Something Random

[Mercutio]

The trailer for the movie version of The Watchmen is up and boy does it look spiffy.

 

[Stereodude]

Sorry, I don't do quicktime.

 

[ddrueding]

Vista SP1 is doing the slowest install I've ever seen. My machine isn't exactly a dinosaur, but it is taking 7-10 minutes per percentage point of "Installing Service Pack: Stage 3 of 3" after the reboot.

 

[ddrueding]

Vista SP1 is doing the slowest install I've ever seen. My machine isn't exactly a dinosaur, but it is taking 7-10 minutes per percentage point of "Installing Service Pack: Stage 3 of 3" after the reboot.

 

[Mercutio]

Vista SP1 took about 30 minutes to install on each of my Core2Duo lab machines, and those boxes aren't exactly slow... and that was using a local copy of the update installer.

 

[ddrueding]

Yup. About 30 minutes to download the 179MB file. Another 10 in windows before the reboot, and another 10 in Stages 1 and 2. Stage 3 is absolutely crawling; I suspect it is due to the fairly complex hardware configuration (can't think of another reason). Now at 58% after about 90 minutes.

 

[ddrueding]

It's sure doing something; power consumption is 60W higher than at idle...

 

[Mercutio]

Joss Whedon, famously the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly, has a new web-only serial running, Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog. It stars Neal Patrick Harris and Nathan "Mal Reynolds" Fillion.

I know there are several other Whedon fans here, but the wrinkle on all this is that the streamable video will only be available until July 20th, with purchasable (crap quality as usual, I'm sure) iTMS downloads and eventually a DVD release to follow.

As one might expect from the title, Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog is a musical about a lovelorn Supervillain.

Frankly, I've been looking forward to this more than the new Batman movie.

--

While I'm at it, I also watched Batman: Gotham Knight, which appears to be more of a companion piece to the movies than anything to do with the comic or previous Animated Series titles. Basically, it's 6 vignettes written by the usual gang of DC Comics idiots, but animated in various styles by different Japanese anime studios.

Cutting right to the chase, the writing is mostly sorely lacking. There's five 15 minute episodes that follow exactly the same formula, and one good episode that makes like the Sopranos series finale. The animation is a mixed bag, with fantastic, moody art direction and some abjectly terrible attempts at stylized human forms.

Basically, it's not something I'd watch again and I'm hoping no one wastes their money on it. On the plus side, despite the involvement of known anime producers, I saw no rapacious tentacles, catgirls or snot bubbles.

 

[Fushigi]

LMAO, you guys, the behind the times old fart PCee/M$ Winblows Apple H8trs are hilarious!

No, I think the issue is more that besides the smear-screen interface Apple continues to not actually offer anything new. There's nothing innovative. Also, considering how well-known Apple devices are for having battery failures and how much power WiFi is known to draw, I find it odd that people still buy Apple products without user-replaceable batteries. Not having a spare battery means heavy-duty data users will likely have to recharge at least twice a day.

Here's a more realistic take on the new iPhone.

I'm not an Apple hater. I just don't get the hype.

 

[ddrueding]

Interesting tidbit. I couldn't find a way to directly disable Hibernation in Vista (and save the 8GB of hard drive space). But when I ran Disk Cleanup, it let me delete the Hibernation file and disabled hibernation for me. Sweet!

 

[Bozo]

To disable Hibernation in Veesta, open a command prompt and type in
'powercfg -h off' without the quotes. Press enter.

Bozo :joker:

 

[Fushigi]

To further tweak things, hit Start and type 'power'. Select Power Options. For whatever plan you've got, click Change plan settings then Change advanced power settings. Lots of things to tweak, from hard drives to USB.

 

[paugie]

hahaha, thanks for the tip Mercutio. I always was a fan of Doogie. And it was a blast seeing Captain Firefly again.

 

[LunarMist]

hahaha, thanks for the tip Mercutio. I always was a fan of Doogie. And it was a blast seeing Captain Firefly again.

Doogie and Capt. Firefly?

 

[LunarMist]

I suddenly received hundreds of returned e-mails from the mailer-daemon.

 

[ddrueding]

Congratulations. A spammer has chosen to use your e-mail address as the "from" address in a spam campaign. Considering 99% of the addresses they are sending to don't exist, the mailer-daemon at those domains is letting the sender (you) know that the address doesn't exist. I suggest setting up a rule to get these out of your inbox.

