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Do not taunt the happy Yul Brynner Gunslinger Robot

http://imdb.com/title/tt0064177/ Forbin Project: We built a super computer with a mind of its own and now we must fight it for the world!

in fact, I forget where it was, but I seem to remember reading someone psychoanalyzing a corporation (as if it were a human) and finding that it's insane.

Deadly serious, Mr Kuryakin. Deadly serious.

In that movie, Kelsey Grammar is assigned command of a Korea-era diesel/electric sub with the mission to infiltrate Norfolk harbor and destroy a simulated battleship as part of a military exercise. The purpose of the exercise being to test the capabilities of an enemy working with outdated and surplus weapon systems.

I'm sure to the PC prissies that live their lives by the standards of Slashdot moderation (wherein any forthrightly-expressed or outside-the-norm opinion is "-1"), the legendary Ellison is nothing but a "troll" or a "flame-baiter" regardless of his accomplishments or status, while weak-sister geek idols who pathetically recycle the pop culture that others -- like Ellison -- worked to create are hailed as the paragons of cool.

What's Harlan been up to lately? Last thing I know of him doing (besides 'City' & getting a creative consultant credit for Babylon 5) was the teleplay for his story 'Demon With The Glass Hand', which I liked. And that's been over 30 years ago.

I think you need a molten, spinning core to have a magnetic field. Good thing we have The Core as reference material.

Whoa. Careful, you dont want to wind up like this guy.

I'm not sure, there are plenty of candidates. Leaving that aside, I think you have invented the perfect word for the sequel to "Dumb and Dumber", they can call it: "Dumber and Dumberer" :-)

jesus, has a dumberer sentence ever been uttered in a /. comment?

I don't know if it is or is not, but I believe there was a movie called 'Demon Seed' with that plot similar to that, so that might be an avenue to find your book.

There's no need to do that. The first page of hits for Donald Kerr already reveals that he played a call boy in a 1933 film called Forty Naughty Girls, and that he moonlights as a Scottish Nationalist councillor.

...or the liquid-nitrogen-cooled (?) VR helmets that the pilots of the stealth fighters in Interceptor (1992) used. "I can see you, but you can't see me!" Poor Jurgen Prochnow.

Dupe.

Has John Pilger's excellent propaganda film The War on Democracy shown in the US yet?

I can see it now:

"I have proof that prove to the court, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my client is innocent."

"Bah! Don't burden us with your 'proof'!"

Idiocracy anyone?

Wow, when I first saw the title of your post, I immediately thought of the movie/TV show Alien Nation from the '80s. And then realized that it probably wasn't a bad conclusion to jump to.

I guess you haven't seen "Once Upon a Time in the West" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064116/
The credits are widely regarded as a masterpiece in themselves. They last for about 10 minutes into the movie and actively contribute to the pacing and epic quality of the movie.

*That*, incidentally, is surely going to be one hell of an expensive film. Most zombie movies are pretty cheap to make, but World War Z is basically an entire future history made up of awesomely expensive-to-make sequences. I won't give too much away in case there are some /.ers who haven't read the book!

"i, for one, welcome our new extra terrestrial plant based overlords.

so i can eat them, silly."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055894/

Cue theremin music...

--
BMO

While planned obsolescence is more widespread than ever these days, it's nothing new - Companies have always realized the benefits of forcing buyers to come back on as frequent a schedule as the market will bear, and have pushed consumers down that road whenever possible.

My father has a few pairs of socks that he got 40-ish years ago that he wears regularly - they're comfortable and haven't stretched or worn out at all . . . for fairly obvious reasons, the company that made them no longer exists. Or, for a more entertaining example, look to the 1952 movie The Man in the White Suit - guy invents perfect, invincible fabric and attempts to sell idea to clothing companies. Clothing companies see the writing on the wall and turn to desperate measures . . . so even way back in 1952 the concept of planned obsolescence was thought about enough to generate a movie.

As technology moves forward, more and more items become commodities or at least lend themselves to planned obsolescence. Nowadays, modern manufacturing processes have brought the prices of most electronic gadgets down to the point where consumers will stand for being forced to replace regularly, and it's often more profitable to sell an upgrade cycle than it is to sell service/repair contracts (plus the sheeple really like being told how many wonderful new features they're getting when they replace broken version 12 with ever-so-(temporarily)-shiny version 13). Companies only have an incentive to serve their customers well enough to keep them coming back to spend - anything more is wasted and too much quality might shut off that revenue stream entirely!

Also, I have to make the obligatory and oft-harped-upon point that open source software is one of the very few examples of a product that is immune to this unfortunate market force - software companies are strongly incented to steer their customers toward application designs that will require regular upgrades/patches, because a stable and perfected application can only be sold once. Some compnaies have figured out that if they do enough interface changing with every major upgrade, they can even tack on a new "training" revenue stream, a side benefit to the quest for lock-in . . . [/rant]

This deserves a congratulatory screening of The Green Slime!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0471711/Ahhh, what an awful dream. Ones and zeroes everywhere... and I thought I saw a two.

according to this movie

Asimov's First Law prevents that kind of threat. How can this happen ?

