First look at Ridley Scott's Forever War Movie
Is this really the first piece of concept art from Ridley Scott's movie of Joe Haldeman's The Forever War?
via io9.com
A great scifi book ( I can say that now that the network went Syfy)
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
First look at Ridley Scott's Forever War Movie - The forever war - io9
Did The V Countdown Clock Actually Disrupt Your Lost Viewing Experience? - Lost - io9
Did The V Countdown Clock Actually Disrupt Your Lost Viewing Experience?
Sun's got a message for Jack. What's that you're saying, Sun? Only a few minutes until V? Thanks for letting us know. The V countdown clock annoyed the shit out of people, but it also disrupted Lost's most text-heavy episode.
They could have picked any other episode of Lost and it might not have been such a big problem. But during an episode with subtitles running across the screen (which got obscured in at least one crucial instance) and Sun having to write on a notepad during a pivotal moment — which just happened to be in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen! — the V countdown clock was a clusterfuck of hamster-eating lizard army proportions.
People took to Twitter to register their dismay. Lost producer Damon Lindelof tweeted: "Yes, people, I saw it too. :34 minutes until I cry myself to sleep." And Lost's Adam Horowitz added, "Really? The V couldn't have at least been translucent?!?" (Here's a list of other angry/mocking "countdown clock" tweets, including one person who suggests that the episode of V should have a countdown until the next episode of V.)
I personally didn't mind the countdown clock that much — V is a show with a lot of potential, that needs a lot of help getting back onto people's radar after an ill-advised four-month hiatus — but when it actually interferes with Lost's storytelling? That's going way too far.
via io9.com
the sound of the death of television begins here - unbelievably annoying
Boing Boing
Apple's iPad is a touch of genius
It strikes you when you first touch an iPad. The form just feels good, not too lightweight or heavy, nor too thin or thick. It's sensual. It's tactile. And it's a good way to spot a first-timer, too, as I observed with a few test subjects. The dead giveaway for an iPad n00b is pausing a few breaths before hitting the "on" switch, and just let the thing rest there against skin.
Flick the switch and the novelty hits. Just as the iPhone, Palm Pré and Android phones scratched an itch we didn't know we had, somewhere between cellphone and notebook, the iPad hits a completely new pleasure spot. The display is large enough to make the experience of apps and games on smaller screens stale. Typography is crisp, images gem-like, and the speed brisk thanks to Apple's A4 chip and solid state storage. As I browse early release iPad apps, web pages, and flip through the iBook store and books, the thought hits that this is a greater leap into a new user experience than the sum of its parts suggests.
via boingboing.net
no surprise there hmmm
Monday, March 29, 2010
Another American Godzilla Movie Set To Attack - kaiju - io9
via io9.com
I must admit to a more than minor Go-jira obsession. Have YOU seen the original cut in subtitles without Perry Mason?
The Bob Chronicles
The Bob Chronicles
On its fifteenth anniversary, a look back at a legendary software flop.
What’s the most efficient way to deride a technology product as a stinker and/or a flop? Easy: Compare it to Microsoft Bob. Bring up the infamous Windows 3.1 front-end for computing newbies–officially released fifteen years ago this week, on March 31st, 1995–and you need say no more. Everything from OS X to Twitter to Google Wave to (inevitably) Windows Vista has gotten the treatment.
Bob’s pervasiveness as an insult long ago transcended its brief period of prominence as a product. By now, it’s unlikely that the vast majority of people who use it as shorthand for “embarrassing tech failure” ever actually used it–any more than the average person who cracks jokes about the Ford Edsel has spent time behind the wheel of one.
But Bob didn’t start out as one of technology’s most reliable laugh lines. It may strain credulity given Bob’s current reputation, but back in 1995, even pundits who had their doubts about the software seemed to accept the idea that it was a sneak preview of where user interfaces were going. And even though Bob died just one year later, Microsoft continued to Bob-ize major applications for years–most notably every version of Office from Office 97 through Office 2003, all of which featured the notorious Office Assistant helper, better known as Clippy.
My ab Fave Rave Skindoze product - bumbling edge of technology
Op-Ed Columnist - The Rage Is Not About Health Care
THERE were times when last Sunday’s great G.O.P. health care implosion threatened to bring the thrill back to reality television. On ABC’s “This Week,” a frothing and filibustering Karl Rove all but lost it in a debate with the Obama strategist David Plouffe. A few hours later, the perennially copper-faced Republican leader John Boehner revved up his “Hell no, you can’t!” incantation in the House chamber — instant fodder for a new viral video remixing his rap with will.i.am’s “Yes, we can!” classic from the campaign. Boehner, having previously likened the health care bill to Armageddon, was now so apoplectic you had to wonder if he had just discovered one of its more obscure revenue-generating provisions, a tax on indoor tanning salons.
