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Television Media

Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos' Available On DVD! 140

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hope-they-sell-billions-and-billions dept.
calags noted that CNN is reporting that the very cool "Cosmos" is finally going to be available on DVD. I'm curious to see how well the 20-year-old mini- series has aged. I loved it when I was little tho. They're also going to air an hour "Highlights" show on PBS.
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Carl Sagan's Cosmos is finally available on DVD! More

Carl Sagan's Cosmos is finally available on DVD!

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  • Re:Others (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Connections 2 and 3 are available on tape, but you can only buy the first series if you're an educational institution...and you get charged $BIGNUM for it. (My SO looked into this as a Christmas gift for me, which is how I know.)

  • Re:Connections (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    yes and no. [http]

  • Re:How Well Will It Sell? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Although he acknowledged that the phrase "Billions and billions" has become closely associated with his name, Sagan wrote that he never actually said "Billions and billions...". In fact he said it was Johnny Carson, in one of his many Saganesque skits that actually said it. Nevertheless, it stuck. Just FYI.
  • 1. I wanted to know about the CDs, I don't care for the DVDs. That's why I ask without RTFA
    2. I wanted to know where to buy them. Where in the article says where are they for sale? I haven't been able (last time I checked, ~2 yrs ago) to find them.

    Victor
  • Does anyone know whether the soundtrack for the series was ever published as a CD? And if it was, where could I buy it online?
    I've got the vinyl, but I'd like to listen to it when on the road, and I've been unable to find it on CD :(

    Victor

  • Others (Score:1)

    by Nail ( 1195 )
    What about "The Day the Universe Changed", "Connections", and "Connections 2"? Are they available in this format?
  • To the extent that I could believe in a God, it'd have to be the type of God who'd design a set of physical constants and behaviors (including all that quantum and stringy stuff we're still trying to understand) and sit Himself back to see what unfolded over a few billion years.

    Sounds like Deism. Deism is the believe that God created the universe in one shining moment, perfectly constructed to unfold in the manner he wanted, and has not done a damn thing since. (Why would he need to? The only reason to make later adjustments would be if you didn't get it right at first, which would contradict the notion of a perfect god.)

    --

  • Tim Hunkin hosted The Secret Life of Machines, not James Burke. The videos are available here.
  • Sorry, typo in the tag, it should link to here [teamvideo.net].
  • Thanks for mentioning that. I just ordered the 5 disc box set from blackstar.co.uk. Amazon US does not have the boxed set and some of the discs are not out yet. Amazon UK though does have the boxed set for 8 pounds less than the blackstar site (damn). Of course you need a region 2 player for the UK release (Apex anyone :) ).

    Hedley
  • Doh! I'm confused... oh well, its been a LONG time (almost maybe 10 years?) since I watched that show on the Discovery channel back before they had all the affiliated channels. I also loved "Beyond 2000", which I won't attempt to tell you the host of. :)

    Heck, ever notice how British shows are so much better than American shows?
  • Connections was one of my favorite shows. I also loved Secret Life of Machines that James Burke hosted as well.

    BTW, about the book, I found the original Connections book (from the 70's) at a local used bookstore. If you don't already have that one, I'm sure you could find it at a local used bookstore or on Ebay. Its worth a read.
  • I guess he'll have to resort to getting it in streaming RealVideo format... that works under Linux, right? :)
  • Or 'the Day the Universe Changed' series from James Burke.
  • Sagan is one man who was taken from us far too soon.

    While I agree with the sentiment, because he clearly had a LOT to contribute to this world...

    I have to mention only 3 letters: B H A .

    (Apple people know what I'm talking about ;)

  • That's fundy Protestantism, actually. Jesuits, to name but one group in the One True Church [catholic.org], have always cherished science as a way to understand Creation and marvel at the power of God.www.va
    --
  • I watched it a couple of years ago. Some of the graphics and "special effect" (like Sagan cruising through the solar system) are highly tacky.
  • In a related note Segan's "Deamon Haunted World", published a few years before his death, is wonderful.

    "Wonderful" is clearly the understatement of the year. The book took me 3 months to read, and its not all that long of a book. It took me some time because the book does what few can, and it actually makes you think.

    The chapters that are my particular favorites are "The Baloney Detection Kit" and "Dragon in my Garage" The Baloney Detection Kit can be found on the internet as well here is one link. [tpgi.com.au] Anyone whom I respect has a grasp of the kit and how it works, while they may not know of the kit directly, they use its rules just the same.
  • The "DVD format" is a format designed to control the ideas exchanged between students and professors, and serve as a model for the day when all information exchange can be controlled by a central authority.

    Except when it's released region-free, or did you not bother to inform yourself [amazon.com] before your knee jerked?

    Not that I love the MPAA, but geez, you've got options. I bought a DVD player that plays any/all regions, and I get to have my cake and eat it, too.
  • Oh MAN! I should've mentioned it earlier!!!

    Oh wait, I did! Now look what you've done, Slashdot Staff That Reviews Submissions!!!

    I bought the first A&E set (2 discs) off a friend who ordered two by mistake.

