This is a thought that's been kicking around in my head ever since I first saw the infamous Phantom re-edit.
Lucas has all these neat digital toys. And we know he's not loathe to reediting his own work. Why not release a G-rated movie, AND an R-, or at least PG13-rated version? Go nuts, George, put in 90 minutes or Jar Jar footage, more Eewoks than you can shake a stick at. And in true G.I. Joe fashion, have people use blasters till they're JUST close enough to break into a wholesome, bloodless fistfight. As long as the REST of us get to see Palpatine popping hapless victim's heads like grapes and Queen Amidala gettin her freak on!
"I don't recall you beating your chest when this happened to a TEST MODEL that never left the lab of the subcontractor that made the batteries for Apple. "
Wow, you remember every post from back in 1995? Someone's been taking their Ginseng! -grin-
Basically, once they can realistically sell them for what the 22" is going for now (currently it costs $5,000 just to manufacture one) it will replace the 22". Drop the price of the 15" to about $500 or, heaven forbid, even lower, and fill in the gap with a 17.4" and a 20" for $1200 and $2000, respectively.
However, I have a feeling LEPs will be out before Apple accomplishes all this... it sure would be nice to cut all those prices in half.:)
I can see it now, someone builds a computer with a full AI to control their machine out of old car parts.
I can see it now, too. 7 1/2 minutes before the deadline, the Slashdot team has a working artificially intelligent fire extinguishing hydrogen powered hovercraft, with AI, running on Linux.
Just as victory seems imminent, one of the team members runs back off into the junkyard screaming something about a beowolf cluster, and the team is disqualified because they can't find him for 3 hours while he frantically tunnels through dead washing machines and microwaves looking for Pentium mobos.
But the real highlight comes halfway through the show. What did the team bring for lunch?
I agree. I've always been a fan of Boston Acoustics, (though I have Klipsch myself) and I've come to realize through lots of in-store listening, and now in-home listening to the system i set up for my dad, that Cambridge Soundworks are nearly identical to BA in construction, looks, and sound, for less money. If only it weren't living hell to shop in a Cambridge Soundworks.
We are having one of those building-wide antenna systems installed here, but they are MUCHO DINERO. And I doubt your company would spring for it if, as you say, the reception is pretty godo everywhere else in the building.
you can pick up a little antenna ata cell phone store or I'm sure Radio Shack, I've seen them for under $50. They're meant for cars but they really would work anywhere: The one I've used is a small car-phone like antenna, about 8" long, magnetic base, and a wire about 10' long you plug into the back of the phone. You can leave the antenna in the office and plug into it when youre there. It works very, very well in the car, even in long tunnels where I couldn't anything previously.
As I sat through this awful, awful excuse for psychological torture, I particularly took note of (of course) how wrong they got so many things as aoopsed to the movie, and how many things they left out that didnt NEED to be left out (i.e. it would have been simple and cheap to add X to this scene, and it would have improved the scene greatly)
Particularly i was noticing how few halflings, gnomes, elves and dwarves there were, no really interesting spells, wants, cloaks etc. Then it dawned on me... could it be possible the studio was worried about being sued by, or at the very least pissing off, the producers of Lord of the Rings, and that's why they didn't (or couldn't) really show off so many of the very Tolkein-ish aspects of the D&D mythos?
//The movie felt exactly as I though D&D should feel. Like a handful of adolescents spending an afternoon roleplaying.//
Yes, and unfortunately the acting was as good as my friends and I can muster on a Sunday afternoon, in between mouthfulls of Cheetos. I really expected better acting... No, let me rephrase that... the acting was SO bad, and every word of dialogue SO cliche, I was dying to walk out 10 minutes into it.
It was almost funny seeing Jeremy Irons act everyone near him off the screen... nay, he acted them into oblivion, really. Almost funny if it didnt feel like passing by a car wreck. I think Thora Biirch used up all her acting ability in American beauty and she was just scraping the bottom of the barrell and flinging what she found against the screen.
Bad acting! Icky, horrible, terrible acting Bad! Bad!
eew.
>Maybe I was watching different previews, but I didn't know a lot of that stuff coming in to watch the movie.
Agreed. However there are now at least 2 new commercials airing that give away a bit more of the story. I suppose they figure the people who really didnt want to know anything going in have already seen it and now they're trying to get everyone else to go by any means necessary. Film companies really don't give a hoot about giving away a movie, by the time you are sitting in it and you realize you know the ending and this sucks, you've already paid your $8. Its an awful thing to do to a filmmaker, but that's business.
