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This kind of thing always makes me wonder why you see so many homeless people. They could just smash someone's head in with a rock and have a nice, clean, warm home with three squares a day and plenty of time to read or watch TV.

Methinks you play The Sims too much - or is the homeless person who's clunked me on the head not going to have to explain himself to my friends who find him in my home and me nowhere to be found?

Or are you implying that prison is better than homelessness? That the threat of larger, nastier people, who might seek to stick a shank (or worse) into you for fun, that the loss of freedom, is better than homelessness? Perhaps it is not a lack of being a sociopath but rather the simple calculation that even a sociopath can make - that freedom is better than imprisonment.

Hey! I saw that movie

goodmanj said:

I'm betting most posters in this thread are going to skip over this phrase completely, and raise the "free speech no matter what" flag.

Hi there. This is John Goodman, and I'm all, like, WTF? Is this guy parodying me?

When all you have is chickens, all your problems look like Voodoo.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096071/

You've pointed out what wrong with most of the "new" laws. I know your example is well dated, but...

    Consider the new slew of laws regarding texting while driving.

    It's illegal to drive while distracted. It has been for an awful long time. If that distraction involved in injury or death, it's even more so.

    Then quite a while ago, they had to spell out that you could drive while watching TV. Any vehicle mounted TV couldn't be in view of the driver. Recently, they started with cell phones. You can't text while driving. You can't read your mail while driving. You can't hold your phone to your ear. Oddly enough, you can still hold in depth conversations if you go buy a earpiece. I don't quite get that one. I've seen plenty of folks in other real-world situations where you can't make them see the reality of their physical situation because they are on the phone. It wasn't necessary to add any of those laws to the books, other than it made government officials look productive.

    So when will they make the laws saying it's illegal to eat, shave your legs, put on makeup, and scream at the kids in the back seat while driving? Ok, I've never seen them all at once, but I've seen various combination of those with cars driving erratically.

    Great, so now it's illegal to impersonate someone else online. I expect they'll have to extend that to say you can't talk on a forum with a name that someone else uses. I guess I'm SOL, my online name matches dozens of other people. Worse, my real name matches thousands of other people in the US, and who knows how many world wide. If we just look in the scope of the Entertainment industry, my name matches about a dozen actors, directors, producers, and other production crew members. Hell, IMDB finds JW Smythe possibly matching 19 people, none of which are me. I swear, they're not me. "Smythe" even shows results in iafd.com. Again, not me.

    No fucking wonder the law books are so bloated. In the quest for lawmakers to feel self important, they will keep adding laws to the books to continually restate other laws. It doesn't just bloat lawbooks, but these laws frequently carry different punishments for the same crime. Hmm, you had a phone, and you were driving carelessly, and screaming at the kids in the back seat, but your bumper sticker that says "Meet.Me.For.Cheap.Sex.com" has the name "Slut Monkey" on it. That's the stage name of someone else.

    (oddly enough, I couldn't find a reference to "Slut Monkey" being either a stage name nor movie title. Production will start tomorrow. All female applicants should send their resume with measurements, nude photos, acts their willing to perform, and current STD test results.)

Well, according to The Day After Tomorrow it all has to do with the salinity of the ocean currents. As the poles melt, cold fresh water drives the warm salt water gulf currents downward... or something like that.

Of course, compared to what there is to know about the brain, we know practically nothing, and we shoud really minimize any brain hacking until we know more about how it works.

If you have never seen it, the movie "Brainstorm" is worth a watch. While not the greatest movie of all time, it was exactly about brain hacking, but with a headset you wore and all the visuals you saw were from the machine instead of your eyes. You would "see" what was recorded by someone else, as if you were there. Yea, some side effects associated with it. It was Natalie Wood's last movie, with Christopher Walken and Louise Fletcher.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085271/

There is a double-standard here.

Lives depend on military members immediately and willfully obeying orders. But Nuremberg did determine that obeying illegal orders is itself illegal.

Individual military members aren't really afforded the freedom to make that distinction, but can be held accountable regardless.

When I was in the Marine Corps, we watched films like this one:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074695/plotsummary

The moral of the movie seemed to encourage enlisted men to think for themselves and stand up for what they felt was right, regardless of an order by a commanding officer, while at the same time I was trained to immediately and willfully obey all orders.

Had no spoofs? Even in Airplane! was done a great one, you can see a few in imdb. But i give that Empire strikes back could had more. But regarding culture, sometimes acts are stronger than words, you may not remember any quote of SNF, but for some generations saturday nights got a very specific meaning, and not just in the US.