    Wait, 5 disc? That can't be the whole series, can it?


    --
  • When Sagan begins the thing by dicing himself open with a rose for the purpose of spilling blood?

    My astronomy class was puzzling for a bit over that.

    Myren
  • > I didn't like it much.

    Me neither. I didn't even bother watching all the episodes.

    Way too overhyped, IMO.

    --
  • Watching the highlights episode recently on PBS, I was reminded just how distinctive his pronunciation was. It isn't the phrase that is so Sagan-esque, but the way you're suppost to say it. And, damn, does he say the world "billion" a lot.
    --
    Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
  • Islam, as I understand it, uses science to discover more of the wonders of G-d. It's a pity that fundie Christianity seems to believe the opposite.

    dave

  • Folks interested in purchasing this series on DVD (region 0 encoding, i.e. it works in any region), VHS, or CD can do so here [projectvoyager.com].

    Full Disclosure: I work for OneCosmos Networks [onecosmos.net], the latest incarnation of Carl Sagan Productions, the ones who are selling this thing.

  • Oh man, this is so cool ;) Now, if they'd only issue DVD versions of James Burke's "Connections" (1, 2 and 3) on DVD I'd be a truly happy guy!
  • Not only was it interesting to once again hear his pronunciation, but it was fun to see his clothing...

    Other than the clothing, some of the computer graphics, etc., it was amazing how well this has held up over 20 years. Carl was talking about the amazing possibilities and responsibilities that would arise when we decoded the human genome...which is where we are today.

    I was a little kid when this series first aired on PBS, and it was great to see those highlights again. It made me realize just how much I learned and was influenced by this series.

    And watching the highlights now, it's interesting to hear how much Pink Floyd was used for music....
  • Ah, the weak anthropic principal ... The principle that says that the probablility that all the fundamental laws of nature that allow for atoms, galaxies, stars, planets, and people is so small that life in the universe couldn't possibly have happened by chance. This is somewhere on the order of some fraction of 1 percent chance that all the fundamental constants to have fallen to the right values (if it were a random happening) to allow for complex atoms and complex structures (like galaxies, stars, planets, and nucleic acids) to form. (That's the cosmotologists speaking).
    <BR>
    <BR>Then there are the more simple minded that argue that the Earth has an Ideal Year, day, seasons (tilt), and moon (for tides), to make things diverse enough but also sane enough for such complex inteligent life to come into being (humans)...
    <BR>
    <BR>Makes you wonder if there wasn't some grand master plan.

    Every rule has an exception, and this is the only rule with no exceptions! Huh? -- Spatch
  • >Sounds like Deism. Deism is the believe that God created the universe in one shining moment, perfectly constructed to unfold in the manner he wanted, and has not done a damn thing since.

    Yeah, I knew I didn't explain "the kinda God I could consider believing in" very well, because I didn't want to spoil the ending of the Rama series.

    Spoiler Alert - The Big Secret of Arthur C. Clarke's Rama series revealed

    Basically, the thesis in the Rama books is "What if God gave Himself more than one shot at it?" -- that is, an (imperfect) God keeps mucking about in his workshop, creating universes left, right, and center, until he gets something that he finds interesting.

    Like I said -- totally useless from a scientific standpoignt; it's all metaphysics. But a neat idea to juggle around with in your head, and the type of God required is a helluvalot more interesting (well, to me) than the ones traditionally worshipped by humans.

    (If God made me in his own image, as a compulsive tinkerer, I'm just returning the favor ;-)

  • >If the Earth was a planet where the complex interactions weren't balanced 'just right', we wouldn't be here!

    I think Spatch's point about the weak anthropic principle is "so what?"

    If the Earth hadn't gotten whacked with an asteroid 65 million years ago, there might be intelligent spacefaring reptiles colonizing the galaxy by now.

    You prove Spatch's point when you say:

    >if the universe weren't balanced as it is, [...] there wouldn't be ANYONE here to argue about it!

    This still doesn't imply design. Consider the probability that all the particles in your cup of coffee will simultaneously jump three feet to the left in accordance with the uncertainty principle. Astoundingly improbable; it'll happen every one-in-a-$FLOATING_POINT_EXCEPTION trillion years.

    Now consider the probability that a universe-sized mass with physical constants suitable for the evolution of sentient life will pop out of nothing in the same sort of quantum vacuum fluctuation. Even more stunningly improbable.

    But if you've got an infinite amount of time to wait for it to happen, it's not just possible -- it's inevitable.

    (The thing I most enjoyed about the HHGTTG is that the bits about improbability physics were remarkably close to the mark :-)

  • >Islam, as I understand it, uses science to discover more of the wonders...

    (BTW, thanks for the numbering system, for preserving the works of the Greeks, and for everything else we "borrowed" from Islam during the Dark Ages ;-)

    From the Christian side, "The heavens declare thy glory" is merely a religious expression of the same kind of awe Sagan expresses.

    I agree wholeheartedly that fundie Christians have completely lost sight of this, and that this is a great pity indeed. (Weak anthropic principle applied to fundies: "but if they had clue, they wouldn't be fundies, would they?" ;-)

  • >I'm just glad all these probabilities added up to what they did so that I can enjoy a good stary night and a cup of coffee.

