C3PX

Necroposting! Necroposting!

My friend picked one up for me while he was in Japan. Seems they are insanely cheap over there, and can be found all over the place, at least from what he was telling me. Haven't been able to test it out because I don't have a power adapter for it, so it may not even function, though externally it is in really great shape.

It is kind of cool to have, but wouldn't really be with blowing a small fortune to get one off of ebay.

I've no doubt you will be disappointed.

I still think I am enjoying the direction this season is taking. I at least see the potential for a far more interesting explaination of things than BSG's "GOD DID IT!" catch all ending.

Perhaps one of the finest works of literature written by the hand of man.

This party is pretty dull...

Irregardless of what this humdinger fellow says, I still say irregardless is a word. Xhonzi would agree with me, no doubt.

It isn't really necroposting if you are attempting to bring the thread back to life. Now, if you are just answering someone's question/comment from five years ago, then it is really annoying.

I can just imagine things like this happening,

C3PX (back in 2005): So, Microsoft just announced Windows Vista! Windows XP was pretty good. I bet this Vista thing will be awesome and really show those Apple users a thing or two. PC users FTW! I'll definitely be trying it out when it is released.

C3PX (a few days later back in 2005): Wow, no comments? No one?

Fink (five years later in 2010): Dude, what are you talking about? Vista sucks!

Uh, who is paying?

BarBar Jinkx said:

OFFS!!!! Berti Ahern (the ex prime minister of Ireland who was in court due to misappropriated funds going into his bank account during his Minister for finance days) won €10,000 on a pub lotto scratch card!!! IS THERE NO JUSTICE IN THIS FUNCKED UP WORLD?

No, not really.

Survival of the fitest. Only the good die young. Nice guys finish last. Etc. There is no such thing as justice, if you want to get a head in life, screwing people over may just be the best policy. Stab your enemies in the back and your friends in the front... and so on. 

Of course, if you really do hold on to some good old fashioned honesty, integrity, and chivalry; you never know what kind of cool people you might impress.

"Sorry I'm late everybody! Just noticed my invitation in a pile of unread mail earlier today! Lucky I found it, or you'd all have been robbed of the delights of my company." Came a shout from the doorway. It was a roguishly good looking tall man wearing glasses, wrinkled khakis, a button up shirt, messy hair and an over all disheveled but relaxed look. Many of the guests glanced up in annoyance at the man's interruption, then irritatedly went back about their business.

"Hmmm, is that Vanilla Cavendish I smell?"

Whoa, tried to watch a bit of Halo: Legends a bit ago and found it entirely unwatchable. Must just be my inability to appreciate anime.

xhonzi said:

Likewise, the Spartan design in what I've seen of Reach puts me off in almost the same way.  Spartans are supposed to be 8 or 9 feet tall and it makes them look a little thin... The Reach Spartans totally looked to have that bulked up Gears of War look to me.

Yeah, from Master Chief in the game and the Spartans in the novel Halo: The Fall of Reach (the only of the books I have read), I got the impression Spartans are suppose to be extremely utilitarian, the ultimate boy scouts. Instead, Halo Reach's Spartans seem the opposite of utilitarian, more like frat boys than boy scouts. 

I was watching the Reach ViDoc "Into the Breach" and it had lots of people gushing over Halo CE and how its some kind of highwater mark that they're constantly trying to get back to.  I think the games have only gotten better since CE, but I seem to be in a minority.

Well, I think the significance of Halo:CE was the ground it covered regarding gameplay. It truly was a high water mark for the FPS genre, especially in regards to the console FPS (prior to Halo, the words console and FPS in the same sentence where synonyms for "worthless"). From a story telling standpoint, Halo:CE really has nothing going for it. It didn't have an original idea in it, it was extremely linear, and it lacked any character depth whatsoever.

But one thing that rings true for games and not for many other forms of art, is that developers must always strive to surpass them. Dark Forces was very impressive for its time, great fun, and had advantages over its contemporary FPS games, advantages that other games borrowed and improved on. No one today would say, "Hey, what we really need to do is make a game that plays like Dark Forces!", it is too archaic today. Halo:CE is the same way, it may have been the first to tread certain ground, but in the time since its release that ground has been trampled on by just about every other FPS in some way or another, and some have far surpassed it.  

quoting Hitchcock, and wikipedia:

"[We] have a name in the studio, and we call it the 'MacGuffin.' It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers."

