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Why they only let Darin Morgan only write a few episodes is beyond me. He was the best writer they had. He also wrote the poignant "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," and the hilarious "Humbug," and War of the Coprophages." The last scene from Humbug, with Jim Rose's critique of Mulder's perfection, still cracks me up. He was the only X-files writer who could do straight comedy, drama, and satire with equal aplomb.

Heros don't hang out and chat with villains. They fight. What we have here was people that didn't actually want to play the game. They just wanted to rack up (dubious) "achievements".

Reminds me of a scene from the television series "Shaka Zulu" where a young Shaka eagerly looks forward to proving himself in battle but instead observes a "battle" where the opponents simply dress up, dance, and hurl insults at each other to determine the winner. This method of warfare and Shaka's subsequent shakeup seems to be backed up by WikiPedia:

A number of historians argue that Shaka 'changed the nature of warfare in Southern Africa from 'a ritualised exchange of taunts with minimal loss of life into a true method of subjugation by wholesale slaughter'.

Not that this has any bearing on the subject at hand but interesting none the less. Or does it?

*sigh* IMDB fail; try this Equilibrium instead.

Excuse me citizen - I believe you've missed your Interval; please report to the nearest Ministry office for assessment.

What if they start demanding you report to the attitude modification center for your antidepressants because you're not smiling all day long? This especially bugs me because I'm not a smilier and I like being bitter, damnit!

I hear that John Preston is good at making sure people take their meds...

...And he can take care of all those smiley people as well. It's a twofer.

"it's hard to avoid a shoulder to shoulder nail strip."

Never fear! we have almost come to a point in the timeline where you can just say Auto-inflate!

only 21 years to go!

Well since nobody from Marc Andreessen's examples would have a clue what Logan's Run is you might have at least given them a link. Or did they already create the mind machine interface that would download the info directly to their brains and nobody told those of us over 30?

Now if they could just get the laser from that movie mounted to a shark's head.

Obligatory Pulp Fiction quote

And if you really got worked up, a TIME CUBE reference wouldn't've been too hard, you educated stupid one-dimensional DULLARD.

Not TIME CUBE , Time Tunnel S01E28 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0723775/ Dont worry we'll win, just wait till sunset

Alternatively we might have to watch out for Carrots http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0636227/

And if you really got worked up, a TIME CUBE reference wouldn't've been too hard, you educated stupid one-dimensional DULLARD.

Not TIME CUBE , Time Tunnel S01E28 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0723775/ Dont worry we'll win, just wait till sunset

Alternatively we might have to watch out for Carrots http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0636227/

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.

Its too late, the invasion has begun!

Oh, how my heart yearns to see this happen.

Romeo, oh Romeo. [Buy the NEW Alfa Romeo Mito ]
Wherefore art thou Romeo? [Visit The Metropolitan Museum of Art ]
Deny thy father, and refuse thy name, or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love and i'll no longer be a Capulet. [Need your ads to be seen? Visit Capulet Communication today!]
Thou are thyself though not a Montegue. What's Montegue? [Is your bicycle taking up too much space? Get a Montague folding bike ]
It is not hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face....nor any other part, belonging to a man. Oh be some other name. What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet. [Why not surprise your partner with a large buquet of roses? Order online from Fleurop Interflora ]
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called, retain that dera perfection which he owes without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, and for thy name which is no part of thee, take all myself.

I suppose Macbeth would fare even worse:

Is this a dagger which I see before me, [Need a new kayak? Visit Dagger Kayaks]
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. [Are you suffering from erectile dysfunction? Ask your doctor about Viagra]
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. [Halucinating again? Why not try Zophitin? An Amazing 100% Guaranteed Treatment for Schizophrenia!]
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? [Don't miss Heatstroke tonight on HBO]

I have to leave the stage to Bill Hicks and his thoughts on marketing

That was a good movie idea when it was called Meteor

Fixed it for you.

How to save time making tuna salad sandwiches..

Idea: Feed mayonnaise to tuna fish.
        -- Billy Blaze

Monica Bellucci filmed a simulated rape scene, where a man attacked her at knife point and spent many long minutes raping her from behind. It's a fairly disturbing scene, and it won several awards:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290673/

It's absurd no one came to these guys' defense. yes what they film is disgusting (imho) and yes they push the envelope, but clearly someone was buying it so clearly not everyone likes the same stuff.

