"Why exactly did it need to be restored again anyways? I mean, wasn't it restored for the THX video re-releases a decade ago and further restored for the theatrical re-releases with new scenes?"
Uhm, ten years ago, they didn't have Power Mac G5's or its equivalent processing power on the desktop. 20th Century Fox gave Lucas $10 million to "improve" Star Wars, which was then spread out to the entire original trilogy. You can't exactly do that great of a job restoration-wise to three epic films. Maybe a Pauley Shore film. Maybe. Its debateable whether it was an improvement to digitally erase Shore from a film and substitute him with Jar Jar Binks.
"Its nice to see that we're finally getting the original 3 films on DVD... it does piss me off a bit that Lucas seems to do everything he can to ear a few more bucks... first we'll redo them and release them in to different VHS boxed sets. Wait a few years, now we'll do them on DVD. Wait a few years, now we'll release the HD versions."
You know what? I'm sick of listening to people bitch about George Lucas bilking the fan-base with multiple releases. Its not like George is up at Skywalker Ranch snorting his wealth up his nose like most of Hollywood. The man spends his money on making the "film" process better. Look at what ILM has done for films since 1977. How about THX sound? Yeah, thank George Lucas for that. He'll also be one of the reasons why movies will eventually been shown at the theatres in digital form. At such time, it won't matter if you go to the theatre on opening night or two weeks later, the "film" will look the same. No "cigarette burns," vertical strip lines, or any other glaring issues with the projection will you ever deal with again.
Now compare that to say, MGM, with multiple releases of the James Bond series. Are they getting any better? Not really. Where's the MGM profits going to? Bankrolling sequels to "Legally Blonde"? Yeah, Lucas really bilks us cinema fans alright.
Go back to bitching about Greedo shooting first. At least that's a valid criticism.
To me, the buildings looks like the College of Letters and Science (L&S) compound at UC Davis. Then again, the bottom floor of the L&S compound looks like the re-education facility in "A Clockwork Orange" so who am I to say. And continuing, the "Big Wheel" logo of the City of Davis looks suspiciously similar to the logo of the Island in "The Prisoner." Perhaps the designers were trying to tell the public something...
I find it strange that Safari isn't listed as its own browser statistic. For example, amongst the OS stats, Macs are listed as being 2.5% of all net users (and Linux at 3.0%). It would be hard for me not to believe that at least 80% of the Mac users are using Safari almost exclusively. Thus Safari should be well above the 0.5% threshhold in terms of being counted in that statistical breakdown.
"Originally Lucas was going to have the last battle on Kashyyyk (the Wookie homeworld)... a marvelously titanic battle of 'primitive' Wookies tearing down the might of the Emperor's best legions through cunning and sheer force of will. Problem is -- thanks to Chewbacca, we know that Wookies are quite adept with technology, thankyouverymuch."
That and 2 hours of Wookies didn't save the Star Wars Holiday Special. Don't worry, there'll be plenty of Wookie fighting in Episode III since one of the major fights takes place on Kashyyyk. No word on if Chewbacca's dad is in it.
I checked the Star Wars website and found nothing on the release. I'm interested to see if they are being released in Full Frame or Widescreen ratios since the two telefilms were released theatrically in Europe. It makes me wonder what ratio they originally filmed it in too...
"What else could explain lines such as " In contrast, classic supercomputers that rely on very fast, specially designed vector processors "could be programmed in Fortran," Scarafino said. "They could be programmed in a language that mere mortals . . . could program in." ?"
Sounds like they need an Atomic Vector Plotter. That was always a pain to acquire on the Vogon ship.:)
What I want to know is how is this going to work with the upcoming Motorola V3 Razr? The phone is slick with its metal clamshell case, Bluetooth support, camera phone, MP3 ringtones, etc. But from what I've read, the phone only has 5.5 megabytes of storage, and no MMC/SD expansion slot. Will the purchased ringtones stream from iTunes over the mobile phone signal?
http://www.motorola.com/mdirect/hellomoto/experi en ce/v3/flash/default.shtml?flash=true
"Now how freakin' cool would it be, when you put a freind on hold to take another call, poop, etc. It would play the music (in a somewhat reduced qaulity) like companies do when they put you on hold. just remember to properly liscense it."
