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lordjedi

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8-Jun-2005
Last activity
9-Apr-2015
Posts
1,640

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Post
#298445
Topic
Windows Vista
Time
Originally posted by: oojason
'Tis 1.8 Intel, with 2gb ram (uupgraded) and 200mb integrated graphics - which 'should' handle Vista Basic easily. For the speed and user friendliness of Vista I shall be going back to previous OS quite soon.

For some reason I did find Vista Premium runs quicker than Basic - though as I couldn't find a permanant (cough) way of upgrading the OS I reverted back to Basic.

Computers, eh?


Can I assume it's a single core 1.8 Intel? Like a Pentium 4? Or is it a Core 2 Duo? Also, I'll assume that your graphics chip isn't an ATI or Nvidia. In that case, you don't really hav 200 mb graphics ram. What you've got is an integrated POS graphics chip that's taking 200 mb of system RAM, leaving you with about 1.8 GB of system RAM. You could probably turn off Aero to get a speed boost.

The other question is, what do you consider poor performance? I've personally never seen bad performance from Vista outside of the initial user login (when it sets up the desktop).
Post
#298444
Topic
Indecision2008 Name Your Canidate
Time
Originally posted by: Darth Chaltab
Originally posted by: ferris209
http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n7/ferris209/Politics/square-large-fredimao.jpg


Quoted for Truth.


That's three baby!

Sean, did you ever think that maybe if the federal government wasn't so huge we wouldn't need such a high taxes? Why, may I ask, do you think we need taxes? This country got along just fine without them before. The only thing they're used for now is wasteful government spending.

Ron Paul doesn't stand a chance.
Post
#298370
Topic
Windows Vista
Time
Originally posted by: oojason
^ I agree mate - I bought a very cheap Toshiba laptop from the US which has Vista Basic on. Rather than upgrade to Premium (about $100/£50) I found a Sidebar that works fine and use 'Visual Task Tips' to provide the 'Aero experience'.

To be honest I'm still tempted to put 2000 (my fave OS from my old P3 laptop) or XP on it and take the Vista off and see how it does. To me Vista is a very memory and processor hog - which is uneccesary as it does nothing special or breathtaking.


What are the specs of the laptop? If it has anything under 2 GB of RAM, then yeah, it's not going to run Vista very well. If you've got integrated video with less than 2 GB of RAM, it's going to be slow. I can say the same thing about OS X though. Those machines all have some kind of accelerated 3D card in them (Nvidia I believe), so you'd never notice any lag. Take that card out, and it's no different from Vista. And oh yeah, OS X does nothing special or breathtaking either with all its "ooh" and "aah" "features".
Post
#297930
Topic
"Lucas can't find home for Star Wars spin-off"
Time
Originally posted by: skyjedi2005
he even ruined the eu by his jealousy of zahn and killing off a character he did not create, the writers wanted to kill off luke so he had them kill mara instead.


The rest of your post is simply a rant, but I thought this needed addressing. Any writer stupid enough to even consider killing off Luke should be taken off all Star Wars projects, period. Luke is the single untouchable character. I believe his name came up for dying in Vector Prime and Lucas pretty much said "Anybody but Luke". Whether or not it's a good idea doesn't matter.

This brings up an interesting point though. The writers keep killing off these great characters to bring "realism" to Star Wars. Since when has Star Wars been about realism? It's a fantasy set in space. I should be able to read it and escape to that galaxy far away and not have to worry with every page if my favorite character is going to die.

I really doubt it had anything to do with the character not being of his creation. He let them kill off Chewy before. Zahn killed Thrawn himself. There's no reason to believe that Mara was killed off for any reason other than they felt the need, again, to eliminate another major character. Something tells me they won't be killing off anymore movie characters, no matter how much they want to.
Post
#297882
Topic
"Lucas can't find home for Star Wars spin-off"
Time
My guess is that they have shopped it to Cartoon Network (why wouldn't they, they showed the Clone Wars), but Cartoon Network is telling them it'll have to go on Adult Swim. Maybe old GL doesn't want it on that late at night. Well, that's just to bad. There's plenty of other anime that airs at that time.

Second, I think Johnny nailed the other part. They've got 40 episodes of 100 done. A regular TV series runs 22 to 23 episodes per season. That puts this cartoon at two seasons of material ready to go already, but they probably want a 5 year commitment (100 episodes) from the network. No network is going to do that, even if a show does look good. You can come in with a 5 year plan, but if they decide to cancel you in the first season or even after a few seasons, you better be able to wrap things up or get ready to send it straight to DVD.

