Seriously, what hardcore gamer actually spends enough time sleeping to have memorable dreams?
If you're sleeping that much, you're just wasting all that valuable game-playing time. You can get by with about half as much. Some hardcore gamer you are.
Re:Lazy, lazy writing
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6. Some of the Lostaways had pretty harsh and painful lives in the flash sideways which would seem weird for a group created dream world.
You just nailed the whole point of the flash-sideways world. The entire point.
The characters of the show, in some stage of their afterlife, were given the opportunity to experience what life without the island would have been like. How and why this happens is left unexplained, though it's pretty consistent with a number of religious beliefs about the nature of the afterlife and the re-examination of your own life as a part of that. It wasn't "heaven". It wasn't some fantasy world where everyone gets everything they ever want and nothing ever goes wrong. It was a place where the souls of the dead got to see what things would have been like if their one big wish ("I wish we had never crashed on that damn island") had come true.
And you know what? No one was happy. Not one of the characters had a happier existence without the island.
Gradually, as the characters began to encounter each other, they began to receive their awakening, remembering the events of the island, of their past lives. And with the perspective of their life in the "islandless world" of the afterlife, they came to realize that while the island was brutal and hard and in some cases deadly, it made their lives better, happier in the long run. With that enlightenment, they were ready to move on to the next stage of the afterlife, also left undefined.
Are you willing to go along with the writers of the show and accept this as the nature of the afterlife in the Lost world? Feel free to object based on your personal beliefs; after all, no one knows the answer for certain. But for this story, that's how it works. Either that's satisfying to you, or it isn't. But it certainly didn't seem like it was all "made up at the last minute".
Faraday remembers attempting to detonate the nuclear bomb because he's started along the path to enlightenment, to remembrance, but he only has a tiny piece of the puzzle.
Eloise has apparently had full enlightenment, but she's not ready to move on, instead selfishly trying to keep her son around. She fears Desmond will take him away from this existence, where she doesn't have to constantly confront the reality that she sent him to his death.
Jack's neck bleeding and Desmond's awakening corresponding with events of the real timeline is just artistic license. Jack's neck bleeding is part of his remembrance process; Desmond's remembrance occurs and he takes it upon himself to speed along the remembrance of the others by pushing them into situations with each other.
Did they make up the whole thing at the start of season six? Quite possibly. I don't know why everyone puts such weight behind the notion of knowing every detail of the end of a story before you begin to tell it. Yes, many storytellers have gotten so far off-track that they couldn't possibly make it back on. I don't think Lost reached that point. Some details were left unexplained, but the majority were answered, even if those answers don't satisfy everyone who was looking for an entirely non-mystical explanation.
Re:Jack's afterlife vs everyone's
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It's not "Jack's party". It's a plane of existence for all the souls who, for one reason or another, aren't ready to "move on". The process of becoming ready involved the remembrance of their lives, specifically the events on the island. The scene in the church included all of those members of Oceanic 815 who were ready to move on. Some, like Ana Lucia, were not.
Jin and Sun were being afforded a glimpse of their life without the island. They were hiding their relationship, running from Sun's father, generally unhappy. The island brought the two of them together, made a happy relationship of an unhappy one, actually improved their lives. Even led to the conception of their child, and kept them together even in death. Their realization of that fact, that the island was a net positive for them rather than a negative, helped them move on. In fact, similar stories abound for the rest of the group. Hurley would won the lottery with "non-cursed numbers" and led a charmed existence, but not a happy one, without Libby in it. Charlie would have continued his drug-fueled life without Claire. Jack could have been married to Juliet and had a son, but living a life without purpose; instead he got to save the world and find meaning. The island is implied to have given each of the characters a better life, even if it led to their death, even if it required a lot of hard work and strife. "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger", and all that.
The really confusing part was the appearance of Desmond, or more accurately, the appearance of Penny. Desmond, perhaps, we could consider an honorary castaway of the island. Penny, on the other hand, was only tangentially involved in the events of the island. Clearly Desmond and Penny would be seeking their eternal reward together... but for them to be included in the church scene became a stretch. Why not include Miles, or Richard, or Lapidus, etc.? If it were "815 members only", it would be understandable, but if you're making one exception to get Desmond in the group, how would a character like Lapidus be any less worthy of inclusion?
Eh. Not really important.
Re:So, my only question regarding Lost is
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No, this one's explainable.
Think of it like static electricity. You shuffle across the carpet a little, you touch a doorknob, you get a little shock. You shuffle across the carpet for a long time, you touch a doorknob, you get a bigger shock.
The stopper on the well of the source has been sitting in place, possibly for millenia. The stopper, the pool, maybe the room itself, whatever... it's been storing up that electromagnetic energy for that long. The Man in Black gets thrown into the source, and dies, presumably from the fall. His soul gets trapped on the island at the moment of death, like others who die on or near the island (e.g. Michael). Somehow (here's the funky mystical voodoo), by dying near the source, instead of being a powerless shade, he becomes a malevolent entity, able to manifest himself as a dead person, or as the smoke monster. The stored-up electromagnetic energy transforms him in such a way, via some unknown mechanism. Voodoo.
Desmond goes down the hole, under control, and doesn't die at the bottom. He's in a room full of electromagnetic energy, but he can resist it. He pulls the stopper. The water drains. The ENERGY drains.
When Jack goes down there, the electromagnetic energy that transformed the soul of the Man in Black isn't there any more. Even once he puts the stopper back, it hasn't had the time it needs to build up to any sort of lethal power. Jack doesn't need to resist electromagnetic energy, because Jack isn't experiencing it at full power. He gets only a little shock from the doorknob, not even enough to notice.
How does he climb back up the waterfall with a mortal stab wound in his side? WHY does he climb back up the waterfall with a mortal stab wound in his side? Who knows. That's the "trying to make good TV" part. It's no different than the TV superman behavior you see from Jack Bauer or any number of other action heroes. Either you can gripe about it, or you can call it another superpower of the island protector, or you can just move on. It's not important to the storyline where he dies from the stab wound; it's just good TV for him to die the same place he woke up on the island. Symmetry, and all that.
The "flash-sideways" may have appeared to take place during those days, but we discover at the end that it's not "real", meaning it's not affixed to what we perceive as the main flow of time and space. It was only "real" in the sense that the souls of the castaways were experiencing it, as some sort of preparation for the afterlife, or as the first stage of the afterlife, or whatever. Insert religious viewpoint as needed.
SO many people are complaining that the writers were hacks because "the whole thing was purgatory after all". That's NOT the explanation of the events of the show. The events on the island did happen (in the Lost-verse), and the "flash-sideways" purgatory was a completely separate story.