You put the person on hold to TCOB? (take care of *business*). You obviously are not familiar with one of my friends named Jared...
"The most likely situation, given the age of the universe, is that they are billions of years ahead of us. If that is the case, then the intelligence "gap" between us and them is about a thousand times greater than the gap between humans and bacteria. When was the last time you tried to communicate with a bacterium? When was the last time a bacterium was able to detect the fact that the entire Earth is colonized by Humans?"
That sounds like an observation made by Douglas Adams about humans. When was the last time you went to a dinner where humans had bothered to invite their closest relatives [chimps] over?
"Perhaps we have actually been colonized, but then left alone to evolve for some reason. Until some point in the future."
Hmm. Annunaki, perhaps? Supposed gods picking up their followers in "fiery chariots"? Cave paintings and sculptures of humanoids and their flying craft? You suppose? Then again, there's always the *logical* explanation...that sci-fi storytellers have always existed in human cultures... Right...
"Years ago I read a few books by Erich von Däniken. I can't say I believe a lot of his theories, but I remember one point he made which made a lot of sense to me"
I really like von Daniken. He receives a lot of criticism from the scientific community, but sometimes its the so-called "madmen" that challenge our thinking and actually sometimes get it right (their theories). Just think, only a few hundred years ago, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for professing that there was nothing special about the Earth in God's eyes since the cosmos was full of planets with living beings inhabiting them.
I like to think of von Daniken as a smartass sitting in class trying to show up the professor. Kinda like how he likes to point at ancient Eygptian paintings supposedly indicating that they had light bulbs and then points out that certain passage ways would be impossible to light with reflective mirrors (the preferred theory).
"So, if against all odds we did evolve, spending money on SETI to search the heavens for the off chance that someone or something else did as well is most like betting millions on the most rediculous lottery ever concieved, one we are sure to loose, no matter how many tickets we buy."
Don't use Slashdot as a platform to "dis" lotteries. Voltaire won the Paris lottery, and I'd be willing to bet (pun intended) that that chap was a lot more wise than you, sir. And one of those Founding Fathers of ours, Jefferson, referred to them [lotteries] as the "fairest tax of them all."
"David Brin has a rather lovely little story in his collection "The River of Time." that tackles this: Human beings have been exploring the galaxy, but finding hardly any habitable worlds and no sign of anyone else to talk to. Then they find an artifact, which contains the coordinates of a bunch of other habitable planets."
Sounds like that TNG episode where all the major races of the Trek universe detected that signal that turned out to be from an ancient humanoid race who seeded the galaxy with the building blocks to create multitudes of humanoid races. The ancient beings had done so because they were sterile and didn't want the universe to be empty, or something like that. But why did they have to seed the planet Skaro? Oh, the humanoidity...
I thought Turner bought the MGM library some years ago (remember colorization?)
He did. He also kept several films like "Gone with the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz" (both of which are Time Warner properties) and sold off MGM at a profit. It wound up a part of the Pathe Group and was sold off again after debt destroyed that company (for the most part). Kerokian (sic) has bought and sold it [MGM] like three times now. He's currently trying to sell what's left of the studio to either Time Warner or Sony Pictures.
"Ted Turner spent billions of dollars to buy the rights of a bunch of classic movies, which he then went and colourized. He owns at least three stations that I can think of (I don't watch a lot of TV, so there may be more)--TNT, TBS and Turner Classic Movies."
So what? Its not like Turner burned the original film stock of the black & white versions. He created alternate versions of flicks which he thought would prompt modern casual viewers to invest time into viewing them. If you want to get all high-and-mighty about that, perhaps you should write to the various channels to also broadcast films in their original aspect ratios for all the post-1950s films shot in widescreen, instead of broadcasting them in pan & scan. The marketability of the colorized versions probably have contributed monies later used into restoring the original prints.
