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The data was likely just "sensitive", not "secret" (or whatever level they use). Data that is "sensitive" doesn't necessarily reveal the details of the project by itself, but with enough "sensitive" pieces of data, you can begin to figure out the "secret" part they reveal. Just apply a reverse engineering principal and you'll be able to make educated guesses about what the sensitive data is related to.

Example: If some files were uncovered that showed a contract with a neural interface company, maybe they are building a Firefox like interface. You may not see the actual implementation but you would know that the capability exist.

Mij

That's just a Hollywood fantasy

They should have called it Lost Vegas. They should have teamed up with Harmonix instead and made the awesomest video game evar.

The Forever War, Cameron's Avatar, and Scott's other upcoming science fiction project, Brave New World, will make the next five years a fantastic time to be a science fiction movie enthusiast.

And, more than likely, an awful time to be a science fiction book enthusiast. Has there been an SF book-to-movie conversion that's been even halfway true to the source material? Enemy Mine, Nightfall, I, Robot, Starship Troopers... All good stories with truly cringe-worthy movie adaptations. Stop the madness!

The Forever War, Cameron's Avatar, and Scott's other upcoming science fiction project, Brave New World, will make the next five years a fantastic time to be a science fiction movie enthusiast.

And, more than likely, an awful time to be a science fiction book enthusiast. Has there been an SF book-to-movie conversion that's been even halfway true to the source material? Enemy Mine, Nightfall, I, Robot, Starship Troopers... All good stories with truly cringe-worthy movie adaptations. Stop the madness!

The Forever War, Cameron's Avatar, and Scott's other upcoming science fiction project, Brave New World, will make the next five years a fantastic time to be a science fiction movie enthusiast.

And, more than likely, an awful time to be a science fiction book enthusiast. Has there been an SF book-to-movie conversion that's been even halfway true to the source material? Enemy Mine, Nightfall, I, Robot, Starship Troopers... All good stories with truly cringe-worthy movie adaptations. Stop the madness!

The Forever War, Cameron's Avatar, and Scott's other upcoming science fiction project, Brave New World, will make the next five years a fantastic time to be a science fiction movie enthusiast.

And, more than likely, an awful time to be a science fiction book enthusiast. Has there been an SF book-to-movie conversion that's been even halfway true to the source material? Enemy Mine, Nightfall, I, Robot, Starship Troopers... All good stories with truly cringe-worthy movie adaptations. Stop the madness!

*looks up*

Without a Clue

Can't you just make it a good movie? It was such a great book. Do we really have to bother with this 3D crap.

The last 3D movie I saw was at Disney World with Micheal Jackson, when I was a kid about 20 years ago. I really don't need to see another.

Besides I already tried downloading Journey to the Center of the Earth http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0373051/ and I have to tell you that didn't turn out so great.

Me: wtf? Oh 3D... Delete.

His feud with Dr. Rick Marshall is becoming more widely known, and with the impending documentary detailing how Hawking has been proven so amazingly WRONG, it seems obvious this is merely a stunt to distract the scientific community. Pulling the illness card is a sad attempt at detracting from the release of this informative documentary .

Still, best of luck, Dr. Hawking.

(Oh, and Matt Lauer can *eat it*!)

(One thing that does not translate from 2D to 3D - at least for me - is a cross-fade. That just breaks my brain. In 2D, everything's in one focal plane. In a 3D crossfade, I can't figure out where to focus as things are appearing and disappearing and it's all a confused blur until the fade's over.)

The other issue is that 3D can't make a bad movie good. My youngest kids enjoyed "Fly Me To The Moon", but my wife and I... well, at least I had my PDA with me.

IMDB has a movie based on the novel High Rise listed as coming out in 2011.

Neil Burnside would like to disagree with you. Season 1 if you are into that kind of thing.

Earth already survived a Big Hit. What makes you so sure we can't handle another one?

"Uh... Aren't they forgetting the inconvenient slowness of the speed of light?"

Send a craft with a virtual reality simulation of a crew running on board. On the journey have the VR simulation recreate contemporary earth culture. The VR program fabricates various crises for the 'crew' so as to keep them occupied and to distract them from the knowledge that they are in a simulation.

