lordjedi

Tiptup said:

lordjedi said:

Tiptup said:

That if the world were a better place . . . we might care a little more? :)

But who says we don't?  Just because we don't talk about it here, doesn't mean we don't care.  There's plenty of things I care about that I never discuss here.

Well, you yourself said you didn't even bother reading about the attacks until a secondary headline came along. Perhaps if we each did our small part to raise awareness and proper thought about events like these we'd be doing a better good. :)

Right.  I didn't read about it, but that doesn't mean I didn't care about it.  Why should I waste my time reading about something that I can already guess about?  I heard about a terrorist attack on Mumbai.  Should I go read about it or just assume it's the same terrorists as usual?  Personally, since it's in that region, I'll assume it's the usual.  And it turns out it was.  No point in wasting my time reading that some terrorists were targeting Americans.  Same old same old.  To me, it's nothing new and only serves to continually reinforce the point.  That point is that we weren't being attacked because of our President and his policies.  We were being attacked because of our beliefs.

I would've been shocked if it had been some westerners attacking Muslims.  That would've made me read even more about it.  As it was, it's nothing new.

It's not that I don't care about the people that were attacked.  I absolutely care about them.  What I don't care to hear is the reasoning for attacking them (based on where they were from).  I don't give a shit what reason some damn terrorist gives for attacking these people.  I care about the response and what happened to the people that got attacked.  The response wasn't reported much.  Just the dead and wounded numbers.  I can either continually get pissed every time it happens and go on a rant and rave (kinda like right now) about how the assholes need to be hunted down and killed or I can just not talk about it.  I prefer the later.

Tiptup said:

lordjedi said:

Other than that, it's yet another terrorist attack.  What more can be said?

That if the world were a better place . . . we might care a little more? :)

But who says we don't?  Just because we don't talk about it here, doesn't mean we don't care.  There's plenty of things I care about that I never discuss here.

If the world were a better place, terrorists assholes like that wouldn't exist.

C3PX said:

I mean, who really cared about the recent terrorist attacks in India?

Yeah, but what was there really to say?  I didn't even bother reading about it until I heard on the news "Mumbai Terrorists speaks out!".  My initial reaction was "why should I care what that murdering asshole has to say?"  The only thing I found remotely interesting about the whole thing is that they were targeting Americans and "westerners" and ended up killing a lot of Indians.  That and one of them said toward the end that he didn't want to die and didn't realize it was suppose to be a suicide mission.

Other than that, it's yet another terrorist attack.  What more can be said?

Stick with hard drives.

Seriously.  Unless you need the portability that optical discs offer, just use hard drives.  It sounds like you've spent quite a bit on disc space already.  You could build a 6 TB RAID 5 array with cheap SATA drives (5 1.5 TB drives in the array).  That would give you all kinds of space and some redundancy.  And if you want to back that up (which I do recommend), you can get 4 1.5 TB USB drives.  Back the whole thing up to the 4 drives and you're all set.

Do you really need all that stuff though?  Are you ever going to find time to watch it all?  I'm thinking the same thing as C3PX.  What good does it do to have all that stuff if you never get to watch it?  Do you have parties a lot where you just want to be able to watch whatever you want, whenever you want?

Anyway, the hard drives are probably far more likely to last then the optical media is.  Recordable CDs and DVDs are notorious for failing after a few years, so you really are better off having everything in an array on the hard drives.

For me, the prequels sucked after about the 10th or 11th viewing of TPM.  I made it about 3-5 viewings before I really started cringing at everything Jar Jar said (which really ruined it for me).  Around the 11th viewing, when I began forcing myself to sit through it in an empty theater, I started to realize how bad it was.  After that, I completely gave up even trying to defend it.

