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I expect the future to be more like Brazil than like Star Trek.

Wait, as I live in Brazil, am I living inthe future allready?

I doubt you live in this one.

> There's a reason I only drink rain water and grain alcohol, you know.

You're a hick ?

Wow, someone isn't up on their Kubrick movies.

Mandrake. Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rainwater, and only pure-grain alcohol? From Dr. Strangelove

Haven't seen Doubt, but I do recall that the Streep character was an extremely conservative nun, the sort of person who thinks of all change as evil. I don't think her attitudes were being held up as something to emulate

The problem with your argument is that you don't say how you think ballpoint pens cause bad penmanship. Without some hypothetical mechanism all you've got is just another post hoc argument. You could just as easily claim that the decline in penmanship was caused by the invention of TV, the construction of the Interstate Highway System, or fluoridation. That last one is probably very popular in some circles.

Here's a much simpler mechanism: when skills stop being valuable, people stop learning them. What's the value of handwriting? Well, if your business correspondence is handwritten, then you better make sure that whoever writes out the "fair copy" has really good handwriting. And indeed, there used to be professional scriveners whose sole job skill was extremely good penmanship.

But businesses stopped hiring scriveners after typewriters became common about 125 years ago. There are other uses for handwriting, but they've been gradually eaten away by technology. Nowadays, ability to hack out text on a QWERTY keyboard is a lot more valuable than good penmanship. And that's the skill people have.

Incidentally, a certain politician is considered to have pretty good penmanship, despite having grown up after the decline of the fountain pen. Judging from his autobiography, I suspect his achievement-oriented mother stood over him as he practiced it. Which is the only way you can get a kid to acquire such a skill.

And notice from the document that I link: the dude writes with a felt tip!!!

Thank you. We are all refreshed by your unique point of view. Here is one of the early moon maps that you mention as a reference.

Shooting stuff into space has been tried already. But it ended badly, with an eye being put out.

Williams Goldman's dictum on Hollywood's ability to spot both commercial and artistic winners: ``Nobody Knows Anything''. Films don't by and large get their just deserts for decades. It's a popular game: take a great film. Look up the Oscars it got, or was nominated for (usually few). Look up the schlock that no-one remembers from that same year that got Oscars by the boatload. Try http://www.filmsite.org/noawards.html for the grim details.

Real source of water...

I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

So, vista was still born, and almost still-birthed?

Sorta like Rosemary's Baby?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otPyEsObI1M

http://www.filmsite.org/rosem.html

Push the tush, then ram the pram...

Or, sorta like the Medusa Touch?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rigyymOrfxw

Born, then hurt, then brain-dead...

Coming to a church of the poisoned mind near you..

Strangelove: I would not rule out the chance to preserve a nucleus of human specimens. It would be quite easy...heh, heh...(He rolls his wheelchair forward into the light) at the bottom of ah...some of our deeper mineshafts. Radioactivity would never penetrate a mine some thousands of feet deep, and in a matter of weeks, sufficient improvements in drilling space could easily be provided.
President: How long would you have to stay down there?
Strangelove: ...I would think that uh, possibly uh...one hundred years...It would not be difficult Mein Fuehrer! Nuclear reactors could, heh...I'm sorry, Mr. President. Nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plant life. Animals could be bred and slaughtered. A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the country, but I would guess that dwelling space for several hundred thousands of our people could easily be provided.
President: Well, I, I would hate to have to decide...who stays up and...who goes down.

Which government, you say? The same government that ordered a copy of every published work to be sent to them? You call that protection, I call that censure. Or perhaps you refer to the U.S. Government that decided that British copyright didn't apply any more. No, copyright has always been a mind construct of control: the only difference between then and now is that the controller isn't the government (and the jury is still out on what's worse). See how much good did copyright do to the author of the story that Disney plagiarized in "The Lion King"

That system is largely successful, evidenced by the fact that you aren't apparently aware that original works by "legendary" artists cost the equivalent of millions (plural) of dollars in some cases...

