Slashdot Mirror

A notable example: Kurt Eichenwald having a tab for for a tentacle porn site visible in his browser.

Sounds like a B movie!

Actually, sounds more like 2009's Gamer:

In a future mind-controlling game, death row convicts are forced to battle in a 'Doom'-type environment. Convict Kable, controlled by Simon, a skilled teenage gamer, must survive thirty sessions in order to be set free. Or won't he?

I liked that the villain in that movie was basically Mark Zuckerberg, played by the guy who was Dexter. It was fairly shlockish, but I think it would probably been seen in a much better light if it were to come out now, with us being on the far side of the social networks' ill effects on society.

I suspect it would have done that anyway though. Episodes 1-3 were intended to "rhyme" with Episodes 4-6. It was less obvious than 7-8-second-half-of-8, but that's in part because there was a lot of (non-plot related) stuff in the first three (midichlorians, Jar Jar Binks, etc) that distracted people from what was happening underneath. But yeah, it was also because Abrams and, to a lesser extent, Johnson, wanted to also duplicate the way the OT movies rhymed with each other.

The Last Unicorn was animated in Japan by a studio named Topcraft. Rankin-Bass had used Topcraft for their earlier television productions of The Hobbit and The Return of the King, and this was their most ambitious collaboration. In 1985, Topcraft went into bankruptcy, at which point a team of its animators bought the studio and began a new one, including many of the same Topcraft employees. That team was made up of Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, and Toshio Suzuki, and the new company was Studio Ghibli.

A Ghibli-Style Movie You Might Not Have Heard Of http://jpninfo.com/11647

The Last Unicorn was nightmare fuel to a generation of kids https://film.avclub.com/the-la...

I don't play WoW either, but I used to play it. It used to be a multi-million dollar market selling digital currency (in-game gold). Chinese gold farms popped up and made so much money doing it. Even Steve Bannon got involved with it. http://www.avclub.com/article/... It's not seen as just a game to people like Steve Bannon. It was seen as an opportunity.

Prada of course. I simply could not dream of using any other paperclip. Granted that at $185 a piece it is more expensive than other paperclips but, for some of us, quality matters.

When you consider the lifetime cost of assuring that your papers stay together, it just makes sense. Of course there are those luddites and fashion-challenged people who just don't understand. Fortunately for them there are plenty of bargain basement opportunities when it comes to their clipping needs.

For me, I just wouldn't feel comfortable trusting my documents with anything else.

http://www.avclub.com/amp/2577...

Trump isn't some pansy ass RINO praying no one calls him a name or tries to put stink on him.

We're talking about the same guy who calls out SNL and can't even handle criticism of his steak restaurant, right? He's not only a pansy ass, he's the biggest pussy in history.

which part are you deeply unsure of? That humans attacked the bugs first, and that news snippets during the movie actually spent a couple seconds talking about protestors pointing that out? Or that the whole thing was obvious satire? Spending half a second, I find an interview with the director, where he describes it as satire that mocks fascism. Even the wiki entry for the movie calls it satire - in the very first sentence . Do you seriously not catch that the whole movie is making fun of the US and the cycle of generate fear => throw the military at the problem => generate fear?

Oh I just watched that episode of Black Mirror yesterday. http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/b...

web CRANK endorses political KOOK

Okay: http://www.avclub.com/article/...

Episode 3-04 "Bella" of Elementary gives a good example of what an early AI system would be like.

Scientists and engineers are by definition not supposed to be ethical.

"I just invented the bomb. I didn't drop it."
        --Brice, Max Headroom Episode 1 "Blipverts", 1987

Reference (in particular, the third video clip): http://www.avclub.com/article/...

Back then that line was meant as tongue-in-cheek humor, funny because of its ridiculousness Depressing that we've degenerated so far that you've actually said the equivalent with all seriousness. (The same could be said for many things in that once funny, now prophetic series.)

As engineers and scientists we do NOT check our humanity at the door, or our ethics. At least, good engineers and scientists do not.

The real question is: was the girl who posted this image able to capitalize on its viral popularity, like the owner of Grumpy Cat?

I'll be reading about a prominent AI researcher getting murdered, ostensibly by his own AI, but really by anti-Skynet wackadoos. It's okay. Sherlock Holmes will be on the case.

(Sorry... spoiler alert?)

A bit OT, but you reminded me of a similar claim by Kate Mulgrew (aka The Worst Captain) over the geocentrist documentary The Principle.

> Coupled with the video toaster card...

