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Slashback: Futurama, Shattering, Footage 192

Posted by timothy from the rolling-roadkill dept.
Slashback items tonight include a hopeful picture of the Futurama future, good news for Ziff-Davis fans worried about bankruptcy, video-release updates for two films reviewed on Slashdot, and more -- read on for the details.

This would be reason enough to have cable. MrChubble writes: "Seems that futurama isn't as dead as previously believed. Here is a quote from a someone's experience at ComicCon: "Julie Schwartz Slide Oddball Comics Show (Hilarious as usual), and at the FUTURAMA panel they showed a preview of a forthcoming episode in which Fry, Leela and Bender become super-heroes. One thing they didn't mention at the panel, was the news that FUTURAMA would be joining Cartoon Network's ADULT SWIM in the near future." Is this too good to be true?"

We have semi-successfully identified a potential security problem ... Jim Driggers writes: "You guys recently had an article on how to escalate one's security status on a Win32 machine. The article included a link to a download called shatter.exe. My Norton antivirus says it contains the beavuh virus. I don't have IIS 5, so it is not a worry for me, but I thought you guys should know."

Actually, it shouldn't be a worry for anyone: apparently, the shatter.exe file triggers some anti-virus software, but according to several readers this is a false alarm.

How to win friends and influence people. In response to this posting ("Congress to Ashcroft: Go After Song Swappers"), Declan McCullagh writes: "FYI I've placed the congressional letter to Attorney General Ashcroft here: Also see this analysis from last summer on why P2P piracy violates the federal No Electronic Theft act: 'Duncan Frissell on why Napster users are federal felons'."

Up against the wall (of videos). An anonymous reader writes "Looks like the film Revolution OS finally makes it to a small screen near you. First copies available at HP booth at LinuxWorld, San Francisco.

It includes footage from LinuxWorld '99 in San Jose where Stallman accepts the "Linus Torvalds Award" from the hand of Linus and proceeds to talk about why Linux should be called GNU/Linux". This is a treasure."

In addition, for the skateboard-inclined, note that Dogtown and Z-Boys is finally out on DVD, too.

Slimmer and trimmer like I ought to be. prostoalex writes "The rumors of Ziff Davis filing for Chapter 11 can just stay rumors, as company claimed it achieved a compromise with bondholders on financial restructuring. Recently ZD has been shutting down a sleuth of print publications including Yahoo! Internet Life, Family PC, Expedia Travels, Interactive Week, eShopper and Smart Business. It is still a publisher of eWeek, PC Magazine, CIO Insight, ExtremeTech and other computer and gaming magazines."

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Slashback: Futurama, Shattering, Footage More

Slashback: Futurama, Shattering, Footage

Comments Filter:

  • Speaking of skateboards... (Score:5, Informative)

    by wiredog ( 43288 ) on Monday August 12, 2002 @08:03PM (#4058159) Journal
    The Washington Post Sunday Magazine has an article [washingtonpost.com] on the corporatization of boarding.

  • Always a shame to see magazines go. (Score:3, Funny)

    by RumGunner ( 457733 ) on Monday August 12, 2002 @08:06PM (#4058185) Homepage
    I mean, having a computer in the bathroom, just ISN'T sanitary.

    .
  • Futurama on Cartoon Network? My cable provider doesn't have cartoon network. They do for EVERY other district except this one.

    *sigh* I guess I'll be stuck with The Simpsons forever...

    So it's confirmed to be dead on Fox? Why? Why did that happen?

    • Re:Bleah (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ConceptJunkie ( 24823 ) on Monday August 12, 2002 @08:23PM (#4058293) Homepage Journal
      Short answer:

      Fox sucks.

      Long answer:

      It seems that they had it out for this show and were determined to kill it by giving it the crappiest time slot on their schedule (short of the middle of the night). When you are pre-empted by football through 80% of the season, people won't see you. Then they started showing it at different times... I got to the point where I didn't even know when it would be on next.

      Meanwhile, they keep puking up more and more profoundly stupidly shows that last all of 6 episodes (if that) because anyone with a room temperature IQ (which doesn't seem to include Fox programmers) won't watch them.

