I consider myself a fan of the series. I got started by seeing the Davis Lynch version of the film sometime in '89. That got me interested enough to read the books. In hindsight, the Lynchs' version isn't faithful as it could be. But it is loaded with style, good actors and great locations. As a stand-alone, it fares pretty well.
Now zip forward a decade or so and I keep hearing about Sci-Fi doing their version of "Dune". The majority of opinions I hear say it's pretty good. I eventually get around to renting the DVD, and you know what? I had to force myself to watch the whole thing. It's that bad. The costumes are lame (someone here made a comment about the costumes being stolen from "Liberace's closet". That's a pretty accurate statement.) Their use of soundstages are far too obvious (A lot of the backdrops look like they were painted by high-school kids.) and a majority of the acting was just piss-poor BAD. Whenever Alec Newman (Paul Atreides) spoke, I cringed as if someone were running their nails down a chalkboard. William Hurt slept through his role as Leto, seemingly there to collect a paycheck and nothing more. I could go on and on. But what I don't get is how I seem to be in the minority! Hey, if people want more "Dune" and Sci-Fi is willing to give it to 'em. So much the better. Just don't expect me to counting the days until the sequal airs.
I think lobbying is really an honest profession. Lobbying means trying to persuade Congress to accept your point of view. Sometimes you can give them a lot of facts they didn't have before.
Money, however, is negative--it's corrupting the body politic. Even though money might be the most self-conflicting force in politics today, there are too many loopholes in this McCain-Feingold bill. All these lobbyists in town who are callous to what the bill stands for are going to exploit it. They'll turn to state parties and special interest groups and the money will keep pouring in. It's a tragedy.
Pure politics are a necessary part of any civilized society. However, throw in large sums of cash and the politicans job becomes diluted. Wanna make it far? Gotta have the cash. Wanna have the cash? Gotta become a spokesperson for someone with that cash. (This step tyically involves setting aside your own beliefs for someone elses.) Nowadays, that "someone" is usually Disney, RIAA and Big Business in general.
Sucks, I know.
It may be the greatest, but I wouldn't know...
on
A Look at IRIX 6.5.17
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I went to SUNY-Fredonia and they had about 16 SGI O2's with IRIX running on them in the CompSci. lab. The machines looked pretty slick and they seemed like they'd be fun to use, but none of the faculty ever bothered to show us how to use them. (Or, for that matter, why we should use them when we had boatloads of Windows machines to do our work on.) A year after I graduated (in 2000), they were shoved in a storage closet somewhere to make room for more x86 machines running Windows (How ironic!)
Really, I'd rather have a small amount of my tax dollars put towards a e-mail account that I know will be there for the rest of my life. (As opposed to getting a "free" account with a.com that might not be there tomorrow.) Not only that, but since it's paid for by taxes, you won't have to worry about the gov't selling your e-mail for extra $$$ (In an ideal world anyway.)
I'm not saying that the USPS should be the only one providing e-mail, but I don't think it would be the horrible thing that everyone is making it out to be.
DVHS isn't meant to compete with DVD at all. DVHS is akin to DVD as SACD is to the Compact Disc, they're meant for 2 different markets: DVD is for the masses and DVHS is for the videophile that has $2000 to blow on a player and probably already has a 50" plasma display.
If you want your movies displayed with the full 1080 lines of resolution, and you've got the cash and you want it NOW - then DVHS is your only option at the moment.
AOL has been doing lots of bad moves that make little sense.
Purchasing Netscape, then killing it off...
Purchasing ICQ, then making it the bloated piece of crap it is today...
Purchasing Winamp,then freezing it's development.
All of those have some degree of threat to MS's desktop domination. Microsoft would love to see open-source go away, but they can't make this type of move on thier own because it would rise too many eyebrows in Washington. But if a silent partner went in and did their dirty work for them....
Too bad about the show, but at this point it's better off dead. IMHO, they should've killed it off around 5th - 6th season while the show had some semblance of dignity. A show like the X-files is all about teasing the viewer - they should've axed the series while everyone wanted more.
Seinfeld attempted it, but was about a season too late. Babylon 5, although I've only seen an episode or two, seems to have pulled this off successfully.
