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The law of the state of Kentucky, like the laws of any nation or locality, is applicable only where the authorities of that nation or locality can send people with guns, or convince the locals to point guns on their behalf.

Naturally, in addition to the conditions you state, there is also the equally real possibility put forth in the movie Next of Kin - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097967/plotsummary

I am not serious.

And what happens when some people don't have the ability to pay for it?

I know that Michael Moore's Sicko is very controversial, but it is shocking to see people not being able get medical care because of lack of money. That old lady which was thrown out from a cab hired by a hospital is enough evidence to me that medical care *is* denied to those who can't pay for it.

I wouldn't say sympathize and I am happy not to hide behind anything. My point is that it could have benefits that we currently don't have. I can't see it realistically working, but if you put away the fear for a moment, look at these points and please tell me how a single unified government in the world would be bad for the following:

1) Every human on earth is an equal citizen of the world with a right to education, freedom and peace.
2) The third world wouldn't be kept in perpetual debt for the benefit of the first world. It would be beneficial to bring up the technology and bring around a higher level of living for all.
3) Despots and tyrants would not be able to struggle over small impoverished countries to the detriment of the people within them.

I am not naive enough to think that we as a world are anywhere NEAR ready to remove our borders, but I am also not close minded enough to dream that it might not have benefits. The idea itself doesn't HAVE to be totally Orwellian, nor does it needingly walk straight down the path of THX 1138 or the hard to navigate website. If you want to go down the path of oppressive government structures, look at things like A Clockwork Orange where the government for all of its power was still at the mercy of public opinion and a slave to the masses that it sought to control so desperately.

Here you go.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092099/

Am I the only one who immediately thought this could lead to another remake of Little Shop of Horrors?

Recharge me, Seymour!

Yes, at last I find someone who thinks alike.

You forgot to mention the LHC will create singularities and allow us to travel through time. Then we will be able to at least time the stock market and create a fortune, like a bandit tried to do in Time Cop (the movie): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111438/

And don't forget John Titor, who predicted so many things: http://www.johntitor.com/

Pee-Wee's Playhouse

Horror is foreboding, knowing that something bad is going to happen, just not knowing exactly how or when.

I'll make a reference to H.P.Lovecraft. Arguably the most famous horror author, and basically all his stories starts with telling you how awful everything went in the end. Then he starts describing exactly how it happened and why it couldn't be avoided.

Mostly agreed, except that I don't think you're giving enough latitude for what horror is and how it can be portrayed, and I think you're conflating horror and terror a bit.

Horror is based on knowledge and revulsion, usually after or during the fact and can be quite powerful, almost real (and also very difficult to effect convincingly with any medium). Horror is very existential and usually long-lasting, and also very subjective. Horror is how one might feel about telling an atrocious lie.

Terror is the actual dread before the fact, the adrenaline inducing paranoia leading up to something bad or while trying to avoid something bad, and this is easier to achieve in Interactive Media. Terror is very temporary, effervescent. Terror is what you might feel in the act of telling a lie.

The best, darkest works start with Terror that leads to Horror, though I have seen effective examples of terror contrasted with and/or leading to hope; horror without knowledge or understanding (this is usually achieved by surrealism, some of the best of which is by Robert Aickman); horror through comedy (don't think Army of Darkness, think Perfume, at some scenes, usually something very Sardonic, but earnestly dark and dreadful); and Horror through Mystery or mysteriousness (effectively done by Ray Bradbury, or more so. Edgar Allen Poe).

Lovecraft IS a great example of horror based on knowledge after the fact, but I find his works fall flat in the actual reading precisely because his works read like a tedious recounting, almost journalistic at times, of said events. He had great horrifying ideas, but was usually lacking in presentation ("The Music of Eric Zahn" and "The Rats in the Walls" being notable exceptions). Games, however have had great success playing off of Lovecraft's ideas, often better than the source material.