Skip to next paragraph
Fred R. Conrad/The New York TimesFrank Rich
Readers' Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.But the laughs evaporated soon enough. There’s nothing entertaining about watching goons hurl venomous slurs at congressmen like the civil rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay Barney Frank. And as the week dragged on, and reports of death threats and vandalism stretched from Arizona to Kansas to upstate New York, the F.B.I. and the local police had to get into the act to protect members of Congress and their families.
How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht. The weapon of choice for vigilante violence at Congressional offices has been a brick hurled through a window. So far.
No less curious is how disproportionate this red-hot anger is to its proximate cause. The historic Obama-Pelosi health care victory is a big deal, all right, so much so it doesn’t need Joe Biden’s adjective to hype it. But the bill does not erect a huge New Deal-Great Society-style government program. In lieu of a public option, it delivers 32 million newly insured Americans to private insurers. As no less a conservative authority than The Wall Street Journal editorial page observed last week, the bill’s prototype is the health care legislation Mitt Romney signed into law in Massachusetts. It contains what used to be considered Republican ideas.
Yet it’s this bill that inspired G.O.P. congressmen on the House floor to egg on disruptive protesters even as they were being evicted from the gallery by the Capitol Police last Sunday. It’s this bill that prompted a congressman to shout “baby killer” at Bart Stupak, a staunch anti-abortion Democrat. It’s this bill that drove a demonstrator to spit on Emanuel Cleaver, a black representative from Missouri. And it’s this “middle-of-the-road” bill, as Obama accurately calls it, that has incited an unglued firestorm of homicidal rhetoric, from “Kill the bill!” to Sarah Palin’s cry for her followers to “reload.” At least four of the House members hit with death threats or vandalism are among the 20 political targets Palin marks with rifle crosshairs on a map on her Facebook page.
When Social Security was passed by Congress in 1935 and Medicare in 1965, there was indeed heated opposition. As Dana Milbank wrote in The Washington Post, Alf Landon built his catastrophic 1936 presidential campaign on a call for repealing Social Security. (Democrats can only pray that the G.O.P. will “go for it” again in 2010, as Obama goaded them on Thursday, and keep demanding repeal of a bill that by September will shower benefits on the elderly and children alike.) When L.B.J. scored his Medicare coup, there were the inevitable cries of “socialism” along with ultimately empty rumblings of a boycott from the American Medical Association.
But there was nothing like this. To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill, you have to look a year before Medicare, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both laws passed by similar majorities in Congress; the Civil Rights Act received even more votes in the Senate (73) than Medicare (70). But it was only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails. That’s because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance.
The apocalyptic predictions then, like those about health care now, were all framed in constitutional pieties, of course. Barry Goldwater, running for president in ’64, drew on the counsel of two young legal allies, William Rehnquist and Robert Bork, to characterize the bill as a “threat to the very essence of our basic system” and a “usurpation” of states’ rights that “would force you to admit drunks, a known murderer or an insane person into your place of business.” Richard Russell, the segregationist Democratic senator from Georgia, said the bill “would destroy the free enterprise system.” David Lawrence, a widely syndicated conservative columnist, bemoaned the establishment of “a federal dictatorship.” Meanwhile, three civil rights workers were murdered in Philadelphia, Miss.
That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.
In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.
If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.
They can’t. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.
If Congressional Republicans want to maintain a politburo-like homogeneity in opposition to the Democrats, that’s their right. If they want to replay the petulant Gingrich government shutdown of 1995 by boycotting hearings and, as John McCain has vowed, refusing to cooperate on any legislation, that’s their right too (and a political gift to the Democrats). But they can’t emulate the 1995 G.O.P. by remaining silent as mass hysteria, some of it encompassing armed militias, runs amok in their own precincts. We know the end of that story. And they can’t pretend that we’re talking about “isolated incidents” or a “fringe” utterly divorced from the G.O.P. A Quinnipiac poll last week found that 74 percent of Tea Party members identify themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, while only 16 percent are aligned with Democrats.
After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is “now on the books.” Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload” rhetoric.
Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too.
•
Correction: Timothy Geithner’s title at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York was president and chief executive officer, not chairman, as I wrote here last week.
Sign in to Recommend More Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on March 28, 2010, on page WK10 of the New York edition.
via nytimes.com
interesting reading
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Internet usage overtakes television watching: Report
Internet usage overtakes television watching: Report
Canadians are spending more time online than they are watching television, according to a new report.
Photograph by: File, Reuters
For the first time ever, Canadians are spending more time online than they are watching television, according to a new report.
The survey, conducted by Ipsos Reid last fall found that Canadians are spending more than 18 hours a week online, compared to 16.9 hours watching television.
thought they just played hockey
Saturday, March 27, 2010
The Outer Limits Visual Episode Guide
March 27, 2010 4:32 PM
by The Crotchety Old Fan
The Outer Limits Visual Episode Guide
Once I started re-watching The Outer Limits in earnest, I realized that this particular show had stuck a bunch of (neato keen) images into my head. What hadn’t always stuck was the story that those images went with.
To solve this problem, I created a visual episode guide, one that links an iconic image from each episode of the Outer Limits to the title of that episode.
Of course, my iconic images may not be yours, but I’ll bet that at least half of them are (and probably more).
I expect this visual display will also bring back a lot of memories.
(Incidentally, there are only 48 images for the 49 episodes. One of the episodes was a two-parter.)
science fiction
Sent from my iPhone by mac
Friday, March 26, 2010
WonderCon 2010 :: What's New
Friday, March 26, 2010
09:12 PM
Just might have to go to this
|  WonderCon 2010 Advance Memberships now available at select Bay Area comics shops. Click here for a complete list! FRIDAY, APR 2 12 Noon - 7 PM* SATURDAY, APR 3 10 AM - 7 PM* SUNDAY, APR 4 11 AM - 5 PM *Additional programming hours on Friday and Saturday nights MOSCONE CENTER SOUTH 747 Howard Street San Francisco directions  
ADVANCE MEMBERSHIPS 3-DAYS Adults: $30 JR/SR*: $15 1-DAY (Fri/Sat) Adults: $12 JR/SR*: $6 1-DAY (Sun) Adults: $10 JR/SR*: $5 ONSITE MEMBERSHIPS 3-DAYS Adults: $40 JR/SR*: $20 1-DAY (Fri/Sat) Adults: $15 JR/SR*: $8 1-DAY (Sun) Adults: $10 JR/SR*: $5
*Children 11 and under free with PAID adult membership. Juniors are 12-17 years old and Seniors are 60 or more years old. Active military will pay the Junior/Senior price. This offer does not extend to dependents. Remember: Your WonderCon membership gets you access to all events onsite at the convention - space permitting — including panels, programs, screenings, and the giant Exhibit Hall. There are no extra fees! OTHER SHOWS:   |
How to get (an) Ilife!
How to get (an) Ilife!
March 26th, 2010 | Author: mclasen
Another great group meeting as we discussed features of iPhoto 09.
Anne presented a slideshow she made from a family musical event and
shared how she created it and important tips that she learned in the
process. That flowed into a discussion of posting photos and movies
onto Facebook to share with our families and friend. From Iphoto, it
is just a click away and for a movie file, it is easy to attach. Lots
of great improvements in iPhoto 09 and so many things to learn. One
tip – the majority of the Apple iPhoto slideshow themes use landscape
orientation not portrait alignment, so keep that in mind when
shooting your photos if you want to use some of their fancy templates
or you’ll be cropping a lot.
via dvmug.org
One of the most popular SIGs at our Apple User group
SongMeanings | Welcome
Check out this website I found at songmeanings.net
where almost half a million people argue about the meaning of song lyrics
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Enough with the Apple bashing! | Companies News - Betanews
As the hype machine for iPad availability revs up into overdrive (and, in some cases, tacks on afterburners), in a desperate effort to restore balance to the universe -- or, in some people's lives, what passes for a universe -- backlash against Apple increases to compensate. I'm thinking it's getting more than a little ridiculous to demonize a company because it's managed to succeed where others have failed.
I'm thinking it's time to stop the silliness.
Ever since Apple's return from the dead began about 13 years ago, it's become almost de rigeur to criticize it for being overly secretive, cultish, and obsessive. Apple-friendly consumers are dismissed as "fanboys" having drunk the Kool-Aid (a phrase Jerry Pournelle now probably wishes he'd never have coined). CEO Steve Jobs is accused of using his "Reality Distortion Field" to get customers to buy Apple products without asking so much as a single question.
