There are so many places they could go with their plot motifs (Man vs. Himself can be seen in the motif of a stranded person surving the odds and their personal self-doubt until rescued, for example.) Science fictions offers endless variety of these!
Cambellian science fiction was all about asking "What if?" Where has that gone with this franchise? Technobabble, non-sense and special effects usually. The problem Trek has been accused of often is not thinking about the consequences of certain technologies. Great examples are missed opportunities with cloaking and teleportation or explaining how the toilets on the Enterprise work (if in fact they are connected in some obscure way with the food replicator).
In stead of asking a What If question about technology we are usually instead given a song and dance routine by Data, a sexual episode between data and a real woman, a lame space battle (sit down B5 folks already) or some dumb ass plot where they come across a planet populated ONLY by Gangsters/Sou Chefs/Half Naked Californians.
Oh, and one more plot about dystopia and I will scream.
I'm not asking that they make their movies as stunningly boring as, say anything written by Robert L. Forward (*great* scientist - lousy story teller in my humble opinion). But get some real writters: David Brin, Greg Bear, Vernor Vinge even! These guys could take that Franchise where No Science Fiction Franchise has ever gone before!
Well, that's my piece. Thanks for listening. --Peter
I once was in what the British call a "Gilley" (spelling) Suit. This is your basic battledress with camo pattern along with a netting with artificial leaves. The leaves were simply strips from an anti-radar cover. Running around in this set up did rather draw the eye. However, when I went to ground in the forest I disappeared. A Marine veteran with 15 years experience saw me go down 20 feet from his position. 10 seconds later he communicated he had no idea where I was.
You don't have to have perfect camo for it to be effective. Break up shapes, blend in with the local color and you are ready to roll. The problem with the suit mentioned above was, what happens when I move out of the forest and into an urban environment? Obviously I would be a lot easier to spot than someone in just regular dark clothing. A well camouflaged man who is a poor shot will probably survive longer than the poorly concealed expert sniper.
A system like this could be useful, depending on how it generates color and how well it minimizes shine. Nothing gets the attention more than something shiney. That is why snipers often camoflage their weapons as well.
I totally agree on "Out of this World" -- one of the very few games I was upset to see end. Extremely compelling, no dialog other than "ow!"
I can see a movie being made with no dialog, all action and only implicit script. Look at Aeon Flux. That is essencially what Alea is talking about, right?
Settlers is one of my favorites too. It has a lot of expansions (some good, some not). I think the basic 4 player game is one of the best balanced games ever created. Non-gamers/geeks like it too, usually.
There is a card game version that is also great for 2 people. Highly recommended!
"After everyone had gone home, the researchers faced a nail-biting wait for the telemetry officers to come in from the dust with their precious data, before analysis could occur."
Don't they have some form of high speed network they can just FTP the data over? Why did they have to wait for these guys to come back from remote tracking stations? Anyone know?
You absolutely owe it to yourself to check out "Napoleon in Europe". (http://www.eaglegames.com). This game rocks. It has more advanced rules, an interesting innovation system and some great, great game pieces! It costs $7.50 per LBS.!!! Give it a look, my gang of players loves it.
Isn't the real problem in that the way patents are applied for the office in unable to make proper examinaitions of each claim? Does this problem with patenting happen in other fields? Last week I was on an 1842 Steam Locomotive and noticed that the butterfly hindged doors on the coal feed was granted patent #3. I thought to myself; here is something that is of a simple design, clearly useful in the confined space of the cab and probably made someone extremely rich.
So what can we do to help prevent obvious and useless patenting?
The problem Verizon faces is the Forklift Problem.
Sprint has had to upgrade a lot of software. So did Verizon. However Sprint didn't have to create a whole new network. Verizon needed forklifts to move all the required new hardware.
Verizon is in 10 cities because that is all they could upgrade reliably in the time they had to beat Sprint to market. Sprint has a major advantage in being nationwide and I believe a lot of businesses will recognize that.
Also Sprint has an advantage with CDMA. Bandwidth usage. CDMA2000 uses 1.25MHz of spectrum for 3G tech. GSM, however for example, needs 5MHz! Have you seen the prices the FCC charges in the US for Spectrum?
The bandwidth glut, high prices, immature technology, inadequate implementation of the Telecom Act and the anemic capital markets have all been cited as the culprits for the recent demise of the telecom market. What we rarely hear about, however, are service providers' sub-par services to their customers. The market will be determined by quality of service I believe as much as by coverage. My hope is that Sprint can offer high quality service and make 3G technology available to everyone.
