Even accounting for that, I think it's safe to say that new Who is probably a lot more expensive than the original. As you say, effects software may be cheap, but it still needs a not-so-cheap expert to get the most from it. And the whole scale of the thing is much bigger, even excluding digitally-originated effects.
FWIW, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation also part-funded it (though having checked this out, it apparently only applied to the second and third series).
I think Red Dwarf is probably one of the best examples of the problem and the solution. Look at series one, series 4 and say series 6, the budget for sets went up little if at all in the mean time, but the sets looked better and better as the series went on, due in large part to more and more creativity in terms of where the money went.
Up to a point. On the other hand, I notice that you don't mention series 7, which had a noticeably more expensive-looking pretend-film appearance, but was still by far the strongest candidate for its jump the shark moment.
Actually, in the case of series 7, it tried to jump the shark, didn't even succeed and was metaphorically torn to pieces by the shark, before being eaten and reincarnated as shark poo.
The 'new' daleks suck. They are the most horrible enemies you can get, and now they come in 5 colors....
Er, they did that in the two 1960s Dalek films not long after the series started. Though to be fair, (a) those weren't "canonical" (geeky fanboy jargon) with the TV series, (b) they probably did that because the film was in COLOUR at a time when all British TV- Who included- was black-and-white and (c) those films were mostly not much good. So maybe you have a point.:-)
After years of not being able to stand Dr Who, I've only just been able to watch this new one. [..] I know the BBC can't spend money; but even the The Dresden Files looked better.
Er... do you remember what the original series was like? This new one is absolutely massive budget compared to it. That shouldn't be taken to mean that the original series was crap, but even in the best episodes you never got the impression that they had tons of money to throw at it.
The new one has quite a lot of effects- maybe too much on occasion- and they're really pretty good for the most part.
It's been destroyed a couple of times since the reboot, and another one has been made
Apparently the much-maligned John Nathan Turner (producer of Who throughout the 1980s) had it destroyed early in his tenure and explicitly vetoed attempts to have a new one made- or whatever- for similar reasons. He thought it was too easy a plot device- I guess it's a sort of Deus Ex Machina.
I mean, I like the Daleks and all that, but they seemed to pop up an awful lot in the new Who series (since 2005) to the point where you got the impression that people forgot Who wasn't all about them. They appeared fairly regularly in the "classic" series, but not quite as frequently as peoples' memories would lead them to believe.
Then again, I realised a while back that my earliest (and *very* faint) memories of Doctor Who at a very young age are of watching it mainly to see the Daleks- not the Doctor!- and being disappointed when they weren't on. And it's easy as an adult to forget that. But I still think that they've made the right decision- just easing off the Daleks a bit for a while. If kids want to see them, the "old" "new" episodes are still repeated countless times on BBC3 anyway!
I am intrigued by this book of faces. Is it some new fangled phone directory?
Actually, it's a book full of worthless "faeces" ("feces" if you're a Yank), not "faces". The people who founded it knew it would end up full of shit, but just couldn't spell.
Is anything Scottish anywhere near generous? They only put salt on their porridge because it's cheaper than sugar.
the trotting out of stereotyped remarks is a clear indicator of one who is either too weak or too stupid to come up with thoughts and judgments of their own.
Not surprising, he's probably American. All Americans are religious nutcases who think that Pi = 3 (*) and know nothing about the world north of Buttfuck, North Dakota.;-)
Actually... probably more truth in that one than the "mean Scot" stereotype, eh guys?:-)
(*) I'm thinking that this one should be called "American Pi"
Bring it on you tea-guzzling fucktards. I'll be in London the weekend of June 18th.
Whilst in London, I suggest you address your repeated civil disobedience call to the appropriate officer of the judiciary.
These gentlemen can be found in the vicinity of many drinking establishments. You can recognise them by their generally shaven heads. They will be wearing either a Union Jack T-shirt or little or no upper body covering, may have a dozen or so tattoos, appear large and threatening (don't worry! They're friendly really) and they will be drinking copious amounts of lager.
Go up to them and repeatedly shout "Bring it on you tea-guzzling fucktards". The gentlemen will register your protest and you may receive a small fine. Be sure to let us know how your protest goes when you return to Buttfuck, Illinois. All the best!
They did not supply the battery immediately and without question as promised [my emphasis] when they took my money in advance. It was fraud.
Well, you didn't mention that guarantee in the original message, nor even in your first reply. I can only judge the situation by the information you actually present!!