All I can say is that Phillipe "The Mouse" Gaston must be careful not to get entangled in those cables, or get embroiled in a fight with one of the subs, next time he escapes via sewers. (OK, OK, so my geography and history sux, but the facts should never subtract from a good Hollywood story.)

Are we talking about the game where you had a little ship and you blew up computerized rocks? This would be the game with absolutely no back story, no plot, no "end game"....

On second thought, this sounds exactly like a Hollywood classic.

Well, then it'll be a perfect gig for Uwe Boll to do then. :-P

Cheers

Hopefully they aren't to productive...

What could possible go wrong you ask? This could...

You call be parinoid, just wait and see, lol.

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1665335321/

You should have watched the movie. Around 47 seconds in, you'll see that the little bastards are far more deadly than the big bastard ever was!!

DO NOT CRUSH OR BREAK THE BIG BASTARD!!

I'd mod, but no points. This was almost my exact thought. I don't know what the "rights" even means. I'm pretty sure I can make a movie called "Asteroids" about, you know, asteroids, without having to license it (if this is any indication). I'm not sure what else you get with the license... cheesy sound effects? The use of italics?

They already made that one a couple years ago... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424823/

Or Phase IV (1974)

Trailer

Actually, yes. Yes it does. As bad as this group is, it's far above the common troll. Consider idiocracy. Now go read 4chan, MSNBC, CNN and Fark. Then come back and comment about how the people here need to surrender their reproductivity to support the Darwinian selection of those mental giants.

MANT: Half-man, Half-ant, All Terror!

This is very bad news for Hopper and the rest of his gang.

Them!

A more relevant movie reference would be Capricorn One, which featured a fake trip to Mars. (And I think must have been the inspiration for many/most of the moon hoaxers.) Plus it starred OJ Simpson.

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0077294/

I stopped caring about blu-rays, they became too much hassle (and too expensive) for not enough of a quality boost.

I disagree. First of all, it can be as hassle-free as plugging one cable between a player and a screen. What's the big deal?

As for quality, try watching something like Planet Earth in full 1080p resolution. Many of the scenes are positively breathtaking in their detail and clarity. I happen to be watching on a bargain 72" TV. At this size, DVD's are very visibly inferior in resolution. I recently rewatched Terminator 2: Judgment Day on DVD and was struck by how noticeable the quality difference was. It really detracted from my enjoyment of the movie until I became caught up in the action enough to stop thinking about it.

I've sat beside people who simply can't tell the difference, however. I suspect these are the same people who stretch standard 4:3 aspect ratio programs across their wide-screen TV's and are oblivious to the distortion.

1)The movie Brainscan, if you haven't seen it you should. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109327/
2)The game Hitman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitman_(series)

OK, imagine that it's 2050 and computers can create seamless virtual realities that we have trouble telling apart from 'real' life. Imagine that your friend buys a new game, "Virtual How-to-host-a-murder 2050", and spends the next month solid playing it. It's very realistic, you go through endless scenarios where someone in the dinner party gets bludgeoned - except that in this game, it actually happens, and your friend is acting out beating someone to death with a lead pipe in the Conservatory. Over, and over again.

Wasn't that the plot of the movie eXistenZ?

Almost certainly killer net - it was a two-parter.

I had vaguely good memories of watching it and bought the DVD - it wasn't as good as I remembered, but it does cover the confusion between "real" and "Just a game" well.

That reminds me of Killer Net, not a great film but it does cover the premise quite well.

What I want to know is whether you have to think in Russian^H^H^H^H^H^H^HJapanese to control this thing.

Doesn't really sound like that one, but I assume that they are somewhat similar.

SotC deals with various "online jobs that anyone could do", from taking thousands of photos hoping some of them will be bought for photo stocks (and paid in pennies), through Amazon's mTurk (and their policy to only pay Americans and Indians in cash, while others get gift certificates) all the way to Chinese who build custom characters and farm gold (I only assume that they do gold farming part as well, though the film only shows what seems to be like character leveling).