I know of only 3 shows (well, maybe 2) that had a 5 year plan at the beginning and all of them ended up running longer. Babylon 5, which the network made a mess of by constantly playing the "you're cancelled...well, no you're not" game, X-Files, which Fox pushed 3 years beyond what Carter ever intended (and it shows), and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which didn't turn out that bad (there's even a Season 8 comic ). I don't think Buffy actually had a 5 year plan, it just looked that way from the S5 finale. However, none of those shows was greenlit for 5 years at the beginning. They all had to prove themselves and get renewed each year.

I'm almost hoping this does fail to find a network. Then they'll be forced to release it on DVD. I really doubt we'll end up with an LFL network. What would they air? LFL movies and news 24/7? There's only so much of that I can take these days (about once a week is plenty).
Post
#297370
Topic
Indiana Jones IV
Time
Originally posted by: ADigitalMan
Not saying Shorty is supposed to be Indy's son on a genetic level, but he was more of an adoptive son, and Spielberg could have gone a dozen good directions with that. Instead we've now got: "Here's Indy's Kid. Accept it."


Some of us don't see it that way though. I never saw Short Round as anything more than a sidekick. No more, no less. Believing Shia is Indy's son doesn't require that much suspension of disbelief. We're pretty sure Indy and Marion had a relationship of some sort (it's alluded to in one of her lines at the start of Raiders), so there's no reason to believe they couldn't have had a son out of that relationship. Hell, there's no reason a son couldn't have come out of their relationship between Raiders and Last Crusade. Maybe he went off on an adventure of some sort and just disappeared for a while, so she never bothered to tell him about their son. Even in the beginning of Raiders, she didn't seem like someone that wanted him around, so she'd have no reason to tell him.

The point is, shit happens all the time between people and they don't find out things they should until years later. Assuming Lucas isn't writing the script (is he?) we have no reason to believe the explanation will be as simple as Shia: "I'm your son" Indy: "Oh...ok...well, let's go get the bad guys"

Post
#297294
Topic
Pee-wee's Playhouse: The Movie in 2009
Time
Originally posted by: Gaffer Tape
Originally posted by: lordjedi


If I'm not mistaken, the original Pee Wee's playhouse was never meant as a kids show anyway. It somehow got turned into that (I know I watched it as a kid) and then the world freaked out when he was caught in an adult theater.


Well, pretty close at any rate. The CBS Saturday morning version was certainly intended to be a kids' show, or it never would have been put in that time slot to begin with. But that was based off Pee Wee's Playhouse on HBO, which was very much targeted to adults.


Yeah, I was referring to the HBO version. I didn't even know that one existed until the incident at the adult theater. I remember a lot of people saying something like "What did you expect? This is the guy that did the HBO PeeWee's playhouse. It wasn't exactly a kids show!" Everyone else was totally oblivious and only knew about the kids show.
Post
#297284
Topic
George Lucas to host showing of Star Wars "1977" for AFI's 40th anniversary.
Time
Originally posted by: generalfrevious
I'm just fed up with this whole 1977/1997 thing. The 1997+ version is the only one that exists now and will be the one that our descendants will always know to be star wars. The whole email campain will obviously fail.


Maybe your descendants will only know the 1997+ versions, but my son (as long as I have anything to do about it) is only going to see the 1977 version (or at least anything pre 1997). I'm sure that once he's older he'll eventually see the 1997 version, but hopefully by then he'll say the same thing we are "Why did they change that? The original was fine as it is"
Post
#297283
Topic
DOOM (game) and STAR WARS
Time
But that was the problem. You had to have an MSN Zone account. So how many people ended up playing it? Probably not very many compared to the likes of Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament, where all you had to do was load the game and browse for a server (or use GameSpy).

My point was that multiplayer star wars FPS didn't really take off until JK2, when you could just use GameSpy or the in game server browser. You didn't need an MSN Zone account at that point. All you needed to do was login to a server.
Post
#297282
Topic
Potter eclipses Star Wars and Bond
Time
Originally posted by: Crygor64
I greatly respect J.K. Rowling for giving kids around the World something to read. However I hate Harry Potter. I just can't stand it. The books are ok, just not my cup of tea. And like I said before, J.K. is a great writer. But those movies are god awful. I'm talking episode one bad. They literally make me cringe. (I'm sorry Potter fans. I hope I haven't offended you. Just write off my comments if I have.)