I just got finished uninstalling Netscape 6 after 5 hours of crashes, improperly displayed web pages, slow slow SLOW load times (on a PowerMac G4), and a poorly designed, kludgy interface that takes up far too much screen real estate (even on my 21" display). The Netscape window has more buttons, widgets, links and arrows than a Rube Goldberg nightmare. Common fonts such as Times don't display correctly, all my AOL Instant Messenger preferences were hosed, I couldnt customize my bookmarks list and the preferences window ALONE had more bugs than I've found in Windows ME and Apple OS X combined. I'm sticking with IE.
Its true, Apple has the highest-quality LCDs out there. Theyre bright, crisp, and a pleasure to look at. It sounded in your post that you were knocking them, or at least that you were reluctant, simply because they were Apple.
Alien user-interface designs, insane business practices and an extra helping of hubris aside, Apple has always made superior hardware, bar none. (Okay, so there was that exploding Powerbook back in 1997 but hey, we ALL make a mistake from time to time).
Truth is, Apple is the first place I'd look for a display because I know it will last, and if it does't, that they will back it up. (And if it DOES break, maybe you'll get a phone call from Steve-O himself!)
You can use the new 15" and 22" displays on any graphics card with a DVI-out connector with a DVI-ADC adapter, availible now for about $15.
The last generation, which you should still have no trouble getting your hands on refurbished or even new, use DVI.
And if you wait another month or two, it is HIGHLY rumored Apple finally has a 17" or 18" display in the pipeline to fill the gaping chasm in their product line between 15-22". It will have a new case design and should be a beauty. Best of all it should be priced compeditively, about $1500.
>The new PowerPC OS rewritten from scratch was promised in 1994.
...And the flying car was promised by the year 2000. Does that mean if it comes out 10 years from now no one will care?
Just because SOMEthing was promised in 94 doesnt mean this is 1994 technology. This is a brand new and very advanced OS. Knocking something entirely different is a waste of time.
First of all, software is very different from other media (movies, muxic recordings) in that with a music CD or DVD you're buying the item and you are only bound by copyright laws. With software, you're not actually buying it, you're LICENSING it so you can be treated any way the company wants to treat you once you open that paper envelope. We're talking about copying movies so let's stick to that.
Secondly, a lot of people are throwing around the "fair use law". This is archaic and was vague to begin with. The laws we should be all jerking off over regard the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 and the 1984 Sony Betamax case.
The AHRA sated that ANY "non commercial" use of a music recording (and by extension a video or DVD) is legal. This includes space shifting, backing up, hell, even making 100 copies and GIVING them to all your friends. (If any of you has Akira on DVD I'll be your friend:)
The Sony betamax case set the precident that if there is ANY sort of legal use for a technology, no matter how many people are using it for illegal activities, that technology is, in itself, legal.
So go ahead and copy the Matrix, as if everyone on the planet didnt already have it (I have two, cant find anyone I know with a DVD player to give it to!). Compress it down and shove it on a floppy, have fun.
Why is there a sixth square? Because you can't make a grid with five! I would hardly call some PowerPoint slide stuck in a presentation, or an image map on Apple's web site for that matter, the definitive word on the future of Apple's multimillion dollar marketing strategy. It's just cleaner design, which is what Apple's all about in the first place. Maybe we should all write apple and suggest they change it to a pentagram?
In my opinion the best villians are ones who aern't doing it for the heck of evilness, but doing it because they're misguided but steadfast in their beleifs... You feel sorry for them, but know you have to defeat them.
Finally! What most people are forgetting is that the X-Man is an old comic book. It first appeared in 1973, and the mutant's undeserved persecution alluded to the civil rights movement. I always appreciated the story for that fact and felt that Senator Kelly's character in the movie wasn't nearly developed enough to live up to the original focus of the story.
However, now that the civil rights movement is on the back burner in this country the story wisely decided to refocus its subcontext, moving away from the political problems a bit and treating the mutants as real people with emotions and problems (as well as making them younger) rather than just archetypical superhero figures/tools for advancing an agenda. I really did feel like they were "updating" the story for today and the problems kids are having (no matter how tired you are of hearing "post-Columbine" and other buzzwords it IS still an issue).
So, believe it or not, Katz's mentioning nerds, goths & geeks being persecuted in schools today wasn't that far off!
Actually one actor sprang IMMEDIATELY to mind for Hiro. I dont know his name but he had a small part at the beginning of Fifth Element, on the ill-fated ship that discovered the dark star or whatever you'd like to call it. I also recall him in a Chemical Brothers video, and several TV spots peppered all over English TV for the 2 months I lived there in 1997. Anyone know who I'm talking about? I THINK he may be a model. Slim, dark skinned, very almond-shaped eyes. Gee, seems like ALL I saw on TV that summer was Radiohead videos, Chemical Brothers videos, and topless darts... very strange country, that is.