Actually CDMA2000, CDMA is 2G. Some other carriers are rolling out W-CDMA (W == Wide).
Also AT&T did it in 10 cities. Sprint is rolling nationally with everything. Someone in Topeka can have as much 3G as someone in Las Vegas. I bet the NewTek guys love that idea.
Sprint's 3G has lots of great features. They are also going to compete with a lot of companies now that had no competition before. Case in point is Nextel's Push-to-Talk service. PTT is where you turn your cell phone into a walkie-talkie. It is all the rage. Nextel is the only company that offers it. With Nextel you get a range of about 250 miles. With Sprint however you will get Nationwide coverage. Assuming it works well there will probably be a large chunk of the 8 million Nextel customers taking a very serious look at Sprint.
I got to use a 3G powered notebook when I was in Lenexa KS. It was extremely cool. I had my picture taken with a 3G digital camera, which sent it's picture up to a webserver and then I was able to email my friends, family and boss the picture. Total turnaround time was about 8 minutes to do all of that. I see that technology being useful in hot real estate markets. There an agent can get the details of a property, take pictures and update the server from the car or the living room and then move onto the next site. It would be possible to get back to the office and have leads generated already.
There are a lot of interesting uses for 3G like that. I think it would be interesting to have a "singles locator" in which you indicate your basic stats and what you are looking for and when the server detects two people within a certain range of each other, informs each. You check your handset and from a description or picture go looking for the person. Hmmm, actually this sounds like a cool tool for stalkers. Um, never mind!
As for pricing - that is top-secret until the actual rollout. I don't know what it will be but I think people will be happy with it.
Disclaimer: I am a Sprint PCS employee and I have worked on 3G products for the last 14 months. However, I know as much about 3G as anyone who has bothered to read all of Sprint's Marketing material and not much more.
--Peter
Re:Great, as long as it doesn't eat up minutes...
on
The Wireless Arcade
·
· Score: 2
There should be a game rate, perhaps a special plan where games are a set monthly subscription. Also with 3G games can be billed as kilobyte squirts so, so long as the game client handles most of the work and data requirements are kept low this can work out pretty good. A lot of analysis needs to be done. I am trying to convince the 3G managers that what we need are multiplayer euro style games. Pricing is a major issue. On the one hand it will cost a lot to develop the games, on the other hand the customer is price sensative. I know I am one of the cheapest bastards around so I am using me as a model.
I don't think it is wierd. I think it is some form of deception. In fact now that I think about it I think the physical address and the email are both bogus. Why not? If you were going to spy or spam or both wouldn't you want to be kept hidden? I wonder if Norton AV or Mcaffee and prevent their stuff from affecting my machine?
I keep getting emails that look like they are from friends but they are instead spoofed by a company called netrax.com. The emails have no body but they have attachments that are executable. I assume Netrax is similar to Gator. I have no idea who these people are but here is their Whois entry below. Given that they are from the Advertising Capital of the US (Madision Avenue) I assume their helpful software is simply designed to flood me with spam.
Registrant: NETRAX (NETRAX4-DOM)
509 Madison Avenue Suite 1610
New York, NY 10022
US
Domain Name: NETRAX.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Harris, Emily (INEVXBUJII) eharris@NEWSSUN.MED.MIAMI.EDU
MCY Music World, Inc.
509 Madison Avenue
Suite 1610
New York, NY 10022
US
212-944-6664
Record expires on 08-Sep-2002.
Record created on 08-Sep-1999.
Database last updated on 27-Jun-2002 11:42:38 EDT.
That's cool. I would love to see Australia. I think there should be more cowboy movies about Australia - the differences would make it more refreshing (aboriginal tribes vs. native american, those funny short black trees and blood thirsty tasmanian devils!)
Texas is big. Real big. And empty. Oh there are lots of things in Texas - it's not all desert. In fact just about any climate on Earth can be found in Texas. However the big cities are far apart and you will drive for hours and hours and hours to get to the next big city. It is kind of like star travel. Between the big cities there isn't a lot that is very interesting. I think that is what makes Texas seem even bigger than it actually is. Texas really is big enough to be it's own thrid world country. The U.S. relies on Texas immensely. Texas can get along fine on it's own without the U.S. but the U.S. cannot make it without Texas.