I even said something about it once in the car with some close friends.  I said something about it sucking badly and one of them said "For you, that's saying a lot".  I'm a HUGE fan among my friends, so for me to have said that was huge.  Unfortunately, it was completely true.

negative1 said:

and who was the original 'star wars' trilogy aimed at?

i don't know of too many 'adult's that still talk about it.

mostly kids that saw it and grew up with it..(i was 10 when i saw 'star wars')..

 

The OT was aimed at a general audience.  Hence why a 10 year old was able to enjoy it in 1977 and the same kid who is now 40 can still enjoy it today.  The kids that were 10 when TPM came out are now 19.  Ask them if they still like TPM.  I'm betting the majority say it's crap.

I saw Jedi when I was 6 and I still love it today.  I don't watch the OT very much, but I don't watch the PT at all.  When I do see the OT, I stop and watch it if I can (having a two year old makes watching them kind of difficult).  When I see the PT, I change the channel or turn the TV off.

The Prequels do not hold up.  The originals do.  That's the point.

Jay said:

lordjedi said:

Ziz said:

The "next generation" of media player is already here - flash memory cards.  It's a matter of waiting for cost vs. capacity to come down.  That's the ideal "player" when you think about it - no moving parts to break down.

Yeah, but the cost for the amount of storage is insane.  A "media player" of any size is going to need a terabyte or more of disc space.  Flash memory cards aren't anywhere near that size yet and they won't be for the foreseeable future.

I think he meant "media player" being a device in which you insert a flash card containing a movie, not a mass storage device containing your whole library.

I think that'll be far to small then.  For the people that like to display their collection, they'll either have these giant boxes with a little flash card in them or they'll have a bunch of tiny boxes that have no artwork.

Downloads and HD on demand are much more likely to end up being the long-term solution, as much as I hate to admit it. As a collector, I enjoy maintaining my own library and would miss owning the physical media.

Personally, I wouldn't miss it at all.  The current situation that they're trying to pass off though is unacceptable.  I'll do the broadband download thing when I can:

1) Copy the movie anywhere I want it with no limitations.

2) Pay less than the full price of a DVD (or Blu-ray) with box and artwork.  If they aren't paying for printing, boxing, and shipping, then I shouldn't have to either.  I'm willing to pay maybe 2/3 of the price right now.  So if it's $25-$30 in the store, I'll pay $20 or so at the most.  But I have to be able to take it wherever I want and burn it on a DVD if I choose.

3) No activation and any media player I want to use.

4) The movie should be able to start playing as it downloads.

Once they can do all of those (the 4th is kind of optional, I can always set it to download and watch it the next night), then I'll support downloads.  Until then, I'll continue to buy DVDs in stores and online and just rip them to the hard drive.

Ziz said:

The "next generation" of media player is already here - flash memory cards.  It's a matter of waiting for cost vs. capacity to come down.  That's the ideal "player" when you think about it - no moving parts to break down.

Yeah, but the cost for the amount of storage is insane.  A "media player" of any size is going to need a terabyte or more of disc space.  Flash memory cards aren't anywhere near that size yet and they won't be for the foreseeable future.

I'm not very concerned with moving parts.  The only "moving parts" in my media player are the fans (easily replaceable) and hard drives.  Standard hard drives have much better reliability than flash cards.  Flash cards have a problem with doing to many writes.  They can easily lose capacity and fail quickly if the writes aren't done at random places.  Cameras, PDAs, and mp3 players do this just fine, but PCs tend to write linearly.  That's bad for flash drives.

If a 1 TB drive fails, I have a 5 year warranty on the drive.  I simply send it in for replacement.  Sure, you'd have to backup all the data on the drive to another drive so you don't have to completely rebuild the system, but that's far cheaper than anything else.  I just don't see flash memory ever being able to compete on a price/storage ratio.  We'll be waiting a long time for the price to come down and something better will likely come along before then.

Moth3r said:

lordjedi said:

-region coding...

This is a problem with DVD as well, so it's nothing new.

... but it was easily multi-region hackable by entering a code on the remote. I haven't seen any BD players that have this feature yet.

