eberry writes "Despite over 70,000 respondents (.37% of the population) replying "Jedi" to an optional faith question on Australia's census, it will not become a recognized religion According to CNN "Australian officials say respondents could face a $1,000 fine for supplying false information. Citing, and I quote, "...people of a particular religious affiliation do not provide the correct information, certain facilities might not be built that otherwise would be." Personally I find their lack of faith disturbing." And I find the fact that this is on CNN even more so ;)

kazama writes: "Toronto-based IMAX said that it had developed a new process called DMR (for "digital remastering") to digitally convert conventional 35mm films to the IMAX format without significant loss of detail. 'Our customers have been saying to us for years, "We want to see Star Wars on IMAX, we want to see The Matrix on IMAX." and DMR is the technology which is the enabler,' Co-CEO Bradley Wechsler told Reuters. 'That's going to be an increasingly important part of the company's performance.'" So what movies would you want to see on IMAX?

Pivot writes: "With the release of Xine v0.9.11a, it is now possible to play back Quicktime movies encoded with the Sorenson SVQ1 encoding natively. There are still some minor issues with sound, and still no support for SVQ3 encoding, but overall this is a major achievement. Downloads are at xine.sf.net. I wonder what apple will do about this." Note: you may have to cut and paste that "movies" link into a new tab or browser.

Slashback (below) brings you tonight more on the fate of Mobilix, "borrowing" from the Onion, keeping track of campus, the recent (partial) eclipse, and animated television. Enjoy!

Dork King writes "The New York Time's Review of AOTC (free reg, yada yada) notes that Attack of the Clones doesn't look good for fans. Thankfully, I'm not a fan." Also, dw5000 writes "The BBC has a favorable review of Attack of the Clones on its news website, as well as an executive summary of what the UK papers are saying about AotC. The populist tabloids love it, while the broadsheets are giving cautious approval. Hmm. Maybe I won't wait for DVD ..." I also noticed Variety has a review up as well. Also, for those who have lost all hope for Star Wars, I submit to you the date of the Spider-Man sequel: May 7th, 2004. You should know that spoilers exist in one or more of these stories. Beware!

Peter Wayner writes: "A friend of mine who works as a public defender knows a thing or two about selling fear to the jury filled with doubts. Several months before December 31st, 1999, he asked me if we should be worried about the Y2K disasters. My answer was: The machines crash every day. Why should it matter if it happens on December 31st?" This time around though, the fears are of a different nature and scope: Peter reviews below Edward Yourdon's latest book Byte Wars, one aimed at everyone concerned about online terrorism in the post-9/11 climate.

Jager writes: "You can download the new starwars trailer here. Enjoy." Seemed to me as if Lucas was worried about the "love story" emphasis in the previous teasers, and wanted to make sure people knew there would be plenty of zapping and slashing.

SchwarzePuppen writes "Fernandes Guitars International in association with Lucas Licensing Ltd., a division of Lucasfilm Ltd., is presenting the Star Wars Retrorocket Collector's Series. Based upon Fernandes' Retrorocket model, these premium Japanese instruments showcase stunning Star Wars graphics created by using a revolutionary computer controlled painting process. Check it out!"

Captain Chad writes: "LucasFilm has donated some items to eBay's "Auction for America". They include a lightsaber used by Ray Park (Darth Maul) and a stormtrooper helmet used in The Empire Strikes Back and in Return of the Jedi. Check out the list of auction items! I think some of the bids will get astronomical. Would anyone be willing to give me a few hundred thousand dollars so I can get the lightsaber?"

danov writes: "A new trailer for Star Wars Episode II has been released on Apple's website. It's called "Forbidden Love"." Don't watch this one if you want to be surprised when you see the movie. It gives away most of the plot. You have been warned. Update: 11/16 12:49 GMT by M : If you get "referral denied", just hit reload. Silly Apple.

tjansen writes "The Episode II Trailer is available. You need be a starwars.com member to watch it and must have installed the Quicktime plugin though." I guess thats 2 strikes against me. Glad I saw it in front of Monsters Inc.