"In todays's megacorp world could you imagine starting something like CNN. It was much simpler 25 years ago when Turner did it. Disney, Viacom, AOLTW, Murdoch, it is very hard for a newcomer to break in now. The last newcomer was Fox and thats been over ten years ago. I don't think they would have made it without Murdochs newspaper empire to back them up till they got a foothold."
Murdoch's rise was perfect timing. He wouldn't even be in the American market today but for two chance happenings. The first was the collapse of the videogame industry starting in 1982 which hit (Warner Communications owned) Atari hard. The Atari collapse sent Warner stock into a downward spiral (versus beforehand making Warner respectable and almost a bluechip). The spiral gave Murdoch the chance for a hostile takeover of Warner. Warner sold off Atari as quickly as possible to challenge the Murdoch attempt. Ultimately, Steve Ross was able to "save" Warner from Murdoch. However, at the same time, one of the majority stock holders of 20th Century Fox fled the country due to tax evasion and Murdoch was able to buy up his forfeited shares and thus acquired a controlling interest in the studio dirt cheap.
"TBS, Inc. is also home to The Atlanta Braves, nascar.com and pga.com"
The home of the Atlanta Braves? That must mean today that TBS owns the rights to the broadcasting of their games because I think Time Warner sold off the sports teams...the Braves, the Hawks, etc. that Turner's company had owned prior to their original *merger* (ahem, acquisition).
Time Warner has also sold off its CD/DVD manufacturing operations and spun off Warner Music to Edgar Bronfman private investor group. The best jewel in the Time Warner empire is New Line Cinema, which they acquired through the Turner merger. And to think Time Warner tried selling that very studio for $1 billion back in 1996/1997 and none of the other media companies would bite. Of course today, we think of New Line as the home of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, the "Blade" trilogy, and the "Austin Powers" trilogy. I personally hope Time Warner acquires MGM because I believe Time Warner will actually spend the monies preserving/restoring that 4,000 title library of films they own and actually release decent DVD editions. I have a feeling Sony Pictures (Columbia, cough cough) is heading for a spin-off since Sony of Japan keeps on saying "no" to so many of their acquisitions and Sony's Japanese parentage will keep Columbia from acquiring/merging with US broadcasters for the foreseeable future.
And of course, the spin-off of NBC (now NBC Universal) from General Electric is long overdue.
"He is also a leader in philanthropy. And not like the robber barons or Bill Gates. He was giving money before the current round of philanthropy became fashionable, and continues to give even though his stock has tanked. He doesn't make a big deal about much of his giving."
Ted Turner was the man who was openly criticizing Bill Gates that led the Gates family into giving away billions. Had Turner not spoken out against the Forbes list back in the late 90s, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation probably wouldn't exist today.
If memory serves me correctly, Turner also criticized Ellison and McNealy, but I haven't heard anything about either of their philanthropies. I do know Ellison is the only American to own a MiG fighter.
I still prefer Paul Allen to the whole bunch though. Giving monies to SETI, funding the famous competitor in the X Prize, etc. etc. etc. Although his selling of TechTV to G4 (aka Comcast) is not exactly a shining prize on his mantle.
"Not only that, but if you go back and look closely the good guys (ie CTU guys) drove Fords, all of the bad guys drove Chevys. I got a big kick out of that;)"
Didn't (at least in the first season) they also have the good guys use Macs and the villains all used PCs?
"Problem is, the DVD-R burning TiVo does not allow transferred programs from other TiVos to be burned, only programs originally recorded on that particular TiVo. In fact it does not even allow programs transferred from another DVD-R burning TiVo to be recorded either. Supposedly it is because the Pioneer units save the files in a more DVD-friendly format than other TiVO units."
Damn! Well, that saved me the future purchase on a Pioneer unit. Thank you for that info!
Slashdot Mirror
"Why exactly did it need to be restored again anyways? I mean, wasn't it restored for the THX video re-releases a decade ago and further restored for the theatrical re-releases with new scenes?"