When the craft arrives at the destination connect the VR simulation to robots through short-range-high-bandwidth radio connections. Have the VR simulation be updated by the robots interactions with the real world. Then beam the simulation back to Earth and run it locally with humans plugged in to it.

'Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?'

Better to be famous and unpaid than just unpaid.

Tell that to Paul Hogan.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078697/

Having seen the proposed plan, there is no coast-to-coast high-speed service. Dumb. But for me, the biggest problem isn't lack of high-speed runs. It's Amtrak itself. No competition for passenger service discourages innovation. Guaranteed federal funds results in a laissez faire attitude. They still haven't restored passenger service between New Orleans and Jacksonville which were damaged by Katrina. It's no different that the puddle-jumper airline that offers service to a major city that's within 2-hours driving distance which is serviced by shuttle vans. That airline has on average one passenger per trip. One. Dumb.

Is there anything a Mac can't do?

*drops dead from amazement*

Damn, and here I was thinking you were going to make an off-hand reference to Big O.

OK, this idea's been around for awhile. Its major useage in Hollywood was in the movie 2010 when the Russian spacecraft used one for aerobraking in Jupiter's atmosphere. Cute effect, but like Dr Floyd said, "Nice in theory, but the guys who did the numbers aren't here."

No, I think you misunderstood GP's comment title.

It's an reference to one of Kelsey Grammer's many movie roles: Police Detective Brunner in Even Money.

I don't know why GP poster would make an off-topic reference to an obscure and forgettable movie less than 2 years old. But the Slashdot moves in mysterious ways, and its ways are not our ways.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092494/

I've actually been advocating the use of nukes if our climate shift truly does get to the point of extinction level heat.

We can easily clear a few mines (or make a pure waterway in Central America) to get enough volcanic-type particulates into the air to drench the world in rain or snow. Radiation fallout would be unpleasant, but better than the extinction of humanity.

Been there, done that.

"And taking a look at the long range forecast, continued snow, darkness, and extreme cold. This is Howard Handupme, saying goodnight... ...goodbye."

If you kill everyone but the robots and the plants first.

It's more than the content industry... a film series, from that very same content industry, started as a pretty insightful commentary on Earth's cancer: Koyaanisqatsi, the second movie did some nice contrast on Northern vs Southern hemisphere, and as far as I can tell, the third in the trilogy just went off the rails down the creator's own navel.

The C.L.I.T is not real.

In case you missed the reference: Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back!
*Second quote down
**probably a lot of profanity on that page

Pffffff... The gay bomb was declassified years ago.

Pffffff... not nearly as scary as The Nude Bomb.

Or was the above satirical? If so, good show, Chance! Have you seen Being There?

In a 1964 novel called "The Invincible", Stanisaw Lem (author of Solaris) described an evolution of robots ("necroevolution"). The final outcome of the process is a symbiosis between plant-like forms that can source solar energy and relatively simple, highly mobile microbots that are capable to form complex clouds.
Depending on the quantity of microbots that go into such cloud, the cloud can be capable of highly complex and spectacular actions (no pretence of AI, though; pure, hard SF). As the microbots are replaceable, fighting such clouds is like fighting against a shadow.
Sorry, felt like mentioning this :-)
j.

It took this long because it was going *through narrow mountain roads in the Alps*. Are you going to drive 80mph on roads like this?

Ah, they remind me of one of my favorite movies, "To Catch a Thief", there's a scene where Grace Kelly (soon to become Princess Grace) is racing in the mountains of southern France.

Falcon

It took this long because it was going *through narrow mountain roads in the Alps*. Are you going to drive 80mph on roads like this?

Ah, they remind me of one of my favorite movies, "To Catch a Thief", there's a scene where Grace Kelly (soon to become Princess Grace) is racing in the mountains of southern France.

Falcon

Who knows, maybe they'll see our Antichthon!

While some Americans seem to have trouble with some "Britishisms"; I think there's a rather large and dedicated "Brit-com" fan base here who either have no problem with them or to whom a bit of cultural "went over my head" doesn't detract from their enjoyment too much.