That depends on the player you have.  Cheaper players, even today, are not always hackable.  I'm sure once the Chinese are able to start making BD players, we'll get region free players.

lordjedi said:

- and of course the crazy DRM schemes (which have been broken), but

Well, it's been broken, so the DRM is almost irrelevant, just like it is on DVDs these days.  The software that's available today makes it pretty easy too.

No, this is incorrect. Once CSS was broken, that was the end of DRM as far as DVD was concerned. OK so there are newer protection schemes found on recent DVDs, but these are based on the premise of corrupting the DVD structure to confuse the ripper rather than encryption. There are several free programs that can easily deal with these discs.   

And almost all of them have to be updated constantly.  Underworld: Evolution is one DVD that not only caused problems for rippers, it caused problems on cheaper players.  Right at the end, it would lock up the player everytime at the exact same spot.  I don't know what the fix was (aside from ripping it and burning it to a new DVD), but it was a Sony DVD, so I just won't buy it.

Compare the situation with BD - yes AACS has been broken, but BD+ has taken DRM to a whole new level. There is no free software that can handle this protection, and Slysoft's AnyDVD HD - the only software capable of decrypting these discs - needs to be constantly updated to deal with new releases.

Yes, because it's completely impossible to get a "free" version of AnyDVD HD :P.  And even if you didn't want to go the "free" route, it's only $80 US dollars to buy the program.  $80 and your entire Blu-ray collection is freed from the shackles of DRM.  I may not like the DRM on Blu-ray, but between dealing with it or using an $80 program to remove it, I'll use the program.  As Blu-ray adoption continues, eventually we'll see a free program.

It seems that people with standalone players are having trouble with new Blu-ray releases as well.  That is if the AnyDVD HD forums on slysoft are anything to go by.  So not only does AnyDVD HD have to be updated constantly, but so does the firmware on standalone players.  Yay for heavily DRMed media!

negative1 said:

blu ray is a mess:

----------------------------

-3 different profiles of players..

This is almost no different than the early days of DVD.  I remember having trouble with The Matrix in my Apex 600A and then the T2 ultimate set.  Both were pretty easily fixed with firmware updates.  The T2 set caused the most trouble since it made very heavy use of seamless branching, which was practically unheard of at the time.

As far as the different profiles go, you're only missing out on extra features.  I'm pretty sure 2.0 only adds Internet connectivity.  The movie will still play fine though.  I'm not saying I like it, but that's the reality.  Also, most players on the market are upgradeable through firmware.

 

-some players don't support DVD's,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Blu-ray_Disc_devices

If the lack of "DVD" on some of those is your reasoning, then it's wrong.  I checked the Panasonic DMP-BD10 as a random example.  It's listed on Amazon as being able to read DVDs.  I honestly don't think I've seen a single Blu-ray player that couldn't read DVDs.

-region coding...

This is a problem with DVD as well, so it's nothing new.

- and of course the crazy DRM schemes (which have been broken), but

Well, it's been broken, so the DRM is almost irrelevant, just like it is on DVDs these days.  The software that's available today makes it pretty easy too.

i might give in and by a dual blu-ray/HD DVD drive just to be able to

play the inevitable movies that will be blu-ray ONLY..... just like i

need a laserdisc for movies ONLY in that format, or a DVD player

for DVD only movies..... it's just one more unnecessary piece of

hardware being pushed out there..

I think it's going to be a while before we see a Blu-ray only movie.  Of course, by that time, I suspect lots of 2.0 profile players will be under $200.

granted going digital only has its drawbacks also, especially concerning

disk space, but with 1T drives dropping, the problem is having a fast

connection to 'get' the files, or 'backup' your physical discs.. of course

hard disk failure is always going to be an issue too..

