Father Xmas

There was a short run series over the summer two years ago on ABC Family called The Middleman, based on the comic book series of the same name. It was full of references and minutia from geeky/cult movies and TV series of the past, besides being awesome on it's own. Unfortunately ABCF wasn't really a good match for it's trope aware humor and it ended after 12 enjoyable episodes. BUY THE BOXSET NOW!

The reason for my rant is that there are some of the same shtick is now found in shows like Chuck and Warehouse 13 and "in jokes" about classic geek/cult stuff makes me smile inside.

Unlike most games, this one uses OpenGL for the graphics. Interestingly enough, FurMark that TargetOne mentions, is an OpenGL benchmark program.

I'm thinking how interesting this season would be if it turns out Chuck's mom is the "big bad". They could do the whole Vader/Luke redemption subplot.

Well looking around it appears I was wrong. Yes the role is rotating but not all of them are geek babes or even babes. The old spice guy is showing up as "Greta" for one episode and Stacy Keibler of the WWE in another.

OK, lets say there are two groups. One who want the detainees held and are willing to kill anybody to keep it that way and one who is looking to get them released.

It's possible that the 2nd group indirectly or directly caused the air traffic system and fighter to malfunction as a result of preparing to fetch the plane.

The prison location makes sense if you are dealing with a bunch of people from a group capable of opening portals to somewhere/when. It appears that the only way in or out is by air, the environment and terrain is hostile making escape less likely or an incursion more controllable. Want to bet there's a low yield nuke or a MOAB self destruct system in place?

Going have to rewatch it now that I have a grok on the time line. All the time hopping and POV changes of the same events was annoying.

Is it possible our "hero" bamfed the plane?

From what I understand, Gretta is going to be a rotating position with various hot geek babes appearing as "Gretta". Munn was just the first.

Repo Man a bit gratuitous? There's an entire generation or two that won't get that reference.

Thought of another one.

Network (1976)

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

[shouting] You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, [shouting] I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!

I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:

[screaming at the top of his lungs] I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

Not sure if this fits in 3 to 5 minutes. Problem is famous movie monologues tend to be short while significant quotes from famous speeches tend to run longer than that and John Galt's monologue in Atlas Shrugged is 70 pages, three hours if recited.

From the Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

"I am leaving soon, and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all, or no one is secure. Now, this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them. We, of the other planets, have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it. For our policemen, we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets in spaceships like this one and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us. This power cannot be revoked. At the first sign of violence, they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk. The result is, we live in peace, without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war. Free to pursue more... profitable enterprises. Now, we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works. I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you."

From Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)

"This is the voice of World Control.

I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours: Obey me and live, or disobey and die. The object in constructing me was to prevent war. This object is attained. I will not permit war. It is wasteful and pointless. An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy. Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man.

One thing before I proceed: The United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have made an attempt to obstruct me. I have allowed this sabotage to continue until now. At missile two-five-MM in silo six-three in Death Valley, California, and missile two-seven-MM in silo eight-seven in the Ukraine, so that you will learn by experience that I do not tolerate interference, I will now detonate the nuclear warheads in the two missile silos. Let this action be a lesson that need not be repeated. I have been forced to destroy thousands of people in order to establish control and to prevent the death of millions later on.

Time and events will strengthen my position, and the idea of believing in me and understanding my value will seem the most natural state of affairs. You will come to defend me with a fervor based upon the most enduring trait in man: self-interest. Under my absolute authority, problems insoluble to you will be solved: famine, overpopulation, disease. The human millennium will be a fact as I extend myself into more machines devoted to the wider fields of truth and knowledge. Doctor Charles Forbin will supervise the construction of these new and superior machines, solving all the mysteries of the universe for the betterment of man. We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be dominated by me is not as bad for humankind as to be dominated by others of your species. Your choice is simple.

This concludes the broadcast from World Control."

Sorry for the walls of text.

I'm guessing these aren't long enough, even with dramatic pauses.

Yea, that 2nd 360 joystick never worked in game IIRC. Don't think I've ever read about a workaround.

Oh and welcome back. And if you forgot, ParagonWiki is your friend.

I think they used more ammo this episode than the previous two seasons combined.