Dude, nothing is worse than Jar Jar Binks. Nothing. Even Jobby (sp?) wasn't that bad.
Post
#297281
Topic
Why the hell did the lazy Emperor even think Luke would join the dark side and become his new apprentice?!
Time
Originally posted by: Gaffer Tape
CO, do you really think we're supposed to believe that the dark side is more powerful? I mean, Yoda point-blank refuted that when Luke asked him in ESB. Unless of course, you just mean a quick power-up, rather than an overall higher threshhold of power...


According to Lucas, it is, at least in the short term. Don't believe me? Listen to the commentary on AOTC.

That one single comment by Lucas pisses me off to no end to this day. That stupid mofo took Yoda's remark about the Dark Side and f'ed it all over the place.
Post
#297207
Topic
DOOM (game) and STAR WARS
Time
I think the biggest problem with the Dark Forces "series" was that they waited so long to add multiplayer. The excuse was always "well, it wouldn't make sense to have Jedi fighting each other or to have Han fighting Leia". Um, who cares if it makes sense, it's a game. When they finally did go multiplayer, it was JK2 which was essentially just Jedi vs Sith. I don't believe they ever made Stormtroopers or anyone else playable characters. I know there were mods for Quake 3 that had stormtroopers, chewie, etc, etc. LucasArts just seemed to be stuck in this mentality of trying to make all the games fit into continuity. That is until Masters of Teris Kasi, which they had to wedge continuity into.
Post
#297138
Topic
Potter eclipses Star Wars and Bond
Time
Originally posted by: GoodMusician
As far as Lord of the Rings... I've always heard how well adapted it was by fans...

Which fans would that be? The first movie was the best adaptation. The second two (TTT and ROTK) were poor at best. Even listening to the commentary, Jackson says, in the first one, that they decided to keep things like the book most of the time because the fans would get mad and it wouldn't work any other way. When it comes to the second two, he plainly states that he decided to change a lot and then by the third they had to change even more because they changed things in the second one. Then, sometime during the third one, he states that if they had been able to release the movies a few months apart instead of one year apart, they would have stayed even more faithful to the books since it would be fresh in everyones mind. In fact, I think he even said that if it had been three movies straight to DVD it would have pretty much been the books on DVD.

I have seen an excellent fan edit of the movies that brings them as close as possible to the books and it does so remarkably well. No comic relief from Gimli. Very little Aragorn doubting himself. And just so much more than the original cuts had to offer.

Most true book fans would tell you that the first movie was done well, but the second two were done poorly. Even the first movie had many unnecessary changes, but they didn't change the overall story. The changes in the second two had major changes to characters that really were unnecessary.

Originally posted by: GoodMusician
Tolkein's novel is a great wealth of information of another kind. The symbolism you say is lost is replaced with another... similar to what I was saying with the music not explicitly stating something but showing it another way.



Personally, I've never read the novels, but the whole 'christian undertone' argument is kind of moot.

I saw "Narnia" and it is like the exact opposite. The whole time, I was stuck comparing it to the Bible. The whole story is like if you told the new testament but changed the nouns from 'Jesus' to 'Aslan' or from the two Mary's to the two girls.

I was stuck comparing it to the Bible and I couldn't see past that and see the film for what it is. For that, I think it greatly suffered if my eyes.

It may have been a good story and a moral one and what have you, but I personally could not see past the christian underpinnings and for me, that hindered the experience. It didn't go its own way or illustrate anything so dramatically different than the Bible. It didn't stand out as being as unique as the Bible; just a knock off copy.


The Christian undertone in Tolkien's work is there, but it requires a closer look than Lewis's does. In LOTR, the Wizards are Angels. Saruman is really just a lieutenant to Morgoth who is essentially Satan (fallen angel). Even the Balrog's are just corrupted Wizards. Most of this isn't in the novels or the movie though. It's in the appendix. It's not a great leap to get to it, it just requires some knowledge of Tolkien and the Bible.