I'm setting up a media center with a 1 TB hard drive.  I simply put my DVDs into the ROM drive when I get them, rip them to the drive, and I'm done.  I can watch any movie in my collection with a few clicks of my remote.  No more swapping discs.

unfortunately unless YET ANOTHER FUTURE FORMAT comes out, with people

looking ahead to address these problems with HD content, we're just going

to go through this cycle yet again with something else (hopefully NOT BLU-RAY 2,3 etc)

Yep.  Since the media companies are stupid, you can bet that when the next best thing comes along, they'll argue about what to put in the standard.  They'll either come to an agreement or we'll have yet another format war.  That isn't likely to happen for another 10-20 years though, so it's a ways off.

HotRod said:

Maybe, but if your going to buy a new TV, you may as well get one that's bigger and better than what you already have, and also get a full 1080 spec big bastard!! In the UK a 40" Sony Bravia cost around £600 - £700 depending where you go.

True.  But by that logic, a bigger and better screen with full 1080p resolution will probably be cheaper than what you paid for your current TV.

My wife works with a lady that wants to sell her one year old 32" LCD for $400.  Problem is, I can get a 32" 1080p TV at Costco for $450-$550.  That would probably be better since it's not one year old and it'll come with a warranty.  I don't know how much she paid for it a year ago, but I doubt it was $400 (probably closer to $800).

Besides, I can't really get a flat screen TV just yet, as my kids like to put their sticky fingers all over our current TV. I'm forever cleaning that bloody screen!

Can't you get screen guards for that?  Basically something that's removable that will at least protect the screen from dirt and fingerprints.

Wow.  I never knew about this.  I was only 9 when it happened though.  Pretty sickening that people can think that about suicide.

The only other video I've ever seen like this was called "Failure to search".  It shows a suspect in custody with a detective preparing to question him.  The detective sits down at a desk, facing away from the suspect.  The suspect pulls a gun from under his belt, cocks the slide, puts the barrel to his and pulls the trigger.  Right after, the detective turns around and throws down his pencil.  It's pretty disturbing.

I have not seen any other videos that disturbing and I have no wish to.  The video of Dwyer probably ranks second to the one I described, IMO.

HotRod said:

There's also the point that some have missed. In  order to fully appreciate the greatness of Blu-ray, you still have to spend shit loads on a HD ready TV. Now that really is the sting in the tail!!

 

 

Shitloads?  An HDTV can be had for about $500 now.  Mind you it's only 32", but couple that with a sub $200 Blu-ray player and you're good to go.

HDTVs don't cost nearly as much as they once did.

I'm glad somebody else was able to help you out.  I totally spaced on this last night, forgot to check, and then completely forgot about it until I got to work today.

C3PX said:

His last movie was an unwatchable take on the giant monster movie genre, it while it was successful in creating hype, and getting people interested in the looks of the cast, it pulled plenty of people into the theaters, but how many people came out saying that it was an awesome movie? Not that many from what I can tell. I have yet to hear one of my friends say that they really liked it, the best I have heard was, "It was kind of cool I guess, wouldn't really be interested in seeing it again though".

Really?!  I loved Cloverfield.  I normally hate movies that end that way, but I loved Cloverfield.  I was on the edge of my seat (literally) at times.  I'd watch it and rewatch it looking for all the little clues about the monster and events that are sprinkled throughout the movie (one of the opening songs even aludes to one of the first deaths).

The interesting paradox of this whole thing, is that JJ is aiming this sucker at the "Star Trek, eww, nerd alert!" crowd, and not at the nerds who are its loyal base. Kind of an interesting experiment actually. I think for the next phase of this experiment, they should take Barbie, a franchise aimed at the 9 years and under girl crowd, and make it into a feature film aimed at 18 - 34 year old males.

It could be Bat Barbie :)

skyjedi2005 said:

Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford should be applauded for breathing Life into the characters in the original star wars trilogy.  Had the characters been played by Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman etc.  they would have been as sterile as the prequels and its phony cgi are.

