C3PX

Basically, they did it the same way it was GL did it on the Star Wars movies. She isn't really there is any sort of hologram, they use a green screen setup and add her into the video. Not really much more hightech than your standard green screen weather maps the TV stations have been using for years. Just a silly gimmick by CNN to awe people. You have to admit, it is more entertaining than the standard split screen discussions that are normally used for communication between two people in different locations.

Janskeet said:

I don't believe in capitalism, or at least capitalism without strong government regulation. What people have fought and struggled for here most people are handed in European countries. I wish I would've grown up in a socialist country. I think I would've done a lot better if I didn't grow up in a home where my parents got divorced because my dad was greedy for money and my mom was working two jobs, always stressed out struggling to make ends meet.

 

 Wow, I am sorry you feel that way. You situation sucks, and I sympathize with you. Put I too grew up in a capitalist society and those things didn't happen to me, because my dad was not a jerk and he worked really hard to take care of his family. That is not something you can really blame on capitalism. Stuff like that happens in social democracies, full out socialist societies, and even under communism. People in European countries suffer and struggle too.

It is really sad to hear you say you think you would have done better in socialist society. I am sorry you have this way of thinking. But man, you are really young as far as I can tell, and you already mentioned being a lot smarter than the fat people at your mom's work. Seriously man, go to university, go to a damn good on, take as many school loans and federal help as you need to do it and do it. I made it through a very good school even though it cost more than I could ever dream of affording. By keeping my grades up and holding on to grants and scholarships along with federal aid, I made it through. I'll still be paying for it several years to come, but I have a good degree under my belt. Determination can get you far my friend. Don't blame your society for holding you back. In America, you have much more freedom to do those things than in socialist countries. That is why everyone comes here from all over the world for school, rather than go to places like China. Come on man, beat this defeatist attitude and go out there and kick some ass! Grab the world by the balls and yell, screw you! I am going to be the best I can be no matter what!

"Did you know that according to the right-wing talking heads today 'This is still a center right country'?"

"At least it may educate some of the smarter people out there."

Please. You can't seem to accept the fact that there are many people in this country who do not share in your ideologies and values. Anybody who has different ideologies seem to be disregarded by your type (please, correct me if I am wrong, not trying to assume here, just calling it how I see it) as stupid unenlightened sheep who only hold these views because they are always listening to the "talking heads", or alternatively they are just ignorant uneducated hicks who don't really know any better or because they are indoctrinated in various forms of intolerance, religion being the biggest form.

I don't think, "they voted for him!" is a very valid argument that the American people are anywhere near as far left as Obama is. I think it is pretty clear a lot of the people who voted for Obama have no idea who the hell he is or what he really stands for. This girl right here is living proof of that, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P36x8rTb3jI&feature=related. Okay, so maybe she is just one silly little girl, and most people are not quite that ignorant. But I don't think so. I am sure they are not THAT naive, but I am still not sure they quite get what he stands for (other than the obvious of course, just about every one realizes beyond a shadow of a doubt that he stands for hope and change). The guy spent the last several months saying very little. Anybody who doesn't stop to take a look at his track doesn't really know what this guy is about. I personally know several people who voted for him, but really don't have a clue. I mean, you still have people who say things like, "I know he is pretty far to the left, but I really think he will govern from the somewhere closer to the center. Even if you look at the exit polls, there are a lot of people who consider themselves conservatives who voted for him. Colin Powell endorsed the guy, up until now Powell would have been considered someone on the far right. The bottom line is, whether you want to admit it or not, many people did not vote for Obama because of his policies or his track record. They voted for him based on this great icon of a harbinger of change that he has been marketed as over the last several months. They voted for him because he was not George W. Bush. They voted for him because he was not a Republican.

I am not saying the country is still a center right country, I have no idea where this country is as a whole. But I do know that there are still enough people who do not think like you, all sheepery and talking head indoctrination aside. Their life experience and personal values lead them to be that way, not voices emitting from their TVs or radios belonging to people they don't even know, telling them what to think, these so called right-wing propagandists. You delude yourself into thinking that the only way someone can come to think differently than you is if they are being feed lies and lead astray by some malevolent external force. There is quite a nasty cultural war going on in America, just because many people from one side of it elected someone from the other side as president, doesn't mean the war is over and their core values will be dropped in favor of the other sides. There is still a wide gap in ideologies in this country, and this election does absolutely nothing to prove it is getting any smaller, or that many have finally reached enlightenment and shifted to the left. Try not to delude yourself. If you do you are just as naive as Miss OMG!!1 all my worries have reached their end! from the youtube video I linked to.