In the end, there were only three "special" characters in the whole show: the island protector (Allison Janney -> Jacob -> Jack -> Hurley -> unknown), the smoke monster (after the death of the Man in Black), and Desmond.
Desmond's still hard to explain. They say he was "created" by Jacob as a failsafe. Somehow (mystical island protector powers, activate!) Desmond was given a resistance to electromagnetism, allowing him to go down the waterfall and reach the source of the source (of course, of course) and unstopper it. AND, somehow the powerful electromagnetic effect that Widmore hit Desmond with, combined with Desmond being Desmond, gave him some glimpse into the nature of the island, the source, and everything that was happening... and perhaps also insight into the nature of the purgatory/afterlife, given his comments about them all "going to another place". And so he was able to guide the remaining events on the island and help set into motion the death of the smoke monster, and the near-destruction of the island itself.
Re:Season 6 was a complete disapoimtment
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And the ending made no sense at all taken with the departure of Kate, Sawyer and Clair on the plane. How does Kate end up at the funeral dead if she managed to fly off the island alive? Why even bother to get that group to the plane, if it is meaningless if they reached it or not?
This one's easy; clearly you didn't "get" the ending. The "funeral scene" was outside of time and space. Call it purgatory, call it the afterlife, whatever. If we were to try to affix it to the timeline, it would be at some point possibly MILLIONS of years after the events of the island. For Kate and the rest to escape had meaning. They got off the island and continued their lives, and someday they kicked the bucket, maybe dying in their sleep at 80 years old, or getting hit by a bus, or whatever. Their lives had whatever meaning you attach to a human life. Though for all we know, the plane ran out of fuel and the six of them crashed and died. The point is, it doesn't "matter" from the perspective of the main story arc, which chronologically ends with Jack's death. And it doesn't "matter" from the perspective of the "flash-sideways" timeline, which was really a "flash-never" timeline, because those events aren't "real" in the sense that we think of "real". They were experiences of a world that doesn't exist, a place where the souls of the dead go to experience some form of existence that prepares them to "move on" into the remainder of the afterlife.
Of course, the existence of such a place, though posited by many of the world's most prominent religions, is just as much "science fiction" as the existing of a magical electromagnetic energy source that can heal wounds, trap the souls of the deceased, turn men into smoke, and manipulate time and space when conjoined with a simple wooden wheel. Either you can accept that the show provides a mystical explanation of the events which transpired, or you can't. Those in the latter camp were doomed to be disappointed by any finale which didn't involve a physicist sitting in a room and lecturing the audience for an hour about how electromagnetism could totally allow time travel, etc. etc. Which for 99.9% of the audience would have been pretty boring.
The writers produced 121 hours of content and 1000 mysteries. Most of the central ones either got direct answers (which may or may not have been satisfying to you) or implied answers (which may or may not be evident to you). A few were overlooked or inadequately explained (the dead father in LA is a good one, though we can posit that Jacob's protector status has conferred him with mystical powers (protective touch, anti-aging cream, etc.), and this might allow him to manipulate the lives of the candidates even while they're not on the island, perhaps by directly causing Jack to hallucinate his father).
Was the ending perfect? No. Did we get all the answers? Not really, nor should we have.
Was it good TV?
Yes.
Re:Was Not Impressed at All
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The smoke monster had one consistent motivation: eliminate anyone it couldn't use.
For the vast majority of the show, the smoke monster was looking for one thing: a way to eliminate Jacob. It knows it can't harm Jacob directly; it has to convince someone else to do it. It tries with Richard, but Jacob survives and converts Richard to his side. So it bides its time. It tries to find someone susceptible to corruption, someone it can warp into a threat to Jacob.
Jacob, through Richard, maintains a group of followers on the island (the Others). They behave in much the same way that Jacob's "mother" did: be prepared to eliminate anyone on the island who gets too close to discovering its secret. When the Man in Black discovered "the source" (with the help of the other island denizens), his "mother" eliminated them. When the Dharma initiative was running their experiments, Ben (effectively an Other at that point) eliminated them. Jacob's group protected the island by eliminating anyone who might have posed a threat to the source, and replenishing its numbers from any new groups that arrive. To do this, it used its pipeline to the main world to quickly and easily research each new arrival, as well as observation from its "agents" implanted with each group. The group decided who could be assimilated and who could be ignored. What criteria it used is a mystery, but not an important one to solve.
The smoke monster has a similar MO: examine each new arrival to the island, looking for its own "candidate": someone who can be tricked into killing Jacob. It's been working on warping Ben for a long time now, but it needs as many backup plans as it can get. It probably kills the pilot to eliminate any chance of the pilot being able to signal for help using the plane's radio equipment. Maybe this is an unnecessary precaution, but wrecking the plane's instrumentation and killing its pilot is the sort of thing the smoke monster would do in order to keep the new arrivals trapped.
Note the scene just before the finale, where the smoke monster (as Locke) cuts the throat of Widmore's assistant and justifies it by saying "You told her not to talk to me, so she was of no use to me any more". That's its motivation for everything it does. Once a person has outlived its usefulness, it can be discarded or eliminated. It spared Ben, it spared Locke, it was prevented from killing the candidates by Jacob's touch... but it killed Eko after evaluating that he was of absolutely no use to it. The people in the temple, Jacob's followers, were unimportant to whether it could remain on the island... but they might have been able to explain things to the candidates, and protect them within the temple. So they were eliminated. While Jacob lived, eliminating them would only decrease the pool of potential candidates (for eliminating Jacob); with Jacob dead, they were useless, possibly dangerous to its plans, and so they were killed.
The smoke monster's motivations, now that they're revealed, are far more consistent than Jacob's. If Jacob knew that Ben was getting ready to turn on him, why not pacify him? Why antagonize him? The only answer the writers hint at is that Jacob has grown weary of being the island's protector, like his "mother" before him. She knew that eliminating the island's inhabitants would provoke the Man in Black to kill her; she was ready to pass on the defender role to Jacob. Similarly, Jacob may have been ready to pass on the defender role to someone else, so he allows Ben to kill him, even provokes it. It's an explanation, but perhaps a thin one... for someone in charge of defending the island, he left an awful lot to chance by not setting up the new protector before letting himself get killed.
In a future where everyone has a replicator, money will cease to have meaning, and our employment model will break down completely. I hardly think that "no one's getting paid to design new cars" will be at the top of anyone's list of issues.
