Yes, I was hoping they would have an option of seeing the original version...at least of just plain Star Wars (without the episode IV, Greedo shooting first, Jabba the Hut weirdness), as an additional DVD.
I know, I'm probably a fan boy (of the old movies, not the new ones) but I'd like to see the original movie. The one that started it all. Without any computer generated effects...all the work and hacks and model kits and spit and gum thrown into the mix by John Dykstra and company to get these shots out there.
Why can't we just have both versions? It's almost like if Coppola went back to the Godfather and digitally enhanced the movie to lighten up the scenes where Gordon Willis shot them very dark...destroying the mood and feel of those scenes, just because "we can do that now with computers". Or the fiascos of 10 years ago when Turner was going wild and trying to colorize every B&W movie he could get his hands on. But the public spoke and that practise has ground to a halt.
But that's just my opinion. These films belong to Lucas, so he can pretty much do what he wants with them. It's just a shame that he can't see that there's a market for the original AND the special editions.
Look at "Boogie Nights". Dirk Diggler had a Corvette...and he certainly didn't have a small penis. But then again, it's a fictional character.
The Corvette thing is mainly for guys in a mid-life crisis when they dump their wives and family, get a hair perm, buy a Corvette and get a 18 year old blonde girlfriend.
Back in my day when you had a small penis, you bought a Corvette, or collected big rifles and pistols...these kids now adays just want to get by with the quick-and-easy solution.
The Video Toaster itself wasn't really used in Babylon 5, but it came bundled with Lightwave...and THAT was used in the CGI...and continued to be used and is still used today...though not on an Amiga.
I remember when Alan Hastings was looking for another distributer when the one that distributed VideoScape 3D crapped out and NewTek gobbled him up. He was even looking for a name for the new "Videoscape" which later turned into Lightwave. This was back in the day when I was trying like mad to get Pixar to port Photorealistic Renderman to the Amiga, even getting them to go to a couple of Amiga-worlds...but I guess they saw the writing on the wall.
Oh well, that was a long time ago. But it's cool that they released the source for the Toaster. Now if they would release the source for Lightwave that would REALLY be cool. lol
I usually don't answer anonymous cowards...but....
Not nearly as great as even the cheapest quartz toy, though.
I would say that's personal opinion. I guess in your opinion you'd take a cheap quartz toy over a gold watch. Hey, whatever floats your boat!
You make that sound like a good thing? Which takes more trouble, winding that piece of antique _every morning_ or changing batteries once in three years?
Well, 100 years from now my watch will still be working if it's taken care of...but will they still be making batteries for those watches? Sure, they're cheap now so their disposible. Disposible seems to be how everything's being built today. Don't build it to last...build it cheap and crappy so they will keep buying one after it wears out. Quality and workmanship are left by the wayside.
Good attitude to live by there.
Well, there are plenty of digitals that fit those, the fact that some of them have too much functions doesn't mean all do.
KISS....Keep It Simple Stupid. There was a story here on Slashdot only a few days ago about cell phones cramming everything into their designs and most of them crapping out. The more features something has, the more things that can go wrong. I know, we're talking about simple watches here, but the same thing applies.
Some people want to just throw out anything that's 20 years old thinking that they could build a better one today. That's not always the case.
Realplayer really pisses me off. It's like adware central for one, and then the streams itself are horrible and buggy. I just don't deal with it anymore.
It's just the worse. When I go to a website that has a link to a RealPlayer sound bite, I don't even bother with it. I don't care if it's the secrets of the universe I wouldn't click on it. And don't get me started about the proprietary format that they use.
If Mplayer can't play it, I don't want any part of it (that being said, RA files are one of the few formats that Mplayer doesn't play).
I'm wearing, as we speak, a watch my Grandfather wore 57 years ago that was given to him when he retired from the railroad. It's engraved on the back with the year 1947.
It's and Elgin and it keeps great time. All I have to do is wind it every morning.
No batteries, no weird functions and it's VERY easy to set. It just tells me the time, which is all I need on my wrist.
It will probably be handed down to my son, along with my Martin guitar...another analog thing in this world of Les Paul guitars with ethernet ports.
57 years from now, if my son takes care of them, they'll still be good. I treasure things that I can just pick up and go with. I just pick up my watch, wind it and bam...I'm off. Same with my Martin. I pick up my guitar and play...just like yesterday...then I get on my knees and....whoa, sorry, was channeling Pete there.
But you get my point. Perhaps some of these technologies refuse to die because they just plain work.