Interestingly, Wil Wheaton worked on the Video Toaster 4000:

http://www.avclub.com/articles...

It was amazingly ahead of its time.

Very controversial opinion, FBTS plays a lot like a Moonlighting episode. Then again, my favorite episode is It's Only a Paper Moon (of course allowing the transcendent brilliance of In the Pale Moonlight).

Oh my. I remember Better of Ted's "the good news is: our security system is NOT racist, because it doesn't see blacks" episode, but never had an inkling it was based in reality.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/better-off-ted-racial-sensitivity,71599/

So what have the Americans got? Skip this if you're eating lunch... One of the most genuinely unpleasant sounding- and looking- "delicacies" I've ever heard of, but fortunately never tasted. Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you... canned pork brains in milk gravy.

If you came to any random American city and asked people if that was an American food, they would all agree that no it is not. If you asked if they had heard of it, no, they have not. If you asked if it is probably sold in the US somewhere, they would probably speculate that it is, somewhere.

treacle, blood pudding, and clotted cream biscuits are much better than anything over here. We eat pure shit compared to the delicacies to be had in your dusty corner for the world.

Seriously, if you mean black treacle- it has a stronger taste than the golden variety, and I wasn't a big fan as a kid, but it's quite nice as an ingredient. Black pudding? Haven't eaten it for years, but I'd put it in my mouth. Clotted cream? Method of thickening cream by slightly cooking it- never tried it, but can't be that bad.

So what have the Americans got? Skip this if you're eating lunch... One of the most genuinely unpleasant sounding- and looking- "delicacies" I've ever heard of, but fortunately never tasted. Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you... canned pork brains in milk gravy.

Yeah... I think it's going to take a lot to "improve" upon that. :'-(

It depends what you mean by 'tolerance'. So far as I'm aware, no-one's called for OSC to be thrown in jail. People have just loudly disagreed with what he says, and advocated not giving money to him. That's a fairly big distinction, and one most beautifully pinpointed by the A.V. Club article on the topic:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/enders-game-author-orson-scott-card-issues-plea-fo,99915/

As a gay person, am I willing to 'tolerate' people who believe that being gay is wrong or whatever? Sure. I don't want OSC sent to prison for thought crimes. Am I willing to 'tolerate' people advocating that homosexual activity be criminalized and I be thrown in prison? Well, it depends what you mean by 'tolerate'. I wouldn't want to forcibly prevent him from expressing his opinion, but I certainly don't think anyone should 'tolerate' it actually happening, or any form of violent revolution to cause it to happen, as OSC has advocated (see above). Am I likely to spend money on his stuff? Nooooope.

"Besides, OSC's SF books have nothing to do with his views on a totally orthogonal societal issue."

Um. Perhaps you haven't read his books closely enough. All of OSC's fiction is very deeply tied into his views on 'societal issues'; that's basically what he writes about. It's least obvious in Ender's Game, but he has, for instance, written an *entire series of SF books* which was a retelling of the Book of Mormon.

I'm pretty sure The Onion hit the nail on the head (as well as their actual review of it).

But this is coming from someone who's probably going to see Frances Ha tonight and is still trying to get his hands on a copy of Incendies so if you want to laugh and don't want to have to think ... watch it make millions.

Bitcoin jumped the shark when it, oh, nevermind let me just coin a new term: it "tv lawyer verdicted"...

http://www.avclub.com/articles/bitcoin-for-dummies,67658/

Spider man, spider man, will suck on you whenever he can.

Worf's a crab, Troi's a frog,

Com-mander Riker, is a Trog,

This is in Ge-ne-sis.

Maybe this recent push has to do with the upcoming Asteroids movie that was announced a while back.

This was up on the AV Club yesterday. I mention this because an interesting (and often humourous) discussion occurred there that many here may be interested in reading.

What do the workers in the HUMANCENTiPAD factory have to sign?

Whoever moderated this Offtopic: http://www.avclub.com/articles/a-clockwork-origin,43936/

People like you make me angry. You're so stupid

I'm not stupid, but apparently I need to work on my deadpan delivery.

Either that, or Tom Lehrer was right when he said satire is obsolete.

Has anyone checked whether they just did it for comedic effect? It seems quite unlike them to censor long, preachy speeches. I mean hell, they air the rest of South Park...

Yes, people have checked. It was also confirmed on The Daily Show.

The Hiller Flying Platform was designed in 1955.