If (and only if) they actually stated that they would replace the battery immediately and without question- or equivalent phrasing- and then didn't might one reasonably be able to argue that it was technically "fraud".
So I can't use my phone for two weeks while they order? No, it was a method to refuse to honor their contract.
This is a comparable inconvenience to having to have something repaired under warranty and the company not issuing a free courtesy widget, as happens all the time. Granted, it's a slightly poorer customer service situation because the company would have to issue a replacement, regardless, so why not just do it?
However, I still think you're jumping to the conclusion of blatant and intentional bad faith on their part when any reasonable interpretation (given the evidence available) would be the most we can *clearly* blame them for is poor customer service.
Let's say they were using your tactic. The customer is going to be without their phone anyway when the battery fails. If they can't be without it for the fortnight, they buy a new battery (or phone!) anyway, then ask Radio Shack to supply them with the promised replacement on top of that anyway, if only as an implicit "fuck you". There are probably better ways for them to get out of it.
I had an extended warranty on a cell phone I bought from them which included free battery replacement. Well, they would not stock the part an insisted I turn in the old battery before they would order the part. Completely dishonest.
Why is this "completely dishonest"? It sounds like they're prepared to replace your battery, just that they're maybe not being as customer-friendly as they could be in how they do it.
I'm guessing it might have more to do with a side-effect of a general returns/replacements policy (due to them ordering parts that people change their mind about and the store's accounting not able to get credit without having returned the original item, or possibly just people ripping them off?) and a low-level employee that doesn't want to risk getting into trouble for breaking store policy, even where it clearly isn't necessary (even if the store manager might feel that they had the discretion to break it under such circumstances).
Not saying they weren't being a bit crap here, but IMHO you can't call such behaviour blatantly "dishonest".
Atari? I hope they bring back Pong.. still the best game ever made
The original "Atari" and any meaningful successors are long-dead- any "Atari" (including the current one) in future would just be some company who had acquired the name...
Ha. Sorry that's just plain ridiculous. A high PC would have out visually outpreformed
No, ironically *this* is just plain ridiculous, were you "high" when you wrote this?;-)
The difference is today on a nice rig vs a PS3 is like a a PS1 vs Atari 2600.
Sloppily-written English aside, this is the *real* part that's "just plain ridiculous." I very, *very* much doubt it's anything like that big a difference, regardless of how much better the PC is. It would have to offer borderline photo-realistic, fully-immersive VR-style 3D for this to be the case and even a non-games expert like me knows that there's nothing out there that's that good and won't be for a long time yet.
(And please don't say that you were exaggerating or using hyperbole to make a point- the only point you were trying to make there was to illustrate the alleged *scale* of the difference, so if that wasn't meant to be accurate, there was no point to it).
One man's "troll" is another man's "funny"- I thought it the original comment was obviously meant to be funny. Though no-one would claim that the Wii is cutting-edge in terms of power, it's obviously not that bad!
IMHO "the linux geek's" comment was arguably more trollish, though I'd give it the benefit of the doubt.
I'm not certain of anything and never claimed to be. The two issues may be linked in one theory, but not being able to disprove that theory isn't the same as it having been proved. Therefore we can't assume in general that one implies the other outwith that particular line of unproven speculation, unless it is proven to be correct.
For me, the fundamental problem is that although everyone thinks they are familiar with consciousness, no-one can really say for sure (at least to my satisfaction) what it actually is.
Your "colour" analogy is flawed because while there are quite clear reasons why the concept of colour may be defined in relation to vision, the concept of "free will" is far more vague, let alone what it can be defined in terms of. Your statement "I have a hard time thinking of free will without consciousness" is- I believe- essentially because your definition of "free will" is in terms of consciousness. Hence IMHO it's circular.
I didn't state that they weren't connected, I said that they were essentially different issues where one couldn't automatically be assumed to be connected with the other.
For example, how could an unconscious being exercise free will?
You assume that "will" or "free will" is an inherent part of consciousness, that simply by being conscious implies that decisions made of one's own volition are the result of "free will". But such logic is essentially circular because it relies on "free will" being defined in terms of consciousness in the first place!
I can't say that I either do or don't believe in free will, because that would require a concrete, watertight and non-circular definition. The problem with determining the nature of "free will" in the broadest philosophical sense is that IMHO it can't be defined like that in the first place because that lack of definition *is* the problem!
(As for the more legalistic meaning of "free will", e.g. when people are mad or sane, etc., to me that's focusing on something different and not really the same issue).
