Jay

xhonzi said:

Just one more: The Polar Bears.  The answer to the mystery of the polar bears was pretty logical... but it wasn't very magical or exciting.  The question was phrased, "Holy COW!  What kind of tropical island has POLAR BEARS ON IT???!?  The answer must be incredible...  The answer turned out to be: "Some scientists brought them to the island." 

I think this is an indicator that they changed their minds and adjusted plenty of major plot points along the way.

The comic book Walt was reading had polar bears in it, and it was pretty strongly implied that Walt had some type of capability to bring his thoughts/dreams/nightmares into reality. I thought for sure that Walt had summoned the polar bears somehow. The Others took him for a reason, and other than mentioning that Walt was more than they bargained for, it was never brought up again. I believe they had big plans for Walt that they abandoned for some reason...maybe because this was all taking place over several months in the show and the child actor playing Walt was growing like a weed during the show's run.

If Walt's meaning in all this isn't cleared up in season 6, I'll consider that a pretty big hole.

Looking at the source, the signature text has broken HTML tags in it. My guess is that the signature text is over the size limit and the software is truncating the signature content upon saving instead of throwing an error. I'll take a look.

Sojourn said:

Something specific they've said is that there were some moments in Season 1 that, after the show is over, will make it clear that they knew where they were going with the story (I think the Adam and Eve bodies are supposed to be one of them). I guess we won't really know until the show is over. 

Again, this isn't proof. Any mystery they created in season 1 can be explained any way they see fit. That's the beauty of TV writing :)

BSG fell victim to the same thing, but the writers were open about the fact that they didn't have a set plan in mind and preferred to let show develop organically. Not everyone was happy with the conclusion, of course. I thought it was brilliantly open and agnostic myself.

Moth3r said:

There have been several occasions where users have accidentally double/triple posted recently; whenever I come across this I tend to remove the duplicate posts. Perhaps this is what happened.

Certainly possible. If someone has their settings configured to receive notifications with every reply, then those posts could go missing before they have a chance to view them.

I have a solution in mind to eliminate the double posting issue as well. It'll be in the next update.

This is my primary problem with the show. Or should I say fans of the show?

Everyone assumes they've been building up to something amazing. I think the actuality is that they've been winging it the entire time and making up the solutions to these "mysteries" as they go. Did the writers know what would be in the hatch prior to writing season 2? I highly doubt it. Did they know the origins of the smoke monster? No. (I think the very mechanical sounds of the smoke monster used in the beginning, which have been toned down to some extent in later seasons, demonstrate their change in direction with its origins.)

I've had diehard fans tell me that there are so many things that seem inconsequential when first viewed, but are then explained later, and these things are proof that there is some grand plan they've had in mind from the beginning. However, any good TV writer can take something inconsequential from an earlier episode and turn it into a meaningful plot point with some decent writing.

Again, it's not really a problem I have with the show because it's not realistic to expect TV writers to have an entire 6-season arc planned out from the beginning, and I think they've done a great job overall in keeping interest high and tying current events into past occurrences. Those expecting some grand resolution will most likely be disappointed though.

I'll still be watching with an open mind. They might drop a metaphorical atom bomb and blow our minds, who knows.

I'd never seen the show before, but decided to marathon the whole thing beginning around Thanksgiving because Netflix has all 5 seasons available for streaming in HD (via my PS3).

Loved the pilot and really enjoyed season 1, liked season 2, was lukewarm about season 3, thought season 4 was rather weak, and found that the 5th season brought the show back on course.

Overall, pretty cool show. I'm looking forward to season 6.

Okay, there are 3 separate problems going on here based on the error messages I'm seeing.

ady, I think the initial issue you reported has been fixed. Please let me know if you experience any more errors that match the one you provided in the first post.

satanika, I think I fixed your issue. When I was querying the database for the first unread post, I was scanning all posts instead of ignoring saved draft posts like I should've been doing, so the unread post link was sometimes sending you to a draft post. Since they aren't visible to the public, it threw an error. That shouldn't happen from now on.

doubleofive, your links are throwing errors because those posts don't exist. I have no idea why you'd receive e-mail updates for posts that don't exist. Perhaps the posts were deleted before you had a chance to view them. Regardless, there should be an error message to handle such circumstances, so I'll add that. Can you tell me the date that those e-mails were sent to you?