    Ditto. "A scientist is an atom's way of thinking about atoms."

  • Connections really was wonderful - I enjoyed it much more than Cosmos and I would guess that it ages much more gracefully.

    Cosmos was very broad and forward looking, relying on scientific beliefs which may have changed.

    Connections was rooted in historical facts, the majority of which have not changed. It was a fantastic history lesson - everybody should see it!

  • I think you need a CSS license in order to produce a properly formatted DVD disc, and that is something you pay The Man to get.
  • I saw some segments from the DVD on a pbs fundraiser and it looks like they have replaced a lot of the cheesy special effects with more modern space photography and the like. It's still the same old Carl Sagan, though, and BOY does he look young!!
  • Let's agree on one thing: DVD is not evil.

    I don't agree. The only way to defeat the studios is to wage the adoption war. Don't touch the format with a 10-foot pole, and it will die. DVD is inextricably linked with CSS. 99.9% of consumers don't understand what's happening inside their DVD player. The slashdot community is far from representative. To get a message to the people, you must simplify. Start ranting about encryption keys and content scrambling and people won't understand.

    So, if you need to get a message out, and you want to keep it simple, assume that 99.9% of DVD players are licensed by the CSS, and make the blanket statement that DVD IS evil.

    I choose to make this statement, because I believe that only by keeping the DVD standard from being adopted will the industry be taught a lesson it won't forget: keep your standards open, or people won't buy them.

    I'm not ignorant, I'm just a lot more pissed off at having lost my first amendment rights than you are.
  • are you aware that until content providers stop using CSS, pushing the format in any way pushes buying a player which puts money in the pockets of the people who hauled a 16 year old kid out of his house in Norway?

    I'm talking about a total boycott of the system. Don't touch it until they go out of business or give up.
  • A 2 CD remastered soundtrack is also available.
  • Does the MPAA have anything to do with a PBS special filmed circa 1980?

    I don't know for sure, but I suspect they do not.

    -Peter

  • I know who they are, I am just questioning if they are involved in any way with the Cosmos DVD set.

    If not, they hardly deserve kudos for not region encoding something that they have no authority to region encode in the first place.

    -Peter

  • Cosmos is not region coded. Yes, content scrambling is ev[il]. No, Cosmos is not content scrambled!

    Yeah, but does it have that damn FBI warning you can't skip past?

    Note to DVD makers:
    Do you actually believe that not being able to skip that warning has resulted in even one less pirate disk? Why do you go to so much trouble to make a nice presentation, then right out the box the first thing you do is annoy the user?

  • It's really not a very good troll if you have to point out that it was one, now is it?

  • Does anyone know whether the soundtrack for the series was ever published as a CD? And if it was, where could I buy it online?

    It's too bad there's no way you could possibly find that out on your own. If only there were some sort of searching apparatus for this internet thingie.

  • The MPAA are the bastards that region code everything and therefor must be destroyed.

    Well, that's the slashdot mentality anyway.
    --

  • ewps, I'm just silly slashDUH.org [slashduh.org]
    --
  • But you still need a DVD player to watch region 0 DVDs..

    Good luck finding a region 0 player.
    --

  • What's illegal about leading a boycott?
    --
  • Where did you pick up a region free DVD player?
    --
  • Oh, and the reason it got rejected you ask?

    "Region Free"

    god forbid if we mention that a DVD is region free, that will demisih the power to change the world and show that MPAA arn't a bunch of bastards ALL the time.
    --

  • What you didn't ask is does it point out a problem that needs to be addressed? YES. While I like both /. and Linux what I don't like is those with a love so blind they are unwilling to admit when they have problems, and if these problems are not addressed we will soon lose them. I like Linux because of what it stands for and what I can do with it, and that it is the best alternitave for my needs. I can't stand those who like it because it is NOT Microsoft. We need to admit when we have a problem and fix it. Take the 2.4 kernel, it's not ready and Linus is willing to hold it back till it is regardless of pressure to send it out. That means Linux has a resonsible leader in charge, It's time that slashdot got the same thing.
  • Read his novel, Contact. It talks a lot about how the experiences and goals of scientific and religious exploration are not all that different.

    +++

  • Damn straight. My copy is already on its way.

    The official soundtrack is also being rereleased on CD.

  • You mean that they didn't hire Lucas to do the computer graphics for 80 million dollars. This series has stood up amazingly in terms of science - which is what's most important here not the quality of the bloody computer graphics in a, PBS for god's sake, miniseries. A lot of his writing for the series is based on earlier work like Brocha's Brain in which he deals with issues surrounding both current, at the time, science as well as pseudo science with aplomb but without being preachy. Most of that has stood the test of time and while it is showing some signs of age it is almost certainly going to remain relatively current for the next 50 years.

    Unless some smart ass comes along and disproves general and special relativity :)

  • People can play VHS tapes on inexpensive consumer devices. People can play DVD on inexpensive consumer devices. Must everything on /. be reduced to the same tired old cliches? Sigh.