      To me, "Futurama" is "The Simpsons" freed from its format and need for consistency with 13+ years of history. There is much more room for experimentation and therefore, to me, the show seems fresher. Still, I enjoy both greatly, but obviously Fox wanted Futurama to fail. Otherwise why would they move it to 7 and keep firing crapppy show and after show at us at 8:30 (they got lucky with Malcolm, almost every other show that followed the Simpsons was pathetic (anyone remember "House of Buggin'"?).

      So long answer:

      Fox sucks.

      • Re:Bleah (Score:4, Funny)

        by glwtta ( 532858 ) on Monday August 12, 2002 @09:12PM (#4058562) Homepage
        anyone with a room temperature IQ (which doesn't seem to include Fox programmers) won't watch them.

        Celcius of Farenheit?

      • Are you being dumb on purpose? (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        If you had ANY idea how hard it is to get a show put together, not to mention how competititive the television business is, you would not accuse FOX of deliberately sabotaging a show any more than you would Linux of deliberately torpedoing his kernel.

        I know. I've pitched shows at Fox as well as the other networks.

        Of the dozens of scripts that are written and pitched to a network, a tiny sliver of them are actually produced as pilots. Of those, only a few ever make it on the air-- of those few, very few find an audience.

        With the tremendous amount of energy a network puts into cultivating a show and trying to help it find an audience, to think they'd be intentionally trying to make one of their own shows fail is utter insanity.

        When a network has to kill a show, it's because they've tried their hardest to get the show to gain traction with an audience. If they've moved around your beloved Futurama (or Star Trek or My So Called Life or Freaks and Geeks or whatever) it's because they think it'll do better somewhere else or because another show might be able to attract a larger audience in that time slot.

        You can blame Fox for their lack of skill in marketing or programming "Futurama" but to say they are trying to kill their own show makes no sense. They want as many hits as they can get.

        Saying Fox sucks, incidentally, is smearing the network that gave you the Simpsons. That alone is heresy in my book.
        • To the casual observer, it's difficult to tell the difference between gross incompetence and internal sabotage.

          I'm not sure which one it is. The decisions made by Fox's programming efforts seem to point to the fact that they were making a conscious effort to kill the show. As I'm sure you well know, those Hollywood types are often more concerned with their egos then anything else. Groening (sp?) may have just pissed off the wrong executive.

          Or, you're right; they could have made the programming decisions because they are morons. I'm not a big time network executive, but I know that if a show is good you probably want to get people to watch it. After all, it worked for the Simpsons.

        • There's a little difference between a show being pitched to a Network from the street, and the know-it-all guys who run your most consistently top-rated show for the last decade saying "So, we feel like making another show. Push over."

          We don't know the relationship between the Simpsons people and FOX: It could be hostile, it could be friendly. Remember what Fox's solution was when the actors wanted more pay (after a decade of being on the show): Fire them all and bring in replacements.

          I think you're glossing over things here.

        • When a network has to kill a show, it's because they've tried their hardest to get the show to gain traction with an audience.

          How hard can a network be trying to build an audience when they bounce it around from timeslot to timeslot?

          Let's also not forget that Fox killed Family Guy.

          but to say they are trying to kill their own show makes no sense. They want as many hits as they can get.

          It makes sense if the show they'll replace it with costs less to produce and ultimately can get bigger profits.

        • I'm pretty sure that Futurama would have done just fine where it was (leading off a decent Sunday evening of TV (really the only good TV on Sunday nights usually)) if it was actually run at that time, rather than some damn football game being on almost every weekend. Here's a hint, FOX programming folks: if football runs late every weekend, then it's going to run late this weekend too. Plan for it, OK? Past a certain point, even gross incompetence counts as malice.

          Dammit, I still miss My So-Called Life too :) Mmmmm, Claire Danes...

          • Really, you can blame Fox. They don't care about you, your family, the loyal viewers, or anyone else. They care about one thing: selling advertising. The more people watching, the more they can sell advertising time for. Football probably gets higer ratings than anything else they show, and also has way more opertunities for advertising. If football runs late, of course they are going to pre-empt regular programming. However if they "planned for it" like you said, and football ended "early", then they would have to fill that dead air with a post-game show or some crap that no one would watch.

            Or something like that. I'm sure they have a team of experts working around the clock to figure out how to squeeze in the most advertising and how to sell it for the most money.

            • They care about one thing: selling advertising [...] Or something like that. I'm sure they have a team of experts working around the clock to figure out how to squeeze in the most advertising and how to sell it for the most money.