 

[LunarMist]

Yeah, I know it is spam - just complaining.

 

[Fushigi]

On the plus side, despite the involvement of known anime producers, I saw no rapacious tentacles, catgirls or snot bubbles.

Tentacle porn: Just another fetish. One that's fallen by the wayside I should add. There's been maybe one or two of these made this millennium.
Catgirls: A sub-genre. There are some still made but again it's a small minority. Tends to show up only in comedies to add a cuteness factor. And didn't Batman have Catwoman?
Snot bubbles: Something I've never really understood either. But they tend to only be present in 'screwball comedies' so again are in a relative minority.

Really, you should either learn about the state of the anime industry and the current product offerings or simply stop talking about it.

Some shows to consider: Samurai 7 (a different spin on the story of protecting poor villagers), Gunslinger Girl (dying children rebuilt as government assassins), Trinity Blood (the Vatican's special forces fight the encroaching vampire nation and have some surprising 'people' in their midst), xxxHolic (your wishes can come true .. for a price), Saikano (what would you do if your girlfriend was a weapon of war?), Gantz (bad people caught by an amoral object at the moment of death are forced to hunt aliens on earth), and Paprika (just surreal).

Besides the Pixar and Dreamworks movies, what have the domestic animation studios come up with lately? Say the last five years? The times I've tried to watch something domestic it's come across as a 6th grader playing in Flash. There's very little good animation coming out of the US companies.

 

[Mercutio]

Really, you should either learn about the state of the anime industry and the current product offerings or simply stop talking about it.


Besides the Pixar and Dreamworks movies, what have the domestic animation studios come up with lately? Say the last five years? The times I've tried to watch something domestic it's come across as a 6th grader playing in Flash. There's very little good animation coming out of the US companies.

I flatly despise anime and manga, Fushigi. What I see, as a fan of Western comics, is the Japanese products replacing those things we've made here. Go into a bookstore that used to have an expansive collection of graphic novels and where those novels once stood are no aisles of backwards Japanese comics.

How are the geeks of tomorrow going to learn about Batman if they can't find any Batman books?

There's an awful, awful lot of younger people now who very literally have a "the nastiest Japanese tentacle porn is better than the best works of Western Literature." I have met these people. I am not joking. They're the kids who come into my local comic book shop (to buy Pokemon cards) and bitch about the space being taken up by everything in the store that isn't Japanese, the whole time they're there.

I look at anime as merely a further symptom of the above. Perhaps one is the gateway to the other (I see the same thing in video games as well, for what it's worth). These are things that are pushing Western-created media out of the marketplace; it's cheaper for some American-based media company to license a Japanese cartoon or manga than it is to develop an original work, so that's exactly what happens. It's unfortunate for the folks who want to create. It's unfortunate for audiences, who are much less likely to be exposed to Western work, and ultimately it will be bad for our media companies, when the Japanese companies realize they can market directly themselves.

A lot of very good animation storytelling is being done in the US. Unfortunately, a lot of it has very non-traditional distribution these days. Shorts end up on YouTube, or playing at animation festivals, but media companies aren't interested in buying or developing works from animators locally when they can buy a complete series or movie from Japan. You aren't seeing the Western stuff because it's not making it to commercial distribution.

 

[udaman]

What I see, as a fan of Western comics, is the Japanese products replacing those things we've made here. Go into a bookstore that used to have an expansive collection of graphic novels and where those novels once stood are no aisles of backwards Japanese comics.

How are the geeks of tomorrow going to learn about Batman if they can't find any Batman books?

There's an awful, awful lot of younger people now who very literally have a "the nastiest Japanese tentacle porn is better than the best works of Western Literature." I have met these people. I am not joking. They're the kids who come into my local comic book shop (to buy Pokemon cards) and bitch about the space being taken up by everything in the store that isn't Japanese, the whole time they're there.

I look at anime as merely a further symptom of the above. Perhaps one is the gateway to the other (I see the same thing in video games as well, for what it's worth). These are things that are pushing Western-created media out of the marketplace; it's cheaper for some American-based media company to license a Japanese cartoon or manga than it is to develop an original work, so that's exactly what happens. It's unfortunate for the folks who want to create. It's unfortunate for audiences, who are much less likely to be exposed to Western work, and ultimately it will be bad for our media companies, when the Japanese companies realize they can market directly themselves.