  • You're right, but I never said anything about a DVD decoder that works in Linux, legal or otherwise, did I? Tee hee!

  • I'll take what you wrote at face value (Hi Dr Awktagon!) ... "mtv" (here [mpegtv.com]) has a "Play VCD" option on the menus, but I haven't tried it (no VideoCDs to hand).

  • No No No! This is all wrong! No more! I need to scrub my eyes with brillo ever time I see the damn URL!

  • ...where he gets on a bicycle and pedals to light speed is gone for a minute and everyone he knows is old?

  • this is actually quite a neat little bit of trivia(and BTW: I'm a Mac user, and I still love Sagan). anyway:

    When the PowerPC first came out, Apple released three machines: the 6100, the 8100, and the 7100. The code names for these machines were PDM(for Piltdown Man), Cold Fusion, and Carl Sagan, respectively.

    Sagan was pissed at being grouped with the two hoaxes(or gaffe at least, in the case of PDM). Sagan got pissed, called his lawyer, and Apple changed it to BHA. This is where most of the stories end. But in fact, Sagan found out, as did most people, that BHA stood for butt-head-astronomer. When he learned this, he again called his lawyer.

    Apple finally rested on the name LAW(lawyers are wimps). One might find some irony of the 1995 Apple saying lawyers are wimps when the present-day Apple sues anyone who makes something bondi blue, but...
  • VHS is as closed source as DVD is it not? It never became an issue because few cared to hook them up to a computer. There are licence fees for any other common media format, why rant only about DVD?

    If I can find this series on LD I will get that. In no way will I touch VHS as if you haven't noticed, only supports 1/2 the line resolution and 1/6 the color resolution that a good TV can handle.
  • Actually, the decryption key costs less than $6 per player, and that is a one-time charge for the life of the player. The DVD-ROM drives are still fairly expensive, and the MPEG / DD decoding circuitry / software isn't exactly a picnic.

    Macrovision is easy enough to legally get around.
    It'll take a lot of education to get people to dis-embrace the latest format. Right now I think about 85% of US homes have yet to get a DVD player, so you have a solid chance with them.

    I'll echo part of my other post, if I can find this series on LD I will get that. In no way will I touch VHS as if you haven't noticed, only supports 1/2 the line resolution and 1/6 the color resolution that a good TV can handle.

  • This is the Nth story that I've seen Slashdot post announcing the release of some movie or another onto DVD. It makes me seriously wonder whether Hemos, CmdrTaco and company are even aware that every DVD that you buy puts money in the pockets of the MPAA to argue that source code is not protected by the First Amendment. It's awful damn hard to argue for a boycott of this technology when one of the main geek pages out there is jumping for joy every time it gets applied to another one of their favorite cultural phenomena.

    Don't get me wrong; I love Cosmos and I'm very glad that it's being re-released, on VHS. It's getting the props it deserves. I'm going to get this for a friend of mine when she has her kid in, oh, three weeks. The point is that DVD technology, as it stands right now, is a threat to the development of free software. It is against our best interests to keep supporting DVDs.

    ObJectBridge [sourceforge.net] (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.

  • In a related note Segan's "Deamon Haunted World", published a few years before his death, is wonderful. He does a great job of debunking psuedo-science through the ages. In my mind he makes a sucessful agruement as to why science is Superior (my words not his) to religion. Highly recommended!

    I second this. The Demon Haunted World is a classic of skepticism, a light shining in the darkness against the kind of new-age postmodernist bullshit we see dominating contemporary intelligent discussion.

    William S Burroughs and others in certain occult organizations (IOT for example) are fond of saying, "Everything is permitted, nothing is true." Still think that, Bill? But if that's true, then the statement "everything is permitted, nothing is true," must be true. Oops. Any system which is self-contradicting is false, and only a fool would believe in something he or she knows to be false. The whole new age house of cards colapses, a result of having been founded upon intellectual bankrupcy.

    Science is superior to religion, art, pure creation...insofar as science can answer questions about the measurable world. Religious and spiritual people may forget this little factoid only at their own peril....

    So what about the immesurable world? Aha!

    ObJectBridge [sourceforge.net] (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.

  • [...] this is the same Church that took nearly two millenia to finally admit that Galileo was correct.

    What you wrote makes no sense unless you purport to affirm that Galileo was a contemporary of Jesus Christ, hardly a popular notion. Quip aside, you may also notice that the horrible Crusades were pursued more for political and economical reasons (disenherited Norman noblemen seeking a kingdom to call their own, basically) than for religious motives per se, and that Arab and Turk monarchs had as much part as the Europeans in the treason and bloodshed that characterizes those cruel wars.

    Let me also add that if it weren't for the Muslims a lot of the ancient Greek texts on philosophy, art, culture, would never have been preserved. In fact, most of the early Christian philosphers studied in Muslim universities.

    Your historical notions are horribly twisted and lie upon a foundation of common prejudices about the Middle Ages and the history of the Church. Early Christian philosophers and theologioans, like St. Paul and (especially) St. Augustine lived and worked way before there were any Muslims on the planet, let alone Muslim universities.