Like you, most "active advertising" has no effect on me. When I want something, I search for options, compare prices, etc. And I rarely make impulse purchases. I suspect that the impact of active advertising will wane as more people who have grown up with search engines all their lives adopt the "I know how to find it when I want it" model of purchasing. Companies will eventually realize that they are getting less benefit from their advertisements, and change their methods or cut back. If this resulted in lower prices for the consumer I'd be all for it, but it's more likely that any advertising savings will be retained as profit rather than put into further discounts.
That said, there have certainly been times when advertising has made me aware of a product of interest to me that I would never have otherwise encountered, or more importantly, made me aware of a sale that I wouldn't otherwise have known about. Say I'm in the market for a big-screen TV. I do my searches, I find that the price is more than I'm willing to spend, I decide to wait. Then I hear an ad a few weeks later about a sale in which a TV that I want is $200 cheaper, putting it in the range I'm willing to spend. Without the ad, I probably wind up missing out on the sale. Sure, I could subscribe to a hundred different stores and have them all send me e-mails when they're doing sales, but I'd quickly be overwhelmed by the quantity of ads and not have the interest to read them all.
The ads that I don't understand are the ones that do nothing but promote an already established brand. If McDonald's wants to make me aware of a new sandwich that's on their menu, okay. I probably won't go buy it, but I understand the ad. If McDonald's just wants to make me aware that they exist... well, that was a total waste of time and money. Who doesn't know about McDonald's? It's like companies believe that I might forget they exist, or be swayed by some random jingle to give them a try again. I don't eat much at McDonald's because their food is unhealthy and often not very good either. Has nothing to do with forgetting their name, and nothing to do with their latest jingle.
As for ad-blocking software, go ahead and run it, especially if the ad companies can't tell that their message isn't getting through. Just don't destroy the wonderful world we live in, where corporate dollars sponsor things that I want so that I get them for free:)
2nd paragraph. Are you not tired of being a sucker? I mean a fish. I mean, the gullible guy at the table. Make you aware of your options? It costs them a lot of money to bring this info to you, so why are you so inclined to believe that you are being offered a good deal, or even a fair deal? They don't give two shits about your well-being, and if the profit may be maximized by screwing you, they will do just that. If not for FDA, for example, you'd never know that feel-good drugs may cause blindness and loss of interest below the belt. Or look at Apple's products: they are pieces of shit wrapped in white plastic. Look at the movie and music industries suing their own customers. Recall the Pinto fiasco. Look at the spam in your mailbox. These are but the tips of the shit-iceberg that is the modern marketing machine. If I wanted to be better informed about consumer products, I'd buy something like Consumer Reports, the advertiser's enemy #1.
Here's where your logic breaks down completely. You are assuming that transactions between a consumer and a producer are a zero-sum game. They're not.
In most transactions, both the consumer and the producer "win". The consumer gets something of value, and the producer gets something of value (typically money). Does that mean that a consumer will always obtain something at the lowest possible cost and therefore get the best possible value? No. Does that mean that consumers will always make smart decisions and never buy something they don't need? Certainly not. It is in the interests of a producer to obtain as much money as the market will bear for its goods, but that doesn't mean that a consumer is the "loser" in the transaction, only that in some transactions the producer will gain more value and the consumer will gain less (and vice-versa, for savvy consumers).
In fact, this is one of the reasons that advertising is VITAL in a free-market economy. If a consumer is in need of, say, a car, and there's only one car production company that the consumer is aware of, that consumer is going to spend any amount of money to obtain a car from that producer. If a competing company can advertise to the customer, then the two producers are in competition and the consumer benefits from lower prices, even when factoring in the overhead associated with the advertising costs.
Most of the stuff you threw out there is NOT an issue with advertising in general. The FDA is important for regulating product safety; Consumer Reports is important for regulating truth in advertising. Both of these are noble goals, and advertisers who promote harmful products (without appropriate consumer warnings) or who promote products with false statements should be penalized and/or prosecuted. That doesn't mean advertising in itself is inherently bad. Spam in your mailbox is traditionally evidence of a CRIME, as the vast majority of spam is generated by botnets of compromised PCs. Come up with a good way to regulate spam or prevent computer infections and I'm all for it; spam only makes money because of idiots who don't yet know how to recognize spam for what it is. As more people from technologically-unsavvy generations die out and are replaced by kids who are practically wired from birth, spam will become less and less profitable because more and more of the population will unconsciously block it out (and tools for blocking it will become better and better). Spam is not legitimate advertising and it doesn't support lower prices or free availability for goods and services; block away.
I'm not a fan of Apple, but a ton of their popularity comes from word of mouth, not advertising. They charge premium prices because they have a legion of loyal fans willing to pay those prices for both the technology and some sense of "coolness" that they inherently associate with all things Apple. I don't understand the obsession, but I can recognize it.
I don't have any expectation for a corporation or other producer to look out for "my well-being". That
First off, your price comparisons are off. Cats and other pets are not free; they require regular feeding and care. Playing your own instrument is closer to free, but still requires an initial cost to get the instrument and possibly small costs to maintain it. Plus, you may have to pay some fee to obtain music to play, or lessons on how to play, if you aren't naturally gifted. Still, let's accept that there are things you can do to entertain yourself that are almost entirely free.
Second, why do you believe that advertising, and not people themselves, determines what is most enjoyable? I enjoy walking in the park, but I would get bored with it pretty fast if that was my only option. It's not advertising that makes me like the experience of listening to music, watching a movie, or playing a game. Advertising might make me aware of my options, and might even push me towards a particular one (if said ad is well-crafted by my standards and persuades me that the music/movie/game might be something I would like). But it doesn't define my enjoyment of a thing. I would still enjoy music if advertising didn't exist.
Finally, my world would be a much bleaker and more expensive place if it weren't for advertising. Advertising lets me use Google to search for things of interest on the internet (free), and to use all the other great Google tools (free), and to visit sites like this one (free). It lets me listen to music free (via the radio or a site like Pandora). It lets me play some of my favorite web games free. With advertisers footing the bill, I get to enjoy a lot of the things I enjoy, WITHOUT having to pay a dime for them myself (excluding any basic costs like the internet connection itself or the hardware used to access said entertainment).
You want to know how to block ads? Train your mind, not your computer. Recognize that just because some disembodied voice is trying to convince you to buy something, YOU have the choice not to. If an ad becomes too obnoxious or intrusive, then by all means block it or go elsewhere. Me, when I see an ad that bothers me, I make it a point to avoid products from that source if I can reasonably choose a competitor's alternative. But if everyone took your advice, and advertising magically failed to work any more, then we'd all have to pay full cost for all the things we enjoy. That would be a tragedy.
