> Oh... and considering that-- how the hell does a college justify charging $20k a year for a degree which is only going to pay $60 to $70k?
Perhaps we should consider outsourcing college. I'm pretty sure tuition at the University of Mumbai is significantly cheaper than here, and the cost of living is but a fraction of any area around a US university campus. If you wanted to take it further, you could expat and then come back on H-1B.
Ok, my knowledge of TV shows is not encyclopedic, but I'm pretty sure Baltasar was a character on Charmed.
But hey, I couldn't bring myself to see seasons 3 and 4 of BSG, maybe Gaius Baltar changed his name at some point.
More to the point, didn't I hear somewhere that Baltar turned out to be a Cylon at the end? What more motivation does he need? Or didn't they ever retcon that?
So with that kind of investment in Battlestar, why the devil did they *try* to make it boring as snot? I stuck with it through season 2, but I just couldn't stand the same people saying the same things over and over again. Yeah, you're a drunk! We get it! Does it really take three MILLION dollars to film 43 minutes of people arguing about relationships?
Let's not get sidetracked. This is not about "shit getting blowed up".
It's not an either/or issue.
Either we have long LONG passages with characters discussing their feeeeeelings, the only thing separating the show from General Hospital being the sound of air recyclers in the background and the odd girder or funny door on the set,
Or we gone an' done blowed up a lota shit.
If those are the only choices, I'm selling my damned tv.
Caprica didn't fail because they didn't blow up a lotta shit. Mindless violence is every bit as boring as mindless emoting. Just because they blowed shit up doesn't make it a good action movie. And just because they look concerned and talk endlessly doesn't make it cerebral. Ok? Geeze.
> Also, why is it suddenly fashionable to split seasons into two? SGU and Caprica both just stopped half way through their first seasons. I watched SGU thinking that it was just slow to get going, but being told that the next episode is six months away, without any sort of season finale type episode to prepare me for it, really killed my interest in the show. Same for Caprica.
I think it's the latest method for a show to commit suicide. Yeah, let's move along reeeealalllly slowly, and then go on hiatus for weeks so that people forget about us. And then, when we start up again, they won't remember or care what was going on. Yeah, that's a good plan. Almost as good as going to reruns mid-season.
Look, I understand. TV goes through long dry periods where there's no good scifi to watch. I get it. But we can't be so scared that there won't be anything but Dallas remakes that we're willing to just accept Dallas In Space. We need to have higher standards than that. Bad SF is NOT better than no SF at all.
Everyone stop while the little robot Figgy or Twiggy or whatever the hell he's called makes a comment.
> Remember how Voyager had those conflicts with the Maquis and the starfleet crew? Those two or three episodes where at the end nothing had changed at all? That's basically how I feel about SG:U.
Man, you have more patience than I do. I stopped watching Voyager after about six episodes. Man, that was deadly dull. It wasn't just dishwater dull, it was aggressively dull. Like, "Look at this! Now! Be bored!" You could see after the first few episodes that they were gearing up for season after season of small variations on about five plots followed by hard reset so you could show the episodes in almost any order, depending on hardcore Trekkies to keep the show on the air.
> Mark my words: at the end of season 2 they will still be on the Destiny unable to go to earth, Rush and Young will still be in conflict. Telford and Young will still be in conflict. And the Angry Fishpeople will still just be Angry Fishpeople in space firing their lasers at a ship that has shields and lasers (perhaps with the notable exception of a short bout of 30 minutes of sabotage).
You may be right. (I love "Angry Fishpeople". It almost makes me wish that they could loosen up enough to actually use that line.) But one thing is for sure -- if that's the case, there will be one component missing -- this viewer.
If the shows are stupid, they deserve to be canceled. Bad scifi is not better than no scifi. You need to raise your standards. And discover that there are other things besides tv.
Agreed. Being Human was interesting precisely because they had a great volume of story in a confined space. The problem was not to fill in the empty spaces, it was to tell the parts of the story they had time to tell. And leave your mind (remember your MIND?? It's the thing that sits in your head between your ears!) leave your MIND to fill in the details.
Agreed. "Oh Apollo, let's talk about our feeeeeeeelingssssss" retch. See, nerds don't see anything wrong with this because they don't have enough socialization to realize that nobody acts like that. They think it's characterization. It's sad, really.
Not sure I agree on Universe. The last couple of episodes make me suspect the writers have lost their way. Look we don't really need the girl having an alien hiding inside. There are lots of other loose plot threads on which they could move forward without having to add yet another that they'll abandon anyway in a few more episodes.
And let's face it, it's not reasonable for Rush to be able to keep the control room secret for this long. The others have *seen* the control room in the gate ship. They *know* what a control room looks like and probably the most likely location. It's contrived and totally out of character for Young to not have Rush followed either physically or electronically at all times at this point.
