Cro Magnon wrote and included with a post:
In the previous three DHs, every other word was either "fuck" or "shit" (or "fucking shit! Motherfucker!"). I can't for the life of me understand why it's OK to show a bloody murder, but uttering "shit" gives you an R rating.
I didn't fully realize just how much cussing Bruce Willis did until I saw DH1 & 2 on TV. They replaced the words with a voiceover with milder language, and the vocieover didn't even sound like willis. It was more jarring to me than the language was. And "Yippie Kayay, Mr. Falcon"? Barf!
Reminds me when I saw "Smokie and the Bandit" on network TV. They replaced Sheriff Justice's (played by Jackie Gleason) cuss words, and the voice replacement sounded like the same man who was also doing the voice of Fred Flintstone at the time. The voice was close, but it was still a bit jarring because of the Fred Flintstone connection.
99BottlesOfBeerInMyF wrote and included with a post:
Does someone want to tell me what's wrong with plain text?
No graphics for one. Do you really think the state doesn't make any documents that include graphs or maps or charts? Aside from that, it's nice to be able to do some formatting, you know like including page numbers on longer documents and cross references that you don't have to spend hours updating every time you add a page to the middle of a document. Then there's the issue of color. It's awfully nice to be able to add some large, red text and a hazard symbol when said document is providing important information to the reader's health, like "Warning, don't open the valve until the green light comes on or sewage will fill the tunnel killing you!"
From what I've seen, it seems like everyone focuses on there being only one format and trying to make it work for all documents. Rather than trying to use a single format, why not offer documents in multiple formats?
As a minimum, I would support all government documents being available in four formats:
Although the above would take more storage space, it would ensure that government documents are easily accessible and available to everyone.
falconwolf wrote:
whilst it's always good to see genuinely open formats in use, isn't there already an ISO standard document format? If there is, is it better to use the ISO standard or an open standard?
ODF is an ISO standard, as is Microsoft's OOXML format. However ODF is an open standard whereas OOXML is proprietary. As the Star-Telegram article says "If the Constitution was in WordPerfect 5.1 format, it would probably be difficult to read right now", substitute any of MS's formats and it would still be true.
Falcon
I'm not sure if it would be that difficult to read a document in the WordPerfect 5.1 format right now since the current version of WordPerfect and both OpenOffice.org and StarOffice will open the file.
Chris Burke wrote and included with a post:
You're right.
You should never take chances. It's safer that way.
If you're so sensitive that watching a bad movie will actually damage your love for a different movie, and this is actually painful for you... Then yeah. You should probably not take many chances in life, due to insufficient stomach for the most pathetic of consequences.
There is nothing Blade Runner 2 can do that will reduce my enjoyment of Blade Runner. I pity anyone who can't say that.
There is also the chance that the sequel might be better than the previous movie. Compare Star Trek - The Motion Picture to Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan, for me the sequel was much better than its predecessor. It is much the same with the rest of even-numbered Star Trek movies.
I think that one reason sequels are sometimes not good is they rehash much of what they thought made the original work, rather than making the new story work on its own merits. For me, I will take a chance of a sequel and hope that it is at least good. If its bad, I can hope that its so bad its good.
Foobar of Borg wrote and included with a post:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highlander_2
LIES!!! This is an ugly rumor started by people who believe extra-terrestrial reptilian humanoids really run the world. There was no Highlander 2 or 3, or anything else. Really. There wasn't! [sobs uncontrollably]
Sounds like part of the plot of Martian Successor Nadesico (where Earth is at war with an enemy called "the Jovian Lizards").
Enderandrew wrote:
Nightmare on Elm Street
Karate Kid
Candyman
GI Joe
Pink Panther
Street Fighter (not that there was much of a franchise to begin with)
Tron (this project has waffled between reboot and sequel, but is now being called Tr2n)
Terminator Salvation (technically a sequel, but one that isn't recognizing T3 as canon, and recast everyone to start a new franchise)
Land of the Lost
Fame
The Stepfather
Astro Boy
Sherlock Holmes
Hellraiser
Superman
Catwoman (a failed reboot, but a reboot none the less)Sadly, I'm probably forgetting more reboots.
With TRON, I think it is more likely to be a reboot instead of a sequel since there have been two sequels already. The first, called TRON 2.0 was a video game that was a direct sequel to the movie. Recently, there was a comic book series called TRON that was a sequel to both the movie and the video game and continued the story.
With Astro Boy, the 1980s series was more of a retelling of the story from the 1960s series (which was based on the original manga), rather than a sequel or a reboot and allowed for better animation than the original series. The 2000s series, on the other hand, was a reboot of the story with vastly improved animation and with large changes from the original animated series (such as Dr. Tenma now being an actual villain unlike in the previous series). With the move to the large screen I think the movie version of Astro Boy will be another reboot (to make allowances for the limited screen time).
Hadlock wrote:
Well the first two or three would go out and buy new TVs. Then they'd get to talking and (hopefully) notice that ALL their tvs were black and white. Although hopefully you would think with an average of 3 tvs per household, they would notice that all their tvs went B&W at the same time.
Since we are so close to the original transition date, I doubt that any analog TVs are still available for sale. At this point there would be little reason to still sell them.
shmlco wrote:
Rewrite history much? The 8-track died because the damn things jammed and broke at each and every opportunity, and because of a little thing called the WalkMan, which let people take their music with them everywhere, not just when they were in their car.
In addition to the above, I think other factors in the demise of the 8-track format were: (1) the lack of a fast-forward and rewind function, (2) their size (you could fit four cassettes [in their cases] in the space of one 8-track tape), (3) their sound quality, especially after better tape formulations were introduced, (4) albums had to be re-orded to accomodate the 8-track format with songs being split over two tracks and (5) the ability to easily record cassettes at home.
Steve001 wrote and included with a post:
GiMP wrote:
Have you actually tasted commercially packaged, pre-sliced bread? It is terrible. Go to a good baker, now, and get a fresh whole loaf. No, don't go to the supermarket, a real baker! If you're fast, it might still be nice, warm, and crispy.
Also, per Aaron Brown of "Good Eats" when you are going to make a sandwich, only choose a bread that tastes good enough to eat by itself.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Correction: That should have been Alton Brown.
GiMP wrote:
Have you actually tasted commercially packaged, pre-sliced bread? It is terrible. Go to a good baker, now, and get a fresh whole loaf. No, don't go to the supermarket, a real baker! If you're fast, it might still be nice, warm, and crispy.
Also, per Aaron Brown of "Good Eats" when you are going to make a sandwich, only choose a bread that tastes good enough to eat by itself.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Kayden wrote:
You're right. American cinema is much better. A love story always must be present, no matter how badly forced. The good guy will always win. Moral choices are seldom ambiguous. It doesn't matter how it happens but that car WILL explode. Can I be xenophobic too? Or would it be anthrophobic?
This points out one of the things that I enjoy most about anime. Characters often do not fall into the neat good-guy/bad-guy template, but often fall in between the two, or even flip to the other side. This even applies to the stories themselves, where the tone of the story can completely change.
In "Cowboy Bebop" we see this in many of the characters and in the story itself. In fact, the first episode of the series gives you little idea of what the series is actually going to be like.
In one series (I won't reveal the name to avoid spoiling anything), at a certain point in the series a completely shocking and unexpected event happens that completely upends your perceptions of everything in the series from the first episode. The revelation of Darth Vader's true identity in Episode Five of "Star Wars" was a minor surprise by comparison.
Although in many anime series the characters tend to remain a bit static, there are many where the characters develop over the course of the series. Among these are: Robotech, Figure 17, Key The Metal Idol, and Video Girl Ai. Even in the Dragonball Epic (Dragonball, Dragonball Z, and Dragonball GT), most of the characters (most notably Gohan) do evolve over the course of the series.
In U.S. animation for the most part the characters tend to remain static over the course of a series, although this has changed in recent years (Gargoyles, and the entire Animated DCU [see below] come to mind). Still, characters like Scooby Doo and The Flintstones remain pretty much as they were (with minor variations) when they debuted.
Animated DCU consists of:
Ragzouken wrote:
I can't be the only one who has no idea what Cowboy Bebop is.
Cowboy Bebop is a 26-episode anime series that was release in Japan in 1998. Later it had a very successful run on Cartoon Network and it still is regularly rerun as part of Adult Swim (it is currently run once a week on Sunday Morning at 4am PST).
Brief Overview: "Cowboy Bebop" is a sci-fi anime series that is set in the late 21st Century and focuses on a group of bounty hunters. The name of the series comes from bounty hunters (called cowboys) and the name of their ship (called the "Bebop"). Although it is set in the future, much of man's current conditions still exist at that time, only the tech has advanced a bit. According to Wikipedia, it is considered one of the best anime series of all time.
If you decide to watch the series, it is important to watch it in order and from the beginning, since each episode builds on the previous ones. Last weekend Adult Swim ran episode #10.
The following is a link to the Wikipedia page on Cowboy Bebop (Note - This page contains many series spoilers): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_Bebop.
techprophet wrote:
Converse:
What about its interface is intuitive?Familiar != Intuitive
There is more to this than it seems. When I first used WordStar I thought its commands would be difficult to learn, but after a short while I got so used to them that I rarely had to think about them (in many ways they made more sense than MS Word's command keys). It was the same with WordPerfect, and then MS Word (I often used the command codes instead the mouse for frequent actions because they were faster, easier, and more reliable).
Given time, any command system becomes familiar to the person using it. It becomes intuitive to that user because that is what he/she is used to.
DaHat wrote:
For years any time I had a bill, statement, tax form or other document I thought "You know... there is a remote possibility I might just want that in a year or 9"... I'd do a quick Print to PDF and bang... I've got my own copy without any need to wonder 'how long should they keep it for me'.
Sure... the hard drive it's own could die, but because in this horrible thing called self reliance... I take steps to make sure that I will still have access to copies just in case without having to ask such questions or worry about hard drive death or house fires.
Personal responsibility... try it!
Although I expect immediate access to my on-line records for a period of time, I don't think its reasonable to expect immediate access indefinitely. I think the following should be a reasonable guide for on-line records (using current year as a basis):
Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the pens will multiply instead of disappear.
