AC Wrote: Take any western and change the indians to aliens. Changes the horses and stagecoaches to spaceships. Presto! You have instant sci-fi. I felt that way through exactly one episode. By the third one, I was hooked on an amazing show.
Well, there were no overt aliens in the show. In the commentary I think Joss said that there were aliens, but they were not out in the open. One of the unaired shows a PT Barnum type character charging admission to see a genuine alien, which in reality is just a mutated cow fetus.
It would have taken off a lot better if they had started with the original pilot. Besides being a good introduction to the main cast, it was also a much better episode. But the network didn't want to start with the original pilot, so they gave Joss & Co a weekend to write a replacement pilot episode.
Decaff wrote: The combination of hi and lo tech just looked silly - it was like... spaceships landing in the wild west and being met with men on horses.
The idea was that The Aliance and the super rich had access to high technology. The poor either lived in shanty towns on high-tech planets, or could be shipped off to planets that had just been terraformed with nothing but blankets, as they said in the show.
It costs lots of money to ship high tech equipment to other planets, to say nothing of the cost of production. But you ship just a few horses and you can get lots more horses from those. The advantage that horses have over hovercraft is that hovercraft cannot reproduce.
It was an inconsistent and totally implausible view of the future.
I disagree, the view of the future was that technology is not going to solve the social problems of today. In all likelyhood we will still have problems of the haves and the have nots.
Also, the X-Files angle they were doing with River which was just starting to get interesting when the show was canceled.
I'm sorry, I'm the freaking 37th President, and am too busy pulling the strings of GWB and hatching my evil plots to remember the exact name of some pissant TV writer/director/producer (Even if he is one of the very few good thing on TV these days.)
But thanks, I'll be sure to remember his name from now on.
At least I didn't call him Josh Wheaton and ponder if he is related to Wil Wheaton.:)
Looks like the editors have already corrected my mistake.:)
The Chu shie fook executes at the Fox network
on
Firefly DVD Set Released
·
· Score: 4, Informative
First, the swearing is as lame as it was in Farscape.
I haven't seen Farscape so I don't know about its swearing. The swearing in Firefly was actually Chinese. Joss's idea was that in the future the only two superpowers that survive are the United States and China, and thus everyone knows both English and Chinese. (But reserve the Chinese for the swearing for the ease of the audience I assume.)
Incidently, the/. editors cut one sentence from my statement: The Chu shie fook executes at the Fox network were Sha gwa to cancel this show. And I thought that was the sentence that would get this article posted:)
The cool thing about swearing in Chinese is that they could get away with saying stuff that the censors would otherwise never allow. It is kinda like Kenny on South Park, where you can read between the lines to guess what they said. Except in this case you could potentially look up what they are actually saying. The downside is the actors were not exactly fluent in Chinese and people who are would probably not understand them.
Second, the commercial breaks are very obvious. Looking at most of them, it would take very little to make the transitions a little smoother.
I think Joss did this deliberately. At least in the pilot (the real one that didn't air until the last broadcast) after a shot of the Reavers' ship he wanted a pause for tension. He said they couldn't have 2 seconds of black, because the computers would automatically cut to commercial. How he got by this is he used the darkest gray that wouldn't trigger the cue for commercial.
And one of these days, I will figure out whether Inara or Kaylee is hotter.
I guess that depends on whether you like geek girls. Kaylee is clearly a geek. And she looks hot with engine grease on her face.:)
I imagine they would sign some sort of "I will not sue you, and my family won't sue you if I die in a horrible accident." kinda contract. But will that really prevent family from trying to sue later?
Then again, I don't think an insurance policy exists that you could buy for this sort of thing. And it wouldn't make sense anyway since the very concept of insurance requires lots of people to buy into the system.
Maybe the people running it go up into space each time as well, that way if there is a horrible accident and the client/s die, they die too and don't have to worry about litigation.
This sort of business gives new meaning to extreme sports do at your own stupid risk activity. Add that to the expense and this is truely the sport of kings.
(Both Articles are at linuxdevices.com but they are different articles.)
