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I don't see how we have come very far - that is still how Science Fiction is portrayed to the masses. Space battles against aliens, aliens invading the earth, etc. etc. What I find fascinating with all this is the science fiction that I read does not usually have this type of plot - just most science fiction movies.

Ah, the great unwashed entertainment-consuming masses, blahditty blah. Remember Contact, starring Jodie Foster - based on Sagan's book? It was pretty interesting, and a well-made film. No aliens attacking (just religious freaks blowing up things on their own, here at home ... Sagan certainly knew about the culture of religious zealotry). That movie was essentially a flop with the public. But if it had been about an intrepid anthropologist decoding mysterious communications from a lost tribe in Amazonia - critical acclaim!

Why? Because people like watching stories about unfolding (and usually, resolved) conflict - and "subtle space stuff" doesn't usually compute with most people, just out of sheer momentum. People who like non-explosion stories about complex human interaction are so sure that they won't find that in science fiction films that the market research by the film makers tells them there's a hole there that's not worth filling. Sometimes they try, though:

How about George Clooney's Solaris? Nice sci-fi setting, but basically a morality tale about letting go of your past and your troubles. At the box office? Big snoozer. If, though, it had been about an aging butler, starring Anthony Hopkins... big bucks and Oscars for everyone.

Now, if those Merchant/Ivory fans could only bring themselves to see Lucas's last work, and see the incredibly subtle nuances brought to life as Darth Vader cries, "Noooooooooo!" they'd realize that sci fi can be riveting drama, too. Hopkins Shmopkins!

I don't see how we have come very far - that is still how Science Fiction is portrayed to the masses. Space battles against aliens, aliens invading the earth, etc. etc. What I find fascinating with all this is the science fiction that I read does not usually have this type of plot - just most science fiction movies.

Ah, the great unwashed entertainment-consuming masses, blahditty blah. Remember Contact, starring Jodie Foster - based on Sagan's book? It was pretty interesting, and a well-made film. No aliens attacking (just religious freaks blowing up things on their own, here at home ... Sagan certainly knew about the culture of religious zealotry). That movie was essentially a flop with the public. But if it had been about an intrepid anthropologist decoding mysterious communications from a lost tribe in Amazonia - critical acclaim!

Why? Because people like watching stories about unfolding (and usually, resolved) conflict - and "subtle space stuff" doesn't usually compute with most people, just out of sheer momentum. People who like non-explosion stories about complex human interaction are so sure that they won't find that in science fiction films that the market research by the film makers tells them there's a hole there that's not worth filling. Sometimes they try, though:

How about George Clooney's Solaris? Nice sci-fi setting, but basically a morality tale about letting go of your past and your troubles. At the box office? Big snoozer. If, though, it had been about an aging butler, starring Anthony Hopkins... big bucks and Oscars for everyone.

Now, if those Merchant/Ivory fans could only bring themselves to see Lucas's last work, and see the incredibly subtle nuances brought to life as Darth Vader cries, "Noooooooooo!" they'd realize that sci fi can be riveting drama, too. Hopkins Shmopkins!

According to IMDB trivia:

1) Rock Hudson walked out of the Los Angeles premiere, saying, "Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?"

2) Arthur C. Clarke once said, "If you understand 2001 completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered."

...why not abolish the corporation as a legal construct? Why should those who run a business not be responsible for what it does, like everyone and everything else? Let them get insurance like the rest of us!

(And I urge everyone here to watch The Corporation to see why corporations are Bad(tm).)

I'm a little uninformed in this area of science. What exactly does this discovery mean? Does it mean that they now know exactly where the strain of DNA is that makes me white, or have dark hair, or have a weakness toward a certain type of cancer?

How is this going to help? Are they going to be able to reach inside me and change my DNA to fix my problems (gene therapy, this is called? Clueless there too i guess)?

Are we going to start engineering perfect babies, ala Gattaca? (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/)

That's from Gattaca, for the movie impaired; one of the few movies I actually own.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/
I always loved the movie, in part since I've twice been told I have a defect in my own genes. Turned out wrong both times, but hey, you never know. Now if only I could find a way to get to Titan...

No longer cool?

Snakes on a Plane! Snakes. On. A. Plane. With a plane. And snakes and Samuel Jackson.
Samuel Jackson on a plane with snakes!
You say his star power is waning?
It's got snakes!
On a plane!

Obligatory Men in Black reference:

Agent J: Why the big secret? People are smart, they can handle it.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.

Real Genius

Blizzard made you change your nickname in their game (you even agree that this is their right)... so why is this a news story again?

