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What kind of probe gives massages? .. oh .. never mind!

A programmatic juicer would be really impractical -- it would actually be more difficult to operate than a regular juicer. Not that an elaborate device that just mixes fruit juice is a model of practicality either. People who design stuff like that should be forced to watch Brazil over and over, until they grasp the concept that technology is not an end in itself!

Paranoid? Don't be so sure.

http://www.imagesjournal.com/2003/reviews/knifewat er/text.htm

QUOTE from link:

Note: The DVD's liner notes indicate "the step function has been disabled during the playback of the feature film"--upon the request of Roman Polanski, who was closely involved with the preparation of the DVD package. However, the step feature worked fine on the three DVD players that I tested. Unfortunately, though, the fast forward and rewind features have been turned off, which is extremely annoying. On several occasions, I missed a bit of dialogue and hit my remote control's rewind button to catch the dialogue again--but no such luck. You can't do it. You can only navigate among the 14 chapter stops.

Just because a new way of distributing information and entertainment appears, doesn't mean the total demise of the previous technologies.

Neither does it mean they necessarily stay around.

The Vaudeville circuit, which gave performers like the Marx Brothers and Abbott and Costello their start, was mortally wounded by radio and film; telvision delivered the killing blow. The circus is a pale shadow of what it once was, and the tent revival is now just a footnote.

New technologies also can force deep changes in old media so much that they could be thought of as different beasts altogether. TV has changed film; gone are the days of the newsreel and the serial. Broadcast TV is still changing in response to cable TV, and both of them are still trying to figure out what to do in response to the internet.

The whole notion of channels is just a primitive hack to allocate scarce bandwidth. The unit cost of bandwidth to the home has dropped by more than 10x over the past decade, and there is enough innovation in the pipeline to keep it dropping for at least another decade. Between an abundance of bandwidth, smart networks, and smart terminals with big storage capacity, channels may not exist in the long term, except perhaps as a convenient way for humans to manage the flood of content available to them.

(I meant this Greenspace)

PS: OK, that was only a movie

Just a minor point. As I recall, and have read, Joseph Campbell really didn't help Lucas craft the mythos. It was more of an after-the-fact thing that Campbell recognized and Lucas then picked up and ran with to inflate his own 'artistry' and level.

It's not a vast work of high art. However, it's the early cinema serials taken to the pinacle. Just spend a weekend watching the old Buster Crabbe serials, then watch Episode IV. From the settings (the common desert-type area), to the music to the cuts, wipes and dissolves, it's clearly a loving tribute to Flash Gordon.

Even more than pulp sci-fi (which I loved as a Jr. High student, E.E. 'Doc' Smith and all), Star Wars is the direct evolution of Flash Gordon. Remember, those old 30's serials hit TV in the early fifties, right about when Lucas would have been around 10 years old (wich is around how old I was when Star Wars came out and I watched it). So one could easily see his childhood wonder and awe come through there.

WinHEC
or
Brazil

Welcome to the modern equivalent of these kind of misleading adverts.

Personally, George C. Scott holds a special place in my heart because he is in two of my favorite movies of all time: Dr. Stangelove and Patton. While he was definately a character actor, I think that George C. Scott plays the powerful person who has a fatal weakness like no other. He had the ability to present a character that could otherwise be dissmissed as a typical arrogant bastard with a skill that I think is still unmatched.

I have been reading past interviews with him this morning and it is very refreshing to see how humble he was. Check out here for a very good bit on his life. It was done before he died.