Now, the phone in yesterday's article is talking about the E28 manufactured by, well it doesn't say beyond that it's a Chinese company.
This article refers to what looks like a different phone (look at the picture) that is described as the Samsung SCH-i519. Is Samsung a Chinese company?
The features of the phones look very similar, and I thought this was a dupe at first too, but I think they are refering to different phones, and thus is it really a dupe?
Dollars to doughnuts I get 2 slashdot subscriptions for Xmas. Hope the returns dept. is open on boxing day.
And more importantly, does this mean that I will get the gift of a slashdot subscription?
While googling for the lyrics I came across this christian explanation of the Twelve Days of Christmas. (How novel, a christian explaination of a christmas song.) Also note, while it seems the song has different origins, the term The Twelve Days of Christmas refers to the 12 days occuring between the Catholic Christmas (December 25) and the Orthodox Christmas (January 6) (I think).
Also, maybe I should RTFA, but does the cost of the twelve days of christmas 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.... 12 of each thing respectively, or is it:
12 Partridges in 12 Pear Trees
22 Turtle Doves
30 French Hens
36 Calling Birds
40 Gold Rings
42 Geese-a-Laying
40 Swans-a-Swimming
36 Ladies Dancing
30 Lords-a-Leaping
22 Pipers Piping
12 Drummers Drumming
OK, I RTFA and it only considered the catalog of the song on the last sing through, which is considerably less that what accounts on singing the enitre song. (Each time you go through the list they add up.)
And does this mean the Answer is really 42 Geese-a-Laying?
What is this slow economy you speak of? The Dow is over 10000 you know. Consumer spending is up too. What's the prob?
Maybe he is refering to unemployment?
You don't even have to be unemployed to be frugal in this economy. A lot of companies right now figure they can treat their employees like crap because of the unemployment rate. Some companies like to pull stuff like lay off half the employees and then make the other half work twice as hard.
Even if you got a job, you gotta be prepaired for stupid stuff like this to happen.
When things are tight, people consider their income a lot less disposable. This means less sales of small consumer goods such as CDs and DVDs. There might be some people out there making a lot of money. But stuff like CD sales depend on the masses making large purchases.
Unless you expect the top 1% to purchase a couple million Britney CDs on their own.
What if they don't? And more importantly, who's gonna make them?
The Chinese government has done far worse than copyright infringment, and yet they still have most favored nation status. They can pretty much get away with anything they want short of an act of war.
Hey! I opened up relations with China you stupid hippie! And China is our most favored nation. Only a hippie liberal commie would be against our most favored nation.
Watch out. Many of the things you mention are coming to america. Just wait and see.
In Arabic culture a man's beard has a huge importance and to shave Saddam's beard and display his pictures before and after the shave is one of the biggest forms of humiliation possible in arabic culture.
Saddam isn't exactly known as an orthodox muslim. He's more of a millionaire playboy who writes romance novels. No more martinis for him I imagine.
the man who attacked my country with rockets during the first Gulf war
We gave him some pretty good weapons, but I never heard that he had any ICBMs. When and where exactly in the United States were we attacked?
I say it again, whoever edited that video sequence knew what he was doing. Damn fine entertainment.
No, it wasn't about WMD, nor can you back up your claim that it ever was supposed to be all about WMD. It's about this.
Actually, the son of my good friend and buddy George HW Bush recently said explicitly that there are no links between Saddam and 911 or al Qaeda.
I just wish he would make up his mind. This is not what he was implying in January. And there was lots of talk about WMD, but he's changed his mind on that too. Now he is going for the humanitarian angle, but lets face it, Saddam was a monster created by the politicians that followed me.
Just goes to show what a poor President the young lad is. You can't be a good President if you don't know how to lie. I was a pretty good lier, but I guess you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
There are posters in this thread who are obviously disappointed that W and the boys captured Saddham. That's sad.
Well, it is sad. We spent a lot of money training and arming that Saddam. He was vicious I'll tell you that. But even with billions of dollars of support he couldn't best Iran. I guess it wasn't that easy, after all, we were arming Iran at the same time, but we gave the best arms and training to Saddam.