It's essentially a god-of-the-gaps argument, only this time for "consciousness" or "free will"...
Yes, assuming you've represented their position fairly, I'd say that I agree with you there.
BTW, I think you're making the mistake of tying together the issues of consciousness and free will. They seem to me to be two distinct phenomena.
The fact that my brain working somehow creates a conscious "me" and what and how that "me" comes to be or exists (if it does!) is- regardless of whether or not I have "free will"- an issue in its own right.
As for "free will", my gut attitude is that the only answer is that it's a philosophical matter whose (non-)answer essentially comes down to perspective and viewpoint because the issue is essentially circular. "Free" from what? The way fate put our brains together? But the brain itself is the thing which would be "free" to exercise (or not) this "free will" anyway so if something "has" free will... what is exercising it? IMHO the question only has meaning from our own perspective, not as something "absolute".
I believe what he was talking about was the implied reasoning that "quantum physics is weird, mysterious and counterintuitive... and consciousness is also weird, mysterious and counterintuitive. Therefore the former might explain the latter."
I don't know which particular fallacy this would fall under, but I'm pretty sure that there must be one it fits.
BTW, I never understood why it was believed that quantum physics would explain consciousness. I'm not saying that it doesn't, I just haven't seen an explanation of why so many suspect that this might be the case. I'd assumed it was more than the above flawed reasoning. That's aside from the fact that the issue of consciousness- ever since I first considered it- always seemed to be to me to be a profoundly philosophical riddle that I wasn't convinced science could answer. How can you "prove" to yourself that anything else is "conscious", to reliably differentiate it from something that merely *appears* conscious to your *own* satisfaction... and is the question meaningful anyway?
Slashdot Mirror
Even accounting for that, I think it's safe to say that new Who is probably a lot more expensive than the original. As you say, effects software may be cheap, but it still needs a not-so-cheap expert to get the most from it. And the whole scale of the thing is much bigger, even excluding digitally-originated effects.
FWIW, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation also part-funded it (though having checked this out, it apparently only applied to the second and third series).
I think Red Dwarf is probably one of the best examples of the problem and the solution. Look at series one, series 4 and say series 6, the budget for sets went up little if at all in the mean time, but the sets looked better and better as the series went on, due in large part to more and more creativity in terms of where the money went.
Up to a point. On the other hand, I notice that you don't mention series 7, which had a noticeably more expensive-looking pretend-film appearance, but was still by far the strongest candidate for its jump the shark moment.
:-/
Actually, in the case of series 7, it tried to jump the shark, didn't even succeed and was metaphorically torn to pieces by the shark, before being eaten and reincarnated as shark poo.
Urgh, what a disgusting train of thought.
The 'new' daleks suck. They are the most horrible enemies you can get, and now they come in 5 colors....
Er, they did that in the two 1960s Dalek films not long after the series started. Though to be fair, (a) those weren't "canonical" (geeky fanboy jargon) with the TV series, (b) they probably did that because the film was in COLOUR at a time when all British TV- Who included- was black-and-white and (c) those films were mostly not much good. So maybe you have a point. :-)
After years of not being able to stand Dr Who, I've only just been able to watch this new one. [..] I know the BBC can't spend money; but even the The Dresden Files looked better.
Er... do you remember what the original series was like? This new one is absolutely massive budget compared to it. That shouldn't be taken to mean that the original series was crap, but even in the best episodes you never got the impression that they had tons of money to throw at it.
The new one has quite a lot of effects- maybe too much on occasion- and they're really pretty good for the most part.
Perhaps not the Goatse one that managed to slip through and get posted on the BBC's site.
You can forgive them that mistake when Audi did a whole UK-wide billboard and newspaper ad campaign that featured similar imagery. It wasn't like they even pulled it or anything AFAICT, the one near where I lived was up for quite a while before they replaced it with another one after roughly the usual length of time.
It's been destroyed a couple of times since the reboot, and another one has been made
Apparently the much-maligned John Nathan Turner (producer of Who throughout the 1980s) had it destroyed early in his tenure and explicitly vetoed attempts to have a new one made- or whatever- for similar reasons. He thought it was too easy a plot device- I guess it's a sort of Deus Ex Machina.
This strikes me as a somewhat sensible decision.
I mean, I like the Daleks and all that, but they seemed to pop up an awful lot in the new Who series (since 2005) to the point where you got the impression that people forgot Who wasn't all about them. They appeared fairly regularly in the "classic" series, but not quite as frequently as peoples' memories would lead them to believe.