It works well in writing, but as soon as a movie is made, it goes right out the window.

except they'll have to change the part about going where no camera has gone before. Sure looks corny by todays standards. And Shirley there's room for a remake or maybe part deux.

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0060397/trailers-screenplay-E14113-310

The official guide.

No, No, that's Lt. Tuck Pendleton (Dennis Quaid):
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093260/

For a second there I thought Toys-backwards-R-Us was being run by this guy.

Eyesore is a perfect description. Frank Gehry is to architecture what Philip Glass or Andrew Lloyd Weber are to classical composition.. an unmitigated hack.
All of his stuff looks like it belongs in Toontown.

What is the FairTax plan?

The FairTax plan is a comprehensive proposal that replaces all federal income and payroll based taxes with an integrated approach including a progressive national retail sales tax, a prebate to ensure no American pays federal taxes on spending up to the poverty level, dollar-for-dollar federal revenue neutrality, and, through companion legislation, the repeal of the 16th Amendment.

"Let's assume a pedophile starts with a Roomba, and adds to it piece by piece until it resembles an animatronic underage Real Doll - at what point does it become illegal?"

I know..

1. When it becomes a synthetic human (self-aware, sentient, basically... if we can morally and technologically accept that despite the existence or non-existence of "God", that human recreation is by the hand of humans, whether by organ-to-organ contact, or by test tube/in-vitro.

2. When the "Real Doll" becomes a REAL DOLL, as in

http://www.lovehkfilm.com/panasia/natural_city.htm

http://www.shuqi.org/asiancinema/reviews/naturalcity.shtml

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0378428/

(I have the DVD and enjoy it enough to re-watch almost monthly. It's worth the ~$20.)

At that point, if the Dolls in real life have technological or material lifespans, extended only by theft of a real human's DND/brain matter, then, at that point, it DEFINITELy should be illegal, whether the stolen matter is child or adult. (Not sure if I want to venture into the area of taking matter from an invalid or comatose/vegetative person. But, for a freshly dead body.... hmmm... Then again, when does the "soul" vacate the body or the "scene", and will it become a malevolent or hungry ghost upon finding out its former body was appropriated by force or after its death for carnal pleasure of unrestrained human beings?)

Hungry Ghost:

http://www.google.com/search?q=hungry+ghost&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Seriously...who has SEVEN CHILDREN? On PURPOSE?

Go watch Idiocracy and then tell me your opinion of geeks having seven kids. It's up to the geeks to save the world!

it was actually a reference to the 1995 american comedy Friday.

but that's okay.

Sorry, you've got your year wrong. In the year 2525, evil robots will have taken over the world, and they will face a formidable foe in the form of a cryogenically revived exotic dancer from the 21st century.

It is unknown at this time whether the robots or the exotic dancer run on an SSD...though, her stacks of silicone may make a good drive.

However, my childhood memories of the Civic Center include leaking roofs (as you mentioned) and cool-looking (but unusable) drinking fountains. The fountains are freakin' round. I wish I could find a photo, but imagine half of a round metal sink recessed into the wall (with a claustrophia-inducing oval indentation) and half of the sink sticking out. To take a drink, you stick your head into a freakin' wall and the round sink sticks into your ribs. I'm not kidding.

However, my childhood memories of the Civic Center include leaking roofs (as you mentioned) and cool-looking (but unusable) drinking fountains. The fountains are freakin' round. I wish I could find a photo, but imagine half of a round metal sink recessed into the wall (with a claustrophia-inducing oval indentation) and half of the sink sticking out. To take a drink, you stick your head into a freakin' wall and the round sink sticks into your ribs. I'm not kidding.

Why We Fight.

Explains how we got here, what we're facing, and why we are screwed. US Government is FUCKED by private interests, largely because there is no line between the two any more.

I'm getting my son EU citizenship and teaching him French. Hopefully that's enough to ease his transition to a new continent.

I mean, it's not like there was an animated series, an 80s TV sitcom, or some movie featuring that kid from The Sixth Sense or Alan Thick. Was there? As long as they don't have access to a dematerializing gun, I guess it's all right.

I mean, it's not like there was an animated series, an 80s TV sitcom, or some movie featuring that kid from The Sixth Sense or Alan Thick. Was there? As long as they don't have access to a dematerializing gun, I guess it's all right.

Give them Felidae, bad enough. Traumatized my sister. It has cartoon cats slicing each other's guts open and ripping the entrails out. What a joy for 5 year olds...

I remember watching a movie in which there are small and white public cars available to the public in a parallel universe. It is a pretty shitty made for TV movie though.

OK, so what would you do with the orphan-turned-fake-diploma-doctor in Cider House Rules?

Consider yourself corrected.

the Democrats are pretty much in a lock to have the next White House

You must not have seen Hacking Democracy.

Director. You can't compare movies where he was a writer or cowriter to a movie where he was the writer and director.