Questions you want answered.

Rykin wrote:

Good question. Not sure if the Next Generation episode like that would predate the movie or not. Stargate SG-1's take on it is one of my favorites.

Time travel stories get around to thinking about loops and paradoxes pretty frequently, but the exact scenario in Groundhog Day (repeating an exact loop) is a little more specific. TV Tropes has a page, which I will refrain from linking to, especially because most of its examples postdate Groundhog Day. It does claim that Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer (1984) "may possibly be" one of the earliest examples, for whatever that's worth.

Groundhog Day was 1993. The Next Gen episode, "Cause and Effect", was 1992. Stargate's episode was in 2000, mentions Groundhog Day by name, and is awesome.

12:01 PM is an Academy Award-nominated 1990 short film (based on a short story from 1973) about a man repeating a time loop in pretty much the same way as Groundhog Day. He doesn't take it very well. It's a pretty good short film.

It's probably also worth mentioning Run, Lola, Run (1998) which is a similar setup but runs in a different direction with it, and has been imitated by television plots in the same way as Groundhog Day.

Doctor Who has, of course, encountered repeating time loops multiple times. The closest early one to the exact Groundhog Day scenario is probably 1972's "Carnival of Monsters". Being a Time Lord, it doesn't phase him for long.

Edit: Tanhausser'd by Stengah.

Wikipedia under time Loop lists a lot of sci-fi going back to the 40s that explores the theme as well

Stengah wrote:
Grenn wrote:

Ok. Every sci-fi or fantasy show and a few other types of shows have a "Groundhog Day" episode. So, was Groundhog Day the first movie to use the plot that they day kept repeating and only one person could tell, or is it just the most successful and memorable one?

Time loops have been used in stories as far back as 1940.
The particular type of time loop in Groundhog Day (one person remembers what happens in each loop) possibly first appeared in the short story 12:01 PM, written in 1973. 12:01 PM was turned into a 1990 short film for Showtime, then a full length movie that aired on FOX several months after Groundhog Day was released.

Try the original Russian in 1915.

I think it can be agreed on that people have been writing time loop stories over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Gravey wrote:

I think it can be agreed on that people have been writing time loop stories over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Groundhog's Day is still the best though.

I think it can be agreed on that people have been writing time loop stories over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Ok. Every sci-fi or fantasy show and a few other types of shows have a "Groundhog Day" episode. So, was Groundhog Day the first movie to use the plot that they day kept repeating and only one person could tell, or is it just the most successful and memorable one?

Grenn wrote:

Ok. Every sci-fi or fantasy show and a few other types of shows have a "Groundhog Day" episode. So, was Groundhog Day the first movie to use the plot that they day kept repeating and only one person could tell, or is it just the most successful and memorable one?

If you keep repeating the same day over and over again, is the Spanish Inquisition still unexpected?

iaintgotnopants wrote:
Grenn wrote:

Ok. Every sci-fi or fantasy show and a few other types of shows have a "Groundhog Day" episode. So, was Groundhog Day the first movie to use the plot that they day kept repeating and only one person could tell, or is it just the most successful and memorable one?

If you keep repeating the same day over and over again, is the Spanish Inquisition still unexpected?

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/IVS1Ma0.gif)

Spoiler:

Yes.

Anyone still use Internet Explorer 8? Anyone test with IE8?

We have an old site that isn't working very well, it seems to load 90% of the way, but sometimes it will get stuck, and when you scroll it sort of copies the page a bunch of times and makes it look... smeared. The only way I can think of how to put it.

Anyone seen this happen? It can happen on any page, so I'm thinking it's either a CSS problem, or more likely the jQuery Superfish menu that is causing it.

Citizen86 wrote:

Anyone still use Internet Explorer 8? Anyone test with IE8?

We have an old site that isn't working very well, it seems to load 90% of the way, but sometimes it will get stuck, and when you scroll it sort of copies the page a bunch of times and makes it look... smeared. The only way I can think of how to put it.

Anyone seen this happen? It can happen on any page, so I'm thinking it's either a CSS problem, or more likely the jQuery Superfish menu that is causing it.

IE is the devil. 90% of the problems we see with IE8 occur when someone accidentally has compatibility mode turned on. (which happens all the time because the button to activate it is right next to the refresh button)

Citizen86 wrote:

Anyone still use Internet Explorer 8?

IE still exists?

I know guys, I know... oh trust me, I know.

But this one site is a more corporate site, which I guess the employees visit on their computers at work, and of course they are using XP and use IE8. So for a few years now apparently, they've been looking at a sometimes-broken website.

@Rahmen, thanks for the suggestion. I was testing it in a virtual machine of XP, so it's basically a fresh copy and I was able replicate the problem, so it's happening with and without compatibility mode.