Since everyone is making horror game recommendations, and we're talking about Lovecraft, I want to recommend Anchorhead by Michael Gentry as an example of first-class interactive Lovecraftian horror. It's all text, but it is the most succesful and artful example of Interactive Horror that I have come across.

"The robot was developed using characteristics of plants normally grown for ornamental purposes."

And

"If a person's voice becomes louder than a certain level, the flower buds will come into bloom, and the stem shakes slightly to suggest a greeting. When the room lights up, the buds open and close, and when music is played, the plant dances."

What kind of plants do they keep around there! Do they also eat meat and sing like Levi Stubbs?

Remember kids, never feed a plant that moves on its own and likes the taste of blood.

" The robotic plant can interact with people when they approach, and it can 'dance' when music is played. "

Little shop of Horrors

Are there any beloved childhood memories that Hollywood hasn't raped the corpse of yet?

Speed Racer: check
Battlestar Galactica: check
Star Trek: check
Buck Rogers: pending

There's also a new Flash Gordon movie down the line, and--while not previoulsy a movie--a John Carter of Mars project for 2012; hell, there's even a new Barbarella due out this year. However, just becuase this is a remake of TOS (and because this is J.J. Abrams) doesn't necessarily mean the movie will be that bad, or bad at all. Granted, M:I III was terrible, and I never cared for Lost or Alias, but I actually liked what he tried to do with Cloverfield, even if the end result was stunted by the awful dialogue and its delivery and some of the behavior of the characters. Revisiting the original Trek characters might be daunting, but the cast, while younger-looking, seems spot on. Time will tell, though. And while few of his movies are actually good, Kevin smith praised both Watchmen and Star Trek after private screenings of both, for what that's worth.

He is a geek, after all.

Enlighten us... who said public key cryptography was pointless in the beginning?

ObCasinoRoyale

What I want to know, is how did the universe expand beyond its own swartzchild radius?

Man, for a moment I thought you were making a Spaceballs joke, instead of a physics reference. :-P

Cheers

Mixing it up with Flash Gordon???

http://german.imdb.com/title/tt0077278/fullcredits

Music
Glen A. Larson .... composer: theme music

(hehe just kidding - George Takei is one cool dude)

If you're wondering if you should do this as a company, please watch Leonard Part 6, which is arguably one of the worst movies of all time.

There were never any Leonard Parts 1-5, and definitely no Leonard Part 7.

Food for thought...

This reads like an episode of House!

I can find no evidence that WALL-E was anything other than 100% American in casting and production. WALL-E

Pixar partners with Maximus to provide RenderMan Training in India [October 5, 2008]

While RenderMan is used in Asia this is the first certified Asian training program in RenderMan.

Roadside Romeo, the first big budget 3D feature in India from Disney/Yashraj has been entirely rendered on RenderMan at VCL. Many other studios are on the verge of adopting RenderMan as their rendering solution.

Actually it made me more think of Windows Seven, but that's just me. A few parts bloat, some OS X envy and some lust for world dominance and you're pretty much there.

Yeah, "illegal" is the wrong term. "Against public policy" fits better

Okay.

I've been wondering about your sig on Natalie Portman for a while now. Before I ever heard about her being in "Star Wars" I saw two of her movies, "Leon, the Professional" and "Where the Heart Is" and loved both. Have you seen either one?

Falcon

Yeah, "illegal" is the wrong term. "Against public policy" fits better

Okay.

I've been wondering about your sig on Natalie Portman for a while now. Before I ever heard about her being in "Star Wars" I saw two of her movies, "Leon, the Professional" and "Where the Heart Is" and loved both. Have you seen either one?

Falcon

Just and suggestion but maybe we don't need background music every where?

They're my theme music. Every hero's got to have some.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095348/quotes

So, in the past couple of months we've seen several folks come out and support free streaming of TV shows and movies, most notably IMDB and now Youtube. What I am noticing is that none of it appears to be exclusive streaming -- most of these shows have been licensed to just about everybody. I guess from the network technology perspective, this is a good thing, so as to avoid a popular server from slashdotting one particular site. But from a competition perspective, is this really a good thing? I mean, if everybody's got the same stuff, then where's the incentive to develop a particular site over another?