Uhm, ten years ago, they didn't have Power Mac G5's or its equivalent processing power on the desktop. 20th Century Fox gave Lucas $10 million to "improve" Star Wars, which was then spread out to the entire original trilogy. You can't exactly do that great of a job restoration-wise to three epic films. Maybe a Pauley Shore film. Maybe. Its debateable whether it was an improvement to digitally erase Shore from a film and substitute him with Jar Jar Binks.
"Its nice to see that we're finally getting the original 3 films on DVD... it does piss me off a bit that Lucas seems to do everything he can to ear a few more bucks... first we'll redo them and release them in to different VHS boxed sets. Wait a few years, now we'll do them on DVD. Wait a few years, now we'll release the HD versions."
You know what? I'm sick of listening to people bitch about George Lucas bilking the fan-base with multiple releases. Its not like George is up at Skywalker Ranch snorting his wealth up his nose like most of Hollywood. The man spends his money on making the "film" process better. Look at what ILM has done for films since 1977. How about THX sound? Yeah, thank George Lucas for that. He'll also be one of the reasons why movies will eventually been shown at the theatres in digital form. At such time, it won't matter if you go to the theatre on opening night or two weeks later, the "film" will look the same. No "cigarette burns," vertical strip lines, or any other glaring issues with the projection will you ever deal with again.
Now compare that to say, MGM, with multiple releases of the James Bond series. Are they getting any better? Not really. Where's the MGM profits going to? Bankrolling sequels to "Legally Blonde"? Yeah, Lucas really bilks us cinema fans alright.
Go back to bitching about Greedo shooting first. At least that's a valid criticism.
To me, the buildings looks like the College of Letters and Science (L&S) compound at UC Davis. Then again, the bottom floor of the L&S compound looks like the re-education facility in "A Clockwork Orange" so who am I to say. And continuing, the "Big Wheel" logo of the City of Davis looks suspiciously similar to the logo of the Island in "The Prisoner." Perhaps the designers were trying to tell the public something...
I find it strange that Safari isn't listed as its own browser statistic. For example, amongst the OS stats, Macs are listed as being 2.5% of all net users (and Linux at 3.0%). It would be hard for me not to believe that at least 80% of the Mac users are using Safari almost exclusively. Thus Safari should be well above the 0.5% threshhold in terms of being counted in that statistical breakdown.
"Originally Lucas was going to have the last battle on Kashyyyk (the Wookie homeworld) ... a marvelously titanic battle of 'primitive' Wookies tearing down the might of the Emperor's best legions through cunning and sheer force of will. Problem is -- thanks to Chewbacca, we know that Wookies are quite adept with technology, thankyouverymuch."
That and 2 hours of Wookies didn't save the Star Wars Holiday Special. Don't worry, there'll be plenty of Wookie fighting in Episode III since one of the major fights takes place on Kashyyyk. No word on if Chewbacca's dad is in it.
I checked the Star Wars website and found nothing on the release. I'm interested to see if they are being released in Full Frame or Widescreen ratios since the two telefilms were released theatrically in Europe. It makes me wonder what ratio they originally filmed it in too...
"Jub jub" in DTS 6.1 surround sound.
You mean "nub nub". Feech, that was dumb.
Feech is "darn" in Ewokese.
"What else could explain lines such as " In contrast, classic supercomputers that rely on very fast, specially designed vector processors "could be programmed in Fortran," Scarafino said. "They could be programmed in a language that mere mortals . . . could program in." ?"
:)
Sounds like they need an Atomic Vector Plotter. That was always a pain to acquire on the Vogon ship.
What I want to know is how is this going to work with the upcoming Motorola V3 Razr? The phone is slick with its metal clamshell case, Bluetooth support, camera phone, MP3 ringtones, etc. But from what I've read, the phone only has 5.5 megabytes of storage, and no MMC/SD expansion slot. Will the purchased ringtones stream from iTunes over the mobile phone signal?
http://www.motorola.com/mdirect/hellomoto/exper
http://www.mobile-review.com/review/motorola-v3
"Now how freakin' cool would it be, when you put a freind on hold to take another call, poop, etc. It would play the music (in a somewhat reduced qaulity) like companies do when they put you on hold. just remember to properly liscense it."