Then he had to go and invade Kuwait. Our ambassador told him we didn't care if he used force in a border dispute, but he took the whole country. Even that wouldn't have been a big deal, but Kuwait is a colony of the UK so we just couldn't let him get away with that.
Yes, it is sad when we have to put down one of our own terrorist agents. Still, there's plenty more where that came from.
If anything, it is the Republicans who have benefitted most from Saddam being in power. The Regan administration sold Hussein conventional, chemical and biological weapons and sat idly by while he mass-murdered people.
Now now now! You have to remember that Loyal Americans only have a memory of about 2 weeks, and most of that is just what they see on the TeeVee.
Anyone who brings up historical context is an unamerican traitor liberal hippie commie terrorist.
I'm sorry, but you have an appointment with the Office of Homeland Security for some Re-Education.
Except in this case the glass is 95% full, but liberals are focused like a laser beam on the 5% thats empty! Whats more liberals are hoping beyond hope, that someone,anyone, will tip over the glass!
The problem with this is that Bush is a liberal. He has wasted our military resources. He has no understanding of military strategy. He has no post-invasion plan. And he is giving all our tax dollars to Bechtel and Halliburton.
No, you've got to understand, from the liberal Bush-supporter mindset, it is an american soldier's duty to die, regardless of reason or insanity.
Bush's strategy is much like that of Zapp Brannigan. Just send wave after wave of soldiers for them to kill and eventually they will get exhasted from all the killing, and then we will have won.
Also note that it is unamerican to critisize the President, so anyone who thinks this is a poor strategy is a thought criminal and will be visited by the Office of Homeland Security.
If Pres. Bush got the idea that he needed to support the overthrow of Canada and the installation of a Communist regime there, in order to seal his re-election next year, he'd do it in a heartbeat...
Because the historically ignorant Americans will sit around and believe that their leaders always try to fight for freedom in the world.
You are saying that like it is a bad thing. Anything older that 2 weeks is ancient history. It doesn't matter. Anyone that thinks American Politicans should be held accountable for their actions is a liberal! Anyone that thinks historical context should be taken into consideration is a terrorist!
Expect a visit from the Office of Homeland Security very soon.
Everyone else out there remember, now that Saddam is captured, we have won TWAT! TWAT is now over! The last of our enemies (besides all the thought criminals who think we should remember past foreign policy decisions) have been destroyed!
(Anyone pointing out that Osama is still at large is also a thought criminal and will soon be visited by the Office of Homeland Security.)
but if you're not a knee-jerk, radical, left-wing person, I'm not referring to you anyway
Good because I'm a conservative that's a foaming at the mouth Bush hater. The invasion went well, but he has no idea what he is going to do next. Iraq is not loyal to Saddam but they hate U.S. Politicians as much they hate Saddam. We have no post-war plan. We have no worst-case-senario plan. And if we leave now the Shiites will take over with an Iranian style Theocracy.
Face it, Bush is a liberal. He is just fumbling around with no idea what he is doing, and spending way too much money.
we're going to americanize iraq now and get heavily discounted oil.
Too bad we've already spent more money on the military venture than all of the oil in Iraq is worth.
This would not have happened if a real conservative like myself was in charge of the Iraq war. That George W Bush is a liberal who spends way too much money. Conservatives fight wars for less!
Slashdot Mirror
AC Wrote: Take any western and change the indians to aliens. Changes the horses and stagecoaches to spaceships. Presto! You have instant sci-fi. I felt that way through exactly one episode. By the third one, I was hooked on an amazing show.
... spaceships landing in the wild west and being met with men on horses.
Well, there were no overt aliens in the show. In the commentary I think Joss said that there were aliens, but they were not out in the open. One of the unaired shows a PT Barnum type character charging admission to see a genuine alien, which in reality is just a mutated cow fetus.
It would have taken off a lot better if they had started with the original pilot. Besides being a good introduction to the main cast, it was also a much better episode. But the network didn't want to start with the original pilot, so they gave Joss & Co a weekend to write a replacement pilot episode.