              Yeah, probably the same geniuses that came up with the idea for pop-ups ads...

            • However if they "planned for it" like you said, and football ended "early", then they would have to fill that dead air with a post-game show or some crap that no one would watch.

              "Planning for it" means scheduling a "Simpsons" rerun after the game rather than a new episode of Futurama, and giving Futurama a timeslot that isn't trampled. Like, for example, that same timeslot outside of football season.
        • Do you actually watch anything on Fox? 90% of what they put on is pure tripe! Sure, they have had a few good, intelligent shows, but were it not for the Simpsons, Fox wouldn't even exist, not the the other way around.

          I stand by "Fox sucks" and I think you give way too much credit to Hollywood in general. If they were really trying to get people to watch the show, they wouldn't pre-empt it 6 months out of the year.

          It may (and I'm sure it does) take a tremendous amount of energy to cultivate a successful TV show, but that doesn't imply that it requires a tremendous amount of intelligence.

          Fox would rather shovel heaps of crap into the 8:30 time slot ("Malcolm" excepted, I find it intelligent and funny) rather than have a guaranteed lock of Groening-show fans by leaving Futurama in its original time slot where it belonged. Does anyone else remember in years past, a spin-off of a successful show would follow the original, sometimes for years. The kind of thinking that moves low-rated shows around the schedule pretty much guarantees that it will lose even more viewers (They even _know_ this and yet they still do it.)

          I can't speak about what it's like in the world of network TV, nor do I really care, but as a paying customer (everyone pays through slightly higher prices due to advertising, blah, blah, blah), I find their actions highly illogical and their intelligence suspect.

          Fox sucks... how many times has "The Simpsons" itself said the same thing?

          Homer: Undo! Undo!

      • I read your post and thought, wow a bored of the rings quote, cool.

        I don't think they want it to fail, if they didn't want it, they would just pull it. Thney don't really have to answer to anybody about whats on the schedule.

        I think there to afraid to mess around with what they percieve to be there money makers. They know futurerama is a money maker, what they have forgottenm is that they need to bite the bullet and take some risj so they can invest in long term growth, instead of sudden success.
        They used to know how to do that, but then they got big enough to get serious sports.
        In conclusion, Fox Sucks Now.
      • To me, "Futurama" is "The Simpsons" freed from its format and need for consistency with 13+ years of history.

        If anything, the Simpsons is pretty far from consistent. Watch the earlier seasons and compare them to now - characters completely changed, gone, etc. Never mind the fact that the characters haven't aged one day in 13 years on the air - I don't think continuity issues are terribly important (hell, just last week Homer pointed out that he's had something like 75 different jobs :)

        I don't catch as much Futurama as I'd like, but have they ever done anything remotely CLOSE to the 'Treehouse of Horror' episodes?

  • What!? (Score:5, Funny)

    by ucblockhead ( 63650 ) on Monday August 12, 2002 @08:09PM (#4058200) Homepage Journal
    You mean that the wild, unconfirmed rumors about Futurama were untrue!?

    If we can't trust wild, unconfirmed rumors, what can we trust?

  • Futurama (Score:5, Informative)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Monday August 12, 2002 @08:11PM (#4058210)
    /. seems to have completely overlooked this, but Futurama showed up on Fox's Fall schedule a couple of months ago.

  • Thank {insert deity of choice} for Cartoon Network (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blackcoot ( 124938 ) on Monday August 12, 2002 @08:14PM (#4058234)
    I don't usually usually go around invoking any powers-that-bes' names (well, unless I'm debugging, but that's a different story ;-)), but yet again, CN has won my devotion --- I mean, Dexter, PPG, Samurai Jack, and now Futurama *bliss* The only thing that could make this any better is if I could figure out how to get the sattelite feed into my WinTV card so I can watch while I'm "working". Hrm... sounds like an Ask /. question....
    • The only thing that could make this any better is if I could figure out how to get the sattelite feed into my WinTV card so I can watch while I'm "working"

      You can buy one of those cablebox/satellite remote-control adapters for your system, like the ones that snapstream (www.snapstream.com) offers to go with their scheduled recording software.

      Also, it would be TONS better if TOON would pick up Invader Zim and made new episodes. Except I don't want to see little retarded "guest appearances" on Space Ghost or whatever. I hate it when they do that.
    • Don't worry. One day, Cartoon Network, too, shall suck. Such is the fate of all cable networks.