    Let me add as a final note that, despite being a Catholic, I deeply respect the Islamic faith and the early cultural achievements by Arabic civilizations, but you'll have to look a little deeper than that to find, for instance, who delivered the Library of Alexandria its doomed fate.

    Anyways, my jab was aimed at correcting the popular (in the US) notion that Christianinty Protestantism, and that devout Christians are close-minded bigots willing to go back to the Neolithic.
    --

  • I AM saying that a publisher has the right to protect their deals by restricting where the content can be viewed, as long as that restriction is done in accordance with the law.

    Those last five words are the catch:

    Section 109 of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 109, permits the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under title 17 to sell or otherwise dispose of possession of that copy or phonorecord without the authority of the copyright owner, notwithstanding the copyright owner's exclusive right of distribution under 17 U.S.C. 106(3). Commonly referred to as the "first sale doctrine," this provision permits such activities as the sale of used books.

    /.
  • It isn't the phrase that is so Sagan-esque, but the way you're suppost to say it.

    He talks about this in his last book, actually entitled Billions and Billions. (Wonderful book.) The term "billion" wasn't then in the sort of everyday use it is now - we didn't have so many billionaries running around, etc. So he over-emphasized Billion to distinguish it from Million.

    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

  • Any system which is self-contradicting is false, and only a fool would believe in something he or she knows to be false.

    It's only self-contradicting and false when certain axioms are accepted. No mathematical/logical system exists independent of certain fundamental asumptions.(Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance has some interesting thoughts on this topic.)

    Now, the traditional asumptions of arithmetic, Boolean logic, Euclidean geometry are certainly very useful for getting pracial things done in this physical world. But they don't help much in dealing with subjective existence. In that realm, only direct experience suffices, and words are at best "a finger pointing to the moon"; their truth is artistic and mythological, not literal and logical. Consider the statement "Everything is permitted, nothing is true." as a sort metaphor for something. For what? You'll know if and when you see it; then you might just say "Ah! Everything is permitted! Nothing is true!"

    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

  • I, too, would recommend Demon-Haunted World (along with Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors). Sagan's awe for the universe wasn't limited to astronomy; humans are pretty interesting creatures too.

    > It goes to show that science can evoke the kind of deep meaningful experiences many religons do.

    To the extent that I could believe in a God, it'd have to be the type of God who'd design a set of physical constants and behaviors (including all that quantum and stringy stuff we're still trying to understand) and sit Himself back to see what unfolded over a few billion years. The type of God who bangs something out of a cookie cutter in six days and sleeps in on the seventh just doesn't interest me. He's a cheapskate.

    For another look at the kind of theism I'm imagining, I recommend the last book in Arthur C. Clarke's Rama series. (But read all the books in the series, in order, for the full effect.)

    I'd have loved to have sat down with Sagan and discussed the inter-relationship between awe, religion, and science from an anthropological perspective. Humans seem to have a need for awe, and a need to explore. What a pity most of us use it to follow charlatans instead of digging the real stuff the universe has to offer.

    You fundies reading this - don't take my crack about "six days" as being a cheap shot at Judeo-Christianity. Imagine some schmuck in 4,000 BC watching the episode of Cosmos where Sagan walks us through the "modern" creation story by mapping the history of the universe from Big Bang to evolution of Homo Sapiens onto a one-year calendar. Your 4000-BC yokel, who's just mastered writing, might very well end up with something akin to Genesis.

    In the interests of fairness, of course, it's much more likely that the author of Genesis just guessed lucky.

    But having known some fundies who referred to him as "Sagan the Pagan" back in the 80s, I have very fond memories of doing just that -- sitting one such fundie down in front of that episode and, one hour later, asking "Now, what was that you were saying about basic science being wholly incompatible with your religion?"

  • >this is the same Church that took nearly two
    >millenia to finally admit that Galileo was
    >correct.

    This is just confusing. Galileo lived in the 16th century, i hope that was a poorly done hyperbole.

    >Up until the horrible Crusades

    You have to understand that the underlying reason for the crusades was to unite Europe. Without them it Europe may still be a land run by thousands of small feudal lords, and the renaissance would not have happened. The problem was that far more people with no millitary training showed up than expected, and mob mentality carried on from there.

    Some people spend so much time trying to hurt christianity by twisting everything they hear that they end up being 'fundimentalist atheists'.

  • Except when it's released region-free, or did you not bother to inform yourself before your knee jerked?

    See my Other post [slashdot.org] on this already. There's no "except" here. The DVD format, region encoded or not, still needs a DVD player to view it. And 99% of the people out there buying DVD players are going down to Best Buy and picking up their encryption keys for $129.99. It's still Cosmos coming out of the back of your Macrovision-scrambled player, and you've still lost another home to the CSS-adoption war. I don't care if you sell the DVD region free with a complimentary Macrovision scrubber. The format is tainted, and pushing it advances the goals of the some very scary people [vitalbook.com].

    All I'm saying is, can't we have "Cosmos released on VHS! (and, dear lord, DVD too)" as our headline?