A lot of very good animation storytelling is being done in the US.Western Unfortunately, a lot of it has very non-traditional distribution these days. Shorts end up on YouTube, or playing at animation festivals, but media companies aren't interested in buying or developing works from animators locally when they can buy a complete series or movie from Japan. You aren't seeing the stuff because it's not making it to commercial distribution.

Geez Merc, like LM with his ignorant distaste for sublime dim sum (which he's never tried)...you have your narrowminded MidWest viewpoint bias showing there. By Western, you really mean USA, as opposed to West vs East mentality of those against Asian countries. There is a variety of Asian animation you wouldn't even know about, nor would find appealing. There is a variety of European continent and other locations that you likewise are unaware of, don't have easy access to, or would not be interested in.

What you want to hold onto is your past...sorry, the world is changing whether you like it or not. People's tastes change. Most of the entire nation of 'older' people rejected the tastes of the 'hippie' era of the '60-'70s here in the USA.

Times are changing, that comic book store is a dinosaur of Middle American culture, fast being replaced by the digital delivery mediums, not limited to FIOS internet. While we have yet to become a paperless society in the digital age of publishing, we move in that direction...bye bye comic book stores. Geeks of now and the future don't necessarily need to learn about your childhood geek favorites, that's *your* era. Just like most current gen of youth could care less about their parent's cultural idols/icons.

Long past the time when the 1st HDfest came to Chicago many years ago. While the HDfest has wanned in popularity over the years, they still have them where ticket sales manifest. Go see some HDfest animations to broaden your perspective. Apparently, over the years Seoul, S. Korea has been most popular festival (films are submitted from all over the world), but you probaly have no interest in something so foreign to you parochial upbringing.

http://www.hdfest.com/

http://www.hdfest.com/film/animation.html

Last year they screened on 4k projectors, a movie shot with the very expensive Dalsa 4k res, 35mm film size sensor digicamcorder. Now with inexpensive Red One 4k @$35k fully outfitted, less expensive to rent; you can expect the 4k res revolution to result in more animated HD films, independent films probably too far from your cultural biased youth preferences to enjoy. I find most 'Hollywood' based animation like Wall-E boring. I'd rather see a Red One 4k res capture of a Ridley Scot Sci-Fi...Blade Runner or Black Rain would have been awesome on 4k or 8k digital projection.

 

[udaman]

Imitation the sincerest form of flattery???

Microsoft tries to derail Apple’s innovative mystique



http://www.macnn.com/blogs/2008/07/18/microsoft-tries-to-derail-apples-innovative-mystique.html


Since I know, no one will click on the link:

Apple has held the industrial design mantle for some time now with their slick aluminum iMac, their ultra thin MacBook Air, their iPod touch and especially their off-the-chart winning iPhone design. Yet unlike the past, players such as HP, Dell and Samsung aren’t willing to stand around idly any longer while Steve Jobs grabs all of the headlines for their latest and greatest gizmo...This report takes a general peak at three recent Apple product challengers and the key wizard behind this current strategy: Microsoft.

Well if you can't innovate, if you can't beat their superior design, just copy ...tis the M$ way.

Samsung launched their new Omnia (SGH-i900) on the morning of June 9, just hours prior to Steve Jobs introducing the new iPhone 3G at Apple’s developer conference keynote. Was that a mere coincidence? Ha – Not a chance! And yet the better question is why?...the day prior to Steve Jobs keynote, Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division, was quoted as saying that “We will outsell the iPhone - We will outsell the BlackBerry.” This was said knowing full well that Samsung’s “next-morning” press release was already cued up for release prior to Steve Jobs keynote. Just chalk that up as having Microsoft’s fingerprint.

Microsoft is still steaming and stewing over the fact that Apple has usurped their touchscreen leadership the blink of an eye. Yes, the mighty Microsoft who introduced the Tablet PC back in 2001 has had to watch Apple’s iPhone do in one year what it’s taken Microsoft seven years to achieve, if indeed they have. Apple clearly beat Microsoft to the punch on multi-touch technology, which they’re only now beginning to roll out as noted in HP and Dell’s new products.

But at the end of the day, it boils down to the fact that Apple is still winning over the consumer with their cool products and grabbing all of the top tech consumer headlines because Apple just gets it . That’s something that Microsoft has never understood. And while the latest barrage of competing products from HP and Samsung are the very best yet in challenging Apple’s line-up, they still end up looking like they’re from the copy-cat catalog from Microsoft. Regardless of what flank they tried to attack Apple on, they just didn’t pull it off: not-a-one. They come close, but no cigar.