Perhaps I'm just a little fatigued but I could have sworn that said "Hitler Flying Platform" when I first read it. Made me think of this this all of a sudden (yes I know it doesn't fly but it's cool nonetheless.)

Bollocks, that's merely a URL. This is a link:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/john-cleese,14197/

http://www.avclub.com/articles/inventory-eight-surefire-fiascoes-that-unexpectedl,1532/

titanic was way over budget and plenty in hollywood were sharpening the knives and whispering about cameron's "heaven's gate"... in 1997

it didn't turn out that way. so many teenage girls around the world seeing that movie 10 times in a row. the guy hit one out of the ballpark

but there's another guy who took a dubious premise and knocked one out of the ballpark... and then went even more ambitious and wound up with a career killing flop

i am (ironically, since avatar is, as so many have noted, just dances with wolves in space) talking about kevin costner and his way over budget little personal project called dances with wolves that so many had rejected throughout the 1980s and he staked so much on career-wise

Originally written as a spec script by Michael Blake, it went unsold in the mid-1980s. It was Kevin Costner who, in early 1986 (when he was relatively unknown), encouraged Blake to turn the screenplay into a novel, to improve its chances of being adapted into a film. The novel manuscript of Dances with Wolves was rejected by numerous publishers but finally published in paperback in 1988. As a novel, the rights were purchased by Costner, with an eye to his directing it.[4] Actual filming lasted from July 18 to November 23, 1989. ...

Because of budget overruns and production delays, and after the fiasco of Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, then considered one of the most mismanaged Westerns in film history, Costner's project was satirically dubbed "Kevin's Gate" by Hollywood critics and skeptics during the months prior to its release.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dances_with_wolves#Production

then what happened after gaining so much legitimacy in the face of so much doubt? kevin costner followed up with waterworld

gulp

his career was never the same after that flop (even though, personally, i never thought it was a bad movie, it was enjoyable, just somewhat flawed, but not repulsively so)

Problems encountered during filming led to massive budget overrun, and it held the dubious distinction of being the most expensive film ever made at the time. Some critics dubbed it "Fishtar" and "Kevin's Gate" (references to the notorious flops Ishtar and Heaven's Gate).

With a budget of $175 million, the film grossed a mere $88 million at the U.S. box office, which seemed to make it the all time box office bomb.[6] Adjusted for inflation and expressed in 2006 dollars (USD), the budget for the movie was $231.6 million, and grossed $116.8 million at the U.S. box office.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterworld#Box_office_and_reception

so, to conclude

titanic : cameron = dances with wolves : costner

? avatar : cameron = waterworld : costner ?

no man is immune to hubris. avatar may very well be cameron's undoing. but then again, avoid the counsel of anyone who is certain avatar will kill cameron's career. no one knows yet, and anyone who "knows" certainly suffers from the same deadly hubris

Now that's a good suggestion. The only risk is that all the students will become fans of really weird movies!

Others have rightly called BS on TFA already for the grossly inflated copies-sold figure. If the movie comes out as planned http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1037220/ his total readership + moviegoers + game players for all his works and derivations might total something like the 160 million figure, but only if that's not constrained to sales of those.

Before taking the article to task for other details, it's worth noting that it's not very original. At the 20 year mark the Neuromancer was reviewed by Velvet Delorey http://www.geocities.com/canadian_sf/pages/media/delorey.htm for the Canadian SF web site Made In Canada http://www.geocities.com/canadian_sf/index.html (1998-2008, RIP). Rather than focusing on the tech itself, she made the observation that "Whatever aspects of the Eighties Neuromancer may have extrapolated from, however, much of the Eighties influences, both -punk and cyber-, seem to have taken their cues from Neuromancer, instead of the other way around," suggesting the influences were bidirectional, and social in nature. That appears closer to Gibson's own views, which although may carry some bias of their own, should be taken as closer to the truth than other viewpoints. This provides its own segue to criticism of TFA for focusing on science-fictionary special effects and giving them primacy, to the neglect of the reason for their creation.