Then again, I realised a while back that my earliest (and *very* faint) memories of Doctor Who at a very young age are of watching it mainly to see the Daleks- not the Doctor!- and being disappointed when they weren't on. And it's easy as an adult to forget that. But I still think that they've made the right decision- just easing off the Daleks a bit for a while. If kids want to see them, the "old" "new" episodes are still repeated countless times on BBC3 anyway!
What would make far more sense would be to rename a bunch of nuclear reactors "Super Happy Perfectly Safe Generators"
Do not taunt Super Happy Perfectly Safe Generators.
I am intrigued by this book of faces. Is it some new fangled phone directory?
Actually, it's a book full of worthless "faeces" ("feces" if you're a Yank), not "faces". The people who founded it knew it would end up full of shit, but just couldn't spell.
Is anything Scottish anywhere near generous? They only put salt on their porridge because it's cheaper than sugar.
the trotting out of stereotyped remarks is a clear indicator of one who is either too weak or too stupid to come up with thoughts and judgments of their own.
Not surprising, he's probably American. All Americans are religious nutcases who think that Pi = 3 (*) and know nothing about the world north of Buttfuck, North Dakota. ;-)
:-)
Actually... probably more truth in that one than the "mean Scot" stereotype, eh guys?
(*) I'm thinking that this one should be called "American Pi"
stereotypes are just shortcuts to the truth.
Lemme see... ACs are mostly trolls who aren't worth taking seriously.
Hey... worked in this case at least!
Bring it on you tea-guzzling fucktards. I'll be in London the weekend of June 18th.
Whilst in London, I suggest you address your repeated civil disobedience call to the appropriate officer of the judiciary.
These gentlemen can be found in the vicinity of many drinking establishments. You can recognise them by their generally shaven heads. They will be wearing either a Union Jack T-shirt or little or no upper body covering, may have a dozen or so tattoos, appear large and threatening (don't worry! They're friendly really) and they will be drinking copious amounts of lager.
Go up to them and repeatedly shout "Bring it on you tea-guzzling fucktards". The gentlemen will register your protest and you may receive a small fine. Be sure to let us know how your protest goes when you return to Buttfuck, Illinois. All the best!
They did not supply the battery immediately and without question as promised [my emphasis] when they took my money in advance. It was fraud.
Well, you didn't mention that guarantee in the original message, nor even in your first reply. I can only judge the situation by the information you actually present!!
If (and only if) they actually stated that they would replace the battery immediately and without question- or equivalent phrasing- and then didn't might one reasonably be able to argue that it was technically "fraud".
More Dead or Alive here!
So I can't use my phone for two weeks while they order? No, it was a method to refuse to honor their contract.
This is a comparable inconvenience to having to have something repaired under warranty and the company not issuing a free courtesy widget, as happens all the time. Granted, it's a slightly poorer customer service situation because the company would have to issue a replacement, regardless, so why not just do it?
However, I still think you're jumping to the conclusion of blatant and intentional bad faith on their part when any reasonable interpretation (given the evidence available) would be the most we can *clearly* blame them for is poor customer service.
Let's say they were using your tactic. The customer is going to be without their phone anyway when the battery fails. If they can't be without it for the fortnight, they buy a new battery (or phone!) anyway, then ask Radio Shack to supply them with the promised replacement on top of that anyway, if only as an implicit "fuck you". There are probably better ways for them to get out of it.
Basic business is to identify your competitors and then look at what they are selling, apparently the Shack can't even figure that out for themselves.
This rests on the assumption that they know who they are competing against in the first place, i.e. what their target market is.
I had an extended warranty on a cell phone I bought from them which included free battery replacement. Well, they would not stock the part an insisted I turn in the old battery before they would order the part. Completely dishonest.
Why is this "completely dishonest"? It sounds like they're prepared to replace your battery, just that they're maybe not being as customer-friendly as they could be in how they do it.
I'm guessing it might have more to do with a side-effect of a general returns/replacements policy (due to them ordering parts that people change their mind about and the store's accounting not able to get credit without having returned the original item, or possibly just people ripping them off?) and a low-level employee that doesn't want to risk getting into trouble for breaking store policy, even where it clearly isn't necessary (even if the store manager might feel that they had the discretion to break it under such circumstances).
Not saying they weren't being a bit crap here, but IMHO you can't call such behaviour blatantly "dishonest".
