, they're not going to stop pirating and start paying for things legally because the films have lower production values.
Back then they didn't have extortionate costs with producing works either. It was cheap to write a book on paper. But the costs for making a film or TV programme can be in the hundreds of millions. No-one's going to put that sort of money down without being able to profit from the distribution.
From all those poor artists, ever wondered how much more art they could have created if they didn't have to work a day job?
Don't forget that bald 'Abiword' man. Can't find an link, but I saw a picture of him on the Internet and he looks like he hasn't seen a bath or a barber's in at least 5 years.
So in effective, you're saying it's OK to take things from people in they're rich? The equivalent to that is taking away country estates or other large parts of land held by individuals, or successful businesses. They're already successful so they don't need them as incentives anymore. In fact, why not just follow this anti-copyright crusade to its natural conclusion and revert to communism?
Set Funny -3.
Problem with that is then you lose the GOOD amusing comments. I just want the decent ones, and the crap filtered. But the moderation system doesn't work because it relies on the idiot moderators.
You will be rewarded with page after page of Informative, Insightful posts.
Are we talking about the same website?
I think it destroys the whole argument that piracy leads to sales. "Oh, I download music but then buy the CD." People on here say they download something, then go and buy it. However in this case, they download it, then DON'T buy the DVD. This means his business has failed, and piracy DOES hurt.
I'm not sure about that. The bit in Kill Bill was OK, but it worked in the excessive, over-the-top context of the whole film. I don't think you could make it last an hour without losing its effect. I think that even after ten minutes you'd be sick of the animation.
What's the point? You've already got it as live-action. If it works as live-action then there's no benefit to making it as a cartoon. I thought the whole point of a cartoon is that it's not gritty and realistic, but hyper-realistic.
When you can actually type properly, it's actually faster to write proper English than SMS-speak. You can type as you think, which is easier than having to think about which abbreviation to use. And things like 'l8r' involve a number key which slows you down. I'd bet at least £3 that people who type in sms-speak hunt and peck.
The objective of communication is to efficiently convey meaning between speaker and listener. To do this, you need to know your audience; for some audiences, these abbreviations ARE the most effective means of communication.
To who? Illiterates? Are you telling me, there are people who have trouble reading normal English, and need the words abbreviated and replaced with numbers before they can understand it? Perhaps it's time to bring back the cane.
When you take out the ambiguities and subtleties of language, you turn it into a dry, mechanical thing. That would only be beneficial to lawyers and computer programmers. For everyone else it would be a terrible thing.
Words don't need to be regular, if you learn them. I have no problem remembering the preterite of 'run', or 'shun'. Nor the pronunciation of 'knight'. It might be hard for foreigners to learn, but language is there for its speakers, not its learners. You learn the inconsistencies as you use the language, you don't learn it by reading mechanical rules in a book. English isn't a weekend project.
Whan that Aprille with his shoores soote
Becomes, easily, "When that April with his showers sweet"
No it doesn't. If you read that pronouncing every letter, you get 'When that Aprilly with his shoe-res soo-ter.'
Beowulf, however, in its original language, is considerably more challenging, though still technically "English".
Technically 'Old English', which is a completely different language to modern English, and probably closer to German than English.
No way is my tax money being paid to let pirates download things for free. Get a job you bum.
I wouldn't say that. Newtonian physics exists in three-dimensional space. The brain thinks in three dimensions. Eisteinium physics exists in at least four-dimensional space. Understanding it is not really possible to the human brain.
Well then, if we haven't discovered it, it obviously doesn't exist. I mean, out understanding of physics is complete and perfect, as explained in that unified theory of everything which we have discovered and is proven beyond all doubt.
Exceeding c (speed of light in vacuum) would involve all sorts of disruption to our understanding of space and time;
God forbid someone would prove that we don't actually know everything. That would be a big blow to the pride.
If it can only render at 5 frames per second, and needs to be displayed at 60 frames per second, then it's not being rendered real time. Rendered real time means it's being rendered as it's being displayed. I.e. if it's playing at 60 fps then it's being rendered at 60 fps. By your logic, if I use a tiny computer that takes six hours to render each frame, and then put them all together at 24fps, it's being rendered in real time...
The problem with understanding relativity is that, not only is it not apparent in observable reality like Newton's Laws, but it goes against everything we see. It's completely incongruent with the way our mind works. Our brain can't understand time and distance being warped, and that a linear increase in speed doesn't actually mean a linear increase in speed.
You'd have more luck trying to explain how colours have different sounds, or how each day of the week has a flavour.
Usually all it takes is for them to watch a movie or football game at a friends house on a big wide-screen set to get them saying, "I think I should start saving up for one of those."
If you have to save up for something like that, then perhaps a fancy digital TV isn't something you should be spending your money on.
As for turning off the analogue signal, I think it's disgusting that the government is mandating something in order to cost us all money for something we don't want or need, just to make money for big business. That's what you get with a system where the government is in the pockets of the corporations.
It happens with all vaguely-science related articles. Most Slashdotters are just kids who've managed to install Linux, they don't know much about science and technology. So when an article like this comes up, they've nothing informed to say. But they treat Slashdot as a chatroom, the social life they don't get in the real world. And they're desperate for attention, so they HAVE to post. Even if they have nothing to say. Especially if they have nothing to say.
So we have kids, desperate to get a +5 funny to validate themselves, on an article they know nothing about. So what do they do? They try posting something 'hilarious', like a play on words of something in the article, or something starting with 'Did anyone else read this as...', or a reference to one of the tired slashdot memes, as if quoting Douglas Adams makes them one of the Slashdot 'in crowd'.
It ruins it for the rest of us, as on any science article, we have to scroll half way down the page to get to the first person who actually says something relevent to the article.
Wait a minute, is this year 2005 or 1945?
Didn't some guy come up with a rule about this? (My local library was all out of copies of that issue of the magazine)
That law is for transistors, not RAM. RAM doesn't double every 18 months. Otherwise we'd all be on 5GB now or something. For only 64MB of RAM, consoles definitely cut the mustard.
Sure, right now, 512mb sounds great... But then 64mb sounded good five years ago too.
They still play well today. These new ones will be 8 times better?
HalfLife2's High Dynamic Range lighting model is expecting to need one to two gigabytes of system RAM to work properly.
Nearly all PCs won't be able to play it then. I bet a new console costs less than brand new gaming PC. And you're assuming that we want to play games for which its entire value is based on its graphics. There's no way in the world that giving a game two gigs for its lighting model is going to make it fun to play. What's the point in all those fancy graphic techniques if all you're going to draw the same old bland scenary and monsters you've seen in a thousand games previous?
Doom III on a top-end PC might give you great immersion, but who wants to be immersed in a basement?