  • every DVD that you buy puts money in the pockets of the MPAA to argue that source code is not protected by the First Amendment.

    I couldn't have put it better myself. When you push this standard, you push the adoption of the region-encoded DVD player. We're at war against the adoption of this standard right now - the MPAA has not won yet. It is important that the word is spread - buying a DVD player, bringing this standard into your home, is a step towards a world where they know what you read, when you read it [vitalbook.com] and they control who reads what.

    Make no mistake, DVD technology in its current form is a tool for consumer control. Don't be the product.

    For god's sake, stop pushing this Orwellian shit on slashdot.

    Carl Segan is rolling in his grave. "And they controlled the masses with billions and billions of encrypted keys..."
  • IT (IRONY TODAY):

    News Flash! Carl Sagan's Cosmos, a modern masterpiece of Science (science is a "movement" founded on "principles" such as "the free exchange of ideas") was released on the "DVD format" today. The "DVD format" is a format designed to control the ideas exchanged between students and professors [vitalbook.com], and serve as a model for the day when all information exchange can be controlled by a central authority.

    Later on our program, a special feature on "Cops running red lights".
  • Hey! The Secret Life of Machines was hosted by Tim Hunkin, one of Britains' great eccentric geniuses. He proceeded to do a stint as eccentric-in-residence at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.
  • I agree that "Cosmos" has held up extremely well. I was a bit disappointed to find that the DVD contains the "updated" version that aired on PBS in 1991. I would much rather have had the original version.

    Better yet, it would have been nice if they had used DVD's "seamless branching" features to allow the viewer to choose which version (original or updated) they wanted to watch, as with the DVDs for "The Abyss" and "Terminator 2".

    What bothers me most about the updated version are the changes made during some of the sequences when he is flying through space in his "spaceship of the imagination". There are a few places where they have inserted pictures from the Hubble telescope, which is good, but they are not animated, which is bad. In the new footage, instead of being animated, is just made up of simple camera pans across a flat photograph, which looks cheap. It's jarring and incongruous. The original footage was animated with a multiplane camera (not CGI), which produced a nice effect of flying through space. The new stuff looks too simplistic next to that.

    There are also some amazing video effects in Cosmos. Watch the part where he is walking through the Great Library of Alexandria. That's a model he's walking through. He's just superimposed. And it's video superimposing, too. Who knew the "chroma-key" technique used in the days of analog video could look so good? I'm still impressed with how good that looks.


  • If only there could be a commentary audio track to hear the words behind the show from the man himself.

    I guess we'll have to settle for some lame impersonation of some guy going "billions and billions" over and over again for the length of the series.

  • That is incorrect. CSS is an optional part of the DVD format. You can master a disc without it (although the evil MPEG consortium still gets their pound of flesh via patent royalties. :)

    Some players, like the Apex AD-600, let you turn off their CSS decoder. Doing this will render most, but not all DVDs unplayable. I don't know about Cosmos, though. Certainly they didn't have to use CSS if they didn't want to.

  • And 99% of the people out there buying DVD players are going down to Best Buy and picking up their encryption keys for $129.99. It's still Cosmos coming out of the back of your Macrovision-scrambled player, and you've still lost another home to the CSS-adoption war.

    My DVD player has no region protection and no macrovision generation, and it came from the factory with those abilities waiting to be enabled. Must be some unknown Chinese brand, you say? No, it's a Sony DVP-S7000 [brouhaha.com]. The MPAA can shove its Orwellian shit right back up its ass from whence it came. (Sorry, that just slipped out.)

    --

  • and SETI [berkeley.edu] is an incredibly worthless disinformation campaign run to keep Earth in the dark about the presence of intelligent life outside of our solar system

    And distributed.net [distributed.net] is incredibly worthless disinformation campaign run to keep Earth in the dark about the presence of unbreakable strong encryption, correct?


    Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo [pineight.com].

  • Flatland, like most popular works of classic literature written before 1923, is available from Project Gutenberg [promo.net]. It's also available from Project Nodeberg (Everything [everything2.com]'s partial PG mirror) here [everything2.com].

    Sadly, nothing written on or after January 1, 1923, will ever expire into the public domain because of atrocities like the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act [8m.com]. Every 20 years, Disney buys another 20 years of copyright in every major jurisdiction.


    Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo [pineight.com].
  • I remember having that same feeling when I first saw it (I was 7). But I've been watching it again on PBS recently. Segan does a great job of displaying his awe for the universe to the general public. It is hard to believe he was an atheist. It goes to show that science can evoke the kind of deep meaningful experiences many religons do.

    In a related note Segan's "Deamon Haunted World", published a few years before his death, is wonderful. He does a great job of debunking psuedo-science through the ages. In my mind he makes a sucessful agruement as to why science is Superior (my words not his) to religion. Highly recommended!
  • Am I the only one who felt the episode entitled "Flatland" was one of best examples of how to simplify basic dimensional theory? Of course, I claim no indepth knowledge of dimension beyond the Flatland episode but to imagine a bunch of 2 dimensional shapes only able to comprehend the 2-d "plane of contact" made it extremely easy for an inquisitive 12 year old to grasp.