Atari? I hope they bring back Pong.. still the best game ever made
The original "Atari" and any meaningful successors are long-dead- any "Atari" (including the current one) in future would just be some company who had acquired the name...
Ha. Sorry that's just plain ridiculous. A high PC would have out visually outpreformed
No, ironically *this* is just plain ridiculous, were you "high" when you wrote this? ;-)
The difference is today on a nice rig vs a PS3 is like a a PS1 vs Atari 2600.
Sloppily-written English aside, this is the *real* part that's "just plain ridiculous." I very, *very* much doubt it's anything like that big a difference, regardless of how much better the PC is. It would have to offer borderline photo-realistic, fully-immersive VR-style 3D for this to be the case and even a non-games expert like me knows that there's nothing out there that's that good and won't be for a long time yet.
(And please don't say that you were exaggerating or using hyperbole to make a point- the only point you were trying to make there was to illustrate the alleged *scale* of the difference, so if that wasn't meant to be accurate, there was no point to it).
you still won't be able the play more sophisticated games when the phone is disconnected from it's peripherals or HD screen
Well, ditto the console, so this (*in itself*) isn't really a good argument.
Repeat after me: Don't feed the trolls.
One man's "troll" is another man's "funny"- I thought it the original comment was obviously meant to be funny. Though no-one would claim that the Wii is cutting-edge in terms of power, it's obviously not that bad!
IMHO "the linux geek's" comment was arguably more trollish, though I'd give it the benefit of the doubt.
I'm not certain of anything and never claimed to be. The two issues may be linked in one theory, but not being able to disprove that theory isn't the same as it having been proved. Therefore we can't assume in general that one implies the other outwith that particular line of unproven speculation, unless it is proven to be correct.
For me, the fundamental problem is that although everyone thinks they are familiar with consciousness, no-one can really say for sure (at least to my satisfaction) what it actually is.
Your "colour" analogy is flawed because while there are quite clear reasons why the concept of colour may be defined in relation to vision, the concept of "free will" is far more vague, let alone what it can be defined in terms of. Your statement "I have a hard time thinking of free will without consciousness" is- I believe- essentially because your definition of "free will" is in terms of consciousness. Hence IMHO it's circular.
For example, how could an unconscious being exercise free will?
You assume that "will" or "free will" is an inherent part of consciousness, that simply by being conscious implies that decisions made of one's own volition are the result of "free will". But such logic is essentially circular because it relies on "free will" being defined in terms of consciousness in the first place!
I can't say that I either do or don't believe in free will, because that would require a concrete, watertight and non-circular definition. The problem with determining the nature of "free will" in the broadest philosophical sense is that IMHO it can't be defined like that in the first place because that lack of definition *is* the problem!
(As for the more legalistic meaning of "free will", e.g. when people are mad or sane, etc., to me that's focusing on something different and not really the same issue).
It's essentially a god-of-the-gaps argument, only this time for "consciousness" or "free will"...
Yes, assuming you've represented their position fairly, I'd say that I agree with you there.
BTW, I think you're making the mistake of tying together the issues of consciousness and free will. They seem to me to be two distinct phenomena.
The fact that my brain working somehow creates a conscious "me" and what and how that "me" comes to be or exists (if it does!) is- regardless of whether or not I have "free will"- an issue in its own right.
As for "free will", my gut attitude is that the only answer is that it's a philosophical matter whose (non-)answer essentially comes down to perspective and viewpoint because the issue is essentially circular. "Free" from what? The way fate put our brains together? But the brain itself is the thing which would be "free" to exercise (or not) this "free will" anyway so if something "has" free will... what is exercising it? IMHO the question only has meaning from our own perspective, not as something "absolute".
I believe what he was talking about was the implied reasoning that "quantum physics is weird, mysterious and counterintuitive... and consciousness is also weird, mysterious and counterintuitive. Therefore the former might explain the latter."
I don't know which particular fallacy this would fall under, but I'm pretty sure that there must be one it fits.
BTW, I never understood why it was believed that quantum physics would explain consciousness. I'm not saying that it doesn't, I just haven't seen an explanation of why so many suspect that this might be the case. I'd assumed it was more than the above flawed reasoning. That's aside from the fact that the issue of consciousness- ever since I first considered it- always seemed to be to me to be a profoundly philosophical riddle that I wasn't convinced science could answer. How can you "prove" to yourself that anything else is "conscious", to reliably differentiate it from something that merely *appears* conscious to your *own* satisfaction... and is the question meaningful anyway?