Excuse me? Is culture available because of copyright or is it available in spite of it? I don't see design studios getting paid once and again for each copy of their products: they are paid to do some work, they do it, and that's the end of it all. Do you get paid whenever someone makes a replica of a pot you created? Most artisans don't. And remember that, because the difference between artisan and artist is that the artisan does the work expecting to get paid, while the artist doesn't. But somehow this has been conveniently forgotten. Otherwise you would expect Rolls Royce to receive a royalty every time one of its cars is at an exposition or even a classic car meeting. Know what, that doesn't really happen. By the way, which original works by legendary artists cost the equivalent of millions? Written texts? Music? Architectural designs? The only thing I can think of costing millions is movies, and that's because there's a whole industry behind trying to reap benefits left and right: I suppose you know movie producers moved to Hollywood because it was dirt cheap compared to New York (see a bit of the film history of the time).

Asking for lower prices is one thing, but asking to have it for free is just as greedy and immoral as the RIAA.

Please don't try me to sell me the "oh, but it's so cheap" line. First: it isn't. I have bought quite a few tapes and discs, so I would know. Latest ones I bought were Internet downloads: I heard music from an author, looked her up, found the recording company would send half of my money directly to the artist if I bought the WAV files and bought them. I guess you will find it interesting that the least I could have paid was just $3. I paid more, which shows I will pay for what I like instead of getting a degraded copy from eMule, if I'm given the option. There usually is no option: you either pay through the nose or get such a restricted access to the material (I can't bring my own food and drinks from home? What the hell?) it isn't worth it. A run-of-the-mill CD with two songs accompanied by filler costs $20. Sorry, I don't buy it (neither in a literal nor in a figurative way). Paint me greedy: a disc I download isn't a disc I would have automatically bought, no matter what the recording industry says. That's one of the reasons private copy right exists (at least on continental legislation): the other one is, basically, "too many people are going to make copies like it or not, and we can't prosecute them all; we'd better make it a law and try to guide it".

Anyway, I think we have gone off-topic long enough: it was privacy what we were supposed to be talking about :-)

From Dr. Strangelove http://www.filmsite.org/drst.html

Ripper: And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids.
Mandrake: Yes. (he begins to chuckle nervously)
Ripper: Are you beginning to understand?
Mandrake: Yes. (more laughter)
Ripper: Mandrake. Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure-grain alcohol?
Mandrake: Well, it did occur to me, Jack, yes.
Ripper: Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation. Fluoridation of water?
Mandrake: Uh? Yes, I-I have heard of that, Jack, yes. Yes.
Ripper: Well, do you know what it is?
Mandrake: No, no I don't know what it is, no.
Ripper: Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face?

Can it be done?

Nope. Not for now or for any other spaceless time!

I have hunch (art dudes have hunches :)) that the people arguing art is completely relative are techies, and that you aren't relativists in your own field so let me give you some examples that may ring true in your field so you'll get it. Programming has certain canonical texts like "The Mythical Man Month," and "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," and "The Art of Computer Programming" by Knuth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Mont h
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar /
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Computer_P rogramming

I think you will grant me that these texts are more important and insightful than the latest J random "dummies" guide to writing AJAX or whatever the latest programming fad is. WHY are they more important? Because they offer deep insights into the very nature of coding that transcends any particular coding language or time or place. They are books that give you many ah-ha type insights. Well art works the same way, the way artists train themselves is by looking at works that contain deep insights into the human experience like Guernica:

http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/guernica/gm ain.html

If the artist has a VERY RARE combination of creative insight, and skill, they may produce another work as insightful as Guernica but it's about as likely as J Random programmer being as insightful about coding as Turing or Knuth.

Back to the original subject I believe it will be obvious when video games produce their Guernica because it will produce a powerful reaction and will be discussed everywhere even by ordinary people on the street like Guernica and Citizen Kane were as soon as they were released.

http://www.filmsite.org/citi.html

These are works of genius which in themselves have the power to move people unlike subjective interpretations of clouds. Again this is not to say that video games aren't capable of producing good art with this level of insight but I sincerely suspect it hasn't happened YET or I would have heard about it, in fact everyone will hear about it, it will rock the world in the same way the Beatles, Bob Dylan, or Jimi Hendrix, or Patti Smith, or Public Enemy did by bringing true artistic insight into the pop culture of rock and roll.

Where is video games Knuth, Turing, Picasso, Hendrix? Hint it's not going to be obscure when it happens, it will likely start an entire movement in video games when it happens just like surrealism was a movement in the arts, and the hippies, punk, and hip hop were movements in music and the entire culture. Has ANY video game transformed the culture in this way? I don't think so.

Thanks to Stanley Kubrick and Terry Southern, we already know how to deal with Doomsday.