    It made me wonder just what that thing I comprehended as my mother really was if you were to extrapolate her into the fourth dimension.

    Scary.

    Can anyone point me to a purchase link? I would like to buy it now!

  • Connections/2/3 aere all great programs, James Burke really blows my mind... I ordered one of the books from spAmazon... 4+ weeks, and no book...

    There are VHS versions of 2 [amazon.com] and 3 [amazon.com]. No DVD that I could find...

    um.. I done, you can stop reading...

  • Carl came to speak at my college, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, back in 92 or 93. I didn't recognize him at all because my last memory of him was his moppy haircut and bellbottoms. He was light gray, very thin, tall and somewhat hunched. I was a little unnerved by how aged he looked.

    He spoke about comets colliding w/the earth, that was his big thing at the end of his career. He had some interesting slides, and sat on a big easy-chair on our stage. All three lecture halls were filled (one live, two broadcast), and the lobbies were packed by people from three other colleges.

    Sadly, the technical crew at my school were a bunch of fuckups because they constantly failed to advance the slides when he asked, and when he did, sometimes they went in the wrong direction. They even left him in the dark twice. It was very embarassing, and he even became irritated by it, ultimately scorning them. The audience chuckled uneasily.

    Anyway, he was a very dramatic and passionate speaker, even in his old age. We were lucky to have him, and other flamboyant personalities, like Feynman. He may not have penned any important constants or equations, but he was definitely one of the heartiest thinkers of his discipline in our generation.


    ---
  • The great thing about networks releasing entire shows on DVD is:
    1) More people become aware of the show because of the limited number of DVD titles (not so much anymore)
    2) Fans don't have to talk about the "good ol' days of network broadcasts." Waiting for NBC or CBS or whatever to replay these on air would be insane
    3) DVD makes jumping between episodes easy! Oh, shoot the show about when Mr. Wizard comes to visit Carl is episode #42 not #32.

    ...and finally...
    4) The children of a new generation are able to appreciate some of the finest achievements of television.

    I wonder if the BBC is going to release a DVD with the Connections or Connections 2 series.

    Man that was a great series!
  • every DVD that you buy puts money in the pockets of the MPAA

    The Cosmos DVD set is produced and distributed by Cosmos Studios, Inc and from what I can tell is not related to any of the major motion picture studios that make up the MPAA. Maybe you can explain how purchasing these DVDs will support the MPAA?

    Besides that the set is Region 0 encoded, meaning it will play on any DVD player from any region. Very cool and definitely holds true to one of the main themes of the series - We are one world.

    While buying this will not put money in the pockets of the MPAA, it will put money in the pockets of Cosmos Studios, which is committed to producing quality science programs, that can educate and excite the layperson. And 10% of the sales from carlsagan.com [carlsagan.com] will go to the Carl Sagan Foundation.


    -------

  • "I guess I'll just have to stick to the inferior, lower quality and lower choice, VCDs and VHS tapes until content providers are required to be as honest and forthright as they pretend they want the buying public to be."

    that's why I collect LaserDiscs... I've got 68 titles on Laserdisc, everything from "Casablanca" to "2001: A Space Odessy", and almost all are "Widescreen Special Edition" versions or director's cuts... and it's hard for people to just walk off with 'em hidden in a coat! :)

    "Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."

  • I saw it as a young one, don't quite remember how young, but it really boosted my interest in science. I won't say it made me a geek for life, but it was a contributing factor.

  • When I was a little girl, my older brother and I would have the usual bitchfests about who got to watch what TV program. Well, one night the contest came down to some Disney movie (me) and Cosmos (him).

    It was one fight that was won more in the losing...It was the fabled Flatland episode that riveted a hyper little girl to the screen for an hour. It was the first time that any teacher in my life had connected science to the beloved worlds of art and poetry. He must have inspired other in the same way that night, and that kind of teaching doesn't dim with age.

    Thank you for the opportunity to relive that little memory!

    Sincerely, Kathryn Aegis
  • Just buy the original book by Edwin Abbott (or A. Square)
    --
    MailOne [openone.com]
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Finished watching my copy the other night; I'd forgotten how impressive this show was, especially for it's time. Some of the CGI is a bit dated by today's standards, but that's only to be expected, but equally some still looks good. Right, that's the obligatory CGI comment over with... ;-)

    The "Cosmos Updates" are present; from the re-edit done ten years after the initial broadcast, as might be expected. But there has been some further editing too, how much I'm not sure I only noticed one spot that gave the game away. There is a rapid sequence of images near the very end which includes a screen shot of the M$ Windows SETI@Home client! I had to rewind and take another look to make sure; it looked like version 2.04 to me!

  • to boldly encode where no one has encoded before.
  • ...
    [E]very DVD that you buy puts money in the pockets of the MPAA to argue that source code is not protected by the First Amendment ... it's being re-released, on VHS ... I'm going to get this for a friend of mine ...
    Because, of course, the MPAA doesn't get any money from VHS sales.

