Chaosgone: March 2010

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Austria's Current Top 20 Popular Songs

Photo by KWG73

It's fun to see what are the popular songs in other countries. The last list I made was for Italy last month.

Here is the Austrian Top 20 for the week ending February 26, 2010. I found the list at www.austriatop40.at

Here are the songs:

Songs 1-10

Songs 11-20

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Exploring Derelict Space Ship

From: trekfancvg

Here's an amazing scene from an ultra-rare, kitschy, trippy, Soviet-style SF film, Ikarie XB 1 (aka Ikaria XB1, Icarus XB1 and Voyage to the End of the Universe). Czechoslovakia's first science fiction film, this remarkable 1963 movie tells the story of Starship Ikaria XB 1's 2163 trek to Alpha Centari. ("Voyage" was the savagely cut, English dubbed version released by American International Pictures.)

The film is generally apolitical, except for this remarkable scene, in which the explorers enter a derelict 20th Century space craft, littered with evidence of capitalist immorality. The visuals are striking. Corpses of tuxedo-clad, gambling westerners, their bodies preserved by open vacuum. The crew killed by their own chemical hand-weapons as they fought over dwindling oxygen. The ship laden with nuclear weapons -- still active after centuries.

Ikarie XB 1 is an ambitious, thoughtful, intelligent film that was decades ahead of its time. It's an ultra-rare "must-see" for any serious SF fan, with high-concept elements galore: a trip to proxima centaura; time dilation; future foods, fashion, music and dance; first-contact protocols; increased longevity; artificial intelligence; bulky socialist robots.

It's said the screenplay was inspired by the work of Stanislaw Lem, including "The Magellanic Cloud" from 1955.

Available as a PAL Region 2 DVD from European retailers, and in the US from www.xploitedcinema.com. Please buy the DVD to help encourage future DVD releases of other Eastern-bloc SF gems.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Twilight Zone - A Small Talent For War

That's the problems with dealing with aliens. Important information can be lost in the translation.

From: Citiprime

When an alien visitor tells delegates at the United Nations that humanity will be exterminated because it has "a small talent for war," the countries of the world struggle to forge a disarmament treaty before the visitor's deadline.

Friday, March 05, 2010

RuneScape Changes to the Hitpoints Skill

By now, everyone who plays RuneScape has heard about Jagex changing hitpoints. All ‘hitpoints’ are now multiplied by 10 and renamed ‘life points’. I'm not too happy about this change. Why, you ask?

Well, what if Jagex sold coffee, instead of running RuneScape? What would the hitpoints change look like? Let's see...

I walked into the Jagex coffee shop to get my morning cup of coffee.

"A cup of coffee," I said, handing the coffee guy a dollar.

He takes the dollar, and walks away. He hands me a tiny cup of coffee, and 90 cents change.

"What's this?"

"Oh, we changed our cups. A cup of coffee is now one ounce, not ten ounces," the coffee guy says.

"But I want a normal cup of coffee, not this tiny one!"

"Okay, no problem." The coffee guy takes my 90 cents, and comes back with nine more one ounce cups of coffee.

"I don't want ten one-ounce cups; I want one cup with ten ounces."

"We changed over to this type of coffee cup. We can't sell you coffee the old way," the coffee guy said.

"Why would you do that?"

"Well, we found that new coffee drinkers would not always have a dollar for a cup of coffee," the coffee guy said.

"So did me, when I started out. I just saved up my money until I could buy one."

"This way, new coffee drinkers don't have to do that. They can just buy a small cup whenever they want. We think it's better this way."

"I don't," I said. "I don't want to carry around ten tiny cups."

"Well, we have this." The coffee guy hands me a cardboard container that I can put the ten tiny cups in.

"This is annoying," I said. "I don't like it at all."

"Well," the coffee guy said, "you can always buy your coffee somewhere else."