You put the person on hold to TCOB? (take care of *business*). You obviously are not familiar with one of my friends named Jared...
www.theredmonkey.com
"The multi-million dollar cell-phone ringer market just SHIT ITS PANTS.
:)
*squirt* *plop*"
So you are saying that the mobile phone market just SHARTED, eh?
"The most likely situation, given the age of the universe, is that they are billions of years ahead of us. If that is the case, then the intelligence "gap" between us and them is about a thousand times greater than the gap between humans and bacteria. When was the last time you tried to communicate with a bacterium? When was the last time a bacterium was able to detect the fact that the entire Earth is colonized by Humans?"
That sounds like an observation made by Douglas Adams about humans. When was the last time you went to a dinner where humans had bothered to invite their closest relatives [chimps] over?
"Perhaps we have actually been colonized, but then left alone to evolve for some reason. Until some point in the future."
Hmm. Annunaki, perhaps? Supposed gods picking up their followers in "fiery chariots"? Cave paintings and sculptures of humanoids and their flying craft? You suppose? Then again, there's always the *logical* explanation...that sci-fi storytellers have always existed in human cultures... Right...
"Years ago I read a few books by Erich von Däniken. I can't say I believe a lot of his theories, but I remember one point he made which made a lot of sense to me"
I really like von Daniken. He receives a lot of criticism from the scientific community, but sometimes its the so-called "madmen" that challenge our thinking and actually sometimes get it right (their theories). Just think, only a few hundred years ago, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for professing that there was nothing special about the Earth in God's eyes since the cosmos was full of planets with living beings inhabiting them.
I like to think of von Daniken as a smartass sitting in class trying to show up the professor. Kinda like how he likes to point at ancient Eygptian paintings supposedly indicating that they had light bulbs and then points out that certain passage ways would be impossible to light with reflective mirrors (the preferred theory).
"So, if against all odds we did evolve, spending money on SETI to search the heavens for the off chance that someone or something else did as well is most like betting millions on the most rediculous lottery ever concieved, one we are sure to loose, no matter how many tickets we buy."
Don't use Slashdot as a platform to "dis" lotteries. Voltaire won the Paris lottery, and I'd be willing to bet (pun intended) that that chap was a lot more wise than you, sir. And one of those Founding Fathers of ours, Jefferson, referred to them [lotteries] as the "fairest tax of them all."
"David Brin has a rather lovely little story in his collection "The River of Time." that tackles this: Human beings have been exploring the galaxy, but finding hardly any habitable worlds and no sign of anyone else to talk to. Then they find an artifact, which contains the coordinates of a bunch of other habitable planets."
Sounds like that TNG episode where all the major races of the Trek universe detected that signal that turned out to be from an ancient humanoid race who seeded the galaxy with the building blocks to create multitudes of humanoid races. The ancient beings had done so because they were sterile and didn't want the universe to be empty, or something like that. But why did they have to seed the planet Skaro? Oh, the humanoidity...
"Hardly - I don't think humans taste very good at all."
Tell that to the German cannibal currently on trial...
I thought Turner bought the MGM library some years ago (remember colorization?)
He did. He also kept several films like "Gone with the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz" (both of which are Time Warner properties) and sold off MGM at a profit. It wound up a part of the Pathe Group and was sold off again after debt destroyed that company (for the most part). Kerokian (sic) has bought and sold it [MGM] like three times now. He's currently trying to sell what's left of the studio to either Time Warner or Sony Pictures.
"Ted Turner spent billions of dollars to buy the rights of a bunch of classic movies, which he then went and colourized. He owns at least three stations that I can think of (I don't watch a lot of TV, so there may be more)--TNT, TBS and Turner Classic Movies."
So what? Its not like Turner burned the original film stock of the black & white versions. He created alternate versions of flicks which he thought would prompt modern casual viewers to invest time into viewing them. If you want to get all high-and-mighty about that, perhaps you should write to the various channels to also broadcast films in their original aspect ratios for all the post-1950s films shot in widescreen, instead of broadcasting them in pan & scan. The marketability of the colorized versions probably have contributed monies later used into restoring the original prints.