  • Futurama RERUNs (Score:5, Informative)

    by jimmcq ( 88033 ) on Monday August 12, 2002 @08:15PM (#4058246) Journal
    Apparently [gotfuturama.com] Cartoon Network said that there are negotiations going on between Fox and Cartoon Network for the reruns of Futurama, not new episodes. We can hope that if the reruns do well, that they might produce new episodes, but that is not what they are currently talking about.
    • I don't think CN has enough ratings & money to justify the expense of producing a full Futurama episode. Those are expensive - it isn't like making a powerpuff girls or aqua teens episode. :)

  • Futurama rumors (Score:5, Interesting)

    by anotherone ( 132088 ) on Monday August 12, 2002 @08:19PM (#4058266)
    Not a chance... in TV guide a while ago it said that the cartoon costs Fox around $1,000,000 an episode. And Cartoon Network recently shitcanned Mission Hill due to $400,000 an ep figures. They like cheap shows like Sealab and Aqua Teen Hunger Force (two of the best shows on TV right now IMHO) better.


    Rumors are usually just that, rumors... remember that Invader Zim/Hot Topic thing a while back? More bullshit. Why does /. even publish this stuff, I'm thinking that a single email would clear it up.

    • With Mission Hill, the 19 episodes were already in the can before it was cancelled off UPN and before CN got it. Same with Baby Blues (recently pushed off ASwim, but all 13 eps shown a few times each before).

      In addition, the use of Home Movies on ASwim got the show revived, and new eps are showing now; these aren't as cheap as ATHF, Sealab, or the others, but not overly expensive either (as I understand it, they're using Flash as their animation medium, thus cutting out a lot of tweening work. However, I've not been able to confirm this).

      Mind you, if the team has sufficiently dispersed by then, it may be hard to put it back together (see how Ren and Stimpy died after John K. was ousted). But, I'd rather see CN do a much better job of handling reruns than FOX seems to be doing right now. (Hint: you'll be missing much of Futurama until Feb if you live on the East Coast).

    • And Cartoon Network recently shitcanned Mission Hill due to $400,000 an ep figures.

      What?! god damnit. Mission Hill is one of the few reasons I have for turning on my TV anymore. The rest of Cartoon Network's Sunday Adult Swim lineup is great, but Mission Hill is easily my favorite.

      I really need to stop liking shows. They keep getting cancelled. Argh.

    • Re:Futurama rumors (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kaphka ( 50736 )
      Not a chance... in TV guide a while ago it said that the cartoon costs Fox around $1,000,000 an episode. And Cartoon Network recently shitcanned Mission Hill due to $400,000 an ep figures.
      Actually, to me, that sounds very encouraging. I thought the difference would be much greater.

      I don't know much about the TV business, but I'm sure that "Futurama" is much more marketable and mainstream than "Mission Hill". I'm also sure that the "Futurama" people could shave quite a bit off that budget, if they're willing. (Groening calls "Futurama" a "gift to animators"... You can tell just by looking at it that it's a flashy show, but they could cut 80% of the flash, and the average viewer wouldn't even notice.)

      IMO, CN should pony up the money to start making new episodes on a more reasonable budget, and make it the anchor of their whole Adult Swim block. It would be the best decision for all parties concerned. (Except maybe Fox, but screw 'em.)
    • To quote Brak:

      "You have a beautiful man-voice."
    • depends on how much they make, not how much it costs.

      • I'm gonna go ahead and say that Fox makes more selling advertising than Cartoon Network. If Futurama's ratings can't bring in the advertising dollar to justify new episodes on Fox, I don't think they'll do it on Cartoon Network. What does make money on Cartoon Network, however, are reruns. They're cheap and they bring in ratings that are excellent for cable.

        Even cheaply made shows like ATHF only warrant a handful of episodes a year. You just can't cut Futurama to ATHF's level. And if Fox couldn't make it profitable, why can CN?
    • Why does /. even publish this stuff, I'm thinking that a single email would clear it up.

      Are you suggesting that Slashdot should show some sense of journalistic knowhow and actually - *gasp* - check up on a story before publishing??!
      I mean, it's on the internet, it must be true...
  • I hate to promote this, but I live in Upstate New York (like in the state, not the city.) Revolution OS will be coming to my city...errr...well...probably never.