There's definitely a concept of defense in Starcraft (and almost every other competitive video game). The question is whether the level of coordination and reflexes required to manipulate the mouse is sufficient to meet the definition of "athletic". Personally, I say no. If there existed a thought-based interface to control the game, where your strategic decisions were instantly translated into actions without requiring the intermediary of moving a mouse, the gameplay would be no different. By contrast, even contests with relatively low athletic requirements (such as fishing) could not be performed without actual physical activity. So I don't believe that Starcraft's physical component meets the necessary threshold for it to be considered a sport.
I'm not in any way disputing the athleticism needed to handle a professional racecar at high speeds. It definitely meets the athletic component standard of being a sport. I just wonder whether the use of sophisticated machinery by the participants should be considered another determining factor in sportshood. For example, I'd hesitate to call demolition derby a sport, even though there's athleticism (to control your vehicle) and defense (to avoid taking major damage from collisions). Same goes for games on the Wii, like Boom Blox or some elements of Wii Sports/Wii Sports Resort. There's definitely athleticism (hand-eye coordination, accuracy, precision) and defense. But few would say that these games should be considered a sport; any athletic ability involved is translated into success through a technological interface rather than through direct contact with the elements of the competition. I'd argue that this set of activities (racecar driving, demolition derby, video games with some demonstrable athletic component) should get its own category (technological competitions, or perhaps technological sports).
I consider neither fishing nor golf to be a sport. You can make an argument that athletic skill (such as hand-eye coordination and sometimes raw strength) plays a sufficient role in fishing, and it's clear that precision and strength both play a significant role in golf. However, by my definition these are both athletic competitions, not sports. Darts is also an athletic competition, not a sport. Same for diving, ballroom dancing, and any stay-in-your-lane racing.
Billiards I would consider a sport. There's clearly an athletic component which plays a major factor in the outcome; strength, accuracy, and precision are all important. In addition, there's a concept which I believe is crucial to separating sports from other competitions: defense. In any sport, you must be able to do something within the rules to defend against your opponent's ability to win. In baseball, players field the balls that are hit. In football, defenders tackle offensive players. Even in some races, you can position your body such that other competitors have to expend additional energy to pass around you. By contrast, the other athletic competitions mentioned above have no notion of defense. A 100m sprint could have one participant in New York and the other in Tokyo, and assuming that all event conditions could be accurately replicated the race would be completely fair. Same goes for golf; you can't block an opponent's shot with your own ball or do anything else (within the rules) to disrupt your opponent's ability to complete a hole.
Car racing meets both of the above conditions: must have an athletic component, and must involve a notion of defense. I'm not certain whether to truly consider it a sport; you can make an argument that any competition which relies on a sufficiently complex piece of equipment (such as a car, a boat, or a computer) cannot be considered a sport. Same goes for equestrian sports like horse racing or polo; I'd be more inclined to call them sports than I would car racing, but it's clearly a gray area.
I don't think your definition of sport works too well. After all, there are a lot of competitive games which might be watched with interest by someone who has no interest in participating themselves. Where is the threshold for your definition? If there are people who are sufficiently interested in watching poker that it could be called a sport, could you say the same of blackjack? Spades? Canasta? 52 pickup? Would you consider a collectible card game like Pokemon to be a sport? What about something like stamp collecting? I'm sure there are people who are interested in stamp collecting even though they don't collect stamps themselves (perhaps because of lack of funds), and it's definitely competitive. Is competitive eating truly a sport? What about two people sitting in a bar who are each trying to outdrink the other, with others watching as they go shot for shot? I feel that judging "sportshood" based on the interest level of non-participants would provide a very watered-down definition of what it means to be a sport.
One of the differentiating factors between a "sport" and a "game" is the involvement of an athletic element. You could make an argument that operating a keyboard and mouse qualifies, but it would be highly tenuous at best, similar to saying that speed chess is a sport because one of the factors is how fast a participant can move his hand from the board to the button on the clock. I don't believe Starcraft or any "stationary" video game qualifies; you could make a case for Dance Dance Revolution competitions as a sport, though in my eyes they fail to meet other criteria.
This is meant to take nothing away from the enjoyment or competitiveness of video game competitions and tournaments. But they're not sports. They're gaming contests. Big difference.
An even better analogy would be that you rented a house from Verizon for one month, and then you stayed in that house for the whole month, but after ten days Verizon came back and said "sorry, we weren't expecting to use ALL the rooms in the house... from now on you can only use the first floor, or you can pay us some more money to continue using the whole house".
You're definitely doing it wrong. In our version of the game, any armies you eliminate when conquering a country reappear at the end of the turn as "insurgents". Each turn thereafter, the occupier of the country removes one of the insurgents, rolls 1d6, and loses that many of his own armies. And every time you move more units into a territory with insurgents, that many more insurgents appear to oppose you.
Funny, our game's been going for a few months now and no one has attacked anyone yet...
Interesting. We could pass a law requiring that any time a newspaper is forced to print a retraction (not a simply typo clarification, but a real retraction for cause), that it has to take the same amount of space on the same pages as the original story/stories. That might make them a little more careful about what they run.
Whose time and energy are you taking away? The actors? The screenwriters? The producers? They all got paid already. If downloading and watching a torrented movie is "theft of labor", then so is DVRing a television show and skipping the commercials. Should we prosecute that too?
If this law were actually to be enforced the government would be overthrown overnight. The entire population would take to the streets and just toss the entire government our, as virtually everyone would either be a felon or a close friend/family of a felon.
You make the assumption that the law would be enforced on everyone all at once. If this effort succeeds in "scaring enough people straight", it won't have to be. They'll arrest and try a few people, there will be complaints, but nothing much will happen. And each time someone gets convicted, or pleads out, it'll get easier and easier to enforce. Until eventually there won't be enough resistance for the sort of revolt you're envisioning.
All this will do is force Torrenters to move to a new level of obfuscation to protect themselves from getting caught.
Sadly, I don't think you and I are going to be consulted on how to architect a governmental framework to protect against such abuses... certainly not by either of the two major parties, who are more than happy to trade off the seat of power, just so long as it keeps all its power. No matter how they may complain about the abuses of the other party while they're out campaigning, they certainly don't make a single effort to rein in such abuses once it's their turn in the big chair.
But yes, I agree that in an ideal world, a better framework would be constructed and in place before we considered anything like this idea. Problem is, as another poster noted, we're going to reach the point where this sort of thing happens LONG before we're going to have a meaningful overhaul of the government's abilities.