AxiaEuxine said:

I love all the fan edits that this site does, but man you guys posts are exhuasting to read....do you like anything?

Still trying to figure out why you are here if all you do is complain about everyone elses posts. Must be some odd form of masochism. Not suggesting your not welcome here, just wondering why you keep coming back when you dislike it so much.

(EDIT: You can skip the following paragraph, rcb summed it up perfectly in one sentence.)

We like plenty of things. Don't tell me you never come home from work and complain to your wife about colleages? Here we are a peer group that share interests. We are annoyed about things like the lack of a OOT DVD release, we can talk about it here with others who feel the same way. Same goes for the new Star Trek movie, plenty of fans are skeptical, we like to share that skepticism and hear what others think. In a world full of plenty of real problems, sometimes it is nice to worry about menial and pointless things, in the end we know they don't really matter.

MeBeJedi said:

BTW, I might point out that the BACKSPACE key makes you go back to the LEFT after you've made a mistake while going RIGHT. Double-LOL!

Oops, too late. Somebody already used that one.

MeBeJedi said:

But apparently, pointing out anti-constitutional actions of the president is seen as worse than the actual anti-constitution actions, themselves. Everyone close your eyes and let Bush do whatever he wants.....even if it puts the government into a recession.

I like the above quote very much. The monkeys added to the humor, but I don't think we need the same picture quoted in every other post, so I have omitted it with no small amount of reluctance. Man, it is going to suck when we can't blame Bush for everything anymore. Bush and his damn sub prime mortgages! err... wait a minute...

negative1 said:

also there was a tv series 'beyond westworld' that came out,

and i've never seen it..(would love to find a copy of it though)...

Huh, I had no idea there was a TV show. That would be very interesting to see.

The first use of 3D CGI in a feature film was Westworld's sequel, Futureworld, in 1976.

I have actually never seen Futureworld, but I have heard about it, was Michael Crichton involved with that at all?

 

crichton was way ahead of his time..

 

are there any authors out there that i should look into?

i don't want just techno-thrillers (clancy), or miliatary stuff,

i want someone that writes about cutting edge or current technology..

Not that I know of. Michael Crichton was really one of a kind. The guy was amazing, very educated and incredibly intelligent to boot (no, education and intelligence don't always go hand in hand). He knew how to do research, and how to tell an engaging story, which always made his stories feel really authentic, even when you were dealing with scientific impossibilities, you could almost fool yourself into thinking it could really happen. Some people may consider Clancy to be something really special, but other than a few of his early works, I have never really gotten into his books. Crichton was, is, and I suspect always will be unmatched in the kinds of books he wrote.

Hmm, I am having a hard time finding any information on this, but it seems his next book was scheduled for release on December of 2008. I am glad there is another book of his on the way, though I'd much rather he still be with us. Since it was scheduled for release next month, I assume it is already finished and in the process of being printed. One last contribution to his fans.

Dude, from what I understand, you live in America? So how did you see this?...

Killing off the Bond franchise? Dude, did you see OHMSS, Never Say Never Again, A View to a Kill, A License to Kill, or Die Another Day? My goodness, if the franchise can survive those films, nothing will ever kill off the Bond franchise. Though as much as I don't feel Craig really works that great as Bond, Casino Royale breathed new life into the franchise and brought it back closer to its source material. Since I don't live in the UK, I have not seen this yet and can't give my judgment of whether or not it continues that trend.

Gaffer Tape said:

This is all my fault, isn't it?

Gaffer! You son of a ****!!! What have you done!

I may be joking around, but I am actually nearly in tears. I hadn't even heard he had cancer. I wouldn't have dreamed that this guys last speech had been given and last novel had been written. I haven't read any of his stuff for a long time, but I feel like dropping by the book store and picking up a copy of Next sometime today, still hadn't gotten around to reading that one yet. This guy is a writer who's books are worth reading again and again. Oh yeah, and Westworld is one of the coolest things ever put on film.

Perhaps it was something he posted that has since been deleted. Sometimes when I check the site early in the morning before work, there are sometimes ridiculous threads that vanish a few hours later.

Michael Crichton dies at 66.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aAPpt4NQ5gTk&refer=muse

Man, this sucks. I really loved this man. Big surprise to me, I didn't even know he was sick. He was one of the greatest and most thought provoking writters of our time.

