/** ***************************************************************** * ****************************************************************** * The Non-Sequitur Express * Anything someone can do, someone else can do just as well maybe. * Published at fortnightly or random intervals by Phillip Thorne * http://home.earthlink.net/~pethorne/Reviewer/NonSeqExp/ * * Volume 2, Issue 4: Thursday, 10 February 2000 * ****************************************************************** * *************************************************************** */ In this issue: LETTER: The CD, the IE5, and the OS. UPCOMING: Heads Up, Animation, Primetime, Voyager. plus Legalese, acknowledgements and opt-in/out instructions. /** ***************************************************************** * LETTER FROM THE EDITOR * The CD, the IE5, and the OS * *************************************************************** */ Once there was a young man who, in the U.S. post, received repeated entreaties to join AOL, invitations borne via 3.5-inch floppies and later CD-ROMs, extending the enticement of 25 free hours of use; and later, 50, 100, 250, 500. The young man thought this last rather excessive, as the time could be redeemed only within the first month, and even the longest month comprises no more than 744 hours. Then one week there arrived one of the infrequent CDs extolling the virtues of a rival ISP -- EarthLink, MindSpring, MSN, NetComplete, Sprint. This one called itself Juno, and contained a copy of Microsoft's latest web browser, Internet Explorer 5. Despite its reputed advancements, the young man had avoided IE5 for months, having heard it was dangerously unstable. Nonetheless, he decided to install the new software, so that he might evaluate its capacity for displaying XML documents. He discovered that although it rejected documents that were not well- formed, and provided terse though adequate error messages for those rejections, it entirely ignored any DTD and therefore could not confirm a document's validity. Moreover, the browser components had insinuated themselves into every corner of his Win98 desktop, suborning the file explorer, commandeering the mail client and cruely hadicapping the web server. This would not do. So the young man activated IE5's proferred uninstallation procedure, and in its retreat, it burned the city and salted the login sequence. Alas! The moral of the story: despite the fact that there's no compact English term that adequately conveys the subtle blend of derision, resentment, and reluctant envy in which Microsoft is held in esteem by a large subset of of the programmer/hacker/cyber community, and despite the fact that some of Microsoft's products are undeniably superior to competitors, it is yet unwise to trust a program that purports to be a simple web browser yet retrofits every aspect of an operating system. And the first corollary of the story: If you happen to own two PCs, don't wait for one to break before you fix the OS on the other. And the second corollary: My TV listings are late again. Oops. It occurs to me that I should start indicating which of the masthead quotes (third line of the file) are borrowed from literature, and which I've made up myself. Soon as I figure an adequately concise way of doing so, I'll start. I'm once again transmitting this so the TV listings are still current, but I have new original content in the works. Really! Reviews of the new "Transformers Beast Wars" toys and historical analysis of anachronisms in "Jack of All Trades." Coming... whenever. /** ***************************************************************** * UPCOMING * Series, Seasons, Episodes, Movies, Books * *************************************************************** */ Books: The paperback version