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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

I want pictures dagnabbit! that's right, i said it... dagnabbit!. How can they post an article like this without pictures of the thing? Oh well. perhapse a google search will find some results.

Anyway, as for the series, when the Walking with the Dinosaurs first came out I found it mildly entertaining. Cool CG, but I'm not really into dinos. Then came the flood of "Walking with"s and now they simply annoy me.

Btw, found this site that has more info on the robosaurs, and links to video of them.

PS: I finally got to watch above mentioned video (took about 30 mins to load on this connection) and WOW! Looks like one of the coolest jobs in the world Enjoy.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Theory of Zombie Relativity:
1) Everyone Else is a Zombie relative to You
2) Whether or not it matters is related to the inverse square of the distance between their teeth and your brain
(Quoted from Demigrog)

They should have named that series on the BBC as walking with speculators

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Fame, glory adventure, a cyber warrior craves not these things.

Unfortunately, that's all they have. I imagine it would be a little easier if the dinosaurs hadn't caught a bad case of mass extinction.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

They portrayed their colours and behaviours as fact in a wildlife style televison programme. They based this on living creatures today. You could only find this out if you had the net, otherwise there was no "How do they know these dinosaurs behaved that way" It seemed like a lot of guess work (some of it worked out ) dressed up as fact.

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Fame, glory adventure, a cyber warrior craves not these things.

Well, they could resort to extant dinosaurs. Unfortunately, they don't seem as intimidating as their ancestors.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Yes, the shows are shamelessly speculative, especially the later specials. In their defense, the speculation is as you said based on living animals so it is not complete fabrication. It wouldn't have hurt however if they had some kind of disclaimer or note that most of the stuff shown is fictious.

It doesn't stop me from enjoying the shows.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

My biggest disappointment with the series was that, after proving that they could do an outstanding job of CGI animals and thus had the potential to give us the best homonids that a TV show on human/homonid evolution has ever had, they finally did do one on human/homonid evolution... and dropped their excellent CGI in favor of yet another round of human actors in makeup and prosthetics.

BTW my argument has nothing to do with creationism as it still applies with an evolution scenario

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Fame, glory adventure, a cyber warrior craves not these things.

Walking with Dinosaurs is often called 'Making it up as we go along with Dinosaurs' in the BBC Natural History Unit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Natural_History_Unit
WWD was made by BBC Science in London, a different department. The Unit was offered a chance to make it but turned it down, this seemed a funny decision at the time but (speculation now!) perhaps it was realised what style & 'treatment' would be imposed on the final product.

walking with dinosaurs....what would it be like...if they havent went to extinction..
maybe their sizes will change gradually as humans increases it population and will become pets or maybe in the zoo if they are still alive today..

Well, I think the conversation missed the point of the topic (at least, i think it was the point of the topic). Those animatronic puppets are really, really cool. I'd love to go jogging down the street in that raptor suit each morning

As for the shows: yes, they are speculative. But as was pointed out, that's all they have. Dinosaurs aren't really around anymore, unless you count <insert some old person's name here>. It is very unscientific of them to not make it a point to make sure everyone knows that it is speculation. But whatever; you should all know that anything done for TV is done with ratings in mind. If they called the show "What we think the dinosaurs were like" it wouldn't have gotten so much attention. :-p

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Theory of Zombie Relativity:
1) Everyone Else is a Zombie relative to You
2) Whether or not it matters is related to the inverse square of the distance between their teeth and your brain
(Quoted from Demigrog)

It is "easy" to make CGI dinosaurs, and CGI mammals can also be relatively lifelike. Making believable hominids is next to impossible, as can be seen in the Australopithecus episode in Walking With Beasts. They did the right thing by using actors. I don't see any point not using traditional methods when they're superior.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Not intimidating...

Pick a fight with a goose sometime, I dare you.

A bean goose. Christmas dinner by any other name. A male, literally whipped my butt. I had welts from those supposedly fragile wing bones slapping me through denim.

Not intimidating...when them bad boys hiss, you'd better step back, they will get hostile.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

I concure. (I love using fancy words). I forget the name for it, something doll syndrome i think...anyway it basically states that the closer something gets to looking like a human, the more we subconciously pick up on the little innacruacies. And that makes the sythetic human appear less real, and generally gives a creepy almost devilish empression. Holds true to robots, puppets, and CG. I'm not saying if they worked really really hard they couldn't overcome this...but why? It's easier to have a human play the role of a, well, lesser evolved human. and less expensive.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Theory of Zombie Relativity:
1) Everyone Else is a Zombie relative to You
2) Whether or not it matters is related to the inverse square of the distance between their teeth and your brain
(Quoted from Demigrog)

There are reports of Great Tits (I mean birds like the one in the image...) attacking smaller birds and killing them by pecking their brains out.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Sure much of Walking with Dinosaurs was speculative, but that's missing the point. The idea was to make dinosaur documentaries interesting again. Rather than having old scientists slowly digging through a desert, we get "real life" animals. It's meant to be just like a normal documentary about animals living today.

When I was younger it was the stop motion animation or cell animation in dinosaur documentaries that really got me hooked. It's the same with this show. It was meant as a spring board for further learning.

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Time cube is evil.

...which is irrelevant, since this is not such a case because they're actually vastly, tremendously inferior.

When the whole point of a show is to show the differences between two things (like us and other homonids), using a method that makes them appear to be the same thing is pretty massively stupid. Even if CGI homonids moved awkwardly, at least they'd look like awkwardly-moving homonids, instead of like humans (especially humans whose sole reason to be shown is to illustrate how they were similar to and different from... humans! ).

Hahaha.... go to the Audubon Society for that. Or put a "dinosaur" feeder in your backyard.

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"I am happy to report that once again the universe is doing just great, thank you, purring with perfection, ever-changing same as always. Light is still cruising along at 186,000 miles per second, and the expanding universe shows no signs of contracting. At this rate, it won't be long before they'll have to let the photon belt out another notch."
Swami Beyondananda's 2007 State of the Universe address