It's just like the tag-line for that bad movie- Alien vs. Predator.

Whoever wins, we lose.

we all know what will happen if we let our scientists focus on hair-loss

I have visions in my head of hundreds of programmers chained to their desks with taskmasters standing above them with whips shouting "Faster, code faster".

The galley scene in Ben-Hur comes to mind...

Have a physics competition show. Something like a crossover between Brainiac, The Incredible Machine and Jackass. Participants get some raw materials and are asked, for example, to make their contraption hurl a bowling ball as far as possible or to fix and fine-tune a light gas gun for use in trap shooting.

You mean like Scrapheap Challenge? Or Escape From Experiment Island? Both were pretty good, though the US version of Scrapheap Challenge ("Junkyard Wars") ended up being edited to emphasize the inter-personal conflict that reality TV seems to thrive on.

The US Constitution says:

The Congress shall have power ... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries

Copyright is constitutional only if it promotes the progress of science and useful arts.

Now the question is *ARE* science and useful arts being promoted by copyrights? Would you say that this work is a progress over this one? If a remake was made, is the copyright in the older film still valid? Why?

The only thing that's being promoted by copyrights is the profit of some corporations.

The US Constitution says:

The Congress shall have power ... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries

Copyright is constitutional only if it promotes the progress of science and useful arts.

Now the question is *ARE* science and useful arts being promoted by copyrights? Would you say that this work is a progress over this one? If a remake was made, is the copyright in the older film still valid? Why?

The only thing that's being promoted by copyrights is the profit of some corporations.

Perhaps you're thinking of The Truman Show?

It costs money and does not generate any revenue (unlike college sports, which the colleges are now so dependent on for income that not even a 12-step program could help them). It makes heroes out of kids who are good at running, jumping, and throwing and catching balls.

In some parts of the US, high school football really is the be all and end all of town life. If you ever seen Friday Night Lights, that depiction is spot on. The whole town practically shuts down on game day and you can bet good money is changing hands on the booster and sponsorship level, if not the bookmaking level. If you're the team captain, you're the prince of town. If you're the captain of the mathletes, you'll be lucky not to be stuffed into your locker on a daily basis.

In one of that film's establishing shots, the dumpy-looking school stands in stark relief to the gleaming stadium where the games are played. It's no mystery what is really being valued.

It's not as if the media were ignorant of the trends. They have seen the future and made fun of it.

The current trends are worrisome, not only in the US, but in the whole world. The easiest way to become a millionaire seems to be in sports or music, and in many countries, including a large part of the USA, being a "scholar" means studying religion.

And don't think that a long-lasting total cultural decadence cannot happen, because it has happened before.

This is no joke, if mankind forgets math, we will suffer a worse fate than global warming, communism, and radical Islamism put together.

from the too-late-for-me dept.

A better choice would have been "from the number-twelve-looks-just-like-you dept."

I believe the precedent was in this case

You know why they put oxygen masks on planes? Oxygen gets you high. In a catastrophic emergency, you're taking giant panicked breaths. Suddenly you become euphoric, docile. You accept your fate. It's all right here. Emergency water landing - 600 miles an hour. Blank faces, calm as Hindu cows. -Tyler

The first thing I thought when I saw the picture was "That's not a moon..."

It's http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280262/ and is available on DVD.

"Thanks for smoking"

idiocracy: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

bingo.

Although not quite the same thing, I have often wondered what our current culture is doing to us through natural selection. Now I know it takes many generations to make a difference. However one has to think that those with certain genetic problems may not have had a chance to propagate as they would likely die.

For instance, do you think 500 years ago as many people has bad eyes, or asthma or, other conditions or mental problems? It kind of makes me think what we well all be like in a 1000 years from now, 5000 years.