>There are probably actual news-worthy/nerd-worthy >events (that matter). Too bad slashdot.org -> >slashdot.net -> slashdot.com doesn't realize it. Yeah, some kid in Nevada just got Linux to run on his blender. Big fucking news. I think a lil change of pace is nice, dont you like? I DONT CARE IF YOU LIKE!!!!
If the ever increasing size of software is scary, the alternative is even more frightening, at least to me. Look at Adobe InDesign, their new desktop publishing program, or Quark killer, or doorstop, call it what you will.
Fully installed I believe its in the 100-200 MB range. But the core application is 1.3 MB.
Thats right, you could fir it on a floppy. Everything else is plugins and extensions. How well could this possibly work? When 98% of your program is extensions piled upon more extensions? Thats why MacOS isnt all it could be. Its OS9 on top of OS8 on top of OS7 etc. Its the software equivalent of Gibson's retrofitted bridge Heaven and it has to come crashing down sooner or later.
IDE hard drives practically grow on trees these days, why would anyone complain about a 200 MB office suite?
>What they really need is better marketing. Youre right, where has Apple been? I have seen nary an ad or billboard for Apple computer in years! Boy, they really dropped the ball, marketing-wise.
Those big-ass black-as-the-abyss IBM mainframes arent my style. Yes, they scream POWER (actually, they kind of whisper it in one of those room-shaking baritones) and get my testosterone flowing and make me pause and contemplate just what exactly man hath wraught. But if they were giving them away at the dollar store I don't even think I'd want one. Yeah, I'm one of those slightly-off-center artistic designer guys. I don't want a computer that broods and looms over me like some monstrosity, I havea boss to do that. I want a machine I can work WITH, not for. The new Macs are curvy and friendly and say "hey, pardner! Come on over and lets make some art!" I think I like the Graphite G4s because they exude a perfect balance of monochromatic ass-kicking name-taking power and curvy, friendly, feng-shui-y comfortableness I can work with. In fact I just bought a new desk (black and grey, by cooincidence) for my office because when I DO get a G4 I know I'll never be able to hide it under the desk I have now, I'm gonna want it right on top to show it off.
true. Steve Case coming to my house for dinner still wouldnt have justified paying that much fora Mac about as powerful as a Brother word processor. BUT... Bruce Wayne had one!
...And lets not forget Spawn. Im forced to get it on DVD however, not having cable yet. But now that Mediaone is in my town (along with cable modem access) I don't think I'll be able to resist.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a thought that's been kicking around in my head ever since I first saw the infamous Phantom re-edit.
Lucas has all these neat digital toys. And we know he's not loathe to reediting his own work. Why not release a G-rated movie, AND an R-, or at least PG13-rated version? Go nuts, George, put in 90 minutes or Jar Jar footage, more Eewoks than you can shake a stick at. And in true G.I. Joe fashion, have people use blasters till they're JUST close enough to break into a wholesome, bloodless fistfight. As long as the REST of us get to see Palpatine popping hapless victim's heads like grapes and Queen Amidala gettin her freak on!
I like him on the Naked Chef. :)
Wow, you remember every post from back in 1995? Someone's been taking their Ginseng! -grin-
The link is here.
Basically, once they can realistically sell them for what the 22" is going for now (currently it costs $5,000 just to manufacture one) it will replace the 22". Drop the price of the 15" to about $500 or, heaven forbid, even lower, and fill in the gap with a 17.4" and a 20" for $1200 and $2000, respectively.
However, I have a feeling LEPs will be out before Apple accomplishes all this... it sure would be nice to cut all those prices in half. :)
I can see it now, someone builds a computer with a full AI to control their machine out of old car parts.
I can see it now, too. 7 1/2 minutes before the deadline, the Slashdot team has a working artificially intelligent fire extinguishing hydrogen powered hovercraft, with AI, running on Linux.
Just as victory seems imminent, one of the team members runs back off into the junkyard screaming something about a beowolf cluster, and the team is disqualified because they can't find him for 3 hours while he frantically tunnels through dead washing machines and microwaves looking for Pentium mobos.
But the real highlight comes halfway through the show. What did the team bring for lunch?
Why, hot grits, of course.
I agree. I've always been a fan of Boston Acoustics, (though I have Klipsch myself) and I've come to realize through lots of in-store listening, and now in-home listening to the system i set up for my dad, that Cambridge Soundworks are nearly identical to BA in construction, looks, and sound, for less money. If only it weren't living hell to shop in a Cambridge Soundworks.