The Andromeda Strain has already been mentioned; I would also count Contact, Mon Oncle d'Amerique, L'enfant sauvage, Gorillas in the Mist and - with a grain of salt - Evolution as great science movies.

The Andromeda Strain has already been mentioned; I would also count Contact, Mon Oncle d'Amerique, L'enfant sauvage, Gorillas in the Mist and - with a grain of salt - Evolution as great science movies.

The Andromeda Strain has already been mentioned; I would also count Contact, Mon Oncle d'Amerique, L'enfant sauvage, Gorillas in the Mist and - with a grain of salt - Evolution as great science movies.

The Andromeda Strain has already been mentioned; I would also count Contact, Mon Oncle d'Amerique, L'enfant sauvage, Gorillas in the Mist and - with a grain of salt - Evolution as great science movies.

The Andromeda Strain has already been mentioned; I would also count Contact, Mon Oncle d'Amerique, L'enfant sauvage, Gorillas in the Mist and - with a grain of salt - Evolution as great science movies.

The Andromeda Strain has already been mentioned; I would also count Contact, Mon Oncle d'Amerique, L'enfant sauvage, Gorillas in the Mist and - with a grain of salt - Evolution as great science movies.

The Andromeda Strain is the only movie I can think of which depicts actual bona-fide scientists performing something close to actual bona-fide science - there are a number of experiments (including some not overly humane animal experiments) performed by the main cast in order to ascertain the nature of some deadly space plague. What's more, you can actually tell, more or less, how the experiments work and what they're intended to achieve, unlike most science in 'science fiction' films, which generally involve some mad scientist pulling inscrutable levers or pouring green foaming liquid from one test tube into the purple bubbling liquid in the beaker.

Not that I think it would be an easy movie to use to sell science to today's sugar-addicted attention-impaired youth. The film is fairly slow and talky by today's standards, the main characters are mostly rather dowdy and middle-aged, there's more or less no sex or violence, and it's from 1971 and most definitely looks it. The only thing that would make you think otherwise is that, refreshingly, it's not about some lone individual rebel fighting back against/escaping from an oppressive totalitarian government like almost every single mindfucking sci-fi flick made in the English-speaking world between 1965 and 1975. Count the other exceptions, if you like, I'll be surprised if you can think of more than 4 without referring to Halliwell's or the imdb.

Anyways, if you want to see science done almost right in a movie, you can do far worse than the Andromeda Strain.

I was inspired by The Core. :)

I liked Primer . It's not exactly "science," since it's about time travel, but the portrayal of engineering culture was spot-on, and it demonstrated how smart people live and work and achieve in the real world (rather than some rarefied academic/government fantasy-land where they don't have to worry about anything except how to get the Earth's core spinning again).

And Raiders of the Lost Ark was great for demonstrating how a guy who teaches boring history lectures by day doesn't have to be a boring, do-nothing guy on the weekends.

I think a lot of kids would still be willing to do science even for a lousy salary. What turns off many of them is the prospect of doing mind-numbing rote work in an atmosphere of utter bureaucratic tedium, where their peers from school make far more money than they do, get far more respect from others (even though they're doing work that is arguably less important), and don't have to wrestle with a lifetime of maintaining their own self-esteem in spite of it all.

I was never much inspired to be a scientist by anything I saw in the movies; not really. Science did seem like interesting, worthwhile work, though. Then I found out how different being a real scientist was from being a movie scientist, and I wondered why I ever even considered it.

"What in the world do the mormons have to do with it?"

Turn in your geek card, and report for remedial education.

Now that Tron: Legacy has made kaboodles of money, will it be long before we see a remake of Automan on TV?

markets like electrical power generation are susceptible to the greed factor

Luckily regulators and politicians are not susceptible to the greed factor. It's about time we put more power in their hands!

So, which do you want...
A monopoly or a natural monopoly.

A monopoly has all the problems of a natural monopoly with no threat of entry.

A monopoly is a government created monopoly, a natural monopoly is a business in an industry which benefits from extreme economies of scale.

You could go for a regulated oligopoly, though they usually aren't fun either. You can split the businesses, and create all sorts of systems, but none is particularly good, because of the enormous investment required, the overwhelming amount of passionate and motivated stakeholders, and the extreme economies of scale.

If you pretend that one system will have none of the faults of the other, you're wrong, because they aren't inherent in the system, but the market/industry/customers as a whole.