Mielr said:

I know most of us here either bought them in '06 or refused to buy them, but I think there are still a few people here who want the GOUT discs but haven't bought them yet.

For anyone that hasn't bought them yet, you're still better off buying them seperately, they'd be cheaper and they won't be the crappy slimline cases. You might not be able to find them in stores anymore, but you can still get them brand new from places like amazon.

I was one of the ones who refused to buy the GOUT. I finally got a set a few weeks ago used for three bucks a piece. Even at $9 for the whole set, I feel like I probably could have found a better use for my money. For anyone who still doesn't have them, their best deal would be to find them at some used DVD store.

Whoooooohoooooooo! Guy Fawkes night!!!

I hope not everyone in America thinks that rhyme is from the movie.

Hunter6 said:

Why was this game about a nobody character like starkiller and not about Vader?

A bigger Question is why were The Prequels wrote as lead ups to Events that were talked about in OT?

Yeah, I actually enjoyed the game well enough, but the story had be irked. How many small children whose midiclorines are off the scale does the galaxy have? Vader discovers a ridiculously powerful small child, so he pulls a Jedi and takes him from his family and trains him. He grows up to do Vader's dirty work, then Vader kills him, and resurrects him, and things get even more convoluted, and he starts the Rebellion, then beats Vader to a pulp stopping just short of killing him, then he gets beat to a pulp and killed by the Emporer.

I liked the underlying story, to me it was better than the prequels. The birth of the Rebellion could have been something really cool. But now we have this character who was more powerful than the choosen one, who was able to use advanced force powers from a young age, and able to beat Vader, sparing his life only out of compasion. Eliminating the new and exagerated Starkiller and his ragtag gang and replacing them with Vader would have helped alot and at least made the ridiculously powerful force powers feel a little more grounded. If someone so absurdy powerful in the force existed, kind of makes Vader seem like a stooge not to have killed him immediately before taking the risk to train him to be a Sith Lord (who always betray their masters) and get beaten within an inch of his life, which is what ends up happening. It is really hard to believe this thing is official canon.

skyjedi2005 said:

Actually once Sylar turned out to be the third Petrelli Brother i stopped watching the show.  That was too much like a George Lucas-ism thing to do, totally jumped the shark.

Sylar: Noah never told you the truth about your uncle... Claire, I am your uncle!

Having The Cheerleader go bad, and Sylar is really her uncle and all that bullshit was stupid.

Hiro's still a good guy right?  This season and Season 2 sucked.   Good lord i'll just watch my dvd's of season 1 again.  Why Tim Kring needed to drag this show out and become a soup opera in season 2  and 3 when he could have told the storyline in 2 full seasons is beyond me.  I guess money is the only reason. 

Well, since it comes on a channel you can pick up just by jamming a coat hanger into the back of your TV, I guess he isn't getting too much of your money. If you still go out and buy the DVDs even after not liking it though, that is something else entirely.

The best new writer/director of sci fi tv sold out in the same way JJ Abrams and Joss Whedon have done previously.  Nowadays  that might as well be called pulling a Lucas or a Spielberg.

What did Joss Whedon sell out on? The only show of his I have ever watched was Firefly, but I was really impressed with his handling of that. He got delt a bad hand by Fox and lost his show, and he really fought and turned around and made a movie for the fans. A lot better than leaving it hanging forever. Though I heard after Serenity came out, that he could have got Firefly back on the air, but didn't because he felt like moving on. That sucks, I think he should have handed it over to someone else, or went ahead and continued it himself. That series still deserves a lot more than it got. Even if he decided to continue it now, and pick up right after the last episode left off, I'd be thrilled beyond belief. 

And what did J.J. sell out on? I guess you are talking about Star Trek: The New Motion Picture (alternatively titled, Star Trek: 90210). J.J. tends to abandon his shows after just a few seasons, and leave them to someone else. He abandoned Alias for Lost, from which Alias suffered greatly. He abandoned Lost after just the first season, after which Lost took a dive in some aspects and got a lot better in many other aspects.

I think the two guys at the helm of Lost are very wise though, as they cared about their show enough to go to the studio and say that they wanted a definite end date to their show, so they could plan out the rest of the series and end it on a high note. So many shows, like X-Files, start out great and by the time they end nobody watched them anymore. It goes from. "Sorry, not tonight. A new episode of X-Files is on and I don't want to miss it" to "X-Files series finally? My goodness! Seriously, that show really hasn't ended yet?"