We are having one of those building-wide antenna systems installed here, but they are MUCHO DINERO. And I doubt your company would spring for it if, as you say, the reception is pretty godo everywhere else in the building.
you can pick up a little antenna ata cell phone store or I'm sure Radio Shack, I've seen them for under $50. They're meant for cars but they really would work anywhere: The one I've used is a small car-phone like antenna, about 8" long, magnetic base, and a wire about 10' long you plug into the back of the phone. You can leave the antenna in the office and plug into it when youre there. It works very, very well in the car, even in long tunnels where I couldn't anything previously.
Particularly i was noticing how few halflings, gnomes, elves and dwarves there were, no really interesting spells, wants, cloaks etc. Then it dawned on me... could it be possible the studio was worried about being sued by, or at the very least pissing off, the producers of Lord of the Rings, and that's why they didn't (or couldn't) really show off so many of the very Tolkein-ish aspects of the D&D mythos?
//The movie felt exactly as I though D&D should feel. Like a handful of adolescents spending an afternoon roleplaying.//
Yes, and unfortunately the acting was as good as my friends and I can muster on a Sunday afternoon, in between mouthfulls of Cheetos. I really expected better acting... No, let me rephrase that... the acting was SO bad, and every word of dialogue SO cliche, I was dying to walk out 10 minutes into it.
It was almost funny seeing Jeremy Irons act everyone near him off the screen... nay, he acted them into oblivion, really. Almost funny if it didnt feel like passing by a car wreck. I think Thora Biirch used up all her acting ability in American beauty and she was just scraping the bottom of the barrell and flinging what she found against the screen.
Bad acting! Icky, horrible, terrible acting Bad! Bad!
eew.
Agreed. However there are now at least 2 new commercials airing that give away a bit more of the story. I suppose they figure the people who really didnt want to know anything going in have already seen it and now they're trying to get everyone else to go by any means necessary. Film companies really don't give a hoot about giving away a movie, by the time you are sitting in it and you realize you know the ending and this sucks, you've already paid your $8. Its an awful thing to do to a filmmaker, but that's business.
I just got finished uninstalling Netscape 6 after 5 hours of crashes, improperly displayed web pages, slow slow SLOW load times (on a PowerMac G4), and a poorly designed, kludgy interface that takes up far too much screen real estate (even on my 21" display). The Netscape window has more buttons, widgets, links and arrows than a Rube Goldberg nightmare. Common fonts such as Times don't display correctly, all my AOL Instant Messenger preferences were hosed, I couldnt customize my bookmarks list and the preferences window ALONE had more bugs than I've found in Windows ME and Apple OS X combined. I'm sticking with IE.
Its true, Apple has the highest-quality LCDs out there. Theyre bright, crisp, and a pleasure to look at. It sounded in your post that you were knocking them, or at least that you were reluctant, simply because they were Apple.
Alien user-interface designs, insane business practices and an extra helping of hubris aside, Apple has always made superior hardware, bar none. (Okay, so there was that exploding Powerbook back in 1997 but hey, we ALL make a mistake from time to time).
Truth is, Apple is the first place I'd look for a display because I know it will last, and if it does't, that they will back it up. (And if it DOES break, maybe you'll get a phone call from Steve-O himself!)
You can use the new 15" and 22" displays on any graphics card with a DVI-out connector with a DVI-ADC adapter, availible now for about $15.
The last generation, which you should still have no trouble getting your hands on refurbished or even new, use DVI.
And if you wait another month or two, it is HIGHLY rumored Apple finally has a 17" or 18" display in the pipeline to fill the gaping chasm in their product line between 15-22". It will have a new case design and should be a beauty. Best of all it should be priced compeditively, about $1500.
--Xel
========
>The new PowerPC OS rewritten from scratch was promised in 1994.
...And the flying car was promised by the year 2000. Does that mean if it comes out 10 years from now no one will care?
Just because SOMEthing was promised in 94 doesnt mean this is 1994 technology. This is a brand new and very advanced OS. Knocking something entirely different is a waste of time.
First of all, software is very different from other media (movies, muxic recordings) in that with a music CD or DVD you're buying the item and you are only bound by copyright laws. With software, you're not actually buying it, you're LICENSING it so you can be treated any way the company wants to treat you once you open that paper envelope. We're talking about copying movies so let's stick to that.
Secondly, a lot of people are throwing around the "fair use law". This is archaic and was vague to begin with. The laws we should be all jerking off over regard the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 and the 1984 Sony Betamax case.