Actual work is being done by kids coming in to the cities from provincial towns and villages for about 95 Euros a month (~135$).
Their daily lunch costs about 0.35 Euros, so in average they end up with about 60 Euros (~85$) earned each month.
Their employers try very hard to show in front of the camera how they only hire kids older than 18, but they don't really succeed in that as they hire the minors (right in front of the camera) for "a trial period".
Workload of such establishments where kids work their nearly entire waking day (in front of the camera we are shown that they work 12 hours a day) is bought off by a company situated in Shanghai.

Which is actually an outpost of ige (Internet Gaming Entertainment Ltd.) - an L.A. based MMORPG gold-selling company founded and run at the time by Brock Pierce - of Mighty Ducks and First Kid fame.
He has since sold the company - but kept the shares.
BTW, they have been failing to pay their employees in their gold-digging sweatshops for months.
And while "Find excuses first, attack and insult later" tactic works on some, others take a more aggressive approach when asking to be paid.

Namely - they come to their Shanghai HQ with guns.

The best part is, that while the local SWAT team arrives to handle the guy holding a gun to the secretary's face - journalists get a confirmation from another female employee that things like that happen all the time.
Oh, and once confronted with tale of their disgruntled subcontractor coming to their Shanghai offices with a gun, Brock Pierce and John Maffei used the same "Excuses, attacks and insults" combo.

One would think that someone in the MMORPG business would understand a practice of having secondary attack skills.

Yeah, the 2nd amendment won't be anything other than a bit of paper until we get TANKS!

(apologies to Dominion:Tank Police)

or something involving Bubbles, a rope, and a closet.

You're thinking of the other creepy old guy that recently died.

Yes. It made news because he was a famous musician.

It made BIG NEWS because it was a sudden and unexpected death - particularly for someone who slept in an oxygen tank and danced like he did.
And 50 years is by no account an age at which one is expected to just die.
I mean look at Gary Busey. Today is his 65th birthday.
Now, if there is one person (besides Amy Winehouse and Keith Richards) you would expect to be long dead from all the drugs and booze - that would be him.

Not Michael Jackson. At least not yet.

I'm just a country lawyer that wound up in a big city.

Keanu?

from the excellent nyt article about the competition in november:

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/22/0526216

it isn't bad movies that are the problem, taste in bad movies can still be uniform

the real problem is extremely controversial movies, most notably Napoleon Dynamite

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374900/

not controversial in terms of dealing with abortion or gun control, but controversial in terms of some people really found the movie totally stupid, while some people really found the movie to be really funny

movies like napolean dynamite are genre edge conditions, and people who apparently agree on everything else about movies in general encounter movies like this one and suddenly dramatically differ on their opinion of it, in completely unpredictable ways

"Before the movie "50 First Dates", there was a sci-fi short story that posited this, with horrifying consequences"

It must suck that your example of this is a crappy rom-com with Adam Sandler rather than a brilliant film like Memento.

Or groundhog day. Was that the first movie to explore this concept, or are there older movies with a similar plot?

Animals are beautiful people.

I read this as "Soul Plane to make Public Debut."

At least give credit where credit is due.

Billy Madison (1995)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112508/quotes

"Before the movie "50 First Dates", there was a sci-fi short story that posited this, with horrifying consequences"

It must suck that your example of this is a crappy rom-com with Adam Sandler rather than a brilliant film like Memento.

• [salesman] Here comes the speech about how he's just doing his job by following orders. Let me tell you about another group of hate-mongers that were just following orders... They were called Nazis!
• [customers] Fuckin' Nazi!

The comparison is so stretched, it's just ridiculous...

300 would have been a good choice, but I would have loved it if they had shown Braveheart.

William Wallace: There's a difference between us. You think the people of this country exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide those people with freedom. And I go to make sure that they have it.

William Wallace: Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM!

followed by Aeon Flux, Equilibrium, Brazil, Brave New World, Pleasantville and Hookers in Revolt

Ok, one of those might get cancelled (I'm guessing it'll be Brazil).

followed by Aeon Flux, Equilibrium, Brazil, Brave New World, Pleasantville and Hookers in Revolt

Ok, one of those might get cancelled (I'm guessing it'll be Brazil).

followed by Aeon Flux, Equilibrium, Brazil, Brave New World, Pleasantville and Hookers in Revolt

Ok, one of those might get cancelled (I'm guessing it'll be Brazil).