This is doubtful.  In the originals, George couldn't keep saying "I don't care what you think".  He actually had people telling him no and he had to listen.  By the time we got to the Prequels, he didn't have to listen to anyone.  So while you're right on some level, Hayden probably wouldn't have been cast in the first place, therefore you wouldn't have seen the same performances.  The performances you saw are like that because Lucas figured he'd just fix everything in post.  That was not possible in the originals, so you therefore have different performances.

In the case of Star Trek, Paramount doesn't have to worry about what the creator thinks since they own the rights.  One of the other things I see wrong with this new movie is that everyone, to me, looks way to young.  The actors in TOS looked much older than the current actors.

skyjedi2005 said:

Compare this Show to Heroes which has become a joke of Late.  Producers being fired, and its creator lashing out at fans.

The reaction, by the executives, to Heroes "low" ratings is lame.  And everyone's reaction to that firing is even lamer.  The problem NBC has is that it no longer has a sure fire winner.  The first season of Heroes had phenomenal ratings.  Now that the ratings are down to the level of the average show, they're angry.

Personally, I think Heroes is actually getting better.  They're showing that there's a lot more going on than everybody thought.  I can't wait until the eclipse ends to see what happens.

Back OT.  What I took from last nights episode is that while they can send someone back in time, it's not always accurate.  If it was, there's no reason they couldn't send someone back 5 feet from John on the right date in order to kill him.  It looks like the accuracy is increased based on generalities (hitting the right year, month, and day as an example), but sometimes it can still go wrong.

I'm pretty sure I have all but the first two in that list.  I'll check tonight and post back.

There should be some par2 files that were posted as well.  Grab those and a copy of quickpar and you can rebuild the missing rar files.

C3PX said:

I hear a lot of people are starting to get fed up with this show, but I think it is getting better and better. If you check out page one of this thread, originally I was pretty harsh on the show, and the sheer amount of time travelers was one of the reasons. In the films each side only sends one soldier back, it seems like if it were an easy process, they'd just send a whole army back to whipe out John and ensure Skynets safety.

 

Maybe the difficulty is in getting the time machines built.  We know they can send 4 through time from the show (John, Sarah, Cameron, can't remember who was the fourth, but I'm pretty sure there was a fourth).  Of course, that might just be a matter of scale.  Anyway, my point was going to be that the time machines are probably a prime target.  They might take a while to build, needing secrecy the whole time.  If the location gets out, then the other side would make an attempt to destroy it.

This would probably also lend some credence to Kyle's statement in T1 about winning the war.  The humans were about to destroy the facility and only jumped into the time machine in order to follow the lone Terminator.  With the future altered, another time machine would be built in an effort to kill John (T2).  Wash, rinse, repeat.

I'm still at least one episode behind, so I don't totally understand why they'd send one all the way back to 1920 (or whatever the date was) unless it's to kill the entire Connor tree.  But I would think they risk altering the events that lead to Skynets creation in that case too.

Gaffer Tape said:

lordjedi said:

He also cheated on the Kobashi Maru, changing the program so he could win because he "doesn't like to lose".  Supposedly that's shown in the new movie.

 

Kobayashi.  Sorry, just had to nitpick.  ^_~

Damn!  I even Googled that to make sure I had the correct spelling.  It's spelled wrong on at least two other sites.  I guess I should have checked Wikipedia.  And Google didn't even correct me.

You're all welcome to not read it (not that I care either way).

Since when is a thread deemed "to long"?  The Politics thread is still going, so why not a discussion on the differences between XP and Vista?

Feel free to continue though :)

Last I checked vbangle, if someone's posting here (the board, not the thread), they're probably a nerd.  I personally prefer the term dork or geek myself.  Nerds typically have zero social skills.  I at least have some :P

C3PX said:

lordjedi said:

HAHAHAHA!  Yeah, because Kirk isn't at all the "shoot first, ask questions later" type.  That's exactly who Kirk is.  That's what made him such a great starship captain.  Diplomacy was out the door almost instantly with Kirk.  There's nothing new here.

