C3PX

Nikola Tesla - Inventor

Most people have heard of Dr. Nikola Tesla, but from my experience, relatively few know how awesome this guy was.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

The wikipedia entry has a lot of information, and is a fairly long read. So I looked around and found a shorter and much more exciting source that still highlights how awesome he was.

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/tesla.html

Have you ever read about some relatively obscure historical figure and thought, “Wow, how is this guy not way better known than he is?”

Happens to me pretty often, so I thought I’d start a thread to share a few of these guys with you. I hope others will do the same and share their lesser known, but significant historical figures with the rest of us.

Mod Edit: This thread was originally named…

‘Rarely Talked About But Entirely Awesome Historical Figures (was: The Most Excitingest Thread Ever (Will eventually be “Rarely Talked About But Entirely Awesome Historical Figures” thread))’

Yeah, I noticed that. Just renewed last month. I always manage to get mine for about $35, so I am not too worried about it. If I am still playing Xbox a year from now, I have now doubt I will still be able to get it for under $50 despite its going up to $60.

For the record, since it has been brought up twice today now, that thread wasn't intended as a slight against Warb, but as a statement trying to convince him he was being irrational and should not put so much weight on the opinions of others (advice I might extend to you, Fink, as you seem to have taken two of my opinions rather harshly today, and shoudn't). 

Anyway, it disappoints me that that particular thread was perceived as a slight against Warb, as that was not the intention.

TV's Frink said:

C3PX said:

See, things like this are what is really lame. No one said anything about pictures. Comp was talking about all the ridiculous SOS threads, and behold, now we have yet another!

You said plenty about pictures.  But this thread is about paint and/or grass.  And no one is forcing you to read it or post in it.

Well, normally I wouldn't have bothered reading it let alone posting in it, but seeing as how it was made as a slight against me and another member, I felt a minor bit of obligation.

Go back and read my posts, I said nothing about pictures. Unless you are referring to that issue from a few weeks ago which was about out of control pictures in an attempt to continuously derail a particular thread. The only reason I had to say "plenty" about them then rather than just asking nicely once, is because while you behaved reasonably, others didn't. I didn't want to bring that up today. All I did was agree with CompMovieGuy that it is laughable to say the place is free from trollish behavior when just about every thread is a repetitive SOS thread.

I swear pretty much this exact same question was posed a few years ago. 

My answer back then was YES, and still is. My reasoning? That lies in some older thread buried around here somewhere.

See, things like this are what is really lame. No one said anything about pictures. Comp was talking about all the ridiculous SOS threads, and behold, now we have yet another!

Bingowings said:

An artist can create high art with a box of Crayolas, just because you have seen a lot of what you would describe as kids daubings doesn't follow that all wax crayon pictures are just scribbles.

I absolutely agree.

Many of the films edited are arguably not high art to start with.

What is high art anyway?

It's all 'work' (which is the originally meaning of art) no matter what qualities you see in it, even kids pictures are the product of effort.

I never claimed that the films they were editing were ever high art, I just said that they often (or used to, it has been a few years since i have even bothered with FE.org) seem to act as if their edits are high art.

I was never saying that fan edits are not "work" or "effort". I was just saying that, personally, I found the vast majority of them to be a waste of time and effort to obtain. What spawned Fink's offense and the continuation of this conversation was my comment that so many people have gotten into the fan editing thing that it has become a joke, like kids scribbling on pictures and suggesting that they are improving them.

TV's Frink said:

So how the fuck did this thread end up about me?  Oh yeah, CMG called me a troll (nothing new) and you agreed with him.  How did you expect me to react?

Actually, it started because Bingo said,

We enjoy a degree of freedom on here that other forums don't and yet it never really gets bogged down with trollish behaviour because of the levity and good sense of the people that use it.

When I read that bit about not getting bogged down by trolling, I actually laughed out loud without meaning to. I decided not to say anything about it because I was sure it would result in me being accused of having dead insects in my anus, or of being too serious, or spawn some whiny new joke thread (like New Politics). Then Comp piped up and said exactly what I thought, so I decided out of fairness I should chime in my agreement. 

I didn't call you (Fink) a troll. And while you did cease to post pictures in the politics thread when asked, other members decided to turn it into a fight. On a forum that has a real balance of seriousness and levity, that sort of bullshit immature behavior wouldn't happen.

For the record, I like the levity too. I don't want strict rules either. Bingo's picture in response to my post on the last page was one of the most humorous things I have seen in a while, I loved it. But you cannot deny the fact that just about every thread is the same these days, hence Comp's SOS comment. I don't see much of a balance between levity and seriousness. To me it feels very out of balance. I think you guys are considering the fan edits and preservation sections to be the serious side, and the off-topic to be the side with the "levity". Off-Topic itself is very nearly entirely "levity". Which is fine, as has already been admitted by me, that is obviously what the majority wants.