SQL-92 has much better syntax than SQL-89. I just wish more of it was implemented. MS SQL-Server actually does a better job of it than even Oracle. Compare
Select A.* From A,B Where A.MayorName is not null and A.CityID = B.CityID and B.TaxRate > 5
vs.
Select A.* From A JOIN B
ON (A.CityID = B.CityID) Where A.MayorName is not null and B.TaxRate > 5
The major difference is that the join is explicityly removed from the filtering done in the where cluase. This makes queries much easier to read. Queries can get extreamly complex and when you have something like 6 joins you will soon appreciate the new syntax.
This book sounds interesting so I will be checking it out!
This past weekend I saw a demo of Sprint's new 3G technology (CDMA2000 based) in which a 3G enabled camera posted pictures taken up on a distant web server. I was able to access the web server via a laptop with a 3G PC-Card in it. It is stronger than wi-fi (3G is available anywhere a cell phone is) and it is almost as fast as wi-fi.
The Sprint people indicated that the capacity would increase in the year that followed to make 3G a great alternative technology. I espcially liked the idea of broadband to PDA/Phone. Wireless networking isn't supposed to make me excited (I run a wifi for my apartment building) but this demo was done in the middle of a parking lot that was surrounded by fields! Now the people of Lenexa, KS can finally surf the web while driving the combines. Isn't that what technology is about?
More web-surfing and less using it to make the US a police state.
Dick was an awesome movie. One of the best takes on historical fiction I've ever seen. It's comedy was great, the use of actual history was great and the comedic acting was great. I thought the movie was a slam dunk. Highly recommended. It also explains why Woodward and Bernstein will never reveal their source!!!
Hey, it's tough being on your own. Might as well brace her for the onslaugh of unsupervised boys running willy-nilly.
Oh, and a package of condoms. Hey, not all the boys running willy-nilly are bad. If she can't be good she might as well be safe.
My I suggest 15% pepper spray with a nitrogen propellent so that it is non-flamable. You don't want her to "Rambo" some pushy dude, just disable him for 5 minutes so she can get away. Also, if you get the type with the UV dye it makes it easy to ID the creep if he was criminally abusive. The dye is invisible and he won't realize he's been marked until he gets radiated by a Black Light.
If size is an issue get the 1/2 oz. bottle and send a new one each year as they have a short shelf-life. They make great key-chains. Otherwise the 2oz. bottle is best. You can clear a room with one of those and then blast any persuers who are stupid enough to follow you after your exfiltration.
Good luck, enjoy college!
A Katz article I like??? Did Hell Freeze Over???
on
The Empire Stumbles
·
· Score: 1
Wow, finally a Katz article I like, read from start to finish without loudly remarking to the computer screen and one that I can agree with in many respects.
I would simply add that part of Lucas's problem is that the supposed target audience shifted from movie to movie. How cool would "Return of the Jedi" have been if instead of Ewoks we had Wookies as originally planned.
Episode 1 was just completely not aimed at me. I can't believe it made as much money as it did.
Episode 2 however was much more enjoyable. Luckily the pain of having to watch Jar-Jar Binks was kept to a discrete miniumum. The story was better and of course seeing Yoda do battle was both hilarious and exactly what I wanted to see in a matinee.
Wow, excellent information. AND fianlly someone on Slashdot that will agree to disagree instead of:-)
You have certainly swayed my opinion a bit. I am interested in watching the movie again (I did like it) and seeing what you saw. I think perhaps my problem originally was they brought up the science fiction issues you mentioned (where is the line between man and machine, etc.) but didn't really explore them as thoroughly as I had hoped for.
There is an R-Rated version of "The Lord of the Rings" coming out, I am curious how they made it more violent and if it really adds to the movie. I found the movie relatively violent to begin with but necessarily so. It is interesting that there are similar parallels here.
Now that is a frightening concept. It is amazing how with a properly written EULA, a deceptive mechanism to get people to "accept" it and the DCMA you could really threaten a lot of civil liberties.
Ok, point taken. However Paul Verhoeven has specifically stated that he feels science fiction is only good for comedy (and if I could find a link to that quote I'd put it here but it will have to be hearsay for now.) The satire you see in the movie wasn't science fiction based; it was political commentary (and good satire at that.) Back then I was totally anti-corporate so it fit well with my mindset and I greatly enjoyed it. Today I can appreciate corporation and, like you, still hate the dangerous ones like Microsoft.