Underground vaults...ten women to every man. Where do I sign up?

I'm trying to think of the highest ranking box office successes in history. Here's what I remember.

Star Wars (PG)
Titanic (PG)
ET (PG)
Indiana Jones (PG)

Then I figured that my list was probably terribly incomplete. So I looked up this. Take a look for yourself.

I can never find George M. Cohan to explain the unintelligible "witty" headlines to me when I come across them.

Of someone else who thought strange things were happening around him:
 
  I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love...Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I-I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women, er, women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake...but I do deny them my essence.

(Now compare this to: Mr. Byrne also noticed another odd health effect after he cleaned up his power, convincing him that electricity was at the root of his problems. Both he and his wife suddenly began to sleep more soundly and his dreams became "incredibly real and very vivid.")

So Shrek 2, best movie of 2004? Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, sweeps the awards for `99, Jar Jar for best male in a supporting role?

While we are at it, spider man deserves some awards, lets say best actor, we can give it to him again for his sequel.

Then finaly, best actor of 2004? Jesus Crist, as Himself, in the Passion of the Christ.

Please, look at this for the caliber of movies you would be awarding for excellence. http://www.filmsite.org/boxoffice.html I didnt go past the top ten. but look down, Meet the Fockers, Home Alone, Beverly Hills Cop, and How the Grinch Stole Xmas would all atleast be nominated, Top box office are really a who's who of crappy movies we should probably be ashamed of (With notable exceptions)

Box office success says Nothing about how good a movie is, nothing about how good of acting it had, and nothing about how good the story, is, box office success is having a movie start from the begining trying to hone in on a target audience and run a targeted non stop marketing blitz in the months between October and Thanksgiving. Can great movies top the box office, Of course, Can a great movie be something you have never heard of, Definately, maybe you should check them out now that you have.

Finaly, incase you really are that dense, let me shout at you...
JURRASIC PARK AND MRS DOUBTFIRE ARE IN NO WAY AS CULTURALY SIGNIFICANT AS SCHINDLER'S LIST!!!

I saw we aim for the Moon's eye, pfff.

http://www.filmsite.org/voya.html

This shows just how important it is to elect a High Noon Texas cowboy to the White House. They get things done. The world needs someone as President who faces down both the dictators and the Eurowimps. (Both have their equivalents in High Noon.)

If we'd have elected Gore in 2000, he'd be droning on about how, having invented the Internet, he could give it to anyone he wanted, and promptly given control to nasty regimes such as Iran, North Korea and China, perhaps slipping another campaign donation from the last into his pocket.

And if we'd elected "War Hero" Kerry in 2004, he'd have asked himself it giving up the Internet would keep him from marrying a third rich wife if rich wife #2 dies. No, would be the reply from his handlers. Or if it hinders his buying $3000 French bikes. Again they say no. Last of all, he would ask if it would make the French and Germans like us. On being told it would, he would promptly give up control to those same nasty regimes, perhaps with a provison that lets European corporations get rich joining U.S. corporations (i.e. Cisco) in censoring political free speech on the Internet.

Let's hope this do-nothing committee follows in the footsteps of all the UN's other do nothing committees and pockets their checks and merely holds conferences in expensive hotels. It's a small price to pay for a free Internet.

--Mike Perry, Seattle

Interviewer: What do you believe is behind this recent increase in terrorist bombings?

Helpmann: Bad sportsmanship. A ruthless minority of people seems to have forgotten certain good old-fashioned virtues. They just can't stand seeing the other fellow win. If these people would just play the game -

Helpmann: - they'd get a lot more out of life.

Interviewer: Nevertheless, Mr. Helpmann, there are those who maintain that the Ministry of Information has become too large and unwieldy...And the cost of it all, Deputy Minister? Seven percent of the gross national product.

Helpmann: I understand this concern on behalf of the tax payers. People want value for money. That's why we always insist on the principle of Information Retrieval charges. It's absolutely right and fair that those found guilty should pay for their periods of detention and for the Information Retrieval Procedures used in their interrogation.

Interviewer: Do you believe that the government is winning the battle against terrorists?

Helpmann: Oh, yes. Our morale is much higher than theirs. We're fielding all their strokes, running a lot of them out, and pretty consistently knocking them for six. I'd say they're nearly out of the game.

Helpmann: Why should decent law-abiding citizens have to subsidize criminals?