Some opposition is well-deserved
I can appreciate where some of the opposition comes from. Apple is, after all, not the world's easiest company to deal with. It often seems to act in its own best interests and to the detriment of many of its stakeholders -- something iPhone developers appreciate all too well. Apple's behavior, as befits its position as the leading consumer electronics vendor of our time, isn't always as nice as it could be. Companies that choose to build their business models around Apple's platforms -- especially the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad -- must first come to terms with the cold reality that Apple may taketh away as quickly as it giveth. They know the risks going in, and they steel themselves for a rough ride as a result.
This is the price that stakeholders pay for being part of a vibrant market. If they want something a little warmer and fuzzier, I'm sure lesser islands of sanctuary like Nokia would be more than happy to coddle them a little. Unfortunately, all the coddling in the world won't ever make up for the fact that there's a lot more money to be made in Apple's App Store than Nokia's Ovi.
What I can't appreciate is the deep-rooted nastiness expressed by some who insist on remaining opposed to Apple's products or its way of doing business, on principle alone. To a certain degree, our complex allegiances to the tech companies that increasingly define the tools of our modern lives naturally lend themselves to polarized opinions and passionate clashes. In a simpler age, Chevy and Dodge aficionados would duke it out at the drag strip before declaring a victor, shaking hands, and going home. The tech industry, unfortunately, doesn't seem to shake hands much. More often than not, the high-spiritedness of the community tends to descend to mean-spiritedness almost as soon as the first article has been published.
Aside from being more than a little distasteful, the breakdown also clouds the core issues of whether or not a given product has value. We spend so much time flinging barbs back and forth that we forget that there may, perhaps, possibly, be something about the product that's worth appreciating.
It saddens me that a company can't succeed without being slammed for being successful. It saddens me that the industry as a whole can't seem to shake this knee-jerk, childlike behaviour. It saddens me that regular business folks, of the genus homo sapiens, observing us from behind the glass wall, conclude no one in the tech sector ever graduated beyond lame teenaged insults and put-downs. Sometimes I wish we could simply congratulate Apple for succeeding where others have failed, critique the company for its rough edges, and then move on.
The conspiracy to invent a conspiracy
So, to set the record straight, from where I sit, the media are not biased toward Apple. While there will always be those who lean one way or the other, there is no industry-wide conspiracy to paint Apple in a favorable light.
While I'm still on the conspiracy thing: No one has it in for wannabe-competitors, either. We'd all love to see countless worthy iPad competitors, and can't wait for other vendors to bring their offerings to market. The demand for something different has been obvious to us all since the very first tablet-like machines were demonstrated two decades ago. It's a category that's generated countless waves of unfulfilled hype since then, so forgive us all if we cut Apple some slack now that it has apparently cracked a very long-standing and stubborn nut. If it hadn't been Apple, the industry would still have gone a little giddy.
Detractors of all things Apple point to initial iPad sales figures as evidence that something is amiss. They claim supporters are manipulating the stats to depict Apple favorably. First off, no one cares about initial sales figures. They may fill editorial space on a slow news day, but they don't say much about a given device's long-term chances. Call me in three months and let me know how the thing is selling. Until then, trying to count a couple of days worth of sales is a patently useless exercise that proves nothing beyond the fact that some people have lots of free time on their hands.
Success makes you a target
In an age marked by endless waves of start-ups that are forgotten before anyone has a chance to remember them, the few companies that forge their own path to domination often become targets. In that regard, Apple is no different than IBM, Microsoft and, more recently, Google. If success is its own reward, it is also a prime motivator of the kind of mean-spiritedness that long ago might have been classified as sour grapes. It's high time we raised the level of discourse and rediscovered the basic principles every consumer values: Namely, does the product or service being discussed meet a given need at a given price at a given point in time? Does it do so more effectively than competing offerings? Will you buy it? Did you buy it?
Like it or not, Apple has taught itself well over the last 13 years. It reads consumers better than any other market competitor and, as a result, is able to generate levels of interest and buying activity that others can only dream about. It has learned to efficiently and effectively market itself, using processes that are rewriting the marketing zeitgeist. It succeeds where others have failed because it learns from the mistakes of others. Apple is the quintessential business success story, and we'd all do well to learn from its experience.
We'd all do well to learn from something, anyway.