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If you're not putting in Seth Green as Joker, then Josh Gomez would be a much better choice than Zach Levi.
You might be able to get away with Levi as Kaiden though...
I see you've played Tecmo Bowl too.
This is complete and utter crap.
Seriously, what hardcore gamer actually spends enough time sleeping to have memorable dreams?
If you're sleeping that much, you're just wasting all that valuable game-playing time. You can get by with about half as much. Some hardcore gamer you are.
6. Some of the Lostaways had pretty harsh and painful lives in the flash sideways which would seem weird for a group created dream world.
You just nailed the whole point of the flash-sideways world. The entire point.
The characters of the show, in some stage of their afterlife, were given the opportunity to experience what life without the island would have been like. How and why this happens is left unexplained, though it's pretty consistent with a number of religious beliefs about the nature of the afterlife and the re-examination of your own life as a part of that. It wasn't "heaven". It wasn't some fantasy world where everyone gets everything they ever want and nothing ever goes wrong. It was a place where the souls of the dead got to see what things would have been like if their one big wish ("I wish we had never crashed on that damn island") had come true.
And you know what? No one was happy. Not one of the characters had a happier existence without the island.
Gradually, as the characters began to encounter each other, they began to receive their awakening, remembering the events of the island, of their past lives. And with the perspective of their life in the "islandless world" of the afterlife, they came to realize that while the island was brutal and hard and in some cases deadly, it made their lives better, happier in the long run. With that enlightenment, they were ready to move on to the next stage of the afterlife, also left undefined.
Are you willing to go along with the writers of the show and accept this as the nature of the afterlife in the Lost world? Feel free to object based on your personal beliefs; after all, no one knows the answer for certain. But for this story, that's how it works. Either that's satisfying to you, or it isn't. But it certainly didn't seem like it was all "made up at the last minute".
Faraday remembers attempting to detonate the nuclear bomb because he's started along the path to enlightenment, to remembrance, but he only has a tiny piece of the puzzle.
Eloise has apparently had full enlightenment, but she's not ready to move on, instead selfishly trying to keep her son around. She fears Desmond will take him away from this existence, where she doesn't have to constantly confront the reality that she sent him to his death.
Jack's neck bleeding and Desmond's awakening corresponding with events of the real timeline is just artistic license. Jack's neck bleeding is part of his remembrance process; Desmond's remembrance occurs and he takes it upon himself to speed along the remembrance of the others by pushing them into situations with each other.
Did they make up the whole thing at the start of season six? Quite possibly. I don't know why everyone puts such weight behind the notion of knowing every detail of the end of a story before you begin to tell it. Yes, many storytellers have gotten so far off-track that they couldn't possibly make it back on. I don't think Lost reached that point. Some details were left unexplained, but the majority were answered, even if those answers don't satisfy everyone who was looking for an entirely non-mystical explanation.
It's not "Jack's party". It's a plane of existence for all the souls who, for one reason or another, aren't ready to "move on". The process of becoming ready involved the remembrance of their lives, specifically the events on the island. The scene in the church included all of those members of Oceanic 815 who were ready to move on. Some, like Ana Lucia, were not.
Jin and Sun were being afforded a glimpse of their life without the island. They were hiding their relationship, running from Sun's father, generally unhappy. The island brought the two of them together, made a happy relationship of an unhappy one, actually improved their lives. Even led to the conception of their child, and kept them together even in death. Their realization of that fact, that the island was a net positive for them rather than a negative, helped them move on. In fact, similar stories abound for the rest of the group. Hurley would won the lottery with "non-cursed numbers" and led a charmed existence, but not a happy one, without Libby in it. Charlie would have continued his drug-fueled life without Claire. Jack could have been married to Juliet and had a son, but living a life without purpose; instead he got to save the world and find meaning. The island is implied to have given each of the characters a better life, even if it led to their death, even if it required a lot of hard work and strife. "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger", and all that.
The really confusing part was the appearance of Desmond, or more accurately, the appearance of Penny. Desmond, perhaps, we could consider an honorary castaway of the island. Penny, on the other hand, was only tangentially involved in the events of the island. Clearly Desmond and Penny would be seeking their eternal reward together... but for them to be included in the church scene became a stretch. Why not include Miles, or Richard, or Lapidus, etc.? If it were "815 members only", it would be understandable, but if you're making one exception to get Desmond in the group, how would a character like Lapidus be any less worthy of inclusion?
Eh. Not really important.
No, this one's explainable.
Think of it like static electricity. You shuffle across the carpet a little, you touch a doorknob, you get a little shock. You shuffle across the carpet for a long time, you touch a doorknob, you get a bigger shock.
The stopper on the well of the source has been sitting in place, possibly for millenia. The stopper, the pool, maybe the room itself, whatever... it's been storing up that electromagnetic energy for that long. The Man in Black gets thrown into the source, and dies, presumably from the fall. His soul gets trapped on the island at the moment of death, like others who die on or near the island (e.g. Michael). Somehow (here's the funky mystical voodoo), by dying near the source, instead of being a powerless shade, he becomes a malevolent entity, able to manifest himself as a dead person, or as the smoke monster. The stored-up electromagnetic energy transforms him in such a way, via some unknown mechanism. Voodoo.
Desmond goes down the hole, under control, and doesn't die at the bottom. He's in a room full of electromagnetic energy, but he can resist it. He pulls the stopper. The water drains. The ENERGY drains.
When Jack goes down there, the electromagnetic energy that transformed the soul of the Man in Black isn't there any more. Even once he puts the stopper back, it hasn't had the time it needs to build up to any sort of lethal power. Jack doesn't need to resist electromagnetic energy, because Jack isn't experiencing it at full power. He gets only a little shock from the doorknob, not even enough to notice.
How does he climb back up the waterfall with a mortal stab wound in his side? WHY does he climb back up the waterfall with a mortal stab wound in his side? Who knows. That's the "trying to make good TV" part. It's no different than the TV superman behavior you see from Jack Bauer or any number of other action heroes. Either you can gripe about it, or you can call it another superpower of the island protector, or you can just move on. It's not important to the storyline where he dies from the stab wound; it's just good TV for him to die the same place he woke up on the island. Symmetry, and all that.
The "flash-sideways" may have appeared to take place during those days, but we discover at the end that it's not "real", meaning it's not affixed to what we perceive as the main flow of time and space. It was only "real" in the sense that the souls of the castaways were experiencing it, as some sort of preparation for the afterlife, or as the first stage of the afterlife, or whatever. Insert religious viewpoint as needed.