    I would think that anyone who had true convictions about DMCA et al. would be more confident in buying DVDs while being fully prepared to break laws that violate rights. If Congress started regulating consumption of Oreos, I wouldn't cower in the candy aisle if I wanted some damn cookies.

    Robert Hutchinson
    "Well, no, Mr. Attorney, we can't afford you any longer ... Slashdot drained our legal budget dry."

  • How Well Will It Sell? (Score:3)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @09:52AM (#1414938)
    I bet they'll sell billions and billions of copies... ;)

    Sagan is one man who was taken from us far too soon.
    ---
    seumas.com

  • Re:It wasn't my favorite (Score:3)

    by po_boy ( 69692 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @10:52AM (#1414939)
    I have to agree in part. I was very excited about this release and bought a copy. I got it a few weeks ago and watched some before I gave it to my brother for Christmas. We then watched some more together.

    Viewing it this time was quite different for both of us than watching it when it first aired when we were kids. This time I could plainly see how he stressed the wonder and amazement of all we don't know as opposed to telling me a bunch of interesting and exciting stuff we (humans) do know.

    That aspect of the series may be one thing that made it so memorable. It may have helped a lot of my generation become scientists of some kind by increasing our curiousity. I, however, found it to be a bit annoying, and frankly a bit boring.

    Additionally, viewing this series again some 20 years later did give me a few good laughs at the special effects of the Spaceship Imagination or whatever it was that he flew around the Cosmos.

    Those complaints aside, I found that by viewing this series again, I did learn some things and it may have rekindled a passing interest in astronomy I have. I also forgot how much history was in the series. Some of that was pretty interesting.

    I would reccommend this series to young teenagers who have never seen it before, but not to those who wish to see the series that they enjoyed in childhood. Unfortunately, I don't think that it will live up to your memories of the series.

  • Re:Do Slashdot care about their own rights at all? (Score:3)

    by IronChef ( 164482 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @05:23PM (#1414940)

    I'm going to voice a very unpopular sentiment: I am OK with region encoding.

    I'm not saying you all have to roll over and take it. I am not saying that it should be the law that players are region encoded. I am not saying that as a consumer I LIKE it. I AM saying that a publisher has the right to protect their deals by restricting where the content can be viewed, as long as that restriction is done in accordance with the law.

    If I publish a movie, and I cut lucrative distribution deals in other nations, why shouldn't I use the region coding mechanism to protect that? That's what it's all about, you know; "They" don't want foreign DVDs from wrecking a theatrical release in yet another country. It is all about control. Yes, it sucks for the consumer. I know that, and I fully expect clever, motivated people to circumvent the region coding, and I think that should be allowed. But if the content publishers and the hardware makers want to work together to make playing foriegn media harder, that is their right. At least in the US.

    I know that in other countries region restrictions are illegal in the hardware. Good for them. If US citizens want that as well, they need to start using the political process to make it happen.

    I used to be on the other side of the fence, ranting about how region coding shold be illegal. Then I started a publishing company, and we are approaching a foriegn licensing deal. Now I understand why region codes exist in a very personal way.

    OK, mod me down. My karma can take it. C'mon, HIT ME! DO IT! ;)

  • *yawn* (Score:4)

    by Jethro ( 14165 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @10:46AM (#1414941) Homepage
    Sure, Carl Sagan stuff and anything ANIME you post. But that The Prisoner is finally available on DVD, that you ignore???

    No justice, I tell you.


    --

  • Re:It wasn't my favorite (Score:4)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @10:46AM (#1414942)
    > The ironic thing is, when you say "too much trembling awe at the majesty of the heavens,"
    >I think you forget that Sagan lived and died an aethiest. Don't these two things contradict?

    As Sagan himself put it:

    How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.

    - Carl Sagan

    I see no contradiction whatsoever. You do not need to be a theist to understand awe.

  • Cosmos was a financial disaster (Score:4)

    by Mr. Protocol ( 73424 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @11:19AM (#1414943)
    KCET, the PBS station here in El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora La Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula, was flying high at the time Cosmos was made. This big, fancy production was supposed to be their crowning achievement and make them all a boodle of money, or rather, make back the boodle they'd spent producing it and a bunch of other expensive stuff.

    It cratered in.

    The disaster was so great that, combined with the other losses, it drove the station into near-bankruptcy. Everyone running it was replaced and the new regime turned it into a standard, fiscally responsible PBS station, i.e., everything was subordinated to begging and pleading for membership subscriptions. Paradoxically, that's when I allowed my membership to expire. Although they have always claimed that they show things "complete and uncut", they started dropping off introductory material from at least one program and replacing it with begging and pleading.

    Several years later the station finally managed to claw its way out of the hole.

    I'm still not a member.

    No one around KCET mentions Cosmos any more.

  • Re:Do Slashdot care about their own rights at all? (Score:5)

    by ElrondHubbard ( 13672 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @11:09AM (#1414944)
    Are you guys aware that the _Cosmos_ DVDs are *not* region encoded? One set, one world. Get informed before you start bitching.

    http://www.onecosmos.net/

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The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..." -- Isaac Asimov

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