SGU is becoming uninteresting because they're taking small plot points and obsessing over them in episode after episode after episode. I'm still watching for now, but if something doesn't happen in another couple of episodes, I'll drop it, just as I dropped Caprica. Which, incidentally, had all the good parts in the pilot and then was excruciatingly boring afterwards.
This is not about a show being intelligent. It's about a show having too much dead time and too many contrived conflicts designed to fill same. It's about writers who (a) don't have a story arc and are just wandering, or (b) have a story arc, but are trying to stretch one season of story to three seasons to guarantee income from reruns.
Ok, let's get one thing straight -- the Cylons "evolving" into human form was not "mind blowing". It just wasn't.
It looked like a shameless ploy to reduce production costs, (which it probably was) and to have a bunch of scenes with James Callis dry-humping Tricia Helfer (which got tiresome after the second or fifth time).
I think I've seen that movie. The robot gets bumped and the switch is accidentally flipped from "help" to "kill". ("Why do we even have that switch??")
They did interesting things with the 3D effects for Coraline, but I'm not sure how much that added to the story. It was interesting from the novelty aspect, which is not (I believe) sustainable in the industry.
The process or the equipment or the glasses (not sure what) induces quite a bit of distortion especially near the edge of the screen, and the 3D effect is not always realistic looking. Again, I can overlook that due to the novelty effect, the first couple of times. Add to this that 3D movies makes my wife nauseous (just what you wanted in entertainment) and we usually give 3D films a pass.
This goes double for craptastic 3D conversions of 2D films.
We've skipped movies because the theater was only showing 3D. After the novelty wore off (took about two films) the greater expense and poor user experience killed it for us. If producers try to force 3D on us in theaters, I'll wait for the video release.
Does this mean they're going to require us to solve puzzles in order to view the page? And this increases viewership and brand loyalty in what fashion?
It's amazing that someone thought this was a good idea. No, we haven't made the user's experience annoying enough with loud audio adverts (I keep my sound off when I'm surfing), floating windows and blackouts, now they want us to solve a puzzle to get them to go away.
Slashdot Mirror
> Oh... and considering that-- how the hell does a college justify charging $20k a year for a degree which is only going to pay $60 to $70k?
Perhaps we should consider outsourcing college. I'm pretty sure tuition at the University of Mumbai is significantly cheaper than here, and the cost of living is but a fraction of any area around a US university campus. If you wanted to take it further, you could expat and then come back on H-1B.
Ok, my knowledge of TV shows is not encyclopedic, but I'm pretty sure Baltasar was a character on Charmed.
But hey, I couldn't bring myself to see seasons 3 and 4 of BSG, maybe Gaius Baltar changed his name at some point.
More to the point, didn't I hear somewhere that Baltar turned out to be a Cylon at the end? What more motivation does he need? Or didn't they ever retcon that?
So with that kind of investment in Battlestar, why the devil did they *try* to make it boring as snot? I stuck with it through season 2, but I just couldn't stand the same people saying the same things over and over again. Yeah, you're a drunk! We get it! Does it really take three MILLION dollars to film 43 minutes of people arguing about relationships?
Let's not get sidetracked. This is not about "shit getting blowed up".
It's not an either/or issue.
Either we have long LONG passages with characters discussing their feeeeeelings, the only thing separating the show from General Hospital being the sound of air recyclers in the background and the odd girder or funny door on the set,
Or we gone an' done blowed up a lota shit.
If those are the only choices, I'm selling my damned tv.
Caprica didn't fail because they didn't blow up a lotta shit. Mindless violence is every bit as boring as mindless emoting. Just because they blowed shit up doesn't make it a good action movie. And just because they look concerned and talk endlessly doesn't make it cerebral. Ok? Geeze.
> Also, why is it suddenly fashionable to split seasons into two? SGU and Caprica both just stopped half way through their first seasons. I watched SGU thinking that it was just slow to get going, but being told that the next episode is six months away, without any sort of season finale type episode to prepare me for it, really killed my interest in the show. Same for Caprica.
I think it's the latest method for a show to commit suicide. Yeah, let's move along reeeealalllly slowly, and then go on hiatus for weeks so that people forget about us. And then, when we start up again, they won't remember or care what was going on. Yeah, that's a good plan. Almost as good as going to reruns mid-season.
I find it hilarious that even people who enjoyed the show thoroughly thought the ending sucked.
Look, I understand. TV goes through long dry periods where there's no good scifi to watch. I get it. But we can't be so scared that there won't be anything but Dallas remakes that we're willing to just accept Dallas In Space. We need to have higher standards than that. Bad SF is NOT better than no SF at all.
Everyone stop while the little robot Figgy or Twiggy or whatever the hell he's called makes a comment.
BDBDBDBBDBDBDBDBD.....BDBDBD....BDBD
BDBD
BDBDBD...BDBD.....BDBDBDBD
BDBD
BD
"That's right, Buck."