TV's Frink said:

Sure, different strokes for different folks.  But you're basically calling the editors childish, and in my opinion by extension, calling those who like the work (like me) childish.

Just my 005 cents.

But that is still just my opinion, and it still seems weird you'd go through the trouble to being offended by it.

You say I am essentially calling editors and those who like edits childish because of my crayons and art analogy. I still think that analogy is very fitting, especially given the self importance I was used to seeing around FE.org back when I could be bothered with the place. They would act like fan editing was high art, when it is really just kids with toys. Rather than a box of crayolas, they are using Sony Vegas or Womble.

Well, I guess you told us.

TV's Frink said:

CompMovieGuy said:

Same Old Shit

Ok, well it's pretty obvious what your choices are:

1) Put me on ignore
2) Don't read my threads
3) Both

In other words, deal with it.

Relax! He was just saying it is not accurate to claim this place as free from trollish behavior, when trollish behavior is pretty much all this place is about these days. You know his SOS comment is true, so no need to react defensively about it like that.

This was brought up a few weeks ago, and it came to light that you have far more support on your side than the people who feel the way CompMovieGuy and I do.

EDIT: Wow, Comp managed to say essentially the same thing I said, only he did it in one sentence.

CompMovieGuy said:

Bingowings said:

We enjoy a degree of freedom on here that other forums don't and yet it never really gets bogged down with trollish behaviour because of the levity and good sense of the people that use it.

+1 on everything...

But the underlined......there has been an outbreak of such behavior, I try not to partake too much in it (admittedly I do get sucked in sometimes) , but TVF starts alot of SOS threads, and it does get repetitive

Turns out this is a sore subject with the current majority of the off-topic community and an unpopular thing to think, but everyone already knows I wholeheartedly agree with CompMovieGuy.

TV's Frink said:

I'm actually a little offended at your dismissive attitude.

Wow, seriously? I guess you have a right to be. Odd to me though, what floats your boat may not float everyone's, doesn't make sense to feel offended by that, no matter how little.

Maybe they are getting better, I don't know. I gave them a chance for years, constantly hearing people say great things about them, going through the trouble of getting my hands on them, and then being disappointed. Finally at one point I realized there was not a single fan edit (save for DigitalfreakNYC's Blade Runner set, which is now obsolete thanks to the official boxset, and Ridgeshark's Army of Darkness: Primitive Screwhead edition) that I could even stomach ever watching more than once, and even once was too much.

I'd consider getting more now to see if things have changed and they have improved, but I can't really imagine it. All the ones I ever dl'ed and watched were ones that had been met with high praise, and I didn't think much of them. Based on the fact that you, Fink, felt that Adywan's edit was a "vastly different takes on the original that made for a completely new experience" shows that I probably still wouldn't find the edits that you think to be amazing to be anything special. While I found some of the things he could do to be impressive and I enjoyed watching it, I certainly didn't find it to be a "completely new experience". I found it to be exactly what the special edition was (but, sadly, done better than the official one), an old film with new elements and special effects taped and glued onto it in various places. The very idea, had it not been something the original film maker had already decided to do to it, would have been something I would have considered absolutely stupid.

Darth Solo said:

Right, i wrong to defend OCP then, but i dont think i am.

Last edited on August 31, 2010 at 12:34 AM by Darth Solo (Reason: Im not defending him or creditin him....masterady may have the same pain to come ;-)

Have these edit reasons become the forum equivalent for muttering stuff under our breaths?

Yeah, I am curious as to what you meant by that, DS. Sounds like you are suggesting that Adywan, who strictly adheres to the rules, unlike that opportunist weasel OCPmovie, is at risk of getting "shoved under the bus" someday, just like so many of you seemed to think was the case with OCP. OCP may have contributed a few things, but honestly, none of them that good by any means (SW Classic was atrocious, though I will admit his SW documentary, that I currently forget the name of, was pretty cool though). His obvious true talent was in selling the works of others.

This thread seems like a really bad idea, I have a feeling you made it just to bring up the subject of OCP. When he was first banned there were many members having a fit about it. He was, and as far as I know still is, selling edits. At that time the future of fan editing was in question and that was exactly the type of thing we didn't need members of the community doing (and still isn't), just what we wanted was for some selfish git to draw negative attention to it by making a profit, then getting us all shut down.*

There is no "yellow card" for that kind of behavior. He knew damn well he wasn't suppose to be selling edits. And as for not reading the forum rules, when you register you are agreeing to follow those rules, if you don't read them you are still breaking your end of the agreement by not following them. It is like saying that a contract should not be binding, because well, you neglected to read it.