 

Hmm, I have seen all the episodes and all the movies, though not for quite a while, but I would have never considered Kirk a shoot first, act later kind of guy. He is usually quite cautious and thoughtful before acting, but more than willing to raise hell in order to protect those under his command.

In ST 3, his best friend had died, and he saw hope that Genesis would bring him back, so he hijacked the Enterprise, disobeying a direct order. I'd say disobeying direct orders wasn't something Kirk did a whole lot of, and definitely not just for the hell of it to feed his rebelous nature. Picard is probably more of a rebel, both First Contact and Insurrection have him disobeying orders big time.

He also cheated on the Kobashi Maru, changing the program so he could win because he "doesn't like to lose".  Supposedly that's shown in the new movie.

One of the things I liked most about Kirk, and to a lesser extent Picard, is that they were willing to break the rules in order to protect their crew.  That's something Janeway didn't seem willing to do and it was obvious from the start.  She had a chance to get everyone back home in the first episode of Voyager and turned it down.  I can't remember the exact reasons, but all I could think was "Your crew comes first!"  Obviously that would've ended the series, which is why they needed better writers from the start.

Tiptup said:

lordjedi said:

You didn't say a "standalone copy." You said it's only available by "digital download" and Nanner was merely correcting that specific statement of yours. (Also, I highly doubt he was trying to make any "point" about our discussion, so I think your last post was barking up the wrong tree there.)

Otherwise, the rest of what you said about StarCraft shows that you know nothing about the game (which you should if you're going to keep acting like you're an expert on every subject in the world). StarCraft is not StarCraft if you don't have the Brood War expansion (the campaign additions and the changes the expansion made to the core multiplayer game were immense). Your analogy equating StarCraft: Brood War to Microsoft Word and getting the whole, expensive Office Suite is lame and makes very little sense to me (StarCraft without Brood War would be more like settling for Windows 95's "Wordpad" and not even getting MS Word [or an equivalent] in the first place!).

At any rate, Brood War was released in the fall of 1998 so the combined product of that battle chest has been supported by Blizzard for over ten years now. If you think it's "moot" to say that Blizzard's product support doesn't outweigh Microsoft's product support, well . . . I guess you're allowed to think that, but it sounds silly to me. :)

I own StarCraft.  I've played it.  You don't need Brood War to play StarCraft.  I haven't played Brood War because I don't have it and really didn't care to continue it.  StarCraft is StarCraft whether you have Brood War or not.  Having StarCraft without Brood War would be like having Jedi Knight without Mysteries of the Sith.  You've still got Jedi Knight, you just don't have the rest of the story contained in the expansion.

StarCraft is likely only sold in the Battlechest and the Anthology simply because it's not economical for them to sell it standalone.  Just like any other game that has expansions (Half-Life and Star Wars Battlegrounds come to mind), they end up selling the whole thing as a set after they've been out for a while.  Of course, Half-Life can still be purchased standalone simply because everything Valve does is through Steam, but that's another story.

I really don't care if Blizzard's product support does go for longer than Microsoft's.  Blizzard can easily use the revenue from WoW to subsidize any calls they might get for StarCraft (which are probably few and far between).  When I think of support, I think of patches, a knowledgebase, and telephone support.  Microsoft is still providing all three for XP.  I don't think of a retail sale as "support".

skyjedi2005 said:

Every overladen Cgi blockbuster can be tied back to Lucas in some way so i don't understand your question.  JJ is taking inspiration from the prequels and is using the same ILM crew that wroked on the prequels you don't see a connection.  He met with Spielberg and Lucas and nobody that had anything to do with Trek. 

If you can watch that trailer and not see that they are going for the same feel as the star wars prequels then you must be blind.  Even the Kirk as a rebel james dean type character is a throwback to Hayden as Anakin.