SO many people are complaining that the writers were hacks because "the whole thing was purgatory after all". That's NOT the explanation of the events of the show. The events on the island did happen (in the Lost-verse), and the "flash-sideways" purgatory was a completely separate story.
In the end, there were only three "special" characters in the whole show: the island protector (Allison Janney -> Jacob -> Jack -> Hurley -> unknown), the smoke monster (after the death of the Man in Black), and Desmond.
Desmond's still hard to explain. They say he was "created" by Jacob as a failsafe. Somehow (mystical island protector powers, activate!) Desmond was given a resistance to electromagnetism, allowing him to go down the waterfall and reach the source of the source (of course, of course) and unstopper it. AND, somehow the powerful electromagnetic effect that Widmore hit Desmond with, combined with Desmond being Desmond, gave him some glimpse into the nature of the island, the source, and everything that was happening... and perhaps also insight into the nature of the purgatory/afterlife, given his comments about them all "going to another place". And so he was able to guide the remaining events on the island and help set into motion the death of the smoke monster, and the near-destruction of the island itself.
And the ending made no sense at all taken with the departure of Kate, Sawyer and Clair on the plane. How does Kate end up at the funeral dead if she managed to fly off the island alive? Why even bother to get that group to the plane, if it is meaningless if they reached it or not?
This one's easy; clearly you didn't "get" the ending. The "funeral scene" was outside of time and space. Call it purgatory, call it the afterlife, whatever. If we were to try to affix it to the timeline, it would be at some point possibly MILLIONS of years after the events of the island. For Kate and the rest to escape had meaning. They got off the island and continued their lives, and someday they kicked the bucket, maybe dying in their sleep at 80 years old, or getting hit by a bus, or whatever. Their lives had whatever meaning you attach to a human life. Though for all we know, the plane ran out of fuel and the six of them crashed and died. The point is, it doesn't "matter" from the perspective of the main story arc, which chronologically ends with Jack's death. And it doesn't "matter" from the perspective of the "flash-sideways" timeline, which was really a "flash-never" timeline, because those events aren't "real" in the sense that we think of "real". They were experiences of a world that doesn't exist, a place where the souls of the dead go to experience some form of existence that prepares them to "move on" into the remainder of the afterlife.
Of course, the existence of such a place, though posited by many of the world's most prominent religions, is just as much "science fiction" as the existing of a magical electromagnetic energy source that can heal wounds, trap the souls of the deceased, turn men into smoke, and manipulate time and space when conjoined with a simple wooden wheel. Either you can accept that the show provides a mystical explanation of the events which transpired, or you can't. Those in the latter camp were doomed to be disappointed by any finale which didn't involve a physicist sitting in a room and lecturing the audience for an hour about how electromagnetism could totally allow time travel, etc. etc. Which for 99.9% of the audience would have been pretty boring.
The writers produced 121 hours of content and 1000 mysteries. Most of the central ones either got direct answers (which may or may not have been satisfying to you) or implied answers (which may or may not be evident to you). A few were overlooked or inadequately explained (the dead father in LA is a good one, though we can posit that Jacob's protector status has conferred him with mystical powers (protective touch, anti-aging cream, etc.), and this might allow him to manipulate the lives of the candidates even while they're not on the island, perhaps by directly causing Jack to hallucinate his father).
Was the ending perfect? No. Did we get all the answers? Not really, nor should we have.
Was it good TV?
Yes.
The smoke monster had one consistent motivation: eliminate anyone it couldn't use.
For the vast majority of the show, the smoke monster was looking for one thing: a way to eliminate Jacob. It knows it can't harm Jacob directly; it has to convince someone else to do it. It tries with Richard, but Jacob survives and converts Richard to his side. So it bides its time. It tries to find someone susceptible to corruption, someone it can warp into a threat to Jacob.
Jacob, through Richard, maintains a group of followers on the island (the Others). They behave in much the same way that Jacob's "mother" did: be prepared to eliminate anyone on the island who gets too close to discovering its secret. When the Man in Black discovered "the source" (with the help of the other island denizens), his "mother" eliminated them. When the Dharma initiative was running their experiments, Ben (effectively an Other at that point) eliminated them. Jacob's group protected the island by eliminating anyone who might have posed a threat to the source, and replenishing its numbers from any new groups that arrive. To do this, it used its pipeline to the main world to quickly and easily research each new arrival, as well as observation from its "agents" implanted with each group. The group decided who could be assimilated and who could be ignored. What criteria it used is a mystery, but not an important one to solve.
The smoke monster has a similar MO: examine each new arrival to the island, looking for its own "candidate": someone who can be tricked into killing Jacob. It's been working on warping Ben for a long time now, but it needs as many backup plans as it can get. It probably kills the pilot to eliminate any chance of the pilot being able to signal for help using the plane's radio equipment. Maybe this is an unnecessary precaution, but wrecking the plane's instrumentation and killing its pilot is the sort of thing the smoke monster would do in order to keep the new arrivals trapped.
Note the scene just before the finale, where the smoke monster (as Locke) cuts the throat of Widmore's assistant and justifies it by saying "You told her not to talk to me, so she was of no use to me any more". That's its motivation for everything it does. Once a person has outlived its usefulness, it can be discarded or eliminated. It spared Ben, it spared Locke, it was prevented from killing the candidates by Jacob's touch... but it killed Eko after evaluating that he was of absolutely no use to it. The people in the temple, Jacob's followers, were unimportant to whether it could remain on the island... but they might have been able to explain things to the candidates, and protect them within the temple. So they were eliminated. While Jacob lived, eliminating them would only decrease the pool of potential candidates (for eliminating Jacob); with Jacob dead, they were useless, possibly dangerous to its plans, and so they were killed.
The smoke monster's motivations, now that they're revealed, are far more consistent than Jacob's. If Jacob knew that Ben was getting ready to turn on him, why not pacify him? Why antagonize him? The only answer the writers hint at is that Jacob has grown weary of being the island's protector, like his "mother" before him. She knew that eliminating the island's inhabitants would provoke the Man in Black to kill her; she was ready to pass on the defender role to Jacob. Similarly, Jacob may have been ready to pass on the defender role to someone else, so he allows Ben to kill him, even provokes it. It's an explanation, but perhaps a thin one... for someone in charge of defending the island, he left an awful lot to chance by not setting up the new protector before letting himself get killed.
In a future where everyone has a replicator, money will cease to have meaning, and our employment model will break down completely. I hardly think that "no one's getting paid to design new cars" will be at the top of anyone's list of issues.
It's not really a very good pun.