Carmi Levy is a Canadian-based independent technology analyst and journalist still trying to live down his past life leading help desks and managing projects for large financial services organizations. He comments extensively in a wide range of media, and works closely with clients to help them leverage technology and social media tools and processes to drive their business.
via betanews.com
enuf already
Ten Alternate Names for the New Sarah Palin Reality Show, from Boing Boing readers - Boing Boing
Ten Alternate Names for the New Sarah Palin Reality Show, from Boing Boing readers
I asked people who follow me on Twitter to come up with more interesting titles for the forthcoming Sarah Palin television show on TLC than the rather bland "Sarah Palin's Alaska." Following are ten the submissions which caused me to spew the largest spews of coffee on my monitor due to involuntary LOL.
• MYTHMAKERS (@DavidHains )
• NATURE'S DEATH PANELS (@dunagan23)
• PALINTOLOGY (@iheartmuseums )
• WHALIN' WITH PALIN (@hmobius)
• THE BEWILDERNESS (@james_atomic)
• TRAILIN' PALIN (@invisiblea)
• WIFE ON EARTH (@fcw)
• NORTHERN OVEREXPOSURE (@JIMWICh)
• THE BEVERLY SNOWBILLIES (@drhypercube)
via boingboing.net
heh heh
Ten Alternate Names for the New Sarah Palin Reality Show, from Boing Boing readers - Boing Boing
Ten Alternate Names for the New Sarah Palin Reality Show, from Boing Boing readers
I asked people who follow me on Twitter to come up with more interesting titles for the forthcoming Sarah Palin television show on TLC than the rather bland "Sarah Palin's Alaska." Following are ten the submissions which caused me to spew the largest spews of coffee on my monitor due to involuntary LOL.
• MYTHMAKERS (@DavidHains )
• NATURE'S DEATH PANELS (@dunagan23)
• PALINTOLOGY (@iheartmuseums )
• WHALIN' WITH PALIN (@hmobius)
• THE BEWILDERNESS (@james_atomic)
• TRAILIN' PALIN (@invisiblea)
• WIFE ON EARTH (@fcw)
• NORTHERN OVEREXPOSURE (@JIMWICh)
• THE BEVERLY SNOWBILLIES (@drhypercube)
via boingboing.net
heh heh
App of the Day - Find the best iPhone and iPod touch Apps and Games
Today
On this day...Developer: Sophia Teutschler
Released: Mar 22nd, 2010
Price: FreeGet it at the App Store
ScreenshotShare on Twitter
Share on FacebookOn this day is a stylish calendar that lets you view historical events and birth dates on your iPhone and iPod touch.
Browse through hundreds of daily entries and read event-related Wikipedia articles right within On this day if Articles is also installed on your device.
Features:
-Display Events, Birth and Death dates
-Quickly select a specific calendar date
-Shake your device to reload the current day
-Open entries in Safari or Articles.app
« Yesterday
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via appoftheday.com
Free app - looks like fun
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
John Nack on Adobe: Video: Sneak peek of Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop
Aware Fill in Photoshop
Bryan O'Neil Hughes shows off some rather eye-popping (if we may say so) technology for synthesizing texture inside a future version of Photoshop:
The demo starts with some small pieces, so if you're short on time, jump to about the 2:50 mark (halfway point) for the more impressive stuff. I've been getting great results filling in missing areas around a panorama, as Bryan shows at the 4-minute mark. Full-screen viewing makes it easier to see the details.
via blogs.adobe.com
For you Photoshop fiends - this is why we have computers
#Filemaker - adding Bar scanner to your database transactions
Adding a bar scanner to your database system is relatively easy. If you have inventory you need to track, transactions you would like to automate this is a great timesaving way to do it. Windows and Mac. First you need a Barscanner such as this one:
Available here: http://www.waspbarcode.com/SEARCH/Product.asp?Item=191504
Then you need to create barcodes for your products in Filemaker. I recommendhttp://sixfriedrice.com/wp/products/6barcode/
A little scripting and experimentation/development and you have a system to track transactions and Inventory. Every Item will need a Serial number that will link it to related info in the database we've set up like photos, prices, quantity in stock, whatever is needed. The scanner translates the bar code into a number to add an item to an invoice, remove it from inventory as needed.
The Filemaker script will look like this:
Its not too complicated. Please contact me with any further questions. mclasen@mclasen.com
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By Harry McCracken | Posted at 1:54 am on Monday, March 29, 2010
See all: Features