Decaff wrote: The combination of hi and lo tech just looked silly - it was like
The idea was that The Aliance and the super rich had access to high technology. The poor either lived in shanty towns on high-tech planets, or could be shipped off to planets that had just been terraformed with nothing but blankets, as they said in the show.
It costs lots of money to ship high tech equipment to other planets, to say nothing of the cost of production. But you ship just a few horses and you can get lots more horses from those. The advantage that horses have over hovercraft is that hovercraft cannot reproduce.
It was an inconsistent and totally implausible view of the future.
I disagree, the view of the future was that technology is not going to solve the social problems of today. In all likelyhood we will still have problems of the haves and the have nots.
Also, the X-Files angle they were doing with River which was just starting to get interesting when the show was canceled.
I'm sorry, I'm the freaking 37th President, and am too busy pulling the strings of GWB and hatching my evil plots to remember the exact name of some pissant TV writer/director/producer (Even if he is one of the very few good thing on TV these days.)
:)
:)
But thanks, I'll be sure to remember his name from now on.
At least I didn't call him Josh Wheaton and ponder if he is related to Wil Wheaton.
Looks like the editors have already corrected my mistake.
First, the swearing is as lame as it was in Farscape.
/. editors cut one sentence from my statement: The Chu shie fook executes at the Fox network were Sha gwa to cancel this show. And I thought that was the sentence that would get this article posted :)
:)
I haven't seen Farscape so I don't know about its swearing. The swearing in Firefly was actually Chinese. Joss's idea was that in the future the only two superpowers that survive are the United States and China, and thus everyone knows both English and Chinese. (But reserve the Chinese for the swearing for the ease of the audience I assume.)
Incidently, the
The cool thing about swearing in Chinese is that they could get away with saying stuff that the censors would otherwise never allow. It is kinda like Kenny on South Park, where you can read between the lines to guess what they said. Except in this case you could potentially look up what they are actually saying. The downside is the actors were not exactly fluent in Chinese and people who are would probably not understand them.
Second, the commercial breaks are very obvious. Looking at most of them, it would take very little to make the transitions a little smoother.
I think Joss did this deliberately. At least in the pilot (the real one that didn't air until the last broadcast) after a shot of the Reavers' ship he wanted a pause for tension. He said they couldn't have 2 seconds of black, because the computers would automatically cut to commercial. How he got by this is he used the darkest gray that wouldn't trigger the cue for commercial.
And one of these days, I will figure out whether Inara or Kaylee is hotter.
I guess that depends on whether you like geek girls. Kaylee is clearly a geek. And she looks hot with engine grease on her face.
I imagine they would sign some sort of "I will not sue you, and my family won't sue you if I die in a horrible accident." kinda contract. But will that really prevent family from trying to sue later?
Then again, I don't think an insurance policy exists that you could buy for this sort of thing. And it wouldn't make sense anyway since the very concept of insurance requires lots of people to buy into the system.
Maybe the people running it go up into space each time as well, that way if there is a horrible accident and the client/s die, they die too and don't have to worry about litigation.
This sort of business gives new meaning to extreme sports do at your own stupid risk activity. Add that to the expense and this is truely the sport of kings.
I'm not so sure. They are at least pointing to different articles.
Here is yesterday's slashdot article
Here is the article it was refering to.
And here is the article that todays slashdot article is refering to.
(Both Articles are at linuxdevices.com but they are different articles.)
Now, the phone in yesterday's article is talking about the E28 manufactured by, well it doesn't say beyond that it's a Chinese company.
This article refers to what looks like a different phone (look at the picture) that is described as the Samsung SCH-i519.
Is Samsung a Chinese company?
The features of the phones look very similar, and I thought this was a dupe at first too, but I think they are refering to different phones, and thus is it really a dupe?
Dollars to doughnuts I get 2 slashdot subscriptions for Xmas. Hope the returns dept. is open on boxing day.
And more importantly, does this mean that I will get the gift of a slashdot subscription?
Only one hand may wield the ruling ring.
And there are 10 Lords-a-Leaping.
Here is where you can buy one lord-a-leaping.
While googling for the lyrics I came across this christian explanation of the Twelve Days of Christmas.
(How novel, a christian explaination of a christmas song.)
Also note, while it seems the song has different origins, the term The Twelve Days of Christmas refers to the 12 days occuring between the Catholic Christmas (December 25) and the Orthodox Christmas (January 6) (I think).
I also came across a site of satires of the twelve days.
Also, maybe I should RTFA, but does the cost of the twelve days of christmas 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.... 12 of each thing respectively, or is it:
OK, I RTFA and it only considered the catalog of the song on the last sing through, which is considerably less that what accounts on singing the enitre song. (Each time you go through the list they add up.)
And does this mean the Answer is really 42 Geese-a-Laying?
What is this slow economy you speak of? The Dow is over 10000 you know. Consumer spending is up too. What's the prob?
Maybe he is refering to unemployment?
You don't even have to be unemployed to be frugal in this economy. A lot of companies right now figure they can treat their employees like crap because of the unemployment rate. Some companies like to pull stuff like lay off half the employees and then make the other half work twice as hard.
Even if you got a job, you gotta be prepaired for stupid stuff like this to happen.
When things are tight, people consider their income a lot less disposable. This means less sales of small consumer goods such as CDs and DVDs. There might be some people out there making a lot of money. But stuff like CD sales depend on the masses making large purchases.
Unless you expect the top 1% to purchase a couple million Britney CDs on their own.
Yeah, and just imagine how tough the Chinese business men will have it when they leave the US and go back home!
How big are the hard dives on these phones?
And can you do a wget websuck?
What if they don't? And more importantly, who's gonna make them?
The Chinese government has done far worse than copyright infringment, and yet they still have most favored nation status.
They can pretty much get away with anything they want short of an act of war.
Hey! I opened up relations with China you stupid hippie!
And China is our most favored nation. Only a hippie liberal commie would be against our most favored nation.
Watch out. Many of the things you mention are coming to america. Just wait and see.
Don't make me go Cambodian on your ass!
In Arabic culture a man's beard has a huge importance and to shave Saddam's beard and display his pictures before and after the shave is one of the biggest forms of humiliation possible in arabic culture.
Saddam isn't exactly known as an orthodox muslim. He's more of a millionaire playboy who writes romance novels. No more martinis for him I imagine.
the man who attacked my country with rockets during the first Gulf war
We gave him some pretty good weapons, but I never heard that he had any ICBMs. When and where exactly in the United States were we attacked?
I say it again, whoever edited that video sequence knew what he was doing. Damn fine entertainment.
I think it was the producers of Girls Gone Wild.
No, it wasn't about WMD, nor can you back up your claim that it ever was supposed to be all about WMD. It's about this.
Actually, the son of my good friend and buddy George HW Bush recently said explicitly that there are no links between Saddam and 911 or al Qaeda.
I just wish he would make up his mind. This is not what he was implying in January. And there was lots of talk about WMD, but he's changed his mind on that too. Now he is going for the humanitarian angle, but lets face it, Saddam was a monster created by the politicians that followed me.
Just goes to show what a poor President the young lad is. You can't be a good President if you don't know how to lie. I was a pretty good lier, but I guess you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
There are posters in this thread who are obviously disappointed that W and the boys captured Saddham. That's sad.
Well, it is sad. We spent a lot of money training and arming that Saddam. He was vicious I'll tell you that. But even with billions of dollars of support he couldn't best Iran. I guess it wasn't that easy, after all, we were arming Iran at the same time, but we gave the best arms and training to Saddam.
Then he had to go and invade Kuwait. Our ambassador told him we didn't care if he used force in a border dispute, but he took the whole country. Even that wouldn't have been a big deal, but Kuwait is a colony of the UK so we just couldn't let him get away with that.
Yes, it is sad when we have to put down one of our own terrorist agents. Still, there's plenty more where that came from.
But I have no idea with what DNA example they compared his.