Also as an extension of that principle it isn't the number of years that matter, but rather the number of generations. So in the distance past when life expectancy was like 40 and people normally had kids when they were like 14 generations were short. Now with people living till 80 and having kids in their 30's, the generations are longer... would this mean that by default we would be less effected by the Darwin's principle? Again expand that out a couple hundred years from now, and things start to get interesting. We start to stagnate, change slower over time, but that change is generally negative. So unless selective breeding and/or we gain the technology and the will to genetically alter our offspring, we are headed down a downward spiral abet a slow one. (Tho I suppose we could become cyborgs of a sort replacing defective parts, however this would seem a negative sum system, however who knows what technology will bring)

Not to even mention:

  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ :)

I actually just watched that movie last night!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

Basically a SciFi comedy where two losers are frozen and 500 years pass. They come out to discover that everyone has become very stupid due to smart people having few babies and dumb people having many babies. They are now the smartest people on the earth!

While it is a silly movie, I did get some laughs out of it.

I love how everyone talks in a combination of Urban Slang/Hillbilly/Redneck

TV shows are named "Ow my balls", the best movie was a picture of an Ass, the President of the United states is a Wrestler/Porn Star, and Justice is done with Monster Trucks...

Breathed already has tentative plans to bring the penguin back in a short feature about discovering a certain country in Europe. It will be called "Mr. Opus's Holland.

So write a better song, and don't sing Happy Birthday.

Doing what you're suggesting may end up having disastrous unintended consequences.

If he had given them up in 1989, we never would have had A Wish For Wings That Work (1991). A X-mas classic in my house, watched every year.

Would have been tragic.

See the documentary "Idiocracy" for ample evidence our civilization is declining.

That was the basis for William Shatner's movie*: 'TekWar' and the TV series of the same name.**

*(from imdb.com) "A television movie based on the futurist story by William Shatner." and from same source:"Plot summary for
TekWar (1994) (TV) More at IMDb Pro
advertisement

After four years, Jake Cardigan is prematurely awoken from his fifteen year cryogenic punishment to a world very different than the one he knew. Much more than before 'Tek', the highly-addictive electronic designer narcotic of the 21st century, seems to be prevalent. His wife has divorced him and disappeared together with their son. He wants them back and he wants justice for those undercover policemen who were murdered by unknown conspirators which led to his imprisonment for a crime he did not commit. He links up with his ex-partner Sid Gomez, now also an ex-cop, and they go to work for the mysterious Bascom who owns and runs the giant Cosmos security corporation. Their first job is a seemingly easy missing persons case trying to locate a missing scientist who may have developed a crystal to destroy Tek chips. The more the two men investigate the more the dark and powerful forces of the hidden Tek lords are sent to thwart them. What is the connection between this case and his wrongful imprisonment four years ago? Will he ever be able to trace his lost family through the infinite twists and turns of this new technological age? In a race against time Jake struggles to come to terms with this new world where nothing is as it seems and his place within it. Written by Mark Smith {msmith@osi.co.uk}"

**(also from imdb.com) "Plot summary for
"TekWar" (1995) More at IMDb Pro
advertisement

The year is 2045 and "tek," a highly addictive computer-based reality drug takes the users of the drug into a fantasy world. Jake Cardigan, a copy who was jailed on trumped charges, is hired by the mysterious Walter Bascom to fight the drug. Jake's first partner was Sid Gomez who was replaced by sexy Sam Houston; Nika is a computer wiz who works for Bascom; Cowgirl and Spaz are two "cyberpunks"; and Shelley Grout is a government agent trying to stop Jake. Written by J.E. McKillop {jack-mckillop@worldnet.att.net}"

"...which is populated exclusively by 19-year-old-Claudia-Schiffer-Nymphomaniac-Clones..."

That sounds nice, but there's a lot to be said for the old cliche: 'variety is the spice of life', in this scenario.

Perhaps better yet, having the ability to reprogram/make changes on the fly...hopefully not by command line interface though.