*Fortunately (or not so) so many people got into the whole fan editing thing that it has really proven to be a joke, I can't imagine anyone actually watching one of the edits out there and taking it seriously enough to try to take legal action against it. It basically takes bad movies, and makes them laughably worse by hacking them up, making them make less sense, and filling them with hard cuts. Good stuff. Like a bunch of little kids tearing pages of famous paintings out of books, scribbling all over them with crayon, excitedly passing them off with pride, and pretentiously commenting on how Vincent Van Gogh obviously didn't "get it", but thankfully they were able to fix the problems with their meticulous scribbling skills.

I have never liked the happy ending.

Kind of funny, I bought the DVD box set when it was first released, but I had never actually watched the Final Cut on it until about a month ago. When I first got it I excitedly watched the international cut and all the special features, and I guess I got Blade Runnered out and never got around to sitting down and watching the FC.

Anyway, Blade Runner is a movie I have introduced to a small handful of my braver and more versatile friends, and usually by the time the film was over, they would look at me as if to say, "Why the hell did you just make us watch that!" One of my friends who is big into artsy foreign films exclaimed, "Why did we just watch that?" as the credits were rolling (Brazil has had much the same effect on them, obviously I have some really lame friends). This has pretty much discouraged me from recommending the film to people beyond saying, "Ah yes, I really love that movie. You should see it sometime." Well, recently one of my less brave and not so versatile friends saw it in my collection and asked if we could watch it. I warned him he probably wouldn't like it, but he still really wanted to see it. So we watched the Final Cut together, and he absolutely loved it. Perhaps I had been sharing it with the wrong sort of friends all these years.

Davnes007 said:

C3PX said:

...it does get awfully boring being stuck in her all alone all day. 

Speak for yourself....I like it when that happens. ;)

I guess I am just a firm believer in good things in small doses.

Nanner Split said:

I've started to look at Ron Gilbert as almost George Lucas-esque these days. It's not like he was the only person involved (Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman were just as instrumental to the development as he was), and what few things he's done ever since haven't been that great (do you know anyone who's played Deathspank?). I'm starting to thing that he's just been holding the whole "What IS the real secret of Monkey Island? I'll NEVER TELL " thing over people's heads over the years just to make sure people still care.

Monkey Island 4 wasn't that great (seriously, FUCK Monkey Kombat), but the Tales series was awesome.

I agree with you about Gilbert being Lucas-esque, I played the Deathspank demo, and was overwhelmingly underwhelmed. Its humor was very forced, and none of it was in the least bit funny. Ron's the real secret of monkey island is just a running joke. I know it wasn't Ron Gilbert alone that made the first two games so great, but to me there is still a very distinct difference between the first two and the third one. Personally, I think it would have been great to have had a third game along the same lines as the first two.

Since we are on the topic, anybody else have the Monkey Island 2 Special Edition? When the first one was re-released, I played through it in just a few days. But I have been having a really hard time getting into the second one, even though that has always been my favorite. Maybe I just haven't been in the mood. I remember the voice acting in the first one being fairly decent, but so far in MI2 I have just found it to be annoying and horribly done.

I guess I will have to admit I enjoyed it to a degree, but I still can't help thinking what might have been had Ron Gilbert gone on to make it a short time after MI2 was released. I felt MI3 was in general, a good deal more childish than the first two. It did have some great moments though.

DarkGryphon2048 said:

What to do with my PC Star Wars games? I am considering selling them.

You obviously liked them at some point. Why do they deserve to be tossed out, just because the games that came after them sucked?

There are still few games out there that I loved more than the original Dark Forces. And I had tons of fun with X-Wing, Tie Fighter, Rogue Squadron and Shadows of the Empire, to name a few. I even really enjoyed the Rebel Assault games back when they first came out. More recently, but still a shockingly long time ago, I thought Jedi Outcast was pretty amazing. I even had some fun playing Galactic Battle Grounds, even though it was essentially a total conversion of AOEII.

I played Infernal Machine and absolutely hated it, and was never interested in any of the later IJ games. Guess I am just not a fan of the clunky third person thing.

Well, since you offered... a side of onion rings would be nice. Oh, and maybe some reading material, it does get awfully boring being stuck in her all alone all day. Perhaps some mystery novels or women's fashion magazines? Oooh, and since you'll be out anyway, would it be too much to ask of you to pick up one of those under-the-gravel filters? Kateb's water is looking rather murky these days and I simply just don't have the time to change his water as often as it needs. Hmm, I may need you to front the bill as well... looks like all I have is a fiver... but I'll be going by the ATM later this week and can pay you back then, you don't mind, right?