ChainsawAsh said:

I assumed that ferris was talking about a MacBook Pro (which is what I have, and the $3,200 comment fits with that), for which his statement is pretty much accurate.  You can get a more-or-less equivalent HP laptop for about half to two-thirds the cost of the comparable MacBook or MacBook Pro.

People tend to play it a bit fast and loose with the whole "more or less equivalent" thing when comparing Apple laptops to the rest of the industry. A laptop from HP's Envy line, which is pretty much a ripoff of Apple's Macbook Pro with its slim profile, aluminum case, clickable trackpad, and LED screen, will cost just as much as a similarly configured MacBook Pro.

Sure, you could go with HP's "performance" line for something more powerful and less pretty, but that's a completely different product with a different market. There is no comparison because Apple doesn't do ugly, cheap, and fast.

When Apple products are compared to truly equivalent PC products--including both hardware specs and form factor--the Apple premium, if there is one, is insignificant.

The next time either of you see this error, please copy and paste the URL in your browser's address bar here (I mean the URL of the page throwing the error exactly as it appears in your address bar). I think it might be an issue with the address being constructed improperly in the unread post script.

So is this still a problem or not?

ferris209 said:

I don't have anything against Macs except their outrageous pricing. You can get the equivalent of a Mac Pro for $1200 in a PC while Apple want $3200 for it. That's the only thing I really have against Apple, but I do love their stuff.

I see this argument a lot and have to assume it comes from not actually knowing what hardware is in a Mac Pro and how much it would cost to configure a PC that is truly identical part-for-part. The dual Nehalem quad core processors in the Mac Pro cost at least $800 by themselves. I'm not sure where you get your parts, but if you can build the equivalent of a current Mac Pro for $1200, you're one hell of a bargain hunter.

The only place Macs consistently lag behind their PC counterparts is in graphics performance, which even I'll admit is annoying. Paying a premium for a graphics card that's at least a generation behind is ridiculous.

Despite this one issue, I've been using Macs for about 5 years now. Best decision I ever made.

I'll take a look. I have to admit that I'm stumped by this one.

Chewtobacca said:

Baronlando said:

Let's not paint ol' Ridley with the same brush!

Same brush, less paint!  :-)  Those Gladiator blu-rays were a disgrace. 

Word is that Scott is so busy finishing up Robin Hood that he had nothing to do with the Gladiator Blu-ray. Blade Runner is a reference release in pretty much every way and I doubt he'd put his stamp of approval on Gladiator in its current state.

I'm working on settings that will allow users to edit or delete posts within a certain amount of time, but then only allow appending changes to posts after that time period has passed. This should provide enough time for users to catch accidental double posts and delete them.

A lighter skin will make an appearance soon.

Fang Zei said:

How many signatures did the old petition get?

Over 70,000. The first 10,000 or so came very quickly because lots of major sites were promoting the petition actively.

How much time passed between the time you read the PM and the time you viewed the forum index?

Missed that one somehow. I added an error message to catch that. Thanks.

Darksaber said:

Ok where do we sign up for the petition to get this forum back to a wider screen layout???

I'm working on it. I'll have it up right after I finish the "ban all douchebags from the internet" petition. Sorry for the delay.

The only suggestion I have is to stick to standard banner ad sizes. The banners I made back in 2003, while good, didn't get the wide adoption they could've because they were non-standard sizes. If a site owner can't fit a banner in their current layout, they won't use it.

Here are some guidelines to follow:

http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/1421/1443/1452

Trading Places is the only movie I make it a point to watch this time of year.

I might pick up Miracle on 34th Street, which I haven't seen in years, but really enjoy.

Edit: Reading your posts reminded me about Gremlins, Scrooged, and Die Hard. I need to grab those too.

I'm more a fan of non-traditional Christmas movies.

Thanks, I dropped the URL from the page title.

ferris209 said:

If any of you are using Firefox, you can use an add-on called "NoSquint", you can enlarge the whole page or just the text. Works great! I only have about one inch of border on both sides of my page. with a 120% increase of the entire page.

Firefox has its own zoom.

View > Zoom > uncheck "Zoom Text Only"

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/New-Forum-Layout/topic/11031/