Interviewed in 1966 by François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock illustrated the term "MacGuffin" with this story:^[2]

It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says, "What's that package up there in the baggage rack?" And the other answers, "Oh that's a McGuffin." The first one asks, "What's a McGuffin?" "Well," the other man says, "It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands." The first man says, "But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands," and the other one answers "Well, then that's no McGuffin!" So you see, a McGuffin is nothing at all.

Hitchcock related this anecdote in a television interview for Richard Schickel's documentary The Men Who Made the Movies. Hitchcock's verbal delivery made it clear that the second man has thought up the MacGuffin explanation as a roundabout method of telling the first man to mind his own business. According to author Ken Mogg, screenwriter Angus MacPhail, a friend of Hitchcock's, may have originally coined the term.^[3]

 

Leonardo said:

To summarize, I think a McGuffin should have a relevance on the plot, no matter how big a relevance, if we see the mcguffin or if we don't, if we understand what it is and how it works. I don't think it is something easy to define. For instance, I think the Dmc Delorean in the BTTF Trilogy, while being one of the protagonists, is also a McGuffin, because we have a vague idea of how it works, yet the stories center around the vehicle, and happen because of it. The plans in Star Wars could also be defined as McGuffin I think, for the same reasons.

So, to summarize, words DON'T actually have meaning, The Boost. Or at least very few people here are in agreement with you that they do.

Chewtobacca said:

I entirely agree.  This kind of abuse of language infuriates me.  It is slowly robbing the English language of its precision and elegance.  I seem to remember C.S. Lewis making a similar case in respect of the word gentleman.  

This is all the fault of descriptivist modern grammarians with no respect for the traditions of the English language who are too eager to invoke the all-excusing "languages change over time" argument to accommodate all manner of sloppy uneducated speech.  The day will soon come when have to use whole clauses and phrases to explain simple concepts for which we once had useful efficient words.

Oh man! You are my new best friend!

I swear, Fink just follows me around looking for typos. Everytime I make a typo there is Fink, right behind me, quoting my typos to ensure they are forever preserved.

EDIT:

As for Xhonzi's post... actually, irregardless of the joking in my previous post, I still have to agree with TheBoost. The term McGuffin was coined to describe something very specific, and things like the Death Star or the Ark of the Covenant, being HUGE plot points, are not it. Even if you want to say, "Star Was is NOT about the Death Star plans" or Raiders is more about the people trying to raid the ark than the actual artifact" those things are still the focal point of the entire story.

Bob Dylan possesses far too much awesomeness for one human being. He is so awesome, the word awesome does not do him justice.

Yeah, TheBoost is right, the Death Star plans are definitely not a McGuffin.

A good example of a McGuffin would be the ark of the covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, or the time traveling device in Primer, or the holy grail in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Oh yeah, I remember that dumb queefer with the YAGE bullshit thing. What a sad person... but man, we had a lot of fun on her/his dime. Didn't even know what the hell a YAGE was until that thread. Definitely one of those things I could have gone through life never knowing.

Man, that thread brings back memories. I really miss WESHALLPRESERVE, that kid was really cool.

TV's Frink said:

You know, I really only came to OT.com to keep track of ESB:R.  And now I'm searching google for things like "fish asshole" and "penis tree."  Anyway...

Oh man! That was such a funny post.

Uh, so yeah, how about that wood, eh?

Yeah, I'd recommend trying out Firefox. It is free, so you've got nothing to loose, and I am fairly certain you won't go back. You can even import your bookmarks from IE. In the end if it doesn't float your boat, it is easy enough to uninstall the thing.

One thing it has over IE is the ability to install plug-ins, which can be of all sorts of use, or not, depending on what you do online. If that last sentence doesn't make any sense to you, a more simple way to put it would be to say it very customizable, not in appearance (might be, I'm not sure) but in functionality. There are all sorts of third party add-ons you can get for it.

Claaaap... claaaap... claaaap... claaap... claap... clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap!

Bravo!

That was a lovely little poem about wood.

TV's Frink said:

EyeShotFirst said:

If it offends any one, they have a sick mind anyway.

Guilty as charged...please remove the pic as it's certainly questionable.

Damn you nature! Damn you for being so perverse!

Is that porno music I hear? Oh my...

Glad I could be of help.

Dude, IE is so uncool. It rapes children, and kills puppies. If you use it, you suck.

Firefox is Mozilla. Firefox is sweet. All the cool kids use it. There is no reason not to use it! Plane and simple! It can only do everything! It can even give head!

Is that the information you were looking for VFP?