Interviewer: But Mr. Helpmann, the bombing campaign is now in its thirteenth year.

Helpmann: Beginner's luck.

"Uhm, I do assure you, Mrs. Buttle, the Ministry is very scrupulous about following up and eradicating any error. But if you do have any complaints you wish to make, I'd be, well, only too happy to send you the appropriate forms."

Foster was going nowhere until 27 or 28.

Yeah, she really stunk up Taxi Driver.

In the near future, everybody (including New York) will be filling out the T-100 form which will greatly simplify tax collection.

But somewhere along the line, the beast they awakened took on a life of its own, and by the 1990s production budgets had escalated as quickly as profits. Hollywood entered a topsy-turvy world ruled by marketing and merchandising mavens, in which flops like Godzilla made money and hits had to break records just to break even. The blockbuster changed from a major event that took place a few times a year into something that audiences have come to expect weekly, piling into the backs of one another in an annual demolition derby that has left even Hollywood aghast.

Tom Shone has interviewed all the key participants -- from cinematic visionaries like Spielberg and Lucas and the executives who greenlight these spectacles down to the effects wizards who detonated the Death Star and blew up the White House -- in order to reveal the ways in which blockbusters have transformed how Hollywood makes movies and how we watch them. As entertaining as the films it chronicles, Blockbuster is a must-read for any fan who delights in the magic of the movies.

While waiting for the images to load on my dialup connection, I was quite excited to see a space labeled "01.13.05 / Expected Footprints": finally, traces of an alien arrival. The actual image turns out to be some boring graphic made before the Huygens descent -- took me a few seconds to realize "01.13.05" was a date. But Huygens did land on an alien world. So I guess for the aliens on Titan the Huygens probe would represent Physical Evidence (of an Alien Landing). See this review of the Spielberg movie (set your popup blocker to "Kill") for a list of the "varying levels of encounters with aliens."

However, see the following story: Judge Blocks Publication of Gone With The Wind Parody.

Note that it was later allowed to be released, but to answer your question: the government prevents someone from putting "old stories" that should have entered the public domain years ago but have not due to copyright extension, from being included in a new movie. (I was not completely specific in my original post, which might have led you to believe that other Grimm's Fairy Tales were off-limits, but they aren't; I was referring to the public's inability to create derivative works using, for example, Mickey Mouse, or anything created in the last 80ish years.)

First thing that came to mind was the film Brazil and the tiny CRTs with big lenses.

Pretty clever.

One way to acheive is mirror array at 'base' ala DLP. DOn't know if this is the approach, but if so, corrections for each pixel would be pretty easy to handle in firmware.

so grab a netflix account and fill yer' queue with titles and titles and titles and titles and titles. Or find some sources of your own (friends, critics' lists). If no one mentions a film, it probably isn't worth watching.

"No blood, no decay. Just a few stitches."

Maybe the Monster's problem wasn't his abnormal brain, or his early torture by a sadistic hunchback in a mad aristocrat's storm-tossed mountain keep. Maybe it just lacked the steady rhythm of its own pulse, reminding it that it marched to the beat of its own drummer, just like everyone else.

The secret? Drink only water.

And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids.

Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?

-Strategic Air Command General Jack D. Ripper

(Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove)

I'm glad to see that someone has undertaken the task of creating a museum setting for so much of this memorabilia. (Even if it is a vanity effort.) Many early films are known only from their titles and a few salvaged props -- the films themselves have degraded into cellulose dust. I find it sad that so much of the early history of cinema has been lost entirely; especially since so many of the first science fiction films were delightful works of whimsy. (See IMDB and Filmsite for their descriptions of Georges Méliès "A Trip to the Moon".)
Hmm. I wonder if any of the props for that one survived. If so, I hope that they'll show up at Mr. Allen's Museum someday.

I dunno, that title seems to be too similar to this one: The Birth of a Nation

I found this series to be, as the reviewer said, one of the best I'd read in a decade.

I was impressed with the author's courage to lead the reader into the life of a main character, cause the reader to empathise with and respect the character, and then unmercilessly have the character killed, unfairly and unjustly.