I am not so sure Kring sold out. The very nature of the show was a little ridiculous and over the top to begin with. I think he is running out of ideas more than he is selling out. I don't think Sylar should have been recycled at all. Hiro should have killed him at the end of season one, and season two should have played more on the evil man in the little girl's dreams who was supposedly worse than Sylar, and actually made him a villian worse than Sylar instead of what they did do.

Season one was onto something, it wasn't the greatest show in the world, but it was new and original in a completely borrowed and unoriginal sort of way. Some of the characters you could really grow fond of, and others you wished they'd just hurry up and kill off. The first season had some mystery and suspense to it. While I wasn't a huge fan, I found it entertaining and enjoyable. Season two felt like a bit of a ripoff, even less original that season one, the story was all over the place, but to give it the benefit of the doubt, blame the writers strike. Season three however has no excuse. It picks up where season two left off, but leaves many season two strings left dangling. Gets a little more original perhaps, but at the same time a whole lot more ridiculous, predictable, and down right retarded.

LOL, this MeBeJedi guy is a tool. I was going to respond to a few things, but by the time he suggested that paying taxes is a choice and attacked Palin over the clothes the McCain campaign bought for her and the fact that she shops at a thrift store, I decided why even bother.

Thanks Hotrod, pretty much what I expected.

Knightmessenger, I get your point about this rerelease of the GOUT setting a precedent, but I still think it was done as a matter of convenience in order to release two six disc trilogies.

Restoring them to some extent that would even be watchable on blu-ray and HD to the equivalent that the GOUT is watchable on a widescreen TV, would not be such a convenience I am afraid. This guy does what he wants, and what the fans think or even his own staff thinks seems to be generally disregarded. This is the guy who, even after four different DVD releases of his masterpieces that have been altered to fit his original vision, has still yet to bother to fix any of the the glaring errors they were originally shipped with. Wouldn't even be surprised if the eventually blu-ray release intentionally ends up with all those same errors, just so they can defend their position that they were in fact "deliberate creative decisions".

Another pessimistic thought I can't help but shake, is that maybe he has figured that since DVD is now already on its way to becoming an obsolete format, he doesn't see releasing them again on it as too big of a deal. I can imagine when it comes to a request for a blu-ray release he will respond with something along the lines of,
[GL voice]I released them on DVD in the highest quality that they still exist in and people complained about how badly they looked on their TV sets. I could put the same thing on a blu-ray, but I can't even imagine how those would look on HD. People would be like, 'What are you doing to us, these look awful! Just restore them in HD already'. What they wouldn't understand is that I can't. This is it. Those films don't exist in any higher quality than what you've already got.[/GL voice].

Brace yourself Ferris, the backlash to that one is going to be big.

Just playing along with Jay's comment. All in good fun. Calm down.

Ziz said:

C3PX said:

Hmm, I find it interesting that everyone with C-3PO as their avatar are liberals.

 

This from a guy whose avatar is a Cylon - a race of single-minded robots that want to control everything, that tried to destroy the free thinking people who value life, freedom and prosperity.

And yours is a droid with his erect dork hanging out. I was just making the observation. Not trying to offend. It seemed like with the old forum software many of the liberals had the same C-3PO avatar. 

As for Chewy who said the late night talk shows are the biggest loosers, you must not remember the Clinton years. They got by just fine back then.

Exactly, and as you correct the mistake, you move to the right. :)

sean wookie said:

People try to pass laws based on religious morals and hurting others freedoms. I fucking need freedom from religion.

I really respect real conservatives but it just seems like they are an endangered species

I just hope better times are ahead.

Dude, where the hell do you live that religous people give you so much hassle that you feel you are not free from religion? People try to protect their own interests, and politicians try to please their bases. I don't think that is really a violation of the constitution or lack of freedom from religion. Though I agree, in some cases religious people try to outstep their boundaries, or feel like everything about the country should be religious. But obviously, religious people (no matter what religion they are) deserve freedom of speech and freedom to practice their religion.

But yeah, real conservatives do feel like an endangered species these days. I think the fact is more that the Repubican party has abandoned its conservative base, leaving them without a voice or organization. The fact that the Republican party big wigs went along with the damn 700 billion dollar bailout plan, not to mention choosing McCain as their candidate, proves they don't give a damn about the conservatives or libritarians anymore.

Hmm, I find it interesting that everyone with C-3PO as their avatar are liberals.

Oh my goodness that is sad. Poor girl.