Slashdot Mirror
I consider myself a fan of the series. I got started by seeing the Davis Lynch version of the film sometime in '89. That got me interested enough to read the books. In hindsight, the Lynchs' version isn't faithful as it could be. But it is loaded with style, good actors and great locations. As a stand-alone, it fares pretty well.
Now zip forward a decade or so and I keep hearing about Sci-Fi doing their version of "Dune". The majority of opinions I hear say it's pretty good. I eventually get around to renting the DVD, and you know what? I had to force myself to watch the whole thing. It's that bad. The costumes are lame (someone here made a comment about the costumes being stolen from "Liberace's closet". That's a pretty accurate statement.) Their use of soundstages are far too obvious (A lot of the backdrops look like they were painted by high-school kids.) and a majority of the acting was just piss-poor BAD. Whenever Alec Newman (Paul Atreides) spoke, I cringed as if someone were running their nails down a chalkboard. William Hurt slept through his role as Leto, seemingly there to collect a paycheck and nothing more. I could go on and on. But what I don't get is how I seem to be in the minority! Hey, if people want more "Dune" and Sci-Fi is willing to give it to 'em. So much the better. Just don't expect me to counting the days until the sequal airs.
I agree with his opinion of money and politics:
I think lobbying is really an honest profession. Lobbying means trying to persuade Congress to accept your point of view. Sometimes you can give them a lot of facts they didn't have before.
Money, however, is negative--it's corrupting the body politic. Even though money might be the most self-conflicting force in politics today, there are too many loopholes in this McCain-Feingold bill. All these lobbyists in town who are callous to what the bill stands for are going to exploit it. They'll turn to state parties and special interest groups and the money will keep pouring in. It's a tragedy.
Pure politics are a necessary part of any civilized society. However, throw in large sums of cash and the politicans job becomes diluted. Wanna make it far? Gotta have the cash. Wanna have the cash? Gotta become a spokesperson for someone with that cash. (This step tyically involves setting aside your own beliefs for someone elses.) Nowadays, that "someone" is usually Disney, RIAA and Big Business in general.
Sucks, I know.
I went to SUNY-Fredonia and they had about 16 SGI O2's with IRIX running on them in the CompSci. lab. The machines looked pretty slick and they seemed like they'd be fun to use, but none of the faculty ever bothered to show us how to use them. (Or, for that matter, why we should use them when we had boatloads of Windows machines to do our work on.) A year after I graduated (in 2000), they were shoved in a storage closet somewhere to make room for more x86 machines running Windows (How ironic!)
(Sigh) What a waste...
Really, I'd rather have a small amount of my tax dollars put towards a e-mail account that I know will be there for the rest of my life. (As opposed to getting a "free" account with a .com that might not be there tomorrow.) Not only that, but since it's paid for by taxes, you won't have to worry about the gov't selling your e-mail for extra $$$ (In an ideal world anyway.)
I'm not saying that the USPS should be the only one providing e-mail, but I don't think it would be the horrible thing that everyone is making it out to be.
DVHS isn't meant to compete with DVD at all. DVHS is akin to DVD as SACD is to the Compact Disc, they're meant for 2 different markets: DVD is for the masses and DVHS is for the videophile that has $2000 to blow on a player and probably already has a 50" plasma display.
If you want your movies displayed with the full 1080 lines of resolution, and you've got the cash and you want it NOW - then DVHS is your only option at the moment.
AOL has been doing lots of bad moves that make little sense.
Purchasing Netscape, then killing it off...
Purchasing ICQ, then making it the bloated piece of crap it is today...
Purchasing Winamp,then freezing it's development.
All of those have some degree of threat to MS's desktop domination. Microsoft would love to see open-source go away, but they can't make this type of move on thier own because it would rise too many eyebrows in Washington. But if a silent partner went in and did their dirty work for them....
Hmmm, maybe I'm just watching too much X-Files.
Too bad about the show, but at this point it's better off dead. IMHO, they should've killed it off around 5th - 6th season while the show had some semblance of dignity. A show like the X-files is all about teasing the viewer - they should've axed the series while everyone wanted more. Seinfeld attempted it, but was about a season too late. Babylon 5, although I've only seen an episode or two, seems to have pulled this off successfully.