I’ll close my report with this: For those of you who actually need an example of what I mean when I say that Apple just gets it , then I’ll point you to a classic: You know that Apple gets it when intelligent adults actually want to lick your product on public TV (see 1:56 mark of video).
Need I say more? Ha – I didn’t think so.
Written and researched by Neo.

 

[Mercutio]

Although I am no longer a Hairy Aussie, I feel I have a certain level of affinity for this job posting.

The link is completely safe for work, but I don't think you can say the same thing about the company that made the posting.

 

[ddrueding]

Sounds like a blast. Have you submitted your resume yet, Merc?

 

[LunarMist]

Although I am no longer a Hairy Aussie, I feel I have a certain level of affinity for this job posting.

The link is completely safe for work, but I don't think you can say the same thing about the company that made the posting.

How is that jpb relevant to your experience, and why are you interested? It looks boring to me.

 

[ddrueding]

How is that jpb relevant to your experience, and why are you interested? It looks boring to me.

It is for an adult site. The link below is certainly NSFW.

www.abbywinters.com

 

[LunarMist]

Oh. I missed that point. Don't be concerned; I'd never click on such a link.

 

[ddrueding]

Well I certainly would

 

[Mercutio]

Abby Winters is particularly interesting for the use of non-professional models with real "girl next door" qualities and cute but imperfect bodies (i.e. real human beings; a little tummy, a girl who wears glasses through a whole scene or maybe someone who didn't shave 15 minutes before filming). A lot of their scenes feature two women who have never been with another woman before, which is very charming and erotic in its own way. They tend to be very tentative at first and ultimately very enthusiastic.

Plus, they're all Aussies and have cute Aussie-girl accents. And a lot of them look really geeky.

No, I am not proud of being able to identify the content of a foreign porn company.
Yes, I would very happily take that job just to hang out with the naked Aussie lesbians.

 

[Fushigi]

Yes, I would very happily take that job just to hang out with the naked Aussie lesbians.

"I'd buy that for a dollar!"

 

[ddrueding]

For as long as I've been looking (about 30 minutes), Flickr has been averaging 6000+ pictures uploaded per minute. Taking the broad leap that this is an actual average, and a broader leap that the average filesize is about 4MB, that means that their download speed is at least 400MB/s...sweet.

 

[ddrueding]

...and that they have a data store that grows at that rate long term...1.4TB/hour...holy crap.

 

[Handruin]

That is a lot of bandwidth, not only for internet but also file I/O. it's got to be spread among lots of servers. Most of my images are between 2-3MB in size.

They also have resized images for everything uploaded. I don't know if those are created on the fly or right after the image is uploaded. I also don't know how they make any money at $24/year. It's a hell of a bargain for the number of pictures I have stored on there.

 

[ddrueding]

They also have resized images for everything uploaded. I don't know if those are created on the fly or right after the image is uploaded. I also don't know how they make any money at $24/year. It's a hell of a bargain for the number of pictures I have stored on there.

I don't know what the CPU cost would be for resizing files on the fly, but it is likely worthwhile to only cache the popular ones in every size. I keep my images as close to the 10MB/image limit as possible and currently have 590 images uploaded.

 

[LunarMist]

For as long as I've been looking (about 30 minutes), Flickr has been averaging 6000+ pictures uploaded per minute.

Yet 5998 of them are not good photos.

 

[LunarMist]

Ever fall asleep on the toilet and hit your head on the metal wall?

 

[Handruin]

You have metal walls? Mine are sheet rock...:beye:

 

[LunarMist]

I don't think there are any rocks. Security screws are all over the place.

 

[ddrueding]

Yet 5998 of them are not good photos.

Nah, I've found perhaps a hundred that I've liked. Not a good percentage, I'll grant you

 

[ddrueding]

Ever fall asleep on the toilet and hit your head on the metal wall?

I don't think there are any rocks. Security screws are all over the place.

That would be in a public restroom? A 'stall' as I believe they are called? In that case, no. I have, however fallen asleep in the shower and split my head on the hot water knob before hitting the floor. Nothing better than waking up in a pool of blood

 

[Bozo]

I was driving home from work going south on a highway. I woke up on the north bound shoulder. :zzz:
But I have never fallen asleep on the toilet or shower.

Bozo :joker: