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Sci-Fi

Journal Journal: Trouble in B5-land

FACT:
The DVDs for the pre-canceled Babylon 5 spin-off "Crusade" was supposed to allow the show creator J. Michael Straczynski to tell the full story of how the show didn't fit the demographics of the TNT channel, and how TNT-Atlanta succeeded in getting rid of the show by sending insane notes to the writers. Like "more sex", "more violence". People at Warner Brothers promised to let JMS tell that story in the commentary, but did they? No, it ended up on the "cutting room floor".

I'm going to send a polite but complaining letter, begging it to be fixed in the region 2 release.

Here's a poll: Poll: What about the Crusade DVDs?

RUMOR:
There are rumors that WB wants to re-cast regular characters from the show for the theatrical movie "The Memory of Shadows". This is comming from industry "insiders", and being reported by respected fans. But I won't be sending off any letters before I get more evidence. JMS hasn't said anything about this situation.

EDIT: I did send off a Christmas card to them, that would work wether or not this (intentionally spread?) rumor is true or not. How I'm looking forward to seeing the film and the regular cast, reminding them they've made millions on DVD sales, etc.

EDIT 2: It's dead, Jim. from jms re: tmos

Television

Journal Journal: It's done. Winners have been drawn.

It's done. Winners have been drawn. The raffle brought in just over $1000. That's in addition to all the auctions and donations were done before.

Old post:
Move sig for grat fundraiser! (November 15th-16th)
Only two days left of the raffle. Posting about this in story comments would be rudely offtopic/trollish behaviour; but most people read slashdot with signatures switched on. So how about you put a link to this site:

http://rbiggsmemorial.starstuff.co.uk/ ...in your signature for these two days, and change it back later?
It's a good thing that you can do without paying.

I bought 6 chances and am looking forward to the prize draw.

Television

Journal Journal: Raffle benefitting Richard Biggs' family closes Nov. 15th 1

As part of the Richard Biggs memorial fundraising effort, the Prize Package Raffle closes soon.
It takes PayPal.

Richard Biggs, who co-starred on Babylon 5, Any Day Now and other series, died suddenly of an arterial rupture earlier this year, at the age of 44. Donations and auctions were held in the benefit of his two small boys, RJ and Hunter. This raffle is the last donation effort I know about. (It's possible to give a normal donation after the deadline, of course.)

I'm not the organizer, but I think people should know about it.

Television

Journal Journal: Don't flip off photographers 3

Quick note: Don't flip off any odd person filming you with a camera. It might be tempting, but you could also end up on national TV in Norway.

Norwegian TV news did a story on the US election victory. They showed video from the Republicans' gettogether. Then they visited some hotel where a hypothetical Democrat victory celebration would have taken place. They interviewed some disappointed democrats. And there's a guy lounging in a chair. Flipping off the camera. With both hands. And a smile on his face. Good job.

Politics

Journal Journal: Don't you dare change your vote because of OBL or MM 1

Don't you dare change your vote because of Osama bin Laden or Michael Moore. That goes for changing it to vote for Kerry, or changing it to vote for Bush.

But I'd be happy to let this tape be an inspiration to get out and vote in the first place! If you feel you don't know who to choose of Kerry or Bush, visit Project Vote Smart and look at some other candidates. Vote on your local issues.

A transcript of the full Osama bin Laden tape is out.
I don't know arabic, but the translators say that he's offering a truce to certain states (not countries, that's a different word). You think he's going to keep that promise?

You know what he wants? He wants to influence the election. In either direction. If his tape is seen as moving the election in ANY direction, he's going to come out and take credit for either a Bush or a Kerry victory, and making himself out to be more important than he is. So don't you dare change your vote because of this.

When it comes to who he REALLY wants? He wants either somebody who will leave the terrorists alone (is afraid of them), or somebody who will come after them too hard (killing lots of civilians etc.). I hope that neither Kerry nor Bush fits either description.

To George W.:

                  I know it's gotta be rough for you right now. Hey, we've all been there. "You're fired" are two horrible words when put together in that order. Bin Laden surfacing this weekend to remind the American people of your total and complete failure to capture him was a cruel trick or treat. But there he was. 3,000 people were killed and he's laughing in your face. Why did you stop our Special Forces from going after him? Why did you forget about bin Laden on the DAY AFTER 9/11 and tell your terrorism czar to concentrate on Iraq instead?
                  There he was, OBL, all tan and rested and on videotape (hey, did you get the feeling that he had a bootleg of my movie? Are there DVD players in those caves in Afghanistan?)

--Michael Moore
(What gave it away, the pet goat references? Or that all the other complaints OBL made were in the movie, except for the references to Israel and Lebanon. He must have seen your website and the anti Moore websites too, because he got your message that it was bad to attack the people who voted against Bush.)

Democrats

Journal Journal: Did anybody see this interview? 3

The Kerry campaign says they have released all the military records that they have. (Meaning there are records that the DoD has, that haven't been released yet?)

Brokaw: Someone has analyzed the President's military aptitude tests and yours, and concluded that he has a higher IQ than you do.

Kerry: That's great. More power. I don't know how they've done it, because my record is not public. So I don't know where you're getting that from.

Brokaw: Do you think he's a smart man?

Kerry: I do. Yes, I do think he's a smart man.

The "records" comment is here: Sen. Kerry: Nation 'is polarized'
, but it's not in here: Kerry: 'America can do better'

Did anybody see this interview?

Screen capture

UPDATE: Steve Sailer says Kerry probably didn't know that his test score was part of records posted on JohnKerry.com.

Caldera

Journal Journal: Another day, another death threat 6

(Filed under Caldera, since that and the Microsoft logo is the only ones we have for total dimwits.)

A Norwegian hyper-commercial, faux socialistic, rap group is collecting a bounty for killing Bush. I guess they must have an album out.

I guess they, just like The Guardian, will come out and say that they're sorry that people took offence. How about they're sorry that they were born and raised to be somebody who advocates murder to sell their lame rap records. I would tell them to shut up and sing, but they can't sing.

UPDATE 7: Removed address.

UPDATE: And here's their webpage, with MP3s that are soo cool and hip, that you'll want to stream them 24/7: We're moronic posers
Whois query for the rappers

UPDATE 2: removed
UPDATE 3: removed

UPDATE 4: The US embassy in Norway has lodged a formal complaint with the Norwegian police.

UPDATE 5 Oh, look: It's a trend: A livejournal post (...) resulted in a visit from the US Secret Service

UPDATE 6: Copyleft Software has put up a fax purportedly from the Norwegian police demanding that the webiste be closed, referencing relevant law authorizing the police to take action to prevent violations. I've now removed the addresses and phone numbers to the ISP, but if anybody is interested they can still look the information up in WHOIS.

Republicans

Journal Journal: UK newspaper The Guardian: "Bush is Jesus" 1

UPDATE: The Guardian issues an apology for any offence caused. (See below.)

Guardian newspaper says Bush is the Christ

Does George W. Bush think he is the second coming? Watching his constant references to religion, and how his politics seem consistent with something randomly pulled down from the ether, him thinking that is rather obvious. But his puppet handlers are just schrewd enough not to let him tell the voters of his Bush Derangement Syndrome. Instead, in a sublime message to the Christian wing-nuts his surreal surrogates are putting out this idea that Bush is of the same nature as "God".

"George W Bush is... well, he's... Jesus" -- "Charlie Brooker", The Guardian. Dumb show

Read it, it goes by fast.

Do you think he's referring to Jesus Garzia? Of course not. He's referring to Jesus from Nazareth, held by many to be Christ. They made sure to thinly veil this message and hide it in plain view. In a move typical of Karl Rove, cheif puppetmaster at the Whitehouse - where Bush is squatting while Gore and you pay the rent - the neocon spinmeisters have planted the Bush=Christ meme in an article intended to spark a fake controversy, thus acting as a vessel for the meme..

The last paragraph of the article, clearly seen by any sane person as a loving joke, has been devilishly crafted to provoke outrage among pajama-clad do-nothing bloggers accross the itraweb. Wingnuts will surely e-mail this to their Christian, or Christian-symphatizing friends, who will unwittingly think that this is a genuine article, and read it.

The recipients may share in the anti-British hatefest, laugh at it, or dismiss it as unimportant, but by then the damage is done: The subliminal Bush=Jesus message will tap into their pro-God dysfunction, and could possibly sway voters to the Bush side. Their malfunctioning subconsious will be telling them to vote for Bush, but their rational mind will be hard at work to justify this imperative. So they come up with lame excuses like "He seems more real.", "I don't trust Kerry's character", or "In the primaries Kerry proposed mandatory service, but now he's accusing Bush of bringing back the draft. Something's not right." If you hear these arguments, feel sorry for those furthering them. You know that the person you're talking to has been programmed, and it's not really their fault.

Who is this "Charlie Brooker" anyway? It's an anagram for Rhoocke R. E. Blair. You may know that the name of the prime minister of England, who supported Bush's oil-grab in Iraq, is Tony Blair. And The Guardian is an English paper. There you have it: A possible relative of Tony Blair helps play the religion card for Bush, and even anagrams her name as message to attentive progressives that she knows that we're on to them, but that our alerts will fall on deaf ears in the corporate media.

Hurry up and email ten friends with this information, especially to people you know in the media. We have to counteract this "Bush=Jesus" nonsense, possibly by hiding a "Kerry=John the Baptist" meme in an article that appears negative to Kerry.
/satire

UPDATE:The story was infamous because the author joked about killing the president of the U.S. They've now posted an apology. Mincers of words may note that they don't apologize for toying with assassinating the president, but they do apologisze for any offence taken. So. If nobody took offence, it would be OK, huh? No. Because you slowly legitimize it.

In real, but fun stories: The T-shirt test. This seems to contradict the 419 test (scammers favor Bush). I think small sample sizes and selection of sampling area might be problems for both tests.

Politics

Journal Journal: 419 lads favor Bush over Kerry 1

Ever heard about the noble practice of baiting scammers? Well, here's a scam bait that starts a Ghana chapter of the Bush/Cheyney campaign: GOLDCORP VS PRINCE MUSTAFA (2 pages). The best part here.
The only thing he does wrong is forgetting to ask the scammers to deliver their passports to the U.S. consulate.
A study shows that 419 lads favor Bush over Kerry

In other news, signs are the big trend among hostage takers and among people saying sorry. Apropos

Television

Journal Journal: CBS takes email hoax to air

This SocEng virus penetrated CBS, and CBS spread it to hosts not connected to the Internet, and with limited BS-filtering abilities.
This vulnerability was allready documented by FactCheck and Snopes*, but CBS had not applied the patches. You'd think they'd learned from recent security holes.

Source

*: Snopes has some self-made legends that they try to pass off as true. This isn't one of them, but look out for it.

Edit of journal entry: Edit of transcript

Amiga

Journal Journal: Amiga OS4pre for PPC up and running 1

I've just installed the pre-release of AmigaOS4 on my AmigaOne. In other words: I'll be quite busy in the near future.

OS-compliant programs wil run in emulated mode without any user intervention. This is sweet.

Now I'm going re-install DebianPCC on this thing so I can have one computer to rule them all.
AmigaOS, Debian PPC Linux and Mac OS X run natively on the G4. Classic hardware-banging Amiga games run in an emulator (or failing that, on my old A1200). Windows programs run on a terminal server which I access with rdesktop for Linux.

Now I only need a 5 1/4 inch floppy drive and a tape-drive to run every program I've ever wanted to run :-) Except for Acorn (RISC OS).

A distributed.net client is my next install, before re-installing Debian.

Spam

Journal Journal: Spam reply: Horses

Spam:
Subject: Re: Wanna be hung like a horse?
Attachments:

Reply:
FYI: We're not in the habit of hanging horses in this country

Slashdot.org

Journal Journal: Journal activity awareness 1

Want more awareness about what is goint on "behind" the front page of Slashdot? Looking at the front page of Slashdot shows you the current news. But what about all the stuff that goes on in journals and far inside discussions? As a place for social interaction, slashdot has many good features, like journals accessible next to a user's handle in the comments page, friend/foe-system, moderation, etc. But what features exist to show the undergrowth to me quickly?
This came up in this discussion. Here's how I'm using existing features and extending them in a simple way:

I go to Preferences: Homepage
Then have my user space look like this:
Recent journals
Recent discussions
Topic:Amiga

With this HTML:

<A HREF="http://slashdot.org/search.pl?op=journals">Recent journals</a> <br> <A HREF="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl">Recent discussions</a> <br> <A HREF="http://slashdot.org/search.pl?topic=138">Topic:Amiga</a>

The last link is to the Amiga topic. Exchange this with your favourite topic or just remove it.
I then make sure these slashboxes are switched on (in addition to other boxes):

  • 10 Hot Comments
  • Semi-Random Box
  • Features
  • Older Stuff
  • Slashdot Login
  • Slashdot Poll
  • User Space

And now I have easy access to more awareness about what's going on behind the front page. :-)

Entertainment

Journal Journal: Richard Biggs, B5's "Stephen Franklin", dead at 44

We were avaiting the announcement of the first Babylon 5 theatrical film, when this sad news broke.

News article

JMS' post

EDIT:
There's an "official" forum for sending condolences to the family: Messages for the Biggs Family
Includes messages from some of the cast members.

A trust fund is going to be set up for Rick's two boys, and some people have allready started donating and starting auctions. Beware: Not all auctions on EBay, for example, are charity auctions. Some may be trying to profiteer from this.

There's also other forums:
Spcecast

B5TV.com

Livejournal

Scifi.com

WB 1

WB 2

EDIT: IMDb put his age at 43. It was really 44. RIP

User Journal

Journal Journal: Page 23, line 5 2

These interactions and effects are detected and transformed into an image, much in the same way that light is reflected from, or absorbed by, objects in a scene.

Sitting on the desk in my dorm room.

  The instructions:

  Grab the nearest book.
  Turn to page 23.
  Find the fifth sentence.
  Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

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