    So, how 'bout someone posting a link to a Divx version of it?

    -Pete

  • Ahh.. Happy Ending for Futurama (Score:5, Funny)

    by finny ( 107762 ) on Monday August 12, 2002 @08:25PM (#4058312)
    I think that Dr. Zoidberg said it best when he emoted:

    "As the candy hearts poured into the fiery quasar, a wonderous thing happened, why not? They vaporized into a mystical love radiation that spread across the universe, destroying many, many planets - including two gangster planets and a cowboy world. But one planet was exactly the right distance to see the romantic rays, but not be destroyed by them - Earth. So all over the world, couples stood together in joy. And me, Zoidberg! And no one could've been happier, unless it would've also been Valentine's Day. What? It was? Hooray!"

  • ACK! Glad I don't do napster (et al)... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by killthiskid ( 197397 ) on Monday August 12, 2002 @08:26PM (#4058316) Homepage Journal

    Taken from http://www.politechbot.com/p-02305.html [politechbot.com], posted there by Duncan Frissell.


    The $1K limit applies to the retail value of the product. Let's apply the law to Napster as an over reaching prosecutor might.


    1. The average CD costs $12 and contains 18 songs (assumed for illustrative purposes). Each song is therefore worth $0.66.
    2. One thousand dollars divided by sixty-six cents equals 1515 songs.
    3. If one values songs by the price of CD singles, it takes even fewer songs (500) since those go for about $2/song.
    4. So any Napster user who made 1515 (or perhaps fewer) songs available was knowingly infringing copyright law and trafficking in copyrighted materials with a retail value of more than 1000. As the US argued in its AMICUS CURIAE in A&M v. Napster "When a Napster user makes the music files on his or her hard drive available for downloading by other Napster users, he or she is distributing the files to the public at large." See http://www.loc.gov/copyright/docs/napsteramicus.ht ml
    5. Likewise, a Napster user who just downloads songs is arguably "distributing" copyrighted works (to himself) since it is his command, generated by his computer, that grabs the song. So once he passes 1515 songs in 180 days, he's (arguably) a felon.

    Time for a new slashdot poll: How many slashdotters are fedral felons due to their file sharing activities? The person closest to guessing the correct quantity without going over wins a get out of jail free card, curtousy of John Ashcroft! Yeah!

    • I don't think that it's quite the same. Since the user isn't charging anything for the songs, he'll never actually sell $1,000 worth of songs.

      • True, $1000 is exactly changing hands, but if you read the page I linked to:


        Duncan Frissell (who is a lawyer and longtime Politechnical) offers one analysis of the No Electronic Theft Act. Let me add another: Financial gain is defined in the NET Act as "receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value,
        including the receipt of other copyrighted works."

        So even though there is no 'charging' going on, the value of the product still changes hands. I'm not advocating this, I'm just quoting their analysis of the situation.


        • So even though there is no 'charging' going on,
          the value of the product still changes hands.

          While someone who distributes unauthorized copies of copyrighted works over a P2P network _might_ download copyrighted works of similar value, it is perfectly ok to take and never give, or to give and never take. There is no contract or bargain, which is what the law is clearly aimed at. Only on a P2P network with some sort of BBS-style "upload quotas" would the NET law apply.
        • Wouldn't the value of the product continue to be diminished, though? As you can freely duplicate the product (a file) with little effort, it would only be a matter of time before it's perceived "value" would diminish, simply by sheer volume.

          Pardon the possible ignorance, it just seems like supply and demand to me... the reason Gold is so expensive is because there's relatively little of it to go around (compared to, say, copper).