HAHAHAHA!  Yeah, because Kirk isn't at all the "shoot first, ask questions later" type.  That's exactly who Kirk is.  That's what made him such a great starship captain.  Diplomacy was out the door almost instantly with Kirk.  There's nothing new here.

Has nothing to do with the real canon history of the character as i have read the novels and seen the films Roddenberry sanctioned as canon.

I've seen all the movies too.  And several tv episodes.  Nothing about Kirk being a rebel is out of character.  Star Trek 3 anyone?  Completely disobeys a direct order.  By the end of IV, he's been demoted from Admiral back down to Captain.  So how is this new movie not in character?

This movie is a joke to those who loved the old series and the old movies 1-6.  It can in no way be a prequel since nothing matches up.  Unless they use some lame time travel excuse which would be totally orci by the way.

We are in agreement on this.

The studio was not at all happy with MI3 but blamed Cruise instead of JJ.  They also blamed Cruise for the failure of War of the Worlds and not Spielberg.

In both cases, it's because people saw such a whack job that Cruise was in public.  It has a lot to do with his publicity of Scientology.  Hell, he recently said he was acting crazy on Oprah, with jumping on the couch and all that.  It looks like he's finally starting to chill out about everything, which is exactly what he needs to do.

Paramount is a very bizarre studio.  They allowed Spielberg to Direct Indiana Jones IV after the debacle that was War of the Worlds and knowing what Lucas did to the prequels they allowed him to produce and write the story.

Uh, yeah, because Lucas and Spielberg can pull no weight of their own.  Seriously, Paramount knows how much of a money maker the Indy franchise is.  As many interviews showed, it was either now or never, so of course they allowed it to go forward.  If Spielberg says he's going to do another one, then Paramount will let him do it.

Now they made up with Cruise and want a blockbuster MI4 in the vein of MI2 to star Cruise and possibly be directed by him.  If he does not direct he will be the producer.

So?  What's the problem with that?

The paramount suits don't care if this new movie is garbage and not real Star Trek as they never cared for Gene's creation anyway, they only care if it makes money and can be sold to the lowest common demoninator and the teen audience.  So they tell JJ to put in a bunch of sex and explosions and Throw hundreds of millions of dollars at this piece of trash that will be all cgi and rubbish and not true at all to Roddenberrys vision.

Again, we're in agreement.

sky, the only thing we disagree on is that you seem to think that anything that has a lot of CG can't possibly be good.  I have four words for you "Lord of the Rings".  Here's two more "The Matrix".  All three LOTR movies had very heavy CG, but the story is what was important and the CG didn't get in the way.  Sames goes for the Matrix.  The problem isn't CG, the problem is the story.  If a story is great, the CG can look like hell and it won't get in the way.  But if the story is bad, no amount of CG will save it.  If the story is bad, the movie is going to be bad, period.  This is exactly why I can't even watch Transformers again.  Aside from a couple of battle scenes, the entire movie is just bad.

skyjedi2005 said:

he fact that Simon Pegg is playing scotty pretty much says they are marketing this film to non star trek fans.  i don't think James Doohan and immediately see Simon Pegg playing Scotty.

Who the fuck is Simon Pegg anyways?  and what does he have to do with Star Trek.  James Doohan Scotty was a loved character on an old tv series i grew up with.

And before that, it looks like he was quite an accomplished actor.  http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001150/  To bad nobody, including you, knew him for anything else.

This other guy is from some crap horror comedy and is the new Jar Jar Binks in Trek 2009.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0670408/

Looks like Pegg is an accomplished actor as well.  He was even in Band of Brothers.  He probably played such a different role that it's no wonder I don't remember seeing him.

I am a fan of Alias and Lost but i don't think Abrams is the guy for this movie.

Yes, we all know this by now.  You manage to repeat it in every post.