Being a loyal Slashdot reader, I of course posted before RTFA in which it states:
I use iTunes, so why should I send you my bottlecap code? You shouldn't! If you use the iTunes Music Store, we don't want the cap, you should redeem it yourself. However, we would strongly encourage you to use the cap to buy music that's not from one of the 5 major labels. The website RIAA Radar can help you figure out if music that you're thinking of buying is put out by a member of the RIAA. Use the tree to see what labels are just major label fronts.
Use them yourself and buy the independent music that's available from iTunes? That way, you're helping to support the independent artist, AND you're opening up yourself to new music!
Don't download that song you've heard a million times on the radio or something like that. Explore the musical frontiers...even if they're not that good, you'll never know unless you look. And you may find a gem.
If you DO find a gem of a song out there, you've "won" again in addition to the free download itself!
What could be more romantic than to meet your loved one on de_dust under the tunnel with knives only...only to be betrayed by someone pulling a deagle.
If that's not love...then...um...it's something unlike love.
Odd...see, I can run my software updates from the command line too in Linux, bu then, by default it can also check automagically for me every week. Of course, I can change that setting any way I want to.
And I can do all sorts of things, make it update every time I log in, every day, every hour, every 20 minutes. I can even set it to never update unless I explicitly tell it too! All with my GPL OS.
Oh, and one thing, I can look through the updates it sends down the tube and pick and choose which parts of the OS I want updated and which I don't feel should be updated...every little part if I want. Or I could just say update everything and I don't want to worry about it. Amazing.
Gee, I use Linux...Gentoo as a matter of fact. I can't remember the last time I screwed around with libraries or configs or stuff like that.
OSX is fine, but please, don't get bogged down in the "this is better than that" nonsense...that's so old and outdated. I'm tired of hearing it.
I install things all the time...play games/openGL etc etc...I STILL don't mess around with configuring the system. The only time I do anything like that is when I upgrade my kernel...like going from 2.6.0 to 2.6.1 took me all of 5 minutes INCLUDING rebooting.
No "under the hood" stuff for me...and I keep everything nice and up-to-date.
"emerge sync && emerge -Up world" is like a few minutes out of my life. No wasted time.
So, on an average day around 5 minutes (if that) of maintenence and then that leaves what? 23 hours, 55 minutes for "real work".
Right now there is plenty of buzz about these movies, but in a few years I know they will be picked on hard. Once the hype wears down, people are going to laugh (or be disgusted at the extremely low quality) of these movies.
What a poor poor excuse for a troll. I mean, come on. Don't they teach you yung-uns how to properly troll?
Anyway, you're wrong about your lines...you skipped a few in there. Typical half-ass.
OH, and you forgot to give your name! AC AND an amatuer troll.
Quip from article: In that way, the research fills a critical gap, he said. Companies "couldn't say, 'Maybe I should just choose Linux because there were 52 Slashdot postings saying that Linux is better,' " he said, referring to a popular Web site for technology news and commentary.
Of course, Slashdot also has as many posts about goatse...which kinda puts it all in perspective. lol
Darl said in the interview: On the other hand, some people in the Linux community said, hold on, you may have some copyright issues there.... There are 2.5 million servers out there today that have this code in it. When are Linux customers going to clean that stuff up? So that's one issue, Linux is tainted, even by their own admission.
Where's he pulling this from? Who in the Linux community said it was tainted? Any links to these statements?
Sorry, I'll try to be more insightfull next time. Your post though is just dripping with insight!
However, RTFA - there is a market at that price level
Unlike 90% of other slashdotters, I DO RTFM. And it didn't convince me at all. It seemed to be more of a "no really...there's a market...guys? Fellas? Come on, there's a market..." kind of piece.
But let's face it, if I personally were going to buy something that for only 50 lousy bucks more I could get almost 4 times the storage...guess what I'm going for? Even if I don't have a use for the extra 11 gigs, I "may" some day.
But hey, what do I know. I don't have any original insight.
I was jazzed this last keynote speech. I thought for sure they were going to release a 1 gig solid-state iPod for $99 bucks. I had heard this through the rumor mill out there, but obviously they're not always right. I was all ready with my credit card to make the purchase.
But come on, $249 for 4 gigs? When for a mere 50 bucks more I could have 15 gigs? I don't care how much they try to justify it, it just isn't a good deal to me.
But think about it, if they sold a $99 iPod they would sell a zillion of them...cementing even further they're hold on the player market.