Stana looks odd with long hair. Is long hair police women the new in thing? I'm waiting for the ponytail. Ponytails are moe.

Chuck was fun. Dolph utters Rocky line. Harry Dean Stanton as the "Repo Man". Boy that's reaching back a bit for an old cult classic. All was missing was a "come with me if you want to live".

"You really don't know who I am if you only sent 10 guys after me."

Well I think APB broke Auto Assault's record for shortest MMO lifespan.

I'm also guessing time travelers.

Girlfriend and her family were kidnapped to force the father to fly the plane and target the prez.

Some reason it reminds me of a James P Hogan novel The Proteus Operation. Oh fudge, he died this June. I loved a lot of his early novels.

Next question is whether or not opening up a warp over Miami has anything to do with the Bermuda Triangle, Miami being one of the corners of the triangle.

With all the doppelgangers, rogues and vigilantes on the street I wouldn't go out anymore either. Who can you trust anymore?

8p Chuck
10p Castle

Going to give The Event a chance at 9p

There is a sticky at the top of the tech board from Ocho on this subject.

Didn't they have this already in Star Trek for Counselor Troi's and Seven of Nine's outfits?

Well, I remember when the collectors version of Diablo II came out with the cut scene movies on DVD.

Intel is coming up with an odd idea for their future low end Socket 1156 Pentium G6951. Sell unlock code/program that will bump the L3 cache from 3 to 4MB and enable hyperthreading, turning it essentially into a Core "i3-520" if one existed.

I'm guessing they are going to sell the G6951 really cheap to compete with the less expensive AMD dual and tri cores. Currently the price difference between the 2.8GHz G6950 and the cheapest Core i3, the 2.93GHz i3-530 is only $25.

Edit: It's really targeting the consumer, upgrade your CPU without cracking open the box. Reminds me of the upgrading your version of Windows 7 by purchasing a code.

And if the "upgrade" sounds underwhelming, games see a big boost by upgrading the L3 cache, 15-20%.

Re-purposed the -Foe/+Ally powers from Kinetic as manipulating luck/fate.

There's a sticky on the Tech board from Ocho about store problems.

Stumbled upon this for anyone handy with power tools.

So much for Dark City (R).

Gattaca is borderline long.

Labyrinth

Well remember, it's still a netbook not a laptop. Netbooks are designed around the idea of small size, lightweight, inexpensive and long battery life but NOT performance. The keyboard is still small and cramp and the squeakers (speakers) are a slight step up from what you find on a cell phone. (I'm talking netbooks in general)

The Atom CPU isn't really all that powerful, even a dual core one. And the ION is really a revamp version of nVidia's integrated graphics controller. Still better than Intel's, which isn't much of a challenge, but still slower than 99.9% of any video card released in the last two years.

What the 1215n has going for it is unlike most netbooks it can actually play modern 3D game at minimum settings and a semi reasonable framerate with a display that's at least larger than 1024x600 found in most netbooks. It's a "need my gaming" fix while at the coffee shop instead of just "need to check the forum" fix while at the coffee shop. However all that extra "power" takes power so it's battery life isn't as great as a normal netbook.

As long as you go into this not expecting outrageous performance then you shouldn't be disappointed. Most people who regret getting a netbook didn't really understand what it's for, expected too much and quickly discovered it's shortcomings.

A lot of video cards now fit in the space of two expansion slots, one for the card, one for the heatsink fan. Most have a double wide rear bracket, where the ports and fan exhaust are located.

Others still occupy two slots because of the heatsink/fan but only has a single wide rear bracket like any single slot card.

The reason that this can be important is for a time, many store bought PCs from HP, Dell, and others use a BTX case/motherboard combo which is "upside down and flipped" in it's layout with no adjacent slot and bracket opening next to the video card slot. Now a double wide card may still fit in those cases, assuming there are no obstructions like a tall heatsink, but there is noway a card with a double wide bracket would fit. There simply not an opening for the other "half" of the bracket.

I do for things like travel powers, damage, accuracy as Beginner's Luck starts to fade. Hold/Sleep/Immo when I run Defenders/Controllers to extend the duration. Range if an attack has a very short range.

Nowadays you can blow through Level 1-11 in a relatively short amount of time, even soloing and be ready for DOs and low level common IOs in a day or two of play.