This is much more believable and realistic than the happy-happy tripe spoon fed by most authors: "The Rambo Syndrome" where a formulaic plot consists of
1. no bad guys can hit anything they shoot at
2. no good guys die
3. the bad guy is 100% evil
4. the good guy is about 98.44% pure
5. truth and love win EVERYTHING at the end
For these types of stories, you don't even have to read the whole book, or watch the whole movie. You know that if you flip to the last few chapters, the bad guy will be vanquished and the good guys will give each other hugs and high-fives.

I think that Martin's series is closer to some of the good old stuff like For Whom the Bell Tolls or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Wouldn't that just attract aliens?

If you add a circular saw blade then it will.

Putin has been involved in a SCO Summit in Russia and France!! See the article. You have to search, but buried down in the third question to Putin, you see these words:

after the SCO summit and the series of major international meetings in St. Petersburg and Evian

What do you want to bet that the German court's attempt to shut down the SCO website was just a smokescreen to hide the fact that they are involved as well.

I bet you that Evian water is designed to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids!!!

Foreigners are plotting to revisit an ancient menace upon New York, and indeed the whole country! I would have thought this sort of terror was something that could have been left in the past.

"A plain-clothed Ministry of Information official enters and reads the notice of Buttle's incarceration, including the principle of Information Retrieval charges, and then forces the dazed and panic-stricken Mrs. Buttle to sign the documents as her husband (with muffled cries heard under the burlap) is hauled away:

I hereby inform you under powers entrusted to me under Section 476 that Mr. Buttle, Archibald, residing at 412 North Tower, Shangri La Towers, has been invited to assist the Ministry of Information with certain inquiries and that he is liable to certain financial obligations as specified in Council Order RB-stroke-C-Z-stroke-nine-O-seven-stroke-X.

That is your receipt for your husband. Thank you. And this is my receipt for your receipt."

1967... Cool Hand Luke.

THE classic movie of all time. I LOVED that movie. :)

Much further. Since the beginning. Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip To The Moon) (1902)

(... in the immortal words of Woody Allen's character in Annie Hall: ) it's all mental masturbation.

The movie version, directed by Frank Darabont, is, in my opinion, the only movie ever made from a book that is better than the book. And considering it's a darn good book to begin with, that's saying a lot. (Okay, yeah, so it's my favorite movie of all time. I'm just a sucker for triumph-over-adversity movies.)

He hasn't always had the best scripts to work with, but he really can really pull off good film noir.

I sure hope Lucas is reading Slashdot this morning... :)

Or PEnnsylvania-six-five-thousand.

This is further explained at X is for Xchange, which relates that the original setup was three-letter/four digit; that is, PENnsylvania-five-thousand.

Glenn Miller (who got on a stamp) finally found continuous success after years of struggle when he formed the Glenn Miller Orchestra to play at the Cafe Rouge [realaudio] in the Hotel Pennsylvania in 1938. I believe this year H2K2 will be using the Cafe Rouge space.

The Glenn Miller song PEnnsylvania-6-5000 (in which the only lyrics were the band shouting "Pennsylvania Six Five-Oh-Oh-Oh"--the Brian Setzer orchestra later recorded the song with fuller lyrics) was one of his band's first major hits. He disbanded the orchestra in 1942 to form a band for the US Air Force troops for World War II. His plane was lost at sea on December 14, 1944.

As The Telephone EXchange Name Project explains, both PEnnsylvania-6-5000 and the John O'Hara novel/Liz Taylor movie BUtterfield 8 (which garnered her a Best Actress Oscar) are named after telephone exchanges. In Butterfield 8, Taylor plays a call girl reachable at that number (the movie poster is especially evocative).

--Adam Brate

The real problem is that we have no idea what really caused the human species to become intelligent. One can assume that between a dumb ape and a smart ape, the smart one figured out how to survive. But, what made him smarter in the first place?

It's an attack waiting to happen.

of that brevity is decreasing at an increasing rate thanks to the war mongering efforts of the The Cheney- Rumsfeld Administration who were all characters in the movie Dr. StrangeLove

If you want to check out the movies that have had the most Oscar nominations, check out this list for summaries by film.

The nominations record is held by Titanic and All About Eve (1950) at 14, and the most wins award is shared between Titanic and Ben Hur (1959, 12 nominations) at 11. Titanic is the only of these three to have won Best Picture. It's kindy funny that of 12 nominations for Ben Hur, the only it didn't win was Best Picture. Damn, what's it take? ;)

I'm not sure, but I'd also imagine there are more categories now than in 1950, so those numbers might not be all *that* meaningful.