The AHRA sated that ANY "non commercial" use of a music recording (and by extension a video or DVD) is legal. This includes space shifting, backing up, hell, even making 100 copies and GIVING them to all your friends. (If any of you has Akira on DVD I'll be your friend :)
The Sony betamax case set the precident that if there is ANY sort of legal use for a technology, no matter how many people are using it for illegal activities, that technology is, in itself, legal.
So go ahead and copy the Matrix, as if everyone on the planet didnt already have it (I have two, cant find anyone I know with a DVD player to give it to!). Compress it down and shove it on a floppy, have fun.
In the words of Shaft... "It's all good".
 
-----
You're looking at it all wrong.
Why is there a sixth square? Because you can't make a grid with five! I would hardly call some PowerPoint slide stuck in a presentation, or an image map on Apple's web site for that matter, the definitive word on the future of Apple's multimillion dollar marketing strategy. It's just cleaner design, which is what Apple's all about in the first place. Maybe we should all write apple and suggest they change it to a pentagram?
---
-Xel
Like Katz!!
---
However, now that the civil rights movement is on the back burner in this country the story wisely decided to refocus its subcontext, moving away from the political problems a bit and treating the mutants as real people with emotions and problems (as well as making them younger) rather than just archetypical superhero figures/tools for advancing an agenda. I really did feel like they were "updating" the story for today and the problems kids are having (no matter how tired you are of hearing "post-Columbine" and other buzzwords it IS still an issue).
So, believe it or not, Katz's mentioning nerds, goths & geeks being persecuted in schools today wasn't that far off!
-----
--Xel
Actually one actor sprang IMMEDIATELY to mind for Hiro. I dont know his name but he had a small part at the beginning of Fifth Element, on the ill-fated ship that discovered the dark star or whatever you'd like to call it. I also recall him in a Chemical Brothers video, and several TV spots peppered all over English TV for the 2 months I lived there in 1997. Anyone know who I'm talking about? I THINK he may be a model. Slim, dark skinned, very almond-shaped eyes. Gee, seems like ALL I saw on TV that summer was Radiohead videos, Chemical Brothers videos, and topless darts... very strange country, that is.
>There are probably actual news-worthy/nerd-worthy >events (that matter). Too bad slashdot.org -> >slashdot.net -> slashdot.com doesn't realize it. Yeah, some kid in Nevada just got Linux to run on his blender. Big fucking news. I think a lil change of pace is nice, dont you like? I DONT CARE IF YOU LIKE!!!!
If the ever increasing size of software is scary, the alternative is even more frightening, at least to me. Look at Adobe InDesign, their new desktop publishing program, or Quark killer, or doorstop, call it what you will.
Fully installed I believe its in the 100-200 MB range. But the core application is 1.3 MB.
Thats right, you could fir it on a floppy. Everything else is plugins and extensions. How well could this possibly work? When 98% of your program is extensions piled upon more extensions? Thats why MacOS isnt all it could be. Its OS9 on top of OS8 on top of OS7 etc. Its the software equivalent of Gibson's retrofitted bridge Heaven and it has to come crashing down sooner or later.
IDE hard drives practically grow on trees these days, why would anyone complain about a 200 MB office suite?
>What they really need is better marketing. Youre right, where has Apple been? I have seen nary an ad or billboard for Apple computer in years! Boy, they really dropped the ball, marketing-wise.
No, the FULL headline would read:
ENTIRE HUMAN RACE TURNS GEEK
Slashdot traffic increases by 15,000%.
Those big-ass black-as-the-abyss IBM mainframes arent my style. Yes, they scream POWER (actually, they kind of whisper it in one of those room-shaking baritones) and get my testosterone flowing and make me pause and contemplate just what exactly man hath wraught. But if they were giving them away at the dollar store I don't even think I'd want one. Yeah, I'm one of those slightly-off-center artistic designer guys. I don't want a computer that broods and looms over me like some monstrosity, I havea boss to do that. I want a machine I can work WITH, not for. The new Macs are curvy and friendly and say "hey, pardner! Come on over and lets make some art!"
I think I like the Graphite G4s because they exude a perfect balance of monochromatic ass-kicking name-taking power and curvy, friendly, feng-shui-y comfortableness I can work with. In fact I just bought a new desk (black and grey, by cooincidence) for my office because when I DO get a G4 I know I'll never be able to hide it under the desk I have now, I'm gonna want it right on top to show it off.
true. Steve Case coming to my house for dinner still wouldnt have justified paying that much fora Mac about as powerful as a Brother word processor. BUT... Bruce Wayne had one!
...And lets not forget Spawn. Im forced to get it on DVD however, not having cable yet. But now that Mediaone is in my town (along with cable modem access) I don't think I'll be able to resist.
Hey, anyone remember when HBO showed movies?
====