FortKnox writes "Starwars.com has officially announced that Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones 'teaser' trailer will appear at the head of the new movie, Monsters, Inc. Other reports have the full trailer on Harry Potter, but this is still speculation. Ep-I DVD owners should be able to view the trailers on starwars.com once Monsters, Inc. hits theaters." Good thing I'm planning on seeing both of those movies anyway.

linderdm writes: "The official Star Wars web site has an article confirming reports about the release date of October 16th for the Phantom Menace DVD. It looks like it will be a double DVD set with 6 hours of additional material, plus 7 new deleted scenes added to the movie." Lucas should have an option to view it in Phantom Edit mode. If that's unrealistic, maybe releasing ep IV, V and VI would be feasible? Please?

BIGJIMSLATE writes: "Maybe these should be considered quickies due to the number of them, but they're all Star Wars. *Warning* There may be spoilers here for some of you, so read at your own risk. Anyways, here I go." Read on below for an interesting, eclectic (not to say, oh, I dunno, "obsessive") pile of links. Sheesh, the next one won't even be out for a while!

ucribido writes "StarWars episode II, as yet untitled film, has wrapped up shooting ahead of shedule. No advanced story lines given although the just freshly completed script was apparently stolen and offered of sale for $100,000 big ones to the fan site The Force.net. More about the shoot here "

linderdm writes: "It looks like, once again, we have been subject to misinformation concerning Episode II. According to the Official Star Wars Web site, Kenny Baker will indeed be returning to act in Episode II, making him and Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), the only two actors to appear in all of the Star Wars movies to date." Good to hear that the old bit was just a nasty rumor.

I'm here at Ottawa Linux Symposium, and I took the Quickies to the crowd and let them pick some of today's Quickies. Hope you like them. CitizenC told us to check out The Kama Sutra of Winnie the Pooh. Scary. alpha264 wrote in about a pegboard computer." Darkness Productions told us that Spaz Labs was back." Phrogman shared a huge collection of Space Images now available on Spaceref.com. kbolton told us to look at streaming anime for free. scampbell said that Yamaha Paper Craft has updated their rare-animal paper sculpture collection to include the Yellow-eyed Penguin. _endgame mentioned that voting has begun for the Freenet Logo." An anonymous coward wrote in about the Men of Sieg Hall calendar. I included that one for Telsa. cdlu wrote (from about ten feet away) about this thing that creates much annoyance from the console. MURL said that Christopher Lee has been cast in the role of a charismatic separatist in Episode II. And finally, I just wanted to mention that Dave Taylor from that company stopped by just to make sure that he wasn't mentioned in the Quickies. Teehee.

Ozten asks: "I am currently looking at GSP and trying to convince the big e-commerce company that I work for that Open Source technology doesn't mean more maintenance than large packages on the market, such as Blue Martini or IBM Websphere. I am looking for facts and firepower on GNU Server Pages, but info is sparse except for bit mechanics and its links. You would think that with a high profile site like the Star Wars Shop using GSP, it would get more notice. Any other facts out there? GSP seems like the best free software since gnu-SlicedBread, where is the hype?" Actually, I would like more facts than hype. With production sites using this technology, I would be interested in hearing how well the things have held up, in addition to any advantages and disadvantages over popular solutions like ASP.

|GopheR| writes "Mr. George changed his mind and is planning to release episode 1 on DVD before 2005? If The digital bits rumormill is right, then he probably did change his mind. " Note that they don't really have a date set, and Lucas hasn't said he *won't* release DVDs... just that it'll be years before they do. To bad. I own two copies of the original trilogy on VHS (Original and Special edition) but I've sworn off video. I woulda bought the DVD the day it came out, but I won't spend a penny on VHS.

In a world splitting increasingly into real and virtual geographies, who owns ideas? The free music wars are just the first in a series of political, cultural and legal struggles that are putting the very idea of copyright and intellectual property on the table for the first time. Read more.