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Like you, most "active advertising" has no effect on me. When I want something, I search for options, compare prices, etc. And I rarely make impulse purchases. I suspect that the impact of active advertising will wane as more people who have grown up with search engines all their lives adopt the "I know how to find it when I want it" model of purchasing. Companies will eventually realize that they are getting less benefit from their advertisements, and change their methods or cut back. If this resulted in lower prices for the consumer I'd be all for it, but it's more likely that any advertising savings will be retained as profit rather than put into further discounts.
That said, there have certainly been times when advertising has made me aware of a product of interest to me that I would never have otherwise encountered, or more importantly, made me aware of a sale that I wouldn't otherwise have known about. Say I'm in the market for a big-screen TV. I do my searches, I find that the price is more than I'm willing to spend, I decide to wait. Then I hear an ad a few weeks later about a sale in which a TV that I want is $200 cheaper, putting it in the range I'm willing to spend. Without the ad, I probably wind up missing out on the sale. Sure, I could subscribe to a hundred different stores and have them all send me e-mails when they're doing sales, but I'd quickly be overwhelmed by the quantity of ads and not have the interest to read them all.
The ads that I don't understand are the ones that do nothing but promote an already established brand. If McDonald's wants to make me aware of a new sandwich that's on their menu, okay. I probably won't go buy it, but I understand the ad. If McDonald's just wants to make me aware that they exist... well, that was a total waste of time and money. Who doesn't know about McDonald's? It's like companies believe that I might forget they exist, or be swayed by some random jingle to give them a try again. I don't eat much at McDonald's because their food is unhealthy and often not very good either. Has nothing to do with forgetting their name, and nothing to do with their latest jingle.
As for ad-blocking software, go ahead and run it, especially if the ad companies can't tell that their message isn't getting through. Just don't destroy the wonderful world we live in, where corporate dollars sponsor things that I want so that I get them for free :)
2nd paragraph. Are you not tired of being a sucker? I mean a fish. I mean, the gullible guy at the table. Make you aware of your options? It costs them a lot of money to bring this info to you, so why are you so inclined to believe that you are being offered a good deal, or even a fair deal? They don't give two shits about your well-being, and if the profit may be maximized by screwing you, they will do just that. If not for FDA, for example, you'd never know that feel-good drugs may cause blindness and loss of interest below the belt. Or look at Apple's products: they are pieces of shit wrapped in white plastic. Look at the movie and music industries suing their own customers. Recall the Pinto fiasco. Look at the spam in your mailbox. These are but the tips of the shit-iceberg that is the modern marketing machine. If I wanted to be better informed about consumer products, I'd buy something like Consumer Reports, the advertiser's enemy #1.
Here's where your logic breaks down completely. You are assuming that transactions between a consumer and a producer are a zero-sum game. They're not.
In most transactions, both the consumer and the producer "win". The consumer gets something of value, and the producer gets something of value (typically money). Does that mean that a consumer will always obtain something at the lowest possible cost and therefore get the best possible value? No. Does that mean that consumers will always make smart decisions and never buy something they don't need? Certainly not. It is in the interests of a producer to obtain as much money as the market will bear for its goods, but that doesn't mean that a consumer is the "loser" in the transaction, only that in some transactions the producer will gain more value and the consumer will gain less (and vice-versa, for savvy consumers).
In fact, this is one of the reasons that advertising is VITAL in a free-market economy. If a consumer is in need of, say, a car, and there's only one car production company that the consumer is aware of, that consumer is going to spend any amount of money to obtain a car from that producer. If a competing company can advertise to the customer, then the two producers are in competition and the consumer benefits from lower prices, even when factoring in the overhead associated with the advertising costs.
Most of the stuff you threw out there is NOT an issue with advertising in general. The FDA is important for regulating product safety; Consumer Reports is important for regulating truth in advertising. Both of these are noble goals, and advertisers who promote harmful products (without appropriate consumer warnings) or who promote products with false statements should be penalized and/or prosecuted. That doesn't mean advertising in itself is inherently bad. Spam in your mailbox is traditionally evidence of a CRIME, as the vast majority of spam is generated by botnets of compromised PCs. Come up with a good way to regulate spam or prevent computer infections and I'm all for it; spam only makes money because of idiots who don't yet know how to recognize spam for what it is. As more people from technologically-unsavvy generations die out and are replaced by kids who are practically wired from birth, spam will become less and less profitable because more and more of the population will unconsciously block it out (and tools for blocking it will become better and better). Spam is not legitimate advertising and it doesn't support lower prices or free availability for goods and services; block away.
I'm not a fan of Apple, but a ton of their popularity comes from word of mouth, not advertising. They charge premium prices because they have a legion of loyal fans willing to pay those prices for both the technology and some sense of "coolness" that they inherently associate with all things Apple. I don't understand the obsession, but I can recognize it.
I don't have any expectation for a corporation or other producer to look out for "my well-being". That
So many flaws, so little time.
First off, your price comparisons are off. Cats and other pets are not free; they require regular feeding and care. Playing your own instrument is closer to free, but still requires an initial cost to get the instrument and possibly small costs to maintain it. Plus, you may have to pay some fee to obtain music to play, or lessons on how to play, if you aren't naturally gifted. Still, let's accept that there are things you can do to entertain yourself that are almost entirely free.
Second, why do you believe that advertising, and not people themselves, determines what is most enjoyable? I enjoy walking in the park, but I would get bored with it pretty fast if that was my only option. It's not advertising that makes me like the experience of listening to music, watching a movie, or playing a game. Advertising might make me aware of my options, and might even push me towards a particular one (if said ad is well-crafted by my standards and persuades me that the music/movie/game might be something I would like). But it doesn't define my enjoyment of a thing. I would still enjoy music if advertising didn't exist.
Finally, my world would be a much bleaker and more expensive place if it weren't for advertising. Advertising lets me use Google to search for things of interest on the internet (free), and to use all the other great Google tools (free), and to visit sites like this one (free). It lets me listen to music free (via the radio or a site like Pandora). It lets me play some of my favorite web games free. With advertisers footing the bill, I get to enjoy a lot of the things I enjoy, WITHOUT having to pay a dime for them myself (excluding any basic costs like the internet connection itself or the hardware used to access said entertainment).
You want to know how to block ads? Train your mind, not your computer. Recognize that just because some disembodied voice is trying to convince you to buy something, YOU have the choice not to. If an ad becomes too obnoxious or intrusive, then by all means block it or go elsewhere. Me, when I see an ad that bothers me, I make it a point to avoid products from that source if I can reasonably choose a competitor's alternative. But if everyone took your advice, and advertising magically failed to work any more, then we'd all have to pay full cost for all the things we enjoy. That would be a tragedy.