Also the cgi is way too over the top and just looks wrong to me.  I like the old ILM stuff all this computer stuff is wonky and rather silly and expensive looking.  Looks like a cartoon.

Old ILM stuff?  When was the last Star Trek they did that didn't have any CG?

I don't think of the guys who worked on the prequels and would not know design if it bit them on the ass.   They design movies like videogames.

No, Lucas designs movies like video games.  Why do you keep blaming all these guys for the failings of one director?  Yeah, the movie might not turn out that good.  I don't really have high hopes for it, but that's because of its targeted audience, not because some guys who worked on the Star Wars prequels are working on this.  The prequels are bad because Lucas has lost whatever magic he once had.  Stop tearing apart the entire industry because of one bad director.  Were they suppose to do the exact opposite of what Lucas wanted?  They'd have gotten fired in that case.

Yes movies are a fictional Universe of fictional characters and places and objects that don't really exist.  But traditional efects at this point still look more real.  Maybe within the next ten years digital chracters will look more lifelike, digital objects and similated reality and enviroments.  Right now they have hit a ceiling on what they are able to do. 

And 10 years from now, people like you will still be complaining about CG, whether you know it's there or not.  I'm sure you were making the same complaints 10 years ago.  Why don't you point out the scenes in the trailer that look incredibly fake to you so we can all take a look at them?  From what I've seen, from a visual effects perspective, the trailer looks great.

It really comes down to what you prefer.  I prefer hand drawn animation as an art over computer animation.  I am still a fan of computer animation and cgi to a lesser extent than the traditional way of doing things.  A compromise of the 2 is the best at this point.

And here's the crux of the argument.  You prefer the traditional way, so you automatically see CG as bad.  This isn't going to change in 10 years.  You're still going to prefer the traditional way.

  Eventually they will no longer need to go shoot anywhere and no longer need actors except for performance or voice over as 100% of a movie could be made on a computer.  They would only need to capture an actors likeness digitally, and get elements photographicaly that they then would manipulate in the computer. 

And I would hope that everyone here completely disagrees with this.  I would much rather see real outdoor locations than to have them totally generated in the computer.

They tried shooting digital background Plates for Indiana Jones IV for instance instead of Going on Location to shoot it with the actors and it looked awfully fake.

Again you keep bringing Lucas into the discussion.  Can you name any other movies that had bad, heavy CGI that didn't have Lucas' involvment?

At what point in the history of making movies did the movie become a showcase for Special effects, and the story and characters were forgotten.

May 19th, 1999.

And the rest is just a rant on how the effects in the prequels are horrible, so all CG is horrible.  Give it a rest sky.

Nanner Split said:

lordjedi said:

The funny thing is, you can't BUY Starcraft from them without getting it as a digital download. So why don't you go try to buy a 10 year old game (aside from a digital download) and see how easy it is? I'm sure you could get a used copy, just like you can get a used copy of XP, but I seriously doubt you can find a new unopened box anywhere.

WRONG! Every time I go into Wal-Mart I see this: Starcraft Battle Chest

That's the Battlechest.  You can't buy a standalone copy of Starcraft.  If we were to compare this to Microsoft, it would be like only wanting Word 2007, but being forced to buy the whole Office suite (even if it is for a lower price).

Also, I said I seriously doubted you could find it, I didn't say it was impossible.  I haven't seen that Battlechest anywhere in my area for some time.  The Battlechest is available, not as a download, from Blizzard's store as well.  So my point still stands.  You cannot buy the standalone version of StarCraft, at least not without getting it in a set.

EDIT: I see you can't even get StarCraft by itself from Blizzard anymore.  The lowest set is the StarCraft Anthology.  How did this get turned into a conversation on Blizzard's business practices anyway?  Just because they offered support for a really old product?  I've already stated that the support timeline for XP has not ended and that XP is available from online retailers, so I think this is a moot point.