William Gibson himself holds that where he created technology, it was to further the interaction of the characters and carry the plot, and was never meant to be prophetic in any sense. Furthermore he claims that when it has proven prophetic it was actually because it was instead descriptive of possibilities, and techies who were already engaged in development of things along the same lines read the book, then used it as a clearer description than they were capable of elucidating for what they were trying to develop. In a 2007 interview with The AV Club focusing on his then upcoming "Spook Country", http://www.avclub.com/articles/william-gibson,14143/ he says "There was a time in the late '80s, early '90s, when every government in the world decided to have a huge, lavishly funded virtual-reality conference, and I got invited to all of them. So I met lots and lots of the players in the goggles-and-gloves school of virtual reality. None of them actually became the man who invented television, which is what I think all of them expected to become. But to a man or woman, they all allowed as how I had really helped them out. They had this idea, but they'd never been able to explain to anybody what it was. Once they had Neuromancer, they could just go around with a suitcase full of copies, and when people said, "I just can't fathom what you're talking about," they'd say, "Read this. It's sort of like this." [Laughs.] I don't think they were just flattering me; I think they were actually doing that." So, Gibson didn't get any of the tech right or wrong. He just got some story points on paper. The tech, and the rights or wrongs about it, belong to the techies who tried to develop it (with or without Gibson's influence) and succeeded or failed.

As an aside, I'm writing this in a small Appalachian town known as the home of Mountain Dew and very little else. I'm 25 miles from Gibson's boyhood home. Despite the big green signs along Interstate 81 announcing that this is "Virginia's Technology Corridor" (thanks to the proximity to Virginia Tech, and no mention of William Gibson in sight) both can well be said to be "a place where modernity had arrived to some extent but was deeply distrusted", as was Gibson's account of his home town of 40 years ago. The future obviously arrives at different rates in different places, this place among the slowest. Luckily for some, when confronted with this fact in places like this, they construct that reluctant future in their heads. Luckily for the rest of us, some of them share it.

But seriously, you're comparing not getting perpetual compensation for something you wrote to invading your personal space?

I'm not invading your personal space. I'm camped on your lawn, scores of feet away from you on the other side of a wall, and doing you no harm. Land ownership is just as much a social-legal fiction as is copyright. Yet you're willing to kill to protect it?

Nor have I mentioned perpetual compensation, I've explicitly disclaimed that. Please do me the favor of not putting words into my mouth.

I tell you this -- I would rather have you camp on my lawn for a few days than falsely claim authorship of one of my works.

Am I harmed if you claim credit for a song that I wrote? Not directly, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. But you are collecting something -- credit -- that I am, ethically, owed. I assert that the financial situation is the same: just as you owe me my name on the liner notes of the CD (or whatever the equivalent is for an MP3 from iTunes), when you sell recordings of a song I wrote, you owe me a just royalty.

You could conceivably have your written song copied and distributed worldwide without even knowing about it.

And I have no objection to that. Is it somehow unclear to you that I am not arguing in favor of copyright? Copy, share and enjoy, please. I just want a fair share if you make money off of it.

Sure, without copyright, other bands could play and the writer wouldn't be compensated, but the original band will always do the best

That statement, sir, is unadulterated rubbish. Is Hendrix's version of "All Along the Watchtower" inferior to Dylan's? Joplin's "Me and Bobby McGee" not as good as Kris Kristofferson's? Do you think Ike & Tina Turner's "Proud Mary" is not as good as CCR's? Feh, I say, feh.

(On the topic of covers, I have to digress a second: while trying to refresh my brain on covers better than originals I stumbled across this, which mentions that that the version of "Desperado" on the Langley Schools Music Project. Let me say that if you love music, you owe it to yourself to seek out this album. Also Songs in the Key of Z.)

That's exactly the sort of dry wit their writers use.

My favourite The Economist moment:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/february-1-2006,1713/ (final letter)
http://www.avclub.com/articles/february-15-2006,1716/ (final letter)

Links maybe NSFW.

Peter

That's exactly the sort of dry wit their writers use.

My favourite The Economist moment:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/february-1-2006,1713/ (final letter)
http://www.avclub.com/articles/february-15-2006,1716/ (final letter)

Links maybe NSFW.

Peter

Congratulations, you've discovered hyperbole. Try not to take every single word everyone says literally. Obviously, I meant that many of his movie reviews are more positive than they used to be. That he gave a shit movie like Fired Up 1/4 doesn't refute that. And that review is not even close to the worst I've seen for that movie. You want to see his inflation in action look at his review of 'Notorious', 'Che', etc. There are plenty of recent reviews out there which validate my point. Don't bother with any more cherry picking.

A few other interesting reviews:

Onion AV Club review.
Massawyrm's review (which I was surprised at.)

Also, MIT, DND, Segway, X-Men, Wikipedia and the GAP. A/V Club might refer to the publication (when ignoring the context).

"Googly" -- which is a Google proxy for "what the customer wants to see in search results"

Which is, of course, why Google is the No.1 search engine. They make serving their customers their business, the crazy loons.