For every bad free market problem (laissez-faire), you can point to an equally bad regulatory problem. Also, don't forget that all "free market" solutions provided so far, have been anything BUT free market solutions. In fact, if you read the VERY article you linked others to most of the discussion is on the regulation that led to this crisis, and only a small fragment of it is on market manipulation. Though the market manipulation was significant, and most visible aspect of the crisis. I recall in the "Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room" documentary, that one of the scandalous things they did, was have certain analysts go over the immensely large documentation on regulations on this new "free market" system, and look for trading opportunities. Does that sound like deregulation to the level, that it could be used as evidence against free markets?

I prefer to err on the side of the entrepreneurship, where as you prefer to err on the side of an omnipotent ruler.

Our prisons are so violent we have TV shows about them such as "Oz" which was supposedly about a new more modern prison.

"how much plastic surgery before you're not human anymore?"

See also Ghost in the Shell.

the people involved must exist in a state filled with 800 pound gorillas

As a citizen of the state involved (New Zealand), I can testify that this is entirely true, except that they're more like 60 tons.

And you don't even want to know what kind of political muscle the other native wildlife species have.

Let's hope we heed the warnings of sci-fi.

You "get it" also if you've ever watched FARGO--no need to live in MN (or be from MN).

Yeah, we definitely disagree. The whole 'giant corporation' thing is a myth perpetuated to keep those corporations in power. Amazingly, it is usually ascribed to those who oppose corporations vehemently.

Ever seen the movie The 13th Warrior? It's a lot like that.

Interesting, I would have thought the ONE country that would allow the people to sue the government would be the US. You know land of the free and all that... Suing the government happens here in Australia and the UK all the time. In fact there is a great movie about it, The Castle.

Daft Punk is amazing. The soundtrack fits into a movie of this type so well, I just had to buy it right after watching the movie on IMAX.

If you were impressed by the Tron: Legacy OST, you're going to be blown away by Interstella 5555

> noted that it was "SolarOS", which I think is a nice reference to SunOS

Or the movie Solaris...

Alien: 1979
Brood: 1982

Unit cohesion is not necessary on the civilian side of things (barring a repeat of the Pentagon attack of 9/11) even though vital for combat units.

In combat sexual orientation doesn't matter much either. What does matter is if your left and your right is covered. What matters are the bullets whizzing overhead. The members of a fire team are like the fingers of a hand, they cover each other, a Band of the Hand. Though I didn't serve in combat, I did serve in the US Army. As a Small Arms Specialist, most commonly known as the infantry. My unit trained cadet officers and Rangers and trained with the Special Forces.

Falcon

You're not this Tim, are you?

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0591101/

Movie making does not have to be expensive.

Movies involve actors, directors, writers, artists, set builders, cinematographers, musicians, etc, etc.

So do plays but they aren't all that expensive. Actually movies should be cheaper, they can be filmed once then played over and over. But plays on stage have to be performed every tyme they're shown. To show a movie just copy the media or download it then display on a projector. The stage, projector, and other things can be used for other movies. A play though, the stage has to be erected at each location with either the props transported between locations or made at each location.

But even a low-budget movie like Moon cost $5 million.

That's low budget? Then the Blair Witch Project had no budget. It cost "$22,000 to make and made back $240.5 million, a ratio of $1 spent for every $10,931 made."

Falcon

"What the fuck is Mechanical Turk?"

Isn't that like a Islamic version of the "Six Million Dollar Man"? Some things get lost in the translation.

Perhaps the submitter does not understand that Tron's graphics were cutting edge at the time. If he doesn't get off my lawn, I'll have to run him over in my awesomely bad 80s monster truck.

Or maybe invite over The Lawnmower Man?

I really don't see why so many people are crapping on "The Last Starfighter". Sure, its plot was formulaic, but at least, unlike Tron, it had a plot. It's a damn fine B movie, and fun to boot. Granted, the at the time groundbreaking use of CGI now looks klunky as hell.

They could easily re-release Starfighter with updated effects, like they did with ST:TOS. The only way to fix Tron is to turn off the sound a burn a J. (But then you miss out on Wendy Carlos' score).


"Teriffic. I'm about to get killed a million miles from nowhere with a gung-ho iguana who tells me to relax. "

Sorry to reply to myself.

IMDB link is HERE

I was also EXTREMELY shocked that the region-1 DVD is going for over $100! (region-2 much more reasonably priced for some reason)

Suggest you watch Super Size Me http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521/ People pick on McDonalds because they are perhaps the number one brand in the industry globally, they use marketing tactics to entice children to the brand and the junk food they serve, and they have been a leader in the "race to the bottom" in the fast food industry. I think there are probably other reasons but those are a few!