Ah hell! Some fellow *nix fanboy will jump on this codemonkey style, create a f*ugly UI that will first tell you to RTFM, then RTFFAQ's, then 'Google it' before you can start the app.
*disclaimer*
The above should be taken as 'tongue in cheek hyperbole', not as a serious flame-if you can't poke fun at yourself, then you have no business poking fun at others!

BTW: I too, am looking forward to my 'tek' overlords! Or, 'Necromancer' style plugging in.
Either one/both would be fine with me as long as it's NOT Microsoft OS support only. It needs to be truly cross-platform: Windows, Mac, *nix, *bsd, etc. (Hp-Vax, Sun, IBM?-over my head in this class of OS!), or better yet, OS agnostic.
   

That was the basis for William Shatner's movie*: 'TekWar' and the TV series of the same name.**

*(from imdb.com) "A television movie based on the futurist story by William Shatner." and from same source:"Plot summary for
TekWar (1994) (TV) More at IMDb Pro
advertisement

After four years, Jake Cardigan is prematurely awoken from his fifteen year cryogenic punishment to a world very different than the one he knew. Much more than before 'Tek', the highly-addictive electronic designer narcotic of the 21st century, seems to be prevalent. His wife has divorced him and disappeared together with their son. He wants them back and he wants justice for those undercover policemen who were murdered by unknown conspirators which led to his imprisonment for a crime he did not commit. He links up with his ex-partner Sid Gomez, now also an ex-cop, and they go to work for the mysterious Bascom who owns and runs the giant Cosmos security corporation. Their first job is a seemingly easy missing persons case trying to locate a missing scientist who may have developed a crystal to destroy Tek chips. The more the two men investigate the more the dark and powerful forces of the hidden Tek lords are sent to thwart them. What is the connection between this case and his wrongful imprisonment four years ago? Will he ever be able to trace his lost family through the infinite twists and turns of this new technological age? In a race against time Jake struggles to come to terms with this new world where nothing is as it seems and his place within it. Written by Mark Smith {msmith@osi.co.uk}"

**(also from imdb.com) "Plot summary for
"TekWar" (1995) More at IMDb Pro
advertisement

The year is 2045 and "tek," a highly addictive computer-based reality drug takes the users of the drug into a fantasy world. Jake Cardigan, a copy who was jailed on trumped charges, is hired by the mysterious Walter Bascom to fight the drug. Jake's first partner was Sid Gomez who was replaced by sexy Sam Houston; Nika is a computer wiz who works for Bascom; Cowgirl and Spaz are two "cyberpunks"; and Shelley Grout is a government agent trying to stop Jake. Written by J.E. McKillop {jack-mckillop@worldnet.att.net}"

"...which is populated exclusively by 19-year-old-Claudia-Schiffer-Nymphomaniac-Clones..."

That sounds nice, but there's a lot to be said for the old cliche: 'variety is the spice of life', in this scenario.

Perhaps better yet, having the ability to reprogram/make changes on the fly...hopefully not by command line interface though.

Ah hell! Some fellow *nix fanboy will jump on this codemonkey style, create a f*ugly UI that will first tell you to RTFM, then RTFFAQ's, then 'Google it' before you can start the app.
*disclaimer*
The above should be taken as 'tongue in cheek hyperbole', not as a serious flame-if you can't poke fun at yourself, then you have no business poking fun at others!

BTW: I too, am looking forward to my 'tek' overlords! Or, 'Necromancer' style plugging in.
Either one/both would be fine with me as long as it's NOT Microsoft OS support only. It needs to be truly cross-platform: Windows, Mac, *nix, *bsd, etc. (Hp-Vax, Sun, IBM?-over my head in this class of OS!), or better yet, OS agnostic.
   

This is exactly right.

For anyone interested in examining the topic of stupidity, I highly suggest looking up, and obtaining in whichever way you choose, a recent CBC documentary on stupdity.

Steven Seagal is... Number 1 With a Ballot

And how about George W. Bush starring in a remake of Seagal's first movie? The title certainly fits: Above the Law

So does this system look into the past aswell? Reminds me alot of Deja Vu.