And be sure to add a few extra days for standing in line..
Because Lucas has announced the date for the 6th, and final, Star Wars Movies (Episode III, still doesn’t have an officially released name. – Although “Rise of the Empire” is floating around as a possible name, supposedly even marketing materials have been printed up with this name).
May 19th, 2005. Which is a Thursday (odd, only because most movies are released on Weds. or Friday)
Someone save me a seat (or three) in line…
Seems to be making quite a few headlines in the last day or so…
First, you had Alanis Morrissette’s (That’s probably spelt wrong…but oh well!) “Naked” protest at the Canadian version of the Grammies… she was apparently protesting the FCC (presumably-possibly her record label) making her remove the word Asshole from one of her songs, and replace it with ‘nightmare’. If you want to read all about it click here
Then a judge in Maine (ironically .. ‘Bang’or) has allowed a couple of women to legally jog naked in Maine (isn’t it cold there? I would think that jogging naked in Maine would be….. uncomfortable). Seems Maine law describes indecent conduct as knowingly exposing genitals in public. And, you would think that naked jogging would fall under that description. However, it appears that Maine has decided that a Female’s genitals are ‘primarily’ internal. So, when one of the accused asked the arresting officer if he’d seen her genitals… he responded with a no. Guess the cops in Maine are going to start having to carry speculums to arrest people for indecent conduct. Here’s the link to that article.
And my favorite headline for this week… Everyone knows sex feels good (if it doesn’t… you’re not doing it right). Now, you can (if you’re a male) tell your partner that the more often you have intercourse, the better your chances of avoiding cancer are… sounds like a prescription to a lot of fooling around to me. At least 21 times a month according to the article! Here’s the link Now.. go tell your partner you need help with a medical condition!
Hurry up and redeem any codes you’ve got laying around.
The contest officially ended 3/31/04 – but, all valid codes must be redeemed by 4/30/04. So, hurry up and redeem ’em.. I know you can probably still buy the special bottles/cups but, sales of the products for the contest don’t help Apple’s iTunes music numbers – redeeming them does. So, redeem away, and let’s see how many of the 100 million songs Pepsi is giving away actually get redeemed.
So.. the first week of the 2 week season is over
And I missed Friday night’s.. dammit… Luckily every episode aired so far, is available from Cartoonnetwork , granted its in a ‘low resolution’ format.. so its only like 120×280 or something like that. Still its better then not being able to see it at all. Hopefully, Cartoon Network will do like they did at the end of season 1, and run the whole second season at once, before they air episode 20. Or, maybe George will figure out that yet another way to make money off us Star Wars fans, will be to release all 20 episodes on DVD… since most of the Star Wars fans I know would buy it.. as long as it wasn’t more then like $20.00.
Anyway.. so far Darth Sidious and Darth Tyranus have recruited Assa Venture (I think that’s the chick’s name…) to kill (or attempt to kill) Anakin. Anakin has disobeyed Obi-Wan (Big surprise there, huh?) Mace kicked an entire robot army’s ass by himself, Yoda is rescuing Baris Ofee and one other lady Jedi who’s name escapes me at the moment – while kicking a robot army’s ass by himself…just so he can one-up Mace.
So, just like the first season, the animation and the story telling is excellent… the voice work is close enough given that they aren’t using the ‘real’ actors. I’d love for Lucas to give the OK, and actually have a 30-minute long cartoon series set somewhere in the Star Wars universe… if its done by the same guys doing the Clone Wars stuff, it’d be a hit.
Showing that not just anyone can succeed in retail sales
Gateway computers announced that they were closing down the remaining retail stores they have in operation (They closed a bunch down last year, in an attempt to lower costs and get the retail portion profitable) — Of course, if they had actually stocked product in the stores, it might have helped.. they used their stores as showrooms, and customer’s still had to wait and have the product shipped to them. About a year after Apple opened their retail stores, Gateway decided to stock a limited selection of machines in the store.. So, while it sucks for the employees at these stores because they are all losing their jobs by the 9th of April… It does show that specialty retail is not quite as easy as lots of people seem to think.
Time to start remembering all the tips you learned from Monster movies!
Ok.. I suppose it might be a little bit early to break out the wooden stakes and chopping heads off people you think are Vampires… since.. according to this article they were Vampire Bats…but if the next report you hear out of Brazil sounds something like the trailer for Van Helsing or Dawn of the Dead… it might be good idea to sharpen a few sticks and keep them handy.
In a completely unexpected move from Apple – they change chips!
A press release was issued today that announced products starting to ship TODAY! with a top speed of 8Ghz!
Here’s an excerpt from the release:
Apple Computer, in a move to meet customer demand for chips with higher clock speed, even if they are lower powered then the current line of PowerPC chips revised their entire lineup this morning. A statement from Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs said, in part, “We thought our customer’s understood that clock speed wasn’t everything, I mean.. we introduced the world’s first 64-bit desktop computer based on the PowerPC G5 chip last summer.. and people are complaining that its clock speed isn’t as fast as some of Intel’s 32-bit chips! Since our customer’s apparently aren’t ready for 64-bit high-powered goodness, we’ve decided to move back to the PowerPC 603e chip. Yes, its much less powerful then our current line of G4 and G5 chips, but, it does have a high clock speed”
The line up now looks like this:
Dual Processor 8.0Ghz Power Mac -10GB HD, 128MB RAM – CDRW drive – $5500.00
Single Processor 7.0 Ghz Power Mac – 10 GB HD, 128MB RAM – CDRW drive – $4500.00
PowerBook03e – 5 Ghz – 7 GB HD – 128MB RAM – CDROM drive – $3500.00
iMac – 3 Ghz – 5 GB HD – 256MB RAM – CDRW drive – $2500.00
iBook – 2 Ghz – 5GB HD – 128MB RAM – CDRW Drive – $3000.00
Hurry… go buy yours today from Apple.com!
Yep….yet another reminder that today is April Fools Day…
In an amazing press release from M$…click read more for the details
Redmond WA – Associated Press – This morning, Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates issued a joint statement confirming that there have been no new security flaws found, or viruses released for any version of Microsoft’s flagship product, Microsoft Windows. “This morning, we are proud to confirm that there have been no new security flaws found, or viruses released for Window. This marks the first time in the history of the Windows operating system that we have gone 20 minutes without either a security flaw, or a new virus.” said Bill Gates. Steve Ballmer followed up with “This is the sort of reliability and security that our customer have come to expect from our new security initiative. If our schedule sticks, we hope to be up to a 45 minute period by this time next year”
The full press release is available from Microsoft here
One more thing…. April Fools!