There are fourteen of them so far. Take your pick. :-)

My classic example of this was The Matrix. Everybody
raved about the special effects. Nobody could ever tell me what it was about. I concluded
it wasn't actually about anything.

Well, of course nobody could tell you what it was about... Nobody can tell you what the Matrix is!

But I seem to remember some kind of blatant violation of the laws of thermodynamics played an important part in the story...

My classic example of this was The Matrix. Everybody raved about the special effects. Nobody could ever tell me what it was about. I concluded it wasn't actually about anything.

...laura

It will look nothing like the computer "maid" on "The Jetsons."

Who thought that had anything to do with it? I think it's time that we as a culture realized that Rosie is decidedly not what people think of when they hear the word "computer."

I was always hoping for "Cherry 2000"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092746/

Next will be Tic-Tac-Tow

Well, they took a few liberties with the game, but there's already been a movie about it.

What I'm saying is that "properly implemented Kerberos" (your words) is a strong assurance, but it is NOT a guarantee of "rock solid". The first four versions of Kerberos all had various weaknesses that weren't discovered until after they were in use.

If Kerberos 5 has an as-yet-undiscovered weakness, it no longer meets the definition of rock solid, and whatever secrets it was protecting may now be exposed at every site relying on it. Do I think V5 has such a weakness? Doubtful, but let me put it this way: I had absolute faith in the security of PGP, which was shattered by the discovery that someone could tack an almost invisible escrow decryption agent into unsigned data attached to someone's public key. Now, I maintain what I consider to be a healthy skepticism in the supposed perfection of any system.

And regardless of the strength of the underlying authenticating technology, I believe proper implementation is a myth. Some sites are very, very good at it today, but reality issues always seem to creep in. Someone outsources someone else's task; and the outgoing employees stop caring, or the incoming contractors never care. Spies break into a factory or two and steal their private CA signing root keys. The offline server is accidentally left online. Joe gets drunk and forgets his keycard in the bar. Or a surrogate Mary McDonnell hooks up with the lead security architect via an XSS hack at match.com and pulls some shenanigans.

Central authentication isn't a panacea, it's just better than anything else we are willing to put up with at the moment.

I think we are arguing semantics. I easily interpreted "rewires brain" to mean what it says - "allows the brain to rewire itself". I did not picture some Brazil style surgery.

What does the shuttle 'imaging' team have to show us?

Images of the shuttle.

If JFK had the balls to make that call, and the governers of this country respect him, why have we not been back there?

If only someone whould have written the reasons down. We could call it history and stored those historical documents historical documents into places we could call libraries perhaps located in a complex called a university and people could come to look at them and learn why decisions were made.

It needs to be preserved, and expanded. Expansion is not possible while people are still fighting over things as trivial as religion, philosophy, and wealth. All three are fairly relative when you consider survival, are they not?

Sorry, I'd love to answer but after college I try to not get high before 8 AM.

What does the shuttle 'imaging' team have to show us?

Images of the shuttle.

If JFK had the balls to make that call, and the governers of this country respect him, why have we not been back there?

If only someone whould have written the reasons down. We could call it history and stored those historical documents historical documents into places we could call libraries perhaps located in a complex called a university and people could come to look at them and learn why decisions were made.

It needs to be preserved, and expanded. Expansion is not possible while people are still fighting over things as trivial as religion, philosophy, and wealth. All three are fairly relative when you consider survival, are they not?

Sorry, I'd love to answer but after college I try to not get high before 8 AM.

What does the shuttle 'imaging' team have to show us?

Images of the shuttle.

If JFK had the balls to make that call, and the governers of this country respect him, why have we not been back there?

If only someone whould have written the reasons down. We could call it history and stored those historical documents historical documents into places we could call libraries perhaps located in a complex called a university and people could come to look at them and learn why decisions were made.

It needs to be preserved, and expanded. Expansion is not possible while people are still fighting over things as trivial as religion, philosophy, and wealth. All three are fairly relative when you consider survival, are they not?

Sorry, I'd love to answer but after college I try to not get high before 8 AM.

What does the shuttle 'imaging' team have to show us?

Images of the shuttle.

If JFK had the balls to make that call, and the governers of this country respect him, why have we not been back there?

If only someone whould have written the reasons down. We could call it history and stored those historical documents historical documents into places we could call libraries perhaps located in a complex called a university and people could come to look at them and learn why decisions were made.

It needs to be preserved, and expanded. Expansion is not possible while people are still fighting over things as trivial as religion, philosophy, and wealth. All three are fairly relative when you consider survival, are they not?

Sorry, I'd love to answer but after college I try to not get high before 8 AM.