of Vernor Vinge's second "Zones of Thought" novel, _A Deepness in the Sky_, prequel to _A Fire Upon the Deep_, is now out. It has a new Boris Vallejo cover that's not nearly as dramatic as the Bob Eggleton of the hardback (of which I saw the original at Lunacon'99). However, it does have a helpful logarithmic scale to compare Qeng Ho megasecond time references with familiar hours/days/years. Organization: I've finally grokked the episode numbering scheme for Cleo and JOAT. The first uses a "12" prefix, the second a "13," and it seems the second episode of each has been delayed to the fourth week. That would explain the unannounced parrot in JOAT:"The Floundering Father." They're not the only shows to use a proprietary counting system. Where I say "105" (first season, fifth episode), "Buffy" says P1ABB05, "X-Files" 1x05, "Now and Again" 005, "Star Trek Voyager" 805 (a single scheme for three series), and "Simpsons" -- well, that's beyond my ken. Heads up: Thu-03-feb-18:50 : Cable network MoviePlex airs the anime "Shadow Skill" (50min, tv-14-v,al,ac,bn). Half-baked fighting philosophy and absurd costumes. Thu-03-feb-19:40 : "Shadow Skill" (80min, tv-ma-al,ac,gv), same title, different animation style, lots and lots of fountaining blood. Thu-10-feb-20:00 : "Sol Bianca" (60min). Fri-11-feb-04:00 : "Sol Bianca" again. Five female space pirates, chases with exotic vehicles, a flying palace, a sentient spaceship that looks rather like the sister to the Decepticon cruiser from "The Transformers: The Movie"... what's not to like? And one of the pirates is named "Feb." What a scheduling coincidence. (Except the others are named Janny, April, Mai and June.) MoviePlex (moved to the standard service tier in a recent shuffling of Suburban Cable's Chester County lineup) seems to show anime on a semiregular, but erratic, basis. Previously they've aired "Macross II" and "Patlabor 2: the Movie," both dubbed. See: www.movieplextv.com . Sat-05-feb-09:30 : "NASCAR Racers" premieres in its regular timeslot on FoxKids. Sun-06-feb-19:00 : "Futurama" returns to FOX with new episodes, in its new 19:00 EST timeslot. Sat-12-feb-08:00 : Saban's latest sentai import, "Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue," premieres on FoxKids. Sat-05-feb-22:00 : "The Others" premieres on NBC. Symbol "Oth". Thu-10-feb-20:00 : FOX airs "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" (180min). Personally, I avoid watching theatrical films on TV; too much is lost. For instance, I've never seen "Star Trek II," (an annual network fixture in the '80's, and rated the best of the nine by most fans) uncut; I wonder what I've missed. Even zero-loss telemovies and one-hour series I tape, to slice the "25% ads by weight" from my diet. Plus, arc-based shows make a lot more sense when accumulated and watched five at a time. Sat-12-feb-15:00 : WPSG-57 shows "7 Days" 212 "Buried Alive" (pre-empted by the NHL on wed-9-feb). I don't know if that time is a UPN feed or affiliate-specific. Sat-12-feb-19:30 : The Disney Channel airs their 1998 animated feature, "Mulan" (90min). If you tape it, you can do things like pen a novelization without renting or buying the VHS/DVD versions. Mon-21-feb-07:30 : "Roughnecks: Starship Trooper Chronicles" returns to the Sci-Fi Channel (SFC), according to a letter posted on roughneckchronicles.com. The CGI series aired briefly (possibly illegally) there in fall 1999, and has since been dropped by at least 10 BKN affiliates nationwide due to its erratic episode release schedule. Apparently the shuffling will continue on SFC until the second week of May, when the programmers expect to begin airing them in proper order. Upcoming Non-Primetime Animated TV: 4 RSTC Heart 45/120 f 0211 * RSTC The Face of Truth 35/115 