Yeah, he didn't really have many "good" movies under his belt other than Heavenly Creatures. But this is an argument for a good director? All good to great directors had excellent, epic, quality movies before their "big break"? Hmm...let's have a look:
Francis Ford Coppola: Had a handfull of movies before The Godfather put him on the map. Remember movies like The Terror or Playgirls and the Bellboy? Maybe The Rain People was his Heavenly Creatures?
Robert Zemeckis: Again, a few handfull of films before a breakthrough movie like Back to the Future. Though I was a big fan of Used Cars. But if we judged him on only his first few films, he would be considered a hack.
I could go on...but I'm tired of typing. But hopefully you get my point. A prior film bio is not a good judge of a persons directing skills before the "big break". Yes, I know there are directors that make a masterpiece right out of the box, but not all can be Orson Welles.
Also, these were his movies. He produced them, produced the fx with his company Weta, he directed them, co-wrote them. These were his babies. And frankly, the statement you made: The only thing he should get credit for is for letting the camera crew and art department do their thing shows your ingorance to movie making, or else you wouldn't have said such a thing.
For a look at "bad directing" look no further than Lucas with the Star Wars pictures that he directed personally. Star Wars is the only one that stands up to "good direction". "Empire" was a much better movie because he didn't direct it. "Jedi" wasn't that good, but it was basically the story itself and not the direction...which was good. Look how stiff and un-natural everyone looks and acts in "Menace" and "Clones".
Finally, if the direction is bad as you stated, it would have spoiled the movies no matter what. The Star Wars movies show that the amount of money and effects and art direction that you throw at a movie doesn't equal a good movie alone.
But hey, that's just my opinion...I could be wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I was hoping they would have an option of seeing the original version...at least of just plain Star Wars (without the episode IV, Greedo shooting first, Jabba the Hut weirdness), as an additional DVD.
I know, I'm probably a fan boy (of the old movies, not the new ones) but I'd like to see the original movie. The one that started it all. Without any computer generated effects...all the work and hacks and model kits and spit and gum thrown into the mix by John Dykstra and company to get these shots out there.
Why can't we just have both versions? It's almost like if Coppola went back to the Godfather and digitally enhanced the movie to lighten up the scenes where Gordon Willis shot them very dark...destroying the mood and feel of those scenes, just because "we can do that now with computers". Or the fiascos of 10 years ago when Turner was going wild and trying to colorize every B&W movie he could get his hands on. But the public spoke and that practise has ground to a halt.
But that's just my opinion. These films belong to Lucas, so he can pretty much do what he wants with them. It's just a shame that he can't see that there's a market for the original AND the special editions.
Well, it's not that a Corvette = Small Penis.
Look at "Boogie Nights". Dirk Diggler had a Corvette...and he certainly didn't have a small penis. But then again, it's a fictional character.
The Corvette thing is mainly for guys in a mid-life crisis when they dump their wives and family, get a hair perm, buy a Corvette and get a 18 year old blonde girlfriend.
Back in my day when you had a small penis, you bought a Corvette, or collected big rifles and pistols...these kids now adays just want to get by with the quick-and-easy solution.
Alias PowerAnimator modeled the models, SoftImage did the animations, Renderman rendered the final frames.
ILM used a lot of different software packages along with their own code to do that movie.
The Video Toaster itself wasn't really used in Babylon 5, but it came bundled with Lightwave...and THAT was used in the CGI...and continued to be used and is still used today...though not on an Amiga.
I remember when Alan Hastings was looking for another distributer when the one that distributed VideoScape 3D crapped out and NewTek gobbled him up. He was even looking for a name for the new "Videoscape" which later turned into Lightwave. This was back in the day when I was trying like mad to get Pixar to port Photorealistic Renderman to the Amiga, even getting them to go to a couple of Amiga-worlds...but I guess they saw the writing on the wall.
Oh well, that was a long time ago. But it's cool that they released the source for the Toaster. Now if they would release the source for Lightwave that would REALLY be cool. lol
1. Design and build a universe
2. Populate it with different objects and species that mirror an irrational number.
3. ????
4. Profit!
I usually don't answer anonymous cowards...but....
Not nearly as great as even the cheapest quartz toy, though.
I would say that's personal opinion. I guess in your opinion you'd take a cheap quartz toy over a gold watch. Hey, whatever floats your boat!
You make that sound like a good thing? Which takes more trouble, winding that piece of antique _every morning_ or changing batteries once in three years?
Well, 100 years from now my watch will still be working if it's taken care of...but will they still be making batteries for those watches? Sure, they're cheap now so their disposible. Disposible seems to be how everything's being built today. Don't build it to last...build it cheap and crappy so they will keep buying one after it wears out. Quality and workmanship are left by the wayside.