First off, yay! TheBoost is back!

@Chewtobacco, so what is the fifth audio option? Both you and the fanedit.org page seem to be extremely secretive of what it is.

TheBoost said:

-The chief drops the line "There are five skinjobs" when there are only four, leading to both the craptastic novel-sequals, and theories about Deckard is the replicant he meant. I know there was a deleted scene of another replicant dying, and they just didn't bother to dub that one word to fix the problem.

All I can say is Whassupwitdat!?

Actually, the slip up was the chief saying that there were "six skinjobs", they did bother to dub that line to fix the problem, which is why the he says "five skinjobs" in whatever version it is you watched. Early in the film he clearly tells Deckard that one of the five replicants that escaped was killed before they reached Earth. The craptastic sequel novel (not written by P.K.D.) was about the sixth replicant, .

DarkGryphon2048 said:

Life? Don't talk to me about life! Here I am, brain the size of a planet...

Geez, dude, lighten up! I think that may have been the most depressing and negative post I have ever seen in the Video Games thread. It made Skyjedi posts sound bright and cheery by comparison.

 

I don't know about anyone else but I'm extremely fucking irritated at LucasArts making ANOTHER fucking damn what the fuck Star Wars video game instead of an Indiana Jones game for XBOX 360, PS3 and PC. How about I make a petition for an Indiana Jones game? Yeah sure it'll fall on deaf ears. By the way, it's The Force Unleashed II. If I were rating the game for a site I'd give it an automatic 0/5 or 0/10 score especially for blatant overuse of an IP instead of working on other series.

Where's my Grim Fandgo II and Indiana Jones (current generation)?

Seriously? Another Indiana Jones game? Have any of those even been any good? The last Indy game I played was Fate of Atlantis and I thought it was great, but has anything good with that brand name attached to it been released since?

If you'd give a game a zero out of whatever just on account of it being from a series you think is over used, then I am extremely grateful you don't work for any game sites. The fact is while you and I may not care about them, SW games tend to sell, the first Force Unleashed went over extremely well, so it is not surprising that a sequel is coming out.

As for Grim Fandango II. Eh, please no! Love to see the first one make its way to Xbox arcade with high rez textures, but the first one was a really great game on its own, and a modern addition to it could be nothing more than an awful cash in. Had a sequel to Monkey Island 2 never been made due to Ron Gilbert's departure from LucasGames, no doubt we would still be hankering for Monkey Island 3. Fortunately/unfortunately that game was made, and it taught us a valuable lesson... sometimes things are best off left alone.

As for physical media, I am a fan of it myself, and in a world where limited edition collector's editions are still the norm for major titles, I am not too worried about it going the way of the dodo anytime soon. The nice thing is, for people who would rather just have their games stored on their console or PC's hard drive, that option is there. I have gotten into the habit of buying Xbox arcade games, and it is quite nice being able to sit on the sofa and load them up without need of disc, or to be able to download them and play them on a friend's console while on vacation without the need of dragging my discs with me. So I can definitely see the appeal for having all your games in this manner. But I am still too attached to having my collection displayed on a shelf to be content with that being it. So I can see it from both sides. It is also worthy to note, even though many of us are paranoid, myself included, about what our ownership status of these non-physically purchased games are going to be five or ten years down the road and if we will always be able to get access to them, that they do hold the advantage over physical media in that they don't scratch, can't be stolen, lost, or destroyed. Which is kind of a nice and comforting thought. While all the other games in my collection could be taken away from me by various methods, for the time being, Braid and my other Xbox arcade games will always be waiting there for me to re download, even if my console is somehow lost.

Interesting that you say it seems like it is "cheating" to download games off of Steam rather than purchasing a hard copy. I am really trying to get my head around exactly how that is "cheating" and who or what you would be cheating by doing so... takes sometimes years to find a game? Wow, that has honestly never happened to me. Seems like you have made the purchasing a video games a sport and hobby in and of itself. If there is a game I want, I walk into a store and buy it, or I hit up amazon or ebay. If that turns out to be fruitless, then I turn in desperation to the seedy underbelly of the internehts until I find what I am looking for.  

What does annoy me, however, is that real physical swag is getting to be a rarity in both pre-orders and in collector's editions, and is rapidly being replaced by codes to unlock exclusive items. I for one kind of liked the cheap silly little crap they used to give away with pre-orders.

C4PX

Your mom is a whore monkey.