> Remember how Voyager had those conflicts with the Maquis and the starfleet crew? Those two or three episodes where at the end nothing had changed at all? That's basically how I feel about SG:U.
Man, you have more patience than I do. I stopped watching Voyager after about six episodes. Man, that was deadly dull. It wasn't just dishwater dull, it was aggressively dull. Like, "Look at this! Now! Be bored!" You could see after the first few episodes that they were gearing up for season after season of small variations on about five plots followed by hard reset so you could show the episodes in almost any order, depending on hardcore Trekkies to keep the show on the air.
> Mark my words: at the end of season 2 they will still be on the Destiny unable to go to earth, Rush and Young will still be in conflict. Telford and Young will still be in conflict. And the Angry Fishpeople will still just be Angry Fishpeople in space firing their lasers at a ship that has shields and lasers (perhaps with the notable exception of a short bout of 30 minutes of sabotage).
You may be right. (I love "Angry Fishpeople". It almost makes me wish that they could loosen up enough to actually use that line.) But one thing is for sure -- if that's the case, there will be one component missing -- this viewer.
The boring half.
If the shows are stupid, they deserve to be canceled. Bad scifi is not better than no scifi. You need to raise your standards. And discover that there are other things besides tv.
Agreed. The girl was cute, but all she did was stand there.
TV Writers! Are you listening to what we're saying here??
Agreed. Being Human was interesting precisely because they had a great volume of story in a confined space. The problem was not to fill in the empty spaces, it was to tell the parts of the story they had time to tell. And leave your mind (remember your MIND?? It's the thing that sits in your head between your ears!) leave your MIND to fill in the details.
I choose not to consider Galactica 1980 as canon, except for one single episode, the last one (I think), the return of Starbuck. But you're right.
Agreed. "Oh Apollo, let's talk about our feeeeeeeelingssssss" retch. See, nerds don't see anything wrong with this because they don't have enough socialization to realize that nobody acts like that. They think it's characterization. It's sad, really.
Not sure I agree on Universe. The last couple of episodes make me suspect the writers have lost their way. Look we don't really need the girl having an alien hiding inside. There are lots of other loose plot threads on which they could move forward without having to add yet another that they'll abandon anyway in a few more episodes.
And let's face it, it's not reasonable for Rush to be able to keep the control room secret for this long. The others have *seen* the control room in the gate ship. They *know* what a control room looks like and probably the most likely location. It's contrived and totally out of character for Young to not have Rush followed either physically or electronically at all times at this point.
SGU is becoming uninteresting because they're taking small plot points and obsessing over them in episode after episode after episode. I'm still watching for now, but if something doesn't happen in another couple of episodes, I'll drop it, just as I dropped Caprica. Which, incidentally, had all the good parts in the pilot and then was excruciatingly boring afterwards.
This is not about a show being intelligent. It's about a show having too much dead time and too many contrived conflicts designed to fill same. It's about writers who (a) don't have a story arc and are just wandering, or (b) have a story arc, but are trying to stretch one season of story to three seasons to guarantee income from reruns.
Ok, let's get one thing straight -- the Cylons "evolving" into human form was not "mind blowing". It just wasn't.
It looked like a shameless ploy to reduce production costs, (which it probably was) and to have a bunch of scenes with James Callis dry-humping Tricia Helfer (which got tiresome after the second or fifth time).
Someone still hasn't gotten over the cancellation of Caprica.
Yet another reason not to go.
I think I've seen that movie. The robot gets bumped and the switch is accidentally flipped from "help" to "kill". ("Why do we even have that switch??")
Let's convince NASA that the space station is a money pit and they should sell it to Virgin Galactic at scrap prices.
They did interesting things with the 3D effects for Coraline, but I'm not sure how much that added to the story. It was interesting from the novelty aspect, which is not (I believe) sustainable in the industry.
The process or the equipment or the glasses (not sure what) induces quite a bit of distortion especially near the edge of the screen, and the 3D effect is not always realistic looking. Again, I can overlook that due to the novelty effect, the first couple of times. Add to this that 3D movies makes my wife nauseous (just what you wanted in entertainment) and we usually give 3D films a pass.
This goes double for craptastic 3D conversions of 2D films.
We've skipped movies because the theater was only showing 3D. After the novelty wore off (took about two films) the greater expense and poor user experience killed it for us. If producers try to force 3D on us in theaters, I'll wait for the video release.
I think the idea is the content you want doesn't display until you solve the puzzle in the ad.
Does this mean they're going to require us to solve puzzles in order to view the page? And this increases viewership and brand loyalty in what fashion?
It's amazing that someone thought this was a good idea. No, we haven't made the user's experience annoying enough with loud audio adverts (I keep my sound off when I'm surfing), floating windows and blackouts, now they want us to solve a puzzle to get them to go away.
I have a better idea -- I'll go away instead.