Good attitude to live by there.
Well, there are plenty of digitals that fit those, the fact that some of them have too much functions doesn't mean all do.
KISS....Keep It Simple Stupid. There was a story here on Slashdot only a few days ago about cell phones cramming everything into their designs and most of them crapping out. The more features something has, the more things that can go wrong. I know, we're talking about simple watches here, but the same thing applies.
Some people want to just throw out anything that's 20 years old thinking that they could build a better one today. That's not always the case.
I'm safe from it here on my Gentoo distro.
Why? BECAUSE I DIDN'T INSTALL IT.
Realplayer really pisses me off. It's like adware central for one, and then the streams itself are horrible and buggy. I just don't deal with it anymore.
It's just the worse. When I go to a website that has a link to a RealPlayer sound bite, I don't even bother with it. I don't care if it's the secrets of the universe I wouldn't click on it. And don't get me started about the proprietary format that they use.
If Mplayer can't play it, I don't want any part of it (that being said, RA files are one of the few formats that Mplayer doesn't play).
I'm wearing, as we speak, a watch my Grandfather wore 57 years ago that was given to him when he retired from the railroad. It's engraved on the back with the year 1947.
It's and Elgin and it keeps great time. All I have to do is wind it every morning.
No batteries, no weird functions and it's VERY easy to set. It just tells me the time, which is all I need on my wrist.
It will probably be handed down to my son, along with my Martin guitar...another analog thing in this world of Les Paul guitars with ethernet ports.
57 years from now, if my son takes care of them, they'll still be good. I treasure things that I can just pick up and go with. I just pick up my watch, wind it and bam...I'm off. Same with my Martin. I pick up my guitar and play...just like yesterday...then I get on my knees and....whoa, sorry, was channeling Pete there.
But you get my point. Perhaps some of these technologies refuse to die because they just plain work.
At first I was thinking it was the big Siberian blast that they said was a comet at the turn of the last century.
Now THAT would have been a hell of a Trojan Horse.
Didn't think of it this way, but thanks for pointing that out!
But then again, I didn't follow your rule #1 as I didn't belittle it at all.
Also, if you look at my past posts, i'm obviously not a karma whore. lol.
Now it will be interesting to see what YOUR post will be modded as.
Being a loyal Slashdot reader, I of course posted before RTFA in which it states:
I use iTunes, so why should I send you my bottlecap code?
You shouldn't! If you use the iTunes Music Store, we don't want the cap, you should redeem it yourself. However, we would strongly encourage you to use the cap to buy music that's not from one of the 5 major labels. The website RIAA Radar can help you figure out if music that you're thinking of buying is put out by a member of the RIAA. Use the tree to see what labels are just major label fronts.
This is what I'm going to try to do.
Use them yourself and buy the independent music that's available from iTunes? That way, you're helping to support the independent artist, AND you're opening up yourself to new music!
Don't download that song you've heard a million times on the radio or something like that. Explore the musical frontiers...even if they're not that good, you'll never know unless you look. And you may find a gem.
If you DO find a gem of a song out there, you've "won" again in addition to the free download itself!
Just a thought.
What could be more romantic than to meet your loved one on de_dust under the tunnel with knives only...only to be betrayed by someone pulling a deagle.
If that's not love...then...um...it's something unlike love.
Weird that my post is modded flamebait when all I did was almost copy verbatum the parent post.
Redundant possibly...but flamebait?
I know, I was just trying to be funny. Certainly wasn't trying to start a flame war as I love Macs and OSX. I just can't afford one.
Was just making a point.
Linux isn't as techy as it once was. The original poster was touting how easy OSX was and I was just pointing out that it's easy on Linux also.
They're both fine OS's in my opinion. And had I the cash, I would spring for a nice Powerbook or G5...but I'm very poor.
Oh well. Peace.
Odd...see, I can run my software updates from the command line too in Linux, bu then, by default it can also check automagically for me every week. Of course, I can change that setting any way I want to.
And I can do all sorts of things, make it update every time I log in, every day, every hour, every 20 minutes. I can even set it to never update unless I explicitly tell it too! All with my GPL OS.
Oh, and one thing, I can look through the updates it sends down the tube and pick and choose which parts of the OS I want updated and which I don't feel should be updated...every little part if I want. Or I could just say update everything and I don't want to worry about it. Amazing.
Gee, I use Linux...Gentoo as a matter of fact. I can't remember the last time I screwed around with libraries or configs or stuff like that.
