Entries from February 2008 ↓
February 27th, 2008 — Television
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is a fantastic new show set in between T2 and T3. It’s really starting to grow on me, especially after the T2 circle-jerk that was tonight’s episode.
The opening quote annoys me though, mainly through the use of the word “programmed”.
In the future, my son will lead mankind in the war against Skynet - the computer system programmed to destroy the world.
The thing is, Skynet wasn’t(*) programmed to destroy the world! The very point of Skynet was that it was self-aware, thinking for itself and making it’s own decisions. Saying it was programmed implies human intent, a programmer that made Skynet what it is.
I know it’s nit-picking, but how hard would it be to change the opening quote to a variation of the following?
In the future, my son will lead mankind in the war against Skynet - the self-aware computer system intent on destroying the world.
Much better.
* Or should that be isn’t? Stupid time-travel tense.
February 27th, 2008 — Technology
I’ve decided I’m going to take advantage of the death of HD-DVD through the inevitable clearout of stock. A few web stores are having clearance sales, one example being dvddownunder.com.au which is clearing stock at $9.95 per disc. I plan to buy at least a few movies during these sales.
My primary reason for buying more movies, rather than abandoning the format completely, is that I was a late adopter - but not so late that I got any advantage out of the reduced player prices. I bought an XBox 360 HD-DVD drive late last year, and a few movies a couple of weeks later. Including christmas gifts and the bundled King Kong, this means I only own 5 movies in the format.
Doing the sums, this means that I had effectively paid roughly $65 per movie. Ouch!
By buying at least a few more movies over the next couple of months I hope to bring the cost per movie down to a reasonable level. After buying another 6 discs, the cost per movie is now around $35 per movie. This is much more reasonable, and will at least let me get some decent use out of a player that will hopefully last a couple of years.