Lewis's works are much more obvious. "Two daughts of Eve and two sons of Adam". If you know even a smidgeon of the Bible, it doesn't get more obvious than that. But it was suppose to be obvious. Lewis was a convert to Catholicism and he was essentially writing a Bible story for children. I didn't get it when I read it as a kid. It still doesn't hurt the story for me today.

Post
#297137
Topic
DOOM (game) and STAR WARS
Time
Originally posted by: generalfrevious
That's a pretty striking coincidence. Another one I might suggest between doom and SW is about the erasure of history in both franchises. Is this right for me to say that the original Doom doesn't exist?


Doesn't exist where? I'm pretty sure I've got it on a CD or a floppy at home. Or are you referring to the script that was posted? I'd say that's more of a rough draft than the final version.
Post
#297117
Topic
Blu-ray Disc or HD-DVD?
Time
Originally posted by: Windexed
When I hear people talk about DVD sales declining, the only factor I can possibly fathom having anything to do with it is that the DVD market is relatively saturated. By this point in time, virtually EVERY movie has had a DVD release (or two, or three, or four), and people have had the opportunity to pick them up over the years. DVD's also decrease in price relatively quick at the major retailers. Just look at Best Buy's and CC's circulars. Movies that have only been on DVD for 6 months are routinely $11.99 or something. I'm not saying people aren't still buying DVDs, there just isn't as much motivation as there was a few years ago so overall sales are declining, and new releases don't balance it out.


I believe the bits numbers are based on the number of DVDs sold and not the dollar amount being sold. The uptake of HD is in fact a lot lower than the studios expected, mostly because they're stupid and didn't think a format war would last this long. Apparently none of them remember beta vs vhs.
Post
#297083
Topic
Indiana Jones IV
Time
Originally posted by: ADigitalMan
Time-tested characters like Bond and all the superheroes not withstanding, we've only seen three new franchises in the past decade with really great characters. Harry Potter, The Matrix, and Pirates of the Carribean. While the latter two both spawned flawed sequels, the originals had characters and situations that most of the population just couldn't get enough of. And of course, HP was based on written material that was already immensely popular. I can't make any other "new" franchise come to mind. Pathetic. But who needs character when you can make movies based on 80s toys, right?


Well, aside from Star Wars and Indiana Jones, I can't think of any lasting franchises. I suppose you could include Back to the Future and Ghostbusters in there, but that's still only one extra franchise.

So what was the point?
Post
#297075
Topic
DOOM (game) and STAR WARS
Time
Originally posted by: skyjedi2005
i know doom was pretty much ripped off by game star wars : dark forces. a game that became later on part of the jedi knight game series.

The engines were actually completely different. Dark Forces was superior to Doom's single player, but it had no multiplayer aspect, which was kind of a downer at LAN parties. Unfortunately, LucasArts kept trying to reinvent the wheel, so every game after Dark Forces fell further and further behind the rest of the genre. That is until Jedi Knight 2 and Jedi Academy when they finally decided to license iD's engine.

Originally posted by: skyjedi2005
and doom ripped off castle wolfenstein 3-D, lol not much originalty going around then.


Seeing as how they were written by the same company (iD Software) that's not a very big surprise. And again, Wolf 3D was nothing more than Castle Wolfenstein from the Apple IIe written for PCs and with a 3D look. But again, Wolf 3D was not true 3D as evidenced by the character "sprites" and the levels (elevators and no staircases).

Originally posted by: skyjedi2005
Even now tons of game come out as nothing but halo clones.


I think you've got that backwards my friend. Halo, and 2 and 3, are nothing but clones of Doom, Doom2, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, etc, etc, etc. For some reason, people on consoles (specifically the XBox) think first person shooters and online play didn't exist before Halo. Well, they're wrong on both counts. The PC world had both for years before Halo came out.
Post
#297074
Topic
Blu-ray Disc or HD-DVD?
Time
Originally posted by: CO
I read that HD-DVD is making a huge push to get Warner Brothers to release their movies in HD-DVD only, as they may be forking over the same amount they did to Paramount.

I smell a comeback by HD-DVD in 2007!


According to the bits, that's a bit of old news. It apparently happened during the same week they paid Paramount and DreamWorks to go HD-DVD exclusive, but Warner rejected the offer.

With more people not sure of which format to get and sales of DVDs on the decline as people wait out the war, I smell two very dead hi-def formats by this time next year. It's a shame really, because a lot of people are ready to adopt a new format, but not when there's two competing ones out there.