I grew up watching plenty of British TV including: Dr. Who; The Tomorrow People; Are You Being Served; Monty Python's Flying Circus; The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy; Fresh Fields; May to December; The Prisoner; Benny Hill (didn't like that one so much); Yes Minister; The Young Ones; and more. Maybe I didn't get all the references in terms of cultural significance (who the hell WAS Reginald Maulding; and why were the Pythons so convinced that his naughty bits were particularly naughty?)

As I grew older, I never lost my love of British television. (I think that Spaced is possibly the second funniest TV series I've ever watched ... next to Red Dwarf.

At any rate, I am by far not the only American who enjoys British television and humor (though I may be a bit on the extreme end, owning a region free dvd player with PAL to NTSC conversion and ordering regularly from amazon.co.uk). While I do understand that some folks may not quite get it or like it, my point was not to underestimate the size and loyalty of potential fan base here.

"James Elwood, master programmer, in charge of Mark 502-741, commonly known as 'Agnes,' the world's most advanced electronic computer. Machines are made by men for man's benefit and progress, but when man ceases to control the products of his ingenuity and imagination he not only risks losing the benefit, but he takes a long and unpredictable step...
into--the Twilight Zone."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734571/

"Advice to all future male scientists: be sure you understand the opposite sex, especially if you intend being a computer expert. Otherwise, you may find yourself, like poor Elwood, defeated by a jealous machine, a most dangerous sort of female, whose victims are forever banished--to...
the Twilight Zone."

There's an interesting book review in the New Yorker which discusses journalistic integrity/objectivity in the US (specifically in the newspaper business) and how it is a relatively recent thing (ie. the post-war decades).

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/04/13/090413crbo_books_lemann

The jist of things is that for most of the history of newspapers in the US, journalistic integrity was a laugh. Starting post-WW2 and arguably hitting it's peak in the 60s and 70s journalism was held to a higher standard, but prior to that in the days of Hearst and Pulitzer back to very beginnings of journalism in the US, newspapers were purely the tools of politicians (or political movements) and there was no such thing as unbiased sources of news. The rise of Murdoch and those like him is in a way a return to the kind of smarmy opinionated journalism that was the norm before Bernard Kilgore, Edward R Murrow, Walter Cronkite, etal.

I think the advent of televised news gave those that were initially involved in it a sense of the nobility of their work that was by and large lacking from previous eras of journalism, but those ideas didn't last more than a decade or two before the networks started to demand more profit generation from their news divisions. In the movie *Network (1976) televised news divisions are seen to be in decline already in the 70s.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/
*(this film is awesome BTW, and predicts in hillarious fashion "reality TV" decades beforehand)

It's kind of sad that things are sliding back towards what are apparently the old/normal ways of journalism, but sensationalist journalism is certainly nothing new.

it reminds me of that fantastic movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066921/

Highlander II:

It's the year 2024 and all the ozone above Earth has gone. To protect people from dying, MacLeod helped in the construction of a giant "shield", several years ago. But, since there isn't left anyone Immortal after MacLeod's victory in the previous film, he has stopped being an Immortal himself. Now he is just an old man, until one day some other Immortals arrive on our planet. You see, the Immortals come from another planet... Planet Ziest.

Oh God! We've become a bad movie. There can be only one.

--
Toro

For every Alien, there's an Outlander .

Zombies. well, not zombies exactly - but I can imagine a scifi book where they use a centralized bot brain to animate vegetative-state or newly-corpses for slave labor.

How about just as spare parts? Moontrap (1989) and Virus (1999) come to mind.

Zombies. well, not zombies exactly - but I can imagine a scifi book where they use a centralized bot brain to animate vegetative-state or newly-corpses for slave labor.

How about just as spare parts? Moontrap (1989) and Virus (1999) come to mind.

the studio hopes to turn it into an LotR-style fantasy blockbuster

As if! At best it will look like Eragon or Dungeons & Dragons, they just need to be sure to hire poor Jeremy Irons to play one of the characters.

the studio hopes to turn it into an LotR-style fantasy blockbuster

As if! At best it will look like Eragon or Dungeons & Dragons, they just need to be sure to hire poor Jeremy Irons to play one of the characters.

From reading that the game would be a movie to reading who was writing it; that is the biggest smile to terror-frown conversion I've ever had.

Well, it could be worse :)

Yeah, why would they have a copy of the new Star Trek film on hand the day before the official release of the new Star Trek film?