It at least gives him something to point to as Violated to say that he used to be CmdrTaco, thereby reestablishing his identity.

Unfortunately not everyone has a famous site that would be authoritative enough to validate their identity should it happen to them.

In these virtual worlds your name is really your only form of identity. If it can be taken away so easily your name might as well be Thomas Veil.

And besides, just because you've known about the problem for a long time doesn't mean everyone is informed, and sometimes it takes a person who is famous in the right circles to make a stink about a policy to get changes made.

Number Six is DOOMED?

Because as we all know, Blogs are the DEBIL!

Interesting to see how religion can overthrow the constitutional right to free speech, but I guess in a catholic school things are different. I wonder if www.popeblog.com is available...

As soon as the cyclonic windspeed hits 88MPH, spacetime is warped back to 1985. Turning slightly within the eye as it passes allows jumping to various other babyboomer moments in the 1950s. Surf's up!

How about Google Vision. Free glasses with targeted ads shot directly into your retinas based on gps tracking and their new image decifering software that can see what you're seeing and automatically sense the best ads to post based on statistical inferances about your environment.

He is a real person :)
See http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0414481/

You'd end up like that guy in Brainstorm who played the sex scene on infinite loop.

Well, the guys name is Jon NEVERDIE Jacobs... a well known player in game. By the way... This is him I'm sure he has plenty of $$$ to spend on one of his favorite hobbies. And if you actually read the specs on what he bought and the track record for activity in Project Entropia, you would understand why he felt it was a good investment.

Well, the guys name is Jon NEVERDIE Jacobs... a well known player in game. By the way... This is him I'm sure he has plenty of $$$ to spend on one of his favorite hobbies.

I thought you were just pulling numbers out of your ass for Red Planet, but according to IMDB you are right! The film had an estimated budget of $75 million and only made roughly $33.5 million worldwide in theatres. Though it did reasonably well in rentals ($22.7 million), it still fell well short of breaking even. Ouch!

I remember twice during Clinton's tenure the Fox network (regular Fox, not Faux News) compared his actions overseas as an attempt to Wag The Dog. They said that art was imitating life, directly accusing him of orchestrating military action to deflect attention away from his blow job shenanigans. They did it once for Kosovo (where genocide was taking place) and once for Iraq (where US warplanes were being targeted by Saddam). Every time he used US troops in a peacekeeping capacity he was vilified by the Republicans for it.

Remember that soldier who refused an order to wear a UN beret? He was a "hero". Yet soldiers that refuse to illegally occupy a foreign country are called traitors by these so-called patriots.

Try 1950 instead, bud.

gosh, really, Bush was in power in 1973?
He was probably referring to Exorcist: The Beginning.

You miss the point - these screener DVDS are *very* limited in number - they are DVDs sent off to the people who vote in the Oscars. Each of these is then watermarked with the name of the person who recieves the DVD for reviewing. Then if copies do surface then Disney can analyse the footage, say - it is you who has copied it! and maybe sue the dude to whom the DVD was provided to and at least not give them anymore.

Disney have now gone a step further by saying it will only play on one range of DVD players. This is probably because the last time they caught someone for bottlegging stuff, the actor Carmine Caridi had 'lent' the DVDs to a friend who he thought was just a film buff.

Looking it up on the web the whole story has a tragic end for the pirate involved.

So, yeah they can be copied and distributed. But it makes it too traceable, too much hassle and a recipient has too much to loose, to make the whole thing worthwhile.

And Springtime for Hitler is straight out.

tekkies (love that spelling)

Are those fans of Tektronix or Shatner's TekWar?

Why are you waiting? Xanadu is here!

You know how I know you're gay?

Incredible juxtaposition of disability and technology, if you haven't seen it, it is highly recommended: It's All Gone Pete Tong

Hey come on, Andy Griffith did it that way, so NASA can too!

I'm all in favor of .kids

While a good idea, you have to remember that the folks lobbying for an .xxx domain are doing so precisely so they can tell the rest of us how to think, and speak, and act.

That's actually pretty old news. See "The Incredible Mr. Limpet" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058230/

Reminds me of one of the producers on Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (2005): "Jay Roach".

Even funnier, this guy really exists: imdb -- and it states "Sometimes credited as M. Jay Roach" which makes his name even less obscure a reference. ;-)

Dude, the dolphins already left...

Hurricane Balki has a nice ring to it, although of course he's Miposian, not Greek. Following that of course, would be Hurricane Cousinlarry.

Uh oh. I don't think Mr. Bond will be doing any more world-saving when things are going that way.