He had a full physical when he was being trained at CIA Puppet Dictator / Terrorist school.
CIA Terrorists get excellent health care.
Dental too!
If anything, it is the Republicans who have benefitted most from Saddam being in power. The Regan administration sold Hussein conventional, chemical and biological weapons and sat idly by while he mass-murdered people.
Now now now!
You have to remember that Loyal Americans only have a memory of about 2 weeks, and most of that is just what they see on the TeeVee.
Anyone who brings up historical context is an unamerican traitor liberal hippie commie terrorist.
I'm sorry, but you have an appointment with the Office of Homeland Security for some Re-Education.
No one must be allowed to question TWAT.
Except in this case the glass is 95% full, but liberals are focused like a laser beam on the 5% thats empty!
Whats more liberals are hoping beyond hope, that someone,anyone, will tip over the glass!
The problem with this is that Bush is a liberal.
He has wasted our military resources.
He has no understanding of military strategy.
He has no post-invasion plan.
And he is giving all our tax dollars to Bechtel and Halliburton.
Talk about a tax and spend liberal.
So now the leader of a government that has committed countless crimes against humanity has been captured.
I'm sure the Iraqis are relieved.
Now what?
Now we install another puppet dictator that is just as bad as Saddam Hussein. It is what we do.
Anyone who critisizes this is unamerican, a thought criminal, and will be visited by the office of homeland security.
Just to help bring this slightly on topic, it's reported that Saddam used Windows. Figures...
I guess the next front in TWAT will be Microsoft Headquarters.
You can't ignore this blantent connection between Saddam and Bill Gates.
No, you've got to understand, from the liberal Bush-supporter mindset, it is an american soldier's duty to die, regardless of reason or insanity.
Bush's strategy is much like that of Zapp Brannigan. Just send wave after wave of soldiers for them to kill and eventually they will get exhasted from all the killing, and then we will have won.
Also note that it is unamerican to critisize the President, so anyone who thinks this is a poor strategy is a thought criminal and will be visited by the Office of Homeland Security.
We got samples of his DNA when he was going to CIA Terrorist School.
If Pres. Bush got the idea that he needed to support the overthrow of Canada and the installation of a Communist regime there, in order to seal his re-election next year, he'd do it in a heartbeat...
The plans have already been drawn up.
Because the historically ignorant Americans will sit around and believe that their leaders always try to fight for freedom in the world.
You are saying that like it is a bad thing.
Anything older that 2 weeks is ancient history. It doesn't matter. Anyone that thinks American Politicans should be held accountable for their actions is a liberal! Anyone that thinks historical context should be taken into consideration is a terrorist!
Expect a visit from the Office of Homeland Security very soon.
Everyone else out there remember, now that Saddam is captured, we have won TWAT! TWAT is now over! The last of our enemies (besides all the thought criminals who think we should remember past foreign policy decisions) have been destroyed!
(Anyone pointing out that Osama is still at large is also a thought criminal and will soon be visited by the Office of Homeland Security.)
but if you're not a knee-jerk, radical, left-wing person, I'm not referring to you anyway
Good because I'm a conservative that's a foaming at the mouth Bush hater. The invasion went well, but he has no idea what he is going to do next. Iraq is not loyal to Saddam but they hate U.S. Politicians as much they hate Saddam. We have no post-war plan. We have no worst-case-senario plan. And if we leave now the Shiites will take over with an Iranian style Theocracy.
Face it, Bush is a liberal. He is just fumbling around with no idea what he is doing, and spending way too much money.
we're going to americanize iraq now and get heavily discounted oil.
Too bad we've already spent more money on the military venture than all of the oil in Iraq is worth.
This would not have happened if a real conservative like myself was in charge of the Iraq war. That George W Bush is a liberal who spends way too much money. Conservatives fight wars for less!
Oh, Baghdad Bob! How you will be missed!
When it is time for them to die, he will be killed last.
Everyone gets to watch the count if they so choose, amazing! You could get real Democracy with that!
I guess the Office of Homeland Security will have to keep their eye on You!