OSX is fine, but please, don't get bogged down in the "this is better than that" nonsense...that's so old and outdated. I'm tired of hearing it.
I install things all the time...play games/openGL etc etc...I STILL don't mess around with configuring the system. The only time I do anything like that is when I upgrade my kernel...like going from 2.6.0 to 2.6.1 took me all of 5 minutes INCLUDING rebooting.
No "under the hood" stuff for me...and I keep everything nice and up-to-date.
"emerge sync && emerge -Up world" is like a few minutes out of my life. No wasted time.
So, on an average day around 5 minutes (if that) of maintenence and then that leaves what? 23 hours, 55 minutes for "real work".
Right now there is plenty of buzz about these movies, but in a few years I know they will be picked on hard. Once the hype wears down, people are going to laugh (or be disgusted at the extremely low quality) of these movies.
What a poor poor excuse for a troll. I mean, come on. Don't they teach you yung-uns how to properly troll?
Anyway, you're wrong about your lines...you skipped a few in there. Typical half-ass.
OH, and you forgot to give your name! AC AND an amatuer troll.
Quip from article: In that way, the research fills a critical gap, he said. Companies "couldn't say, 'Maybe I should just choose Linux because there were 52 Slashdot postings saying that Linux is better,' " he said, referring to a popular Web site for technology news and commentary.
Of course, Slashdot also has as many posts about goatse...which kinda puts it all in perspective. lol
Darl said in the interview: On the other hand, some people in the Linux community said, hold on, you may have some copyright issues there.... There are 2.5 million servers out there today that have this code in it. When are Linux customers going to clean that stuff up? So that's one issue, Linux is tainted, even by their own admission.
Where's he pulling this from? Who in the Linux community said it was tainted? Any links to these statements?
Or is he just pulling this out of his ass?
Not a very original insight.
Sorry, I'll try to be more insightfull next time. Your post though is just dripping with insight!
However, RTFA - there is a market at that price level
Unlike 90% of other slashdotters, I DO RTFM. And it didn't convince me at all. It seemed to be more of a "no really...there's a market...guys? Fellas? Come on, there's a market..." kind of piece.
But let's face it, if I personally were going to buy something that for only 50 lousy bucks more I could get almost 4 times the storage...guess what I'm going for? Even if I don't have a use for the extra 11 gigs, I "may" some day.
But hey, what do I know. I don't have any original insight.
I was jazzed this last keynote speech. I thought for sure they were going to release a 1 gig solid-state iPod for $99 bucks. I had heard this through the rumor mill out there, but obviously they're not always right. I was all ready with my credit card to make the purchase.
But come on, $249 for 4 gigs? When for a mere 50 bucks more I could have 15 gigs? I don't care how much they try to justify it, it just isn't a good deal to me.
But think about it, if they sold a $99 iPod they would sell a zillion of them...cementing even further they're hold on the player market.
But what do I know...
Just look at his film bio
Yeah, he didn't really have many "good" movies under his belt other than Heavenly Creatures. But this is an argument for a good director? All good to great directors had excellent, epic, quality movies before their "big break"? Hmm...let's have a look:
Francis Ford Coppola: Had a handfull of movies before The Godfather put him on the map. Remember movies like The Terror or Playgirls and the Bellboy? Maybe The Rain People was his Heavenly Creatures?
Robert Zemeckis: Again, a few handfull of films before a breakthrough movie like Back to the Future. Though I was a big fan of Used Cars. But if we judged him on only his first few films, he would be considered a hack.
I could go on...but I'm tired of typing. But hopefully you get my point. A prior film bio is not a good judge of a persons directing skills before the "big break". Yes, I know there are directors that make a masterpiece right out of the box, but not all can be Orson Welles.
Also, these were his movies. He produced them, produced the fx with his company Weta, he directed them, co-wrote them. These were his babies. And frankly, the statement you made: The only thing he should get credit for is for letting the camera crew and art department do their thing shows your ingorance to movie making, or else you wouldn't have said such a thing.
For a look at "bad directing" look no further than Lucas with the Star Wars pictures that he directed personally. Star Wars is the only one that stands up to "good direction". "Empire" was a much better movie because he didn't direct it. "Jedi" wasn't that good, but it was basically the story itself and not the direction...which was good. Look how stiff and un-natural everyone looks and acts in "Menace" and "Clones".
Finally, if the direction is bad as you stated, it would have spoiled the movies no matter what. The Star Wars movies show that the amount of money and effects and art direction that you throw at a movie doesn't equal a good movie alone.
But hey, that's just my opinion...I could be wrong.