There's definitely a concept of defense in Starcraft (and almost every other competitive video game). The question is whether the level of coordination and reflexes required to manipulate the mouse is sufficient to meet the definition of "athletic". Personally, I say no. If there existed a thought-based interface to control the game, where your strategic decisions were instantly translated into actions without requiring the intermediary of moving a mouse, the gameplay would be no different. By contrast, even contests with relatively low athletic requirements (such as fishing) could not be performed without actual physical activity. So I don't believe that Starcraft's physical component meets the necessary threshold for it to be considered a sport.
I'm not in any way disputing the athleticism needed to handle a professional racecar at high speeds. It definitely meets the athletic component standard of being a sport. I just wonder whether the use of sophisticated machinery by the participants should be considered another determining factor in sportshood. For example, I'd hesitate to call demolition derby a sport, even though there's athleticism (to control your vehicle) and defense (to avoid taking major damage from collisions). Same goes for games on the Wii, like Boom Blox or some elements of Wii Sports/Wii Sports Resort. There's definitely athleticism (hand-eye coordination, accuracy, precision) and defense. But few would say that these games should be considered a sport; any athletic ability involved is translated into success through a technological interface rather than through direct contact with the elements of the competition. I'd argue that this set of activities (racecar driving, demolition derby, video games with some demonstrable athletic component) should get its own category (technological competitions, or perhaps technological sports).
I consider neither fishing nor golf to be a sport. You can make an argument that athletic skill (such as hand-eye coordination and sometimes raw strength) plays a sufficient role in fishing, and it's clear that precision and strength both play a significant role in golf. However, by my definition these are both athletic competitions, not sports. Darts is also an athletic competition, not a sport. Same for diving, ballroom dancing, and any stay-in-your-lane racing.
Billiards I would consider a sport. There's clearly an athletic component which plays a major factor in the outcome; strength, accuracy, and precision are all important. In addition, there's a concept which I believe is crucial to separating sports from other competitions: defense. In any sport, you must be able to do something within the rules to defend against your opponent's ability to win. In baseball, players field the balls that are hit. In football, defenders tackle offensive players. Even in some races, you can position your body such that other competitors have to expend additional energy to pass around you. By contrast, the other athletic competitions mentioned above have no notion of defense. A 100m sprint could have one participant in New York and the other in Tokyo, and assuming that all event conditions could be accurately replicated the race would be completely fair. Same goes for golf; you can't block an opponent's shot with your own ball or do anything else (within the rules) to disrupt your opponent's ability to complete a hole.
Car racing meets both of the above conditions: must have an athletic component, and must involve a notion of defense. I'm not certain whether to truly consider it a sport; you can make an argument that any competition which relies on a sufficiently complex piece of equipment (such as a car, a boat, or a computer) cannot be considered a sport. Same goes for equestrian sports like horse racing or polo; I'd be more inclined to call them sports than I would car racing, but it's clearly a gray area.
I don't think your definition of sport works too well. After all, there are a lot of competitive games which might be watched with interest by someone who has no interest in participating themselves. Where is the threshold for your definition? If there are people who are sufficiently interested in watching poker that it could be called a sport, could you say the same of blackjack? Spades? Canasta? 52 pickup? Would you consider a collectible card game like Pokemon to be a sport? What about something like stamp collecting? I'm sure there are people who are interested in stamp collecting even though they don't collect stamps themselves (perhaps because of lack of funds), and it's definitely competitive. Is competitive eating truly a sport? What about two people sitting in a bar who are each trying to outdrink the other, with others watching as they go shot for shot? I feel that judging "sportshood" based on the interest level of non-participants would provide a very watered-down definition of what it means to be a sport.
One of the differentiating factors between a "sport" and a "game" is the involvement of an athletic element. You could make an argument that operating a keyboard and mouse qualifies, but it would be highly tenuous at best, similar to saying that speed chess is a sport because one of the factors is how fast a participant can move his hand from the board to the button on the clock. I don't believe Starcraft or any "stationary" video game qualifies; you could make a case for Dance Dance Revolution competitions as a sport, though in my eyes they fail to meet other criteria.
This is meant to take nothing away from the enjoyment or competitiveness of video game competitions and tournaments. But they're not sports. They're gaming contests. Big difference.
An even better analogy would be that you rented a house from Verizon for one month, and then you stayed in that house for the whole month, but after ten days Verizon came back and said "sorry, we weren't expecting to use ALL the rooms in the house... from now on you can only use the first floor, or you can pay us some more money to continue using the whole house".
You're definitely doing it wrong. In our version of the game, any armies you eliminate when conquering a country reappear at the end of the turn as "insurgents". Each turn thereafter, the occupier of the country removes one of the insurgents, rolls 1d6, and loses that many of his own armies. And every time you move more units into a territory with insurgents, that many more insurgents appear to oppose you.
Funny, our game's been going for a few months now and no one has attacked anyone yet...
Interesting. We could pass a law requiring that any time a newspaper is forced to print a retraction (not a simply typo clarification, but a real retraction for cause), that it has to take the same amount of space on the same pages as the original story/stories. That might make them a little more careful about what they run.
Whose time and energy are you taking away? The actors? The screenwriters? The producers? They all got paid already. If downloading and watching a torrented movie is "theft of labor", then so is DVRing a television show and skipping the commercials. Should we prosecute that too?
If this law were actually to be enforced the government would be overthrown overnight. The entire population would take to the streets and just toss the entire government our, as virtually everyone would either be a felon or a close friend/family of a felon.
You make the assumption that the law would be enforced on everyone all at once. If this effort succeeds in "scaring enough people straight", it won't have to be. They'll arrest and try a few people, there will be complaints, but nothing much will happen. And each time someone gets convicted, or pleads out, it'll get easier and easier to enforce. Until eventually there won't be enough resistance for the sort of revolt you're envisioning.
All this will do is force Torrenters to move to a new level of obfuscation to protect themselves from getting caught.
Sadly, I don't think you and I are going to be consulted on how to architect a governmental framework to protect against such abuses... certainly not by either of the two major parties, who are more than happy to trade off the seat of power, just so long as it keeps all its power. No matter how they may complain about the abuses of the other party while they're out campaigning, they certainly don't make a single effort to rein in such abuses once it's their turn in the big chair.
But yes, I agree that in an ideal world, a better framework would be constructed and in place before we considered anything like this idea. Problem is, as another poster noted, we're going to reach the point where this sort of thing happens LONG before we're going to have a meaningful overhaul of the government's abilities.