...I'm sure Colbert is in the same line of thinking but you never see him talk out of character.

Just FYI, this is the only out-of-character interview of his I've seen: http://www.avclub.com/content/node/44705

His gag isn't so much making fun of politicians, but lampooning over-the-top conservative personalities. In the process, he rips on politicians on both sides of the aisle, but that's more the secondary goal, I think.

...you should read this interview.

AVC: Just like you changed your comic style in the late '60s and early '70s, some have contended that you changed again in the '80s, becoming a little bit angrier. Would you agree with that?

GC: No, it's not so much anger. People read it that way, and that's the convenient word to go to. I understand that. Here's why it seems that way. There is a certain amount of righteous indignation I hold for this culture, because to get back to the real root of it, to get broader about it, my opinion that is my speciesâ"and my culture in America specificallyâ"have let me down and betrayed me. I think this species had great, great promise, with this great upper brain that we have, and I think we squandered it on God and Mammon. And I think this culture of ours has such promise, with the promise of real, true freedom, and then everyone has been shackled by ownership and possessions and acquisition and status and power.

And perhaps it's just a human weakness and an inevitable human story that these things happen. But there's disillusionment and some discontent in me about it. I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist. But I understand the word "cynic" has more than one meaning, and I see how I could be seen as cynical. "George, you're cynical." Well, you know, they say if you scratch a cynic you find a disappointed idealist. And perhaps the flame still flickers a little, you know?

And so, there's a part of me that is angry. Not in the sense of, "Gee, George is an angry guy!" I mean, anyone who's been with me five minutes, five years, whatever, they would tell you they've rarely seen me in a moment of anger. Yes, I can become highly irritated in a line that's moving slowly, or with a clerk who's incompetent. But I don't yell. I don't get rude. I am clear about what I expect. In a store, my mother always told me, "Ask for the manager immediately. It changes the tone of the conversation." [Laughs.]

So I am not a difficult man by any stretch, and I'm saying that with a full and honest inventory going on. I'm not. And I'm not angry on stage. There is a heightening. There is an intensification of the feelings on stage in order to let them carry the room. There is a theatricality about it. The whole thing is oratory, so there's persuasion involved. There's the art of rhetoric involved. And so, with hyperbole and with the desire to really punch the thing home, some of it reads a little more angry.

Now, it's true that the direction of the material changed, at least in part. Because I had always featured language stuff that was fairly simple and innocent and honest and even sweet and childlike, and other things like, "Oh, did you ever notice between your toes, you have these things." I still did all that stuff. But I began to tap into that other part of me that would've been a great protest singer. I just began to let that part of me grow and live. It was a natural thing, and it just went from one level to another. And there's a lot of that social criticism in the shows now, because what I'm really trying to say to people is, "Don't you see what the fuck you're doing here? What you've done to yourselves? Can't you see what you're letting them do to you?" I mean, that's sort of the subtext. "Aren't you aware of what the fuck is going on, you folks?" That's kind of what I'm thinking in my heart.

One need only consult Jim Mallon's Wikipedia Page or the Onion AV Interview with Joel to confirm that it was a fight between Hodgson and Mallon that ended Hodgson's time with MST3K.

If you really want to read Colbert au naturale, try this: http://www.avclub.com/content/node/44705
He openly admits the difficulties of staying in character, and does a fine job of bashing public appearances.

I would hope it should serve as entertaining, regardless of your political leanings.

Is this /. or Savage Love http://www.avclub.com/content/savagelove? === ALERT! ADULT CONTENT=== I'm confused.

The Onion's AV Club, which is normally a pretty astute review site for video games, is pretty hard on Dusk. All the reviews can agree on the fact that the game is about the story, not the gameplay aspects of it, but the AV Club seems to really pound the story as being trite. Somehow I'm more inclined to believe the reviewers there when it comes to evaluating the quality of a narrative than just about anyone out there who regularly reviews videogames, for whom the model of storytelling is Final Fantasy or Half Life.

I'm sure the story (for someone who regularly reads real fiction) is nowhere near as good as the game's boosters would have us believe, but I also think folks at The Onion may be a little too hard on it. I'm curious to know what the rest of you out there thought of this, evaluated from the perspective of a graphic novel. Is it really compelling, or is it one of those titles you like more for what it's trying to do (bringing fiction to a new medium), rather than what it is.

-BbT

Tycho at PA and others seem to love this game, but the reviewer over at The Onion AV was pretty harsh.