On what planet is April 7th a day before May 8th?

That's not much of a study or report.

Hume's telecast had 39 per cent favourable comments for McCain and 28 per cent positive for the Democratic ticket.

It was the second study in two weeks to remark upon negative coverage for the McCain-Palin ticket. The Project for Excellence in Journalism concluded last week that McCain's coverage has been overwhelmingly negative since the conventions ended, while Obama's has been more mixed.

So. What. What if McCain were the antichrist (or, perhaps, not on par with Obama as the case might be)? If that were true, reporting mostly positive things (or at least as many positive things as were reported about Obama) about him would indeed significant bias. It's neither fair nor honest to say one is as good as the other if this is not true.

The documentary Outfoxed provides a worthy counterpoint here. Specifically they pointed out a few internal Fox News memos that required broadcasters to use loaded words instead of more neutral semantics (abortion clinic vs health clinic, homicide bombers vs suicide bombers, etc). The problem isn't that Fox is leaning one way or another, but the fact that Fox is leaning further than the other networks.

Have you ever seen the movie Broadcast News? There was a point in time when it was considered uncouth for reporters to editorialize. In fact you see Albert Brooks' character lambast William Hurt's character for injecting tidbits about himself into a story, and later for faking tears in another. Yet this is what Fox News does every single day.

I'd love to find a Fox News article to demonstrate my point. Unfortunately, most of the articles I could find on the top FN page were human interest pieces. As Brooks' character said "you really blew the lid off of nookie."

Lemmie give you an example of quality FN journalism. Look for all the uses of "some people", "some users", and the like. Clearly a newspaper isn't an academic article (and, yes, I pity the person writing an academic article about 4chan, but...). However, FN seemingly pulls most of this stuff out of their ass by deferring to "some people" for most of its points without ever backing a single thing up.

Fox News is not centrist news, it's garbage.

Unless you're Denzel Washington: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112740/

Sounds like Johnny Mnemonic.

A game is by definition about "winning".

If you take the classic game definition, sure, video games however have long ago ventured into the area of storytelling where winning isn't really necessary any more to make a compelling game.

In movies its probably much easier to show that "sometimes the only way to win is not to play" or that in a war, both parties are loosing, no matter who might be "winning" in the end.

And yet your average Hollywood war movie fails miserably at that. Even the so called anti-war movies, far to often portrait nothing more then brave US soldiers fighting an evil faceless enemy. The movies that portrait both parties or at least give the enemy a human face are few and far between (Das Boot, Tunnel Rats).

The thing that makes video games interesting is that it not only lets you watch the events, but that its lets you control the events. If bad things happen, you are the one doing them and this in turn gives a much better understanding why those acts where committed. You can think of it as an @home version of the Stanford prison experiment or the Milgram Experiment. Now given, the number of video games that ventured into that direction hasn't been many and probably close to zero when it comes to realistic settings, but we had games going in a similar direction, like Shadow of the Colossus.

All that said, the likelihood that this will be just another brainless FPS without any reflections on the ethics of your doing is huge, after all thats what most war games are about.

A game is by definition about "winning".

If you take the classic game definition, sure, video games however have long ago ventured into the area of storytelling where winning isn't really necessary any more to make a compelling game.

In movies its probably much easier to show that "sometimes the only way to win is not to play" or that in a war, both parties are loosing, no matter who might be "winning" in the end.

And yet your average Hollywood war movie fails miserably at that. Even the so called anti-war movies, far to often portrait nothing more then brave US soldiers fighting an evil faceless enemy. The movies that portrait both parties or at least give the enemy a human face are few and far between (Das Boot, Tunnel Rats).

The thing that makes video games interesting is that it not only lets you watch the events, but that its lets you control the events. If bad things happen, you are the one doing them and this in turn gives a much better understanding why those acts where committed. You can think of it as an @home version of the Stanford prison experiment or the Milgram Experiment. Now given, the number of video games that ventured into that direction hasn't been many and probably close to zero when it comes to realistic settings, but we had games going in a similar direction, like Shadow of the Colossus.

All that said, the likelihood that this will be just another brainless FPS without any reflections on the ethics of your doing is huge, after all thats what most war games are about.