"In todays's megacorp world could you imagine starting something like CNN. It was much simpler 25 years ago when Turner did it. Disney, Viacom, AOLTW, Murdoch, it is very hard for a newcomer to break in now. The last newcomer was Fox and thats been over ten years ago. I don't think they would have made it without Murdochs newspaper empire to back them up till they got a foothold."
Murdoch's rise was perfect timing. He wouldn't even be in the American market today but for two chance happenings. The first was the collapse of the videogame industry starting in 1982 which hit (Warner Communications owned) Atari hard. The Atari collapse sent Warner stock into a downward spiral (versus beforehand making Warner respectable and almost a bluechip). The spiral gave Murdoch the chance for a hostile takeover of Warner. Warner sold off Atari as quickly as possible to challenge the Murdoch attempt. Ultimately, Steve Ross was able to "save" Warner from Murdoch. However, at the same time, one of the majority stock holders of 20th Century Fox fled the country due to tax evasion and Murdoch was able to buy up his forfeited shares and thus acquired a controlling interest in the studio dirt cheap.
"TBS, Inc. is also home to The Atlanta Braves, nascar.com and pga.com"
The home of the Atlanta Braves? That must mean today that TBS owns the rights to the broadcasting of their games because I think Time Warner sold off the sports teams...the Braves, the Hawks, etc. that Turner's company had owned prior to their original *merger* (ahem, acquisition).
Time Warner has also sold off its CD/DVD manufacturing operations and spun off Warner Music to Edgar Bronfman private investor group. The best jewel in the Time Warner empire is New Line Cinema, which they acquired through the Turner merger. And to think Time Warner tried selling that very studio for $1 billion back in 1996/1997 and none of the other media companies would bite. Of course today, we think of New Line as the home of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, the "Blade" trilogy, and the "Austin Powers" trilogy. I personally hope Time Warner acquires MGM because I believe Time Warner will actually spend the monies preserving/restoring that 4,000 title library of films they own and actually release decent DVD editions. I have a feeling Sony Pictures (Columbia, cough cough) is heading for a spin-off since Sony of Japan keeps on saying "no" to so many of their acquisitions and Sony's Japanese parentage will keep Columbia from acquiring/merging with US broadcasters for the foreseeable future.
And of course, the spin-off of NBC (now NBC Universal) from General Electric is long overdue.
"He is also a leader in philanthropy. And not like the robber barons or Bill Gates. He was giving money before the current round of philanthropy became fashionable, and continues to give even though his stock has tanked. He doesn't make a big deal about much of his giving."
Ted Turner was the man who was openly criticizing Bill Gates that led the Gates family into giving away billions. Had Turner not spoken out against the Forbes list back in the late 90s, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation probably wouldn't exist today.
If memory serves me correctly, Turner also criticized Ellison and McNealy, but I haven't heard anything about either of their philanthropies. I do know Ellison is the only American to own a MiG fighter.
I still prefer Paul Allen to the whole bunch though. Giving monies to SETI, funding the famous competitor in the X Prize, etc. etc. etc. Although his selling of TechTV to G4 (aka Comcast) is not exactly a shining prize on his mantle.
"Not only that, but if you go back and look closely the good guys (ie CTU guys) drove Fords, all of the bad guys drove Chevys. I got a big kick out of that ;)"
Didn't (at least in the first season) they also have the good guys use Macs and the villains all used PCs?
"The Home Media Option is not available for the HD Tivo and neither DirecTV nor Tivo have indicated when or even if it will be made available."
Thanks for the info!
"Problem is, the DVD-R burning TiVo does not allow transferred programs from other TiVos to be burned, only programs originally recorded on that particular TiVo. In fact it does not even allow programs transferred from another DVD-R burning TiVo to be recorded either. Supposedly it is because the Pioneer units save the files in a more DVD-friendly format than other TiVO units."
Damn! Well, that saved me the future purchase on a Pioneer unit. Thank you for that info!