NASA is playing it right in to the hands of criminal super-genious overlords everywhere, which, I, for one, would like to welcome.

It's been done. Liam Howlett (of The Prodigy) and Robert del Naja (3D of Massive Attack) did the music.

The Washington post is supposed to be a reputable newspaper with a reputation for reliable informaiton. So why was this article not basic fact checked by anybody?

That is, anybody before us.

Come 'on everybody! Let's all pile on to poor Jose Antonio Vargas and point out everything he just plain got wrong.

I'll take the obvious ones.

1. Tron was not a videogame-turned-into-a-movie. It was an original movie about games in general. The videogame followed.
2. Doom cannot be categorized as an Xbox game. Doom has seen basically all of it's sales on the PC for about a dozen years, with the occasional port.
3. Console gaming and movies don't "crave" the 13 - 25 year old male audience. According to the Entertainmetn Software Association the average gamer age is 30, and 43% are female. This skewes a little lower on consoles, but the numbers are far better than the shallow stereotype Vargas passes as journalism. And hasn't box office gold been Date Movies?

Arguable points

1. Doom is not the Granddaddy of FPS games. Wolfenstein 3D is. Wolfenstein 3D begat Doom. There were other FPS games before Wolfie, but it was the first to see real commercial success.
2. Half-Life was based more on classic adventure games than Doom. It certainly didn't "follow the Doom model."
3. He points to Spielberg signing a deal to create 3 franchisable games for EA as a sign that the industry is at a crossroads. However, Spielberg has worked on games many times before, though his LucasArts and Dreamworks Interactive studios. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to see him spend more time trying to alter the craft, but it's still nothing he hasn't done before.

As a side note: Movies are about why you do something. Games are about how you do something. Movies about "how" are hollow, and games about "why" are boring.

'nuff said.

To add more detail for those who've not seen his Meaningless Obviously Vacant & Idiotic Eggheaded Shindigs aka "movies", they have appalling stories (yes, even considering the source material), terrible acting, horrendous special effects - they're just aweful! For some reason he thought it would be a good idea to show snippets of the original game footage in House of the Dead while Alone in the Dark used an anti-racism song in a terrible sex scene?!?!

Yet, somehow he keeps getting relatively big name projects, like Dungeon Seige, Bloodrayne, Far Cry, Hunter: The Reckoning and more! Someone just take him out, it'd be a whole lot cheaper than making piss-poor movies!

Damien

'nuff said.

To add more detail for those who've not seen his Meaningless Obviously Vacant & Idiotic Eggheaded Shindigs aka "movies", they have appalling stories (yes, even considering the source material), terrible acting, horrendous special effects - they're just aweful! For some reason he thought it would be a good idea to show snippets of the original game footage in House of the Dead while Alone in the Dark used an anti-racism song in a terrible sex scene?!?!

Yet, somehow he keeps getting relatively big name projects, like Dungeon Seige, Bloodrayne, Far Cry, Hunter: The Reckoning and more! Someone just take him out, it'd be a whole lot cheaper than making piss-poor movies!

Damien

'nuff said.

To add more detail for those who've not seen his Meaningless Obviously Vacant & Idiotic Eggheaded Shindigs aka "movies", they have appalling stories (yes, even considering the source material), terrible acting, horrendous special effects - they're just aweful! For some reason he thought it would be a good idea to show snippets of the original game footage in House of the Dead while Alone in the Dark used an anti-racism song in a terrible sex scene?!?!

Yet, somehow he keeps getting relatively big name projects, like Dungeon Seige, Bloodrayne, Far Cry, Hunter: The Reckoning and more! Someone just take him out, it'd be a whole lot cheaper than making piss-poor movies!

Damien

'nuff said.

To add more detail for those who've not seen his Meaningless Obviously Vacant & Idiotic Eggheaded Shindigs aka "movies", they have appalling stories (yes, even considering the source material), terrible acting, horrendous special effects - they're just aweful! For some reason he thought it would be a good idea to show snippets of the original game footage in House of the Dead while Alone in the Dark used an anti-racism song in a terrible sex scene?!?!

Yet, somehow he keeps getting relatively big name projects, like Dungeon Seige, Bloodrayne, Far Cry, Hunter: The Reckoning and more! Someone just take him out, it'd be a whole lot cheaper than making piss-poor movies!

Damien

'nuff said.

To add more detail for those who've not seen his Meaningless Obviously Vacant & Idiotic Eggheaded Shindigs aka "movies", they have appalling stories (yes, even considering the source material), terrible acting, horrendous special effects - they're just aweful! For some reason he thought it would be a good idea to show snippets of the original game footage in House of the Dead while Alone in the Dark used an anti-racism song in a terrible sex scene?!?!