          Lordfly
    • I think they'll have to deal with two points though, as this isn't like stealing a car. Who's copying the files, the man with them or the man downloading them? If you say the man sharing them, then you have to prove that he intended for people to download them that didn't own the CD. What if you don't get all the file from one person? Point 2 is the backup factor. You are entitled one backup copy, and they will have to PROVE that you don't own them before they can get a warrent. There is no method of proving that you do or don't if you claim you are using your backup copy because you lost the original in a fire.
    • It's been a while since I've looked up the stats, but the dollar value for felony copyright violations of software is something insanely low. And of course they use the full retail price for determining value (kind of like how game shows do it), so simply pirating some high-cost software like Photoshop or Office can get you near if not over the dollar limit all by themselves. I know that technically I was a felon back in the late 1980s thanks to all those PC games I copied using CopyIIPC-- but then again so was everyone I knew, and computer stuff was way under the national radar back then.
  • I am pretty scared that anyone would call themself a fan of Ziff-Davis. Futurama, maybe.
  • Oh please. This is been non-news for anyone who bothered to check out FOX's lineup for the coming Fall season:

    http://www.fox.com/schedule/schedule_2002.htm

    BUT! You'll notice Family Guy is conspicuously absent from that lineup. And they didn't even bother to leave us with a finale! Just sort of vanished halfway through last spring.

    Time to fire up the ol' useless web petition.

    - JoeShmoe

    .
    • This is news. If you consider the fact that Futurama *is* cancelled [gotfuturama.com] (hasn't been renewed to be super accurate), but had 1 - 1.5 seasons worth of episodes to show before they're done. Fox has also stated their intentions of not renewing the show and this has been doubly confirmed by Groening and Cohen in interviews. Absolutely.

      Moreover, it is definitely news that they could be joining Adult Swim, which is fast becoming a big part of my Sunday night viewing diet.
    • According to that website, Futurama is still on at 7PM on Fox on Sundays in Fall 2003.

      It also says Family Guy is not renewed if you click on FAQ #3 on http://www.fox.com/community/askfox/
  • The letter to Ashcroft states that '[t]he copyright industries account for 5% of our gross domestic product.' Anyone have any thoughts on where this figure might have come from? My BS detecter is beeping.
    • First you take the sum of the money made by the copyright industries. Once you have determined that number, you divide it by our gross domestic product. Then, you realize that number is much too low and instead lie and say it is 5%.
    • High-velocity pizza delivery... Is Snow Crash really ten years old? While we really need to have Uncle Enzo arrange to have somebody take care of Ashcroft, if you count software, movies, music, Muzak, videos, books, web pages, and anything else that involves people writing or performing text or songs or other things with original thought, or anybody taking those things and packaging and marketing them, it sounds like it could easily be 5% of the GNP. Ignore whether copyright is actually relevant to the business models (Ashcroft probably does) - since the US joined the Berne Convention, just about anything is born copyrighted.

  • but according to several readers this is a false alarm.


    Well, I'll just start running this right now then.

  • The anti-virus alarm (Score:3, Informative)

    by hayden ( 9724 ) on Monday August 12, 2002 @08:49PM (#4058463)
    Is triggered because it does contain the virus code (or enough of it for the scanner to recognise it). You have to inject code into the other programs address space and the virus code does something useful. On *nix you would use something that opened up a shell (which would now have root priveleges) but under Windows a shell is about as useful as a one legged man in an arse kicking competition so he used something else.

    <bitch>
    Of course if you'd read the article (specifically the only bit in red, I know it's hard to miss) you'd know this.
    </bitch>

    • Yep, in addition to what's been said above, here's full scoop from the original paper [tombom.co.uk].

      PLEASE NOTE: Some virus scanners are alerting people to the presence of a "Win32/Beavuh" virus within the sploit.bin file in the Shatter zipfile. This is not a virus. The scanner is correct in flagging it - the code in this file is designed to open a command shell and bind it to a network socket. This is a bad thing to do in general, so the scanner is correct in generating an alert. This code is designed to be malicious in terms of its functionality, but the scanner is incorrect when labelling it as a virus.

    • under Windows a shell is about as useful as a one legged man in an arse kicking competition so he used something else.

      Actually the included 'spoit did kick off a command shell, directed to a TCP port for easy access from a remote computer. And this is useful for several reasons, not the least of which would be to create a user, set a password and join the admin group - pretty much the same as on a unix box. Too bad the user has to be running VirusScan or some other badly coded service for it to work. Funny how clueless nix users can be about their "enemy".

      alex

  • About Invader Zim (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does anyone know what's going on with Invader Zim?
    If anything, I wish Cartoon Network would take a look at acquiring it from Nickelodeon.
  • ... shutting down a sleuth of print publications


    Don't you mean slew ... editors: earn your pay and correct this :-)

  • Huh? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 12, 2002 @09:12PM (#4058565)
    "Julie Schwartz Slide Oddball Comics Show..."

