loosy|goosy|ness - Blog

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We all know product placement in science-fiction television shows can sometimes get out of hand. But today’s episode of “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” has left me puzzled over what might have been a placement for Windows Vista. I say “might have been” because it is definitely not the Windows Vista we’ve all seen and some love to hate. It was like if they shot the scene inside Microsoft’s Windows development labs. I didn’t know John Connor was such a beta addict.

Rafael Rivera has put a gallery of high-definition screencaps, here are some of the most interesting ones in order they appear in the episode. For those of you playing at home, it begins at about 15min43sec and lasts about 90 seconds.

Without giving too much away, John Connor (lead character from the Terminator franchise) is walking into a computer store inside a shopping mall, having just time traveled from 1999 to 2007. Fortunately for John, he missed the release of Windows Millennium Edition. Note how Solitaire is clearly the best way to test out a computer before you purchase it. Media Center running on the PC on the top shelf.

John sees Windows Vista for the first time, falls in love. Woman with “1337″ bag in the background.

Having time traveled also means John missed the introduction of the Apple iPod, AppleTV and new MacBooks. But like the loyal Microsoft fanboy he is, he doesn’t pay much attention to them.

John starts playing with Dell laptop, which happens to be connected to the huge LCD TV behind him.

John plays with his first Sidebar gadget, which happens to be a system performance multi-monitor of some sort displaying eight graphs. Note how the Sidebar has a white translucent background with a border (instead of the black fade in Vista RTM). The other gadgets from top to bottom include a hard drive monitor, the default CPU meter, a prototype Windows Media Player gadget from 2005, a chess piece and a quick launch tile.

Next he clicks on the Chess icon and a Chess game application fades in from the right. It looks very different to the one in Windows Vista - darker shadows, more realistic chess pieces and board and it also has a space background with stars and galaxies.

Somehow then John opens the control panel, or if you can still call it that. The window is filled with all the icons from the Vista classic control panel but without text labels. The background is translucent with a black overlay. Norton LiveUpdate icon also makes a cameo appearance.

John then discovers a search box with an Explorer style back and forward button. The default search engine is LeSearch.com. Watch out Google, the French are coming.

Naturally John starts searching about his past and finds articles about his “death”. What appears to be a browser window appears in the background. It shows only a back and forward button, an address bar and a standard toolbar.

Shortly after a sales person disturb John and tells him that he was showing everyone what he was looking at on the big screen. Offers to help him clear the browser history. Somehow she opens a menu for Internet Explorer in the taskbar, which seems to have some of the options you would find inside the application’s toolbar.

In the dialog that opens, she clicks on “Clear History”. Note how the buttons are styled like Windows XP buttons, even though this is inside Windows Vista with the glass frame and Aurora background. Scene ends.

Whilst it is true custom operating systems in TV shows and movies are nothing more than just optimizing what appears on screen so viewers can follow along more easily, but this seems a little more elaborate than most. I mean that Windows Media Player gadget was never released to the public, so how did that get there? I can’t help thinking Microsoft knew about this production either through licensing or a product placement deal, in which case, what is this?
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Found on: http://www.istartedsomething.com/

A really funny Star Wars Parody from Adult Swim.

Adult Swim, usually stylized [adult swim], is an adult-oriented television network that shares channel space with Cartoon Network in the United States.^[1] It features many animated shows, including original programming, syndicated shows, and Japanese anime, generally with minimal or no editing for content. The shows are geared toward an older adult audience over 18, in contrast to the child and pre-teen oriented daytime programming on Cartoon Network. [from Wikipedia]

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File-sharing sci-fi fans get an early taste of the upcoming made for TV movie.

For you "Battlestar Galactica" fans out there who are having a hard time waiting for April 2008 and season 4 to roll around, I ran across an interesting pre-release DVD the other day on BitTorrent and figured that I'd share the news here if you haven't seen it for yourself already.

"Battlestar Galactica: Razor" is a made-for-TV movie not scheduled to air until November 24th, 2007 on the Sc-Fi Channel, but its leak to BitTorrent means fans of the series can get an early look.

The plot outline from Wikipedia:

Wartime atrocities dating back to the First Cylon War over forty years before, and others more recent, haunt Admiral William Adama, young Battlestar Pegasus officer Kendra Shaw, and her mentor Admiral Helena Cain.

For the officers, Viper pilots and Marines of the Colonial Fleet, there is no higher honor than to be judged a "Razor." Nor is it an honor that can be earned in peacetime. Razors are forged in the heat of battle as fear, hesitation, and any other instinct that can spell the difference between life and death are burned away until what remains is an unflinching human weapon. Only that Razor's edge can cut two ways: it can slash an enemy or cleave away a warrior's soul.

One such warrior is the ambitious young officer Kendra Shaw. On the eve of the Cylon attack, she reports for duty on her new ship - the Battlestar Pegasus, under the command of Admiral Helena Cain - and embarks on a harrowing six-month struggle for survival with its crew. Taken under Cain's wing, Shaw becomes her protégé, a surrogate daughter, and finally an extension of the Admiral's own ruthless will. Nothing less than a Razor.

After Admiral Cain's death, Shaw's beliefs are challenged when she's chosen to assist Pegasus' new commander, Lee Adama, on a mission to destroy a heavily guarded Cylon base ship along with the mysterious entity it was built to protect. When the mission goes badly wrong, a wounded Shaw and Kara Thrace are forced to hole up on the Cylon ship. As the hope of rescue grows dim, the two battle-hardened warriors forge a bond and Shaw begins to confess the details of a tragic wartime incident she took part in under Admiral Cain, an incident that has haunted her ever since.

A Razor to the end, Shaw ultimately fulfills her mission, and in the process finds a measure of redemption tempered by a chilling warning she is unable to pass on. Lee Adama, meanwhile, struggles with his own razor-sharp demons as he faces the challenges of his first command, and the dire choices it entails - choices not dissimilar to the traumatic dilemmas that had shaped the commands of his father and Helena Cain a generation earlier in the First Cylon War.

A friend of mine has had a chance to see it already and he said it's made the wait for season 4 to start even tougher.

In doing a bit of background research for this article I stumbled across a season 4 spoilers page on Battlestar Wiki( yes, there's a Battlestar Wiki). There's a bunch of interesting new plot developments on there to sink your teeth into. Without giving too much away, it does mention that a revolt by Centurions against their humanoid masters will take place early on.
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Source: http://www.zeropaid.com/