Yet, somehow he keeps getting relatively big name projects, like Dungeon Seige, Bloodrayne, Far Cry, Hunter: The Reckoning and more! Someone just take him out, it'd be a whole lot cheaper than making piss-poor movies!

Damien

'nuff said.

To add more detail for those who've not seen his Meaningless Obviously Vacant & Idiotic Eggheaded Shindigs aka "movies", they have appalling stories (yes, even considering the source material), terrible acting, horrendous special effects - they're just aweful! For some reason he thought it would be a good idea to show snippets of the original game footage in House of the Dead while Alone in the Dark used an anti-racism song in a terrible sex scene?!?!

Yet, somehow he keeps getting relatively big name projects, like Dungeon Seige, Bloodrayne, Far Cry, Hunter: The Reckoning and more! Someone just take him out, it'd be a whole lot cheaper than making piss-poor movies!

Damien

'nuff said.

To add more detail for those who've not seen his Meaningless Obviously Vacant & Idiotic Eggheaded Shindigs aka "movies", they have appalling stories (yes, even considering the source material), terrible acting, horrendous special effects - they're just aweful! For some reason he thought it would be a good idea to show snippets of the original game footage in House of the Dead while Alone in the Dark used an anti-racism song in a terrible sex scene?!?!

Yet, somehow he keeps getting relatively big name projects, like Dungeon Seige, Bloodrayne, Far Cry, Hunter: The Reckoning and more! Someone just take him out, it'd be a whole lot cheaper than making piss-poor movies!

Damien

The upcoming Silent Hill Movie doesn't have a single hair of Boll on it, and that's got me hoping.

It's actually got some pretty strong talent behind it. The script's been refined by Roger Avary (who co-wrote Pulp Fiction, True Romance and Reservoir Dogs among others). It's being directed by Christophe Gans (Brotherhood of the Wolf), who can create pretty amazing atmospheres. And the original Silent Hill sound designer/composer Akira Yamaoka is doing the music. Not to mention starring Sean Bean (Boromir in LotR) and Radha Mitchell (Mary Barrie in Finding Neverland).

Apparently Avary and Gans spent hours playing the game together while coming up with the visuals and finer plot points, and even the special effects guys are saying it's like nothing they've worked on before.

So yeah, enough of my rampant fanboyism. This one has all the marks of breaking this horrible cycle.

No, but remember that sneakers was not a documentary. For most politicians Word is normal tech and Powerpoint is scary advanced stuff.

For the average terrorist bomb maker mobile phones are exploitable tech and for the mules they use to carry their bombs a screwdriver is way out high tech.

Did anyone else see the headline and 1990's in the link and at first glance think this would be an article about why running an ATM network but using LANE everywhere is bad? Or perhaps how implementing this correctly would have caused bankruptcy because of all the expensive network cards for servers that would have to be purchased?

No. As soon as I saw "UK" "ruined economy" and "1990s," I thought it was about a plot by a renegade British agent, Russian programmer, Soviet general, and a super-weapon left over from the Cold War.

And it seemd you're ready to do whatever the authorities say, er allow them to decide what you can do and how you do it. Fact is this won't stop conterfitting but it will make it easy the the authorities to track political speech. You may not remember J Edgar Hoover and how he collected intel on people he considered a threat like John Lennon. I'm sure he would of loved this, as would the Gestapo and the KGB.

Simply I don't believe government should have more power than absolutely necessary and this isn't necessary. Protecting liberty, regulating interstate and international commerce, conducting foreign affairs, and defending the country, that's the job of the federal government. For a compleat list of the powers of government I refer you to the USA Constitution. And be sure to refer to the X Amendment, and how it says "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

I disagree with your following statement:

It's funny how we seem to get most upset when it's people who have almost nothing doing the scamming. Yet when rich folk do scamming, like the Savings & Loan scandal, Enron, Worldcom, and so on, people don't get so upset.

Do you know how many people lost their jobs, lost their entire retirement savings account, and had to start from scratch from the Enron scandal? If you not, I'd recommend you to watch: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.

I don't know about others, but I've always felt these nigerian scandals as a joke and anyone that falls for it is an idiot. But I've truly felt sick to the stomach at what some of these corporate scandals involved. There were hardly any signs for any of the employees or anyone affected by the scandal to see it coming, especially for the lower level guys.

But here's a fact of life, most people just won't care until they've been affected by it too, thinking that'll never happen to them.