    Proper noun, proper noun, verb, adjective, noun, noun...

    What the FUCK would this be in English?

  • The "problem" with Futurama (Score:3, Interesting)

    by geekoid ( 135745 ) <dadinportland&yahoo,com> on Monday August 12, 2002 @11:11PM (#4059141) Homepage Journal
    is that it is subtle, very subtle. I'm surprised at the number of post that don't find it funny.

    It is completly nerdsville, and I love.
    they make programming reference, engineering references, sci-fi references, and modern culture references.
    How many people would have the guts to put this on the air:
    "that happened in 2506...just after the second coming of christ"?
    I paraphrased the year.
    in the last episod I saw it had:
    A marriage between Iron chef and Soylent green.
    A styx reference(group not river)
    Homophobic reference from a robot.
    Wraith of Kahn joke.
    poisoning
    revenge
    a frame up
    destruction of a ship(in a bottle)
    secret code(granted, they're in every episode)
    Its one of the few shows that I don't understand why it is NOT 'embraced' by slashdot, yet Buffy is.

    I suspect its because the first generation gamers/video game players/star wars people are getting old, and this generation is trying to glom onto anything they can call a product of there generation.

    I guess I'll have to start all my conversations with "Back in my day..." ;)

    • ...I believe is called "30% Iron Chef", and to further your point, also contains a reference to old depression-era cartoons and the "Hobo-Lifting Aroma".

      One has to have an appreciation of culture and history and science to appreciate these sorts of things, and unfortunately many TV viewers these days don't. So network execs drop such things in favor of more lowest-common-denominator appeal. The Simpsons is lucky - it has many of these references, too, but fortunately there's enough Homer-Beer humor for stupid people to watch it too.

      To sloppily paraphrase Fry in "When Aliens Attack": "You can't do anything original or unexpected on TV, because this confuses and frightens people."

      The writers knew their own show's situation, to put that line in.

      One of the smartest, most original shows on TV, IMO.
    • Are you joking? Underappreciated in Slashdot? Half the posts for this article are Futurama quotes.


      Anyhow, the real problem with Futurama is that after an incredible start it has undergone the "Simpon's effect" so quickly - recent episodes have been diabolically bad (how's about that second Santa robot one? Yikes! Made me want to cry instead of laugh) Looks like they have run clean out of ideas, so maybe best that it is put to pasture while they still have some dignity.

    • Its one of the few shows that I don't understand why it is NOT 'embraced' by slashdot, yet Buffy is.

      % lynx -head -dump http://slashdot.org/
      HTTP/1.1 200 OK
      Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 09:06:47 GMT
      Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a mod_perl/1.27 mod_ssl/2.8.10 Op
      enSSL/0.9.6e
      SLASH_LOG_DATA: shtml
      X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000
      X-Fry: Well, thanks to the Internet I'm now bored with sex. Is there a place o
      n the web that panders to my lust for violence?
      Cache-Control: private
      Pragma: private
      Connection: close
      Content-Type: text/html

      'Nuff said.

  • I saw Groening speak 3 weeks ago... (Score:3, Informative)

    by TheTomcat ( 53158 ) on Monday August 12, 2002 @11:21PM (#4059177) Homepage
    Matt Groening spoke in Montreal a few weeks ago, and he specifically stated that Futurama has "at least one more season" he was hoping for more, and that he also "has a few projects up [his] sleeve"

    I'm looking forward to said sleeve-projects.

    S
    • Well, if he had not phrased it in a way to give people hope, he would have been lynched.
      And he knew it ;- )

      But the thing is, once you've laid-off all your talented people, they'll find new jobs, and won't be available to come back if you try to recussitate the show, and the then it'll suck, and people will say "see, it sucks now, they were right to cancell it". : (
  • ZD are definitely doing this the right way. Other companies could learn from their actions if they near bankruptcy.

    If McDonald's starts to go under.. it can close all of its outlets and stop buying supplies! No more costs, the business can get back on its feet.

    If Walmart starts to go under.. it can just close all of its stores. No more stock to buy, no staff to employ, costs will be through the floor, with profits sure to rebound.

    Really, I'm thinking the best way for a multi-billion dollar company to make money these days is to shut down its main operation, accumulate the billions in a high interest bank account, and then dabble in risky investments.

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