m 0214 * RSTC Mixed Signals 52/122 t 0215 * RSTC Betrayal 31/111 w 0216 * RSTC D-Day 62/127 r 0217 * RSTC Metamorphosis 61/126 f 0218 * RSTC Letters Home 64/129 m 0221 * RSTC Clip Show #3 143 t 0222 * RSTC Trackers 71/131 w 0223 2 RSTC Ice-Olation 51/121 r 0224 * RSTC The Mission 63/128 f 0225 Upcoming Primetime (etc.) TV: * Oth Pilot 101 z 0205-2200 nbc Robot Wars r 0210-2300 12 Robot Wars r 0210-2330 12 * N+A Film at Eleven 114 f 0211-2100 cbs B5 A Tragedy of Telepaths 510 z 0212-0700 tnt BCJ AKA Kansas 115 z 0212-1000 tnt Robot Wars z 0212-1030 12 r Cle Flying Lessons 1205 z 0212-1300 17 r JAT The Floundering Father 1309 z 0212-1330 17 DS9 Image in the Sand 701 z 0212-1500 29 * EFC Scorched Earth 314 z 0212-1600 17 * SG1 A Matter of Time 216 z 0212-1700 29 * 7D Buried Alive 212 z 0212-1800 57 * Cle Mind Games 1207 z 0212-2000 17 * JAT Once You Go Jack 1308 z 0212-2030 17 * Oth Unnamed 102 z 0212-2200 nbc r SG1 The Fifth Race 215 s 0213-0400 29 * Fut Put Your Head On My Shoulders 207 s 0213-1900 fox * Sim Alone Again Natura-Diddly 1110 s 0213-2000 fox * XF Closure, part 2 710 s 0213-2100 fox Robot Wars s 0213-2330 12 r EFC Subterfuge 313 s 0213-2330 17 * Buf Goodbye Iowa 414 t 0215-2000 wb * Ang I've Got You Under My Skin 114 t 0215-2100 wb Dil (Premp'd by NHL) t 0215 * 7D The Backstepper's Apprentice 213 w 0216-2000 * Ros Independence Day 114 w 0216-2100 wb Robot Wars r 0217-2300 12 Robot Wars r 0217-2330 12 * N+A Deep in My Heart is a Song 115 f 0218-2100 cbs B5 Phoenix Rising 512 z 0219-0700 tnt BCJ Bounty Hunters Convention 116 z 0212-1000 tnt Robot Wars z 0219-1030 12 r Cle Mind Games 1207 z 0219-1300 17 r JAT Once You Go Jack 1308 z 0212-1330 17 * Dil The Assistant 210 z 0219-1330 upn DS9 Empok Nor 524 z 0219-1500 29 * EFC Sanctuary 315 z 0219-1600 17 * SG1 Holiday 217 z 0219-1700 29 * Cle Home 1203 z 0219-2000 17 * JAT The People's Dragoon 1303 z 0219-2030 17 Oth Eyes 103 z 0219-2200 nbc r SG1 A Matter of Time 216 s 0220-0400 29 * Fut Lesser of Two Evils 207 s 0220-1900 fox * Sim Missionary: Impossible 1111 s 0220-2000 fox * XF X-Cops 712 s 0220-2100 fox Robot Wars s 0220-2330 12 r EFC Scorched Earth 314 s 0220-2330 17 Upcoming episodes of STAR TREK VOYAGER: Latent Image 511 f 0211-1900 Shutterbug Doc, mem gone? * Tsunkatse 615 z 0212-1900 New. r Tsunkatse 615 s 0213-0200 Ibid. Flashback 302 m 0214-1900 Young Tuvok on Excelsior. Blood Fever 318 t 0215-1830 Vorik pon'farr Torres. Dark Frontier, pt 1 515 w 0216-1900 Borg retrieve Seven. * Collective 616 w 0216-2100 New. Dark Frontier, pt 2 516 r 0217-1900 Use stolen transwarp coil. 11:59 523 f 0218-1900 Janeway's ancestor, bookseller. r Collective 616 z 0219-1900 Ibid. The Fight 519 m 0221-1900 Chakotay boxer escape anomaly. /** ***************************************************************** * Legalese * Acknowledgments * Opt-in/out Instructions * *************************************************************** */ All books, movies, television shows, toys and other creative works reviewed or analyzed herein are the property of their respective copyright holders. No infringement is expressed, implied or intended. The original reviews and analyses are themselves copyright 1999 by Phillip Thorne. 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Capitalization and punctuation don't matter. /** ***************************************************************** * ****************************************************************** * The Non-Sequitur Express * http://home.earthlink.net/~pethorne/Reviewer/NonSeqExp/ * Volume 2, Issue 4: Thursday, 10 February 2000 * Copyright 2000 Phillip Thorne, pethorne@earthlink.net * ****************************************************************** * *************************************************************** */