I think I'll just have to get permission to make some changes and figure out what's causing it. I'm betting it's the Superfish script, or I'm betting just a super-old jQuery script.

dhelor wrote:
Citizen86 wrote:

Anyone still use Internet Explorer 8?

IE still exists?

We have a lot of fun with IE around here. Some of our stuff works in IE8 but not IE9 and some works in IE9 but not IE8. Compatibility mode fixes the issue sometimes but not with some other stuff (there is a MIME issue on some external servers that causes problems in IE9 with the Office-x file types but not IE8 for instance). Next to Skype one of the most requested things I install for people is Chrome.

I wish everyone would update/install a different browser. It is surprising, IE's aren't actually all that bad, IE10 has no big problems I've seen. It's just that IE8 is years old now....

Citizen86 wrote:

I know guys, I know... oh trust me, I know.

But this one site is a more corporate site, which I guess the employees visit on their computers at work, and of course they are using XP and use IE8. So for a few years now apparently, they've been looking at a sometimes-broken website.

@Rahmen, thanks for the suggestion. I was testing it in a virtual machine of XP, so it's basically a fresh copy and I was able replicate the problem, so it's happening with and without compatibility mode.

I think I'll just have to get permission to make some changes and figure out what's causing it. I'm betting it's the Superfish script, or I'm betting just a super-old jQuery script.

For those unlucky enough to be forced to care, IETester is your friend.

Garden Ninja wrote:

For those unlucky enough to be forced to care, IETester is your friend.

I used that for quite a while. However, I find that since I have the RAM for it, having an XP and Win7 VM gives more accurate results for IE8 and 9. I was testing one site in IETester and it was throwing out an error that actually didn't happen in real IE8.

don't feel too bad, IE6 is still fairly widely used in China. And in case you had any faith in the banks here, they pretty much all REQUIRE IE for secure login and online transactions. Bank of China's site makes the extra effort of requiring you to be browsing in 1024x768 (not higher) for it to work properly.

OK, so UK tabloid journalism frequently gets linked to and picked up Americans (and even some American news services), who apparently view the The Times and The Sun as having the same amount of credibility. But does it happen the other way? That is, outside of America are there people who don't distinguish between The New York Times and The National Enquirer?

Also, do travelers realize that most people only see USA Today in hotels?

I know the Onion often pops up as a referenced news source.

Gremlin wrote:

That is, outside of America are there people who don't distinguish between The New York Times and The National Enquirer?

I know the difference but I really could not tell you if my experience generalises.

Gremlin wrote:

OK, so UK tabloid journalism frequently gets linked to and picked up Americans (and even some American news services), who apparently view the The Times and The Sun as having the same amount of credibility. But does it happen the other way? That is, outside of America are there people who don't distinguish between The New York Times and The National Enquirer?

Trick question, the US has no credible news sources left.

Mebbe?

IMAGE(http://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/1/57/198/573/1571985735_l.gif)

EDIT: this is actually a loathe now that I think about it.

I also had a potential loathe, but there's a question too as well so I'll put it here.

It looks like earlier today we had a USPS flat rate box stolen off of our front step. Nothing too mission critical, some used baby clothes the wife was selling and had already been paid for.

The mailman later comes knocking at the door asking for the box because he had a pickup notice for it. No box. I guess there might be a slight chance another carrier picked it up and we will follow up with the Post Office and tracking and such but chances are someone absconded with it and it won't be seen again.

$77 worth of baby clothes is not the worst loss we've ever suffered, but that someone would tresspass and rob from us bothers me very much.

So, worth getting a police report for? My limited knowledge says that being a USPS box might make it a federal crime? Would it be imprudent to ask the police about the legal ramificaions of parking the cars down the street, putting a small to medium sized box with say an Apple logo on the front step and then waiting very patiently behind the front door?

Dr_Awkward wrote:

So, worth getting a police report for? My limited knowledge says that being a USPS box might make it a federal crime?

Depends. Do you own or rent? If you own, you've got more of an investment in your neighborhood, so might be more worthwhile reporting to the police. If you have a neighborhood email list, maybe ping your neighbors and let them know that it happened.

Dr_Awkward wrote:

Would it be imprudent to ask the police about the legal ramificaions of parking the cars down the street, putting a small to medium sized box with say an Apple logo on the front step and then waiting very patiently behind the front door?

To do what? Take a picture of the thief, or break their teeth with a baseball bat? Can't see a policeman advising you that the latter is a good idea.

We own.

Lets's say... detain them.

Dr_Awkward wrote:

We own.

Lets's say... detain them.

Magically? Tractor beam? There's no way any police officer would okay something like that, which could put you in harm's way. Take a photo, maybe, but not approach or "detain" them, however you're implying.

Dr_Awkward wrote:

We own.

Lets's say... detain them.

If you wrassle a criminal to the ground, finger->butt, and don't post pictures here, it's a federal crime.

Umm does anyone have any opinions on http://www.amazon.com/Kenneth-Cole-R...