The science fiction concepts in Robo-cop were great: cyborgs, privitizaition of government and hypercrime. The delivery in some places was great too. Peter Weller did more acting with just 3 square inches exposed than most actors do without masks and body armor.
However, the brutal action (and you mention the existance of an X version I wasn't aware of) take away the emphasis from the ideas and focus the movie squarely on violence. That's why it doesn't make my list. It is a fun movie to watch if you like to see things blow up but the parts that are pure science fiction are eclipsed by the pure action bits.
Still, it was nice seeing Murphy shoot the rapist in the nuts...
Slashdot Mirror
There are so many places they could go with their plot motifs (Man vs. Himself can be seen in the motif of a stranded person surving the odds and their personal self-doubt until rescued, for example.) Science fictions offers endless variety of these!
Cambellian science fiction was all about asking "What if?" Where has that gone with this franchise? Technobabble, non-sense and special effects usually. The problem Trek has been accused of often is not thinking about the consequences of certain technologies. Great examples are missed opportunities with cloaking and teleportation or explaining how the toilets on the Enterprise work (if in fact they are connected in some obscure way with the food replicator).
In stead of asking a What If question about technology we are usually instead given a song and dance routine by Data, a sexual episode between data and a real woman, a lame space battle (sit down B5 folks already) or some dumb ass plot where they come across a planet populated ONLY by Gangsters/Sou Chefs/Half Naked Californians.
Oh, and one more plot about dystopia and I will scream.
I'm not asking that they make their movies as stunningly boring as, say anything written by Robert L. Forward (*great* scientist - lousy story teller in my humble opinion). But get some real writters: David Brin, Greg Bear, Vernor Vinge even! These guys could take that Franchise where No Science Fiction Franchise has ever gone before!
Well, that's my piece. Thanks for listening.
--Peter
There are some great suggestions already mentioned here but, unless I missed it, no one has mentioned my favorite text book:
Newtonian Mechanics (The M. I. T. Series) by A. P. French, W. W. Norton, 1971. ISBN 0-393-09970-9.
Still one of my all time favorites for it's clarity, exercises and readability.
--Peter
www.ghilliesuits.com
I once was in what the British call a "Gilley" (spelling) Suit. This is your basic battledress with camo pattern along with a netting with artificial leaves. The leaves were simply strips from an anti-radar cover. Running around in this set up did rather draw the eye. However, when I went to ground in the forest I disappeared. A Marine veteran with 15 years experience saw me go down 20 feet from his position. 10 seconds later he communicated he had no idea where I was.
You don't have to have perfect camo for it to be effective. Break up shapes, blend in with the local color and you are ready to roll. The problem with the suit mentioned above was, what happens when I move out of the forest and into an urban environment? Obviously I would be a lot easier to spot than someone in just regular dark clothing. A well camouflaged man who is a poor shot will probably survive longer than the poorly concealed expert sniper.
A system like this could be useful, depending on how it generates color and how well it minimizes shine. Nothing gets the attention more than something shiney. That is why snipers often camoflage their weapons as well.
I totally agree on "Out of this World" -- one of the very few games I was upset to see end. Extremely compelling, no dialog other than "ow!"
I can see a movie being made with no dialog, all action and only implicit script. Look at Aeon Flux. That is essencially what Alea is talking about, right?
--Peter
Settlers is one of my favorites too. It has a lot of expansions (some good, some not). I think the basic 4 player game is one of the best balanced games ever created. Non-gamers/geeks like it too, usually.
There is a card game version that is also great for 2 people. Highly recommended!
--P
"After everyone had gone home, the researchers faced a nail-biting wait for the telemetry officers to come in from the dust with their precious data, before analysis could occur."
Don't they have some form of high speed network they can just FTP the data over? Why did they have to wait for these guys to come back from remote tracking stations? Anyone know?
--P
You absolutely owe it to yourself to check out "Napoleon in Europe". (http://www.eaglegames.com). This game rocks. It has more advanced rules, an interesting innovation system and some great, great game pieces! It costs $7.50 per LBS.!!! Give it a look, my gang of players loves it.
Isn't the real problem in that the way patents are applied for the office in unable to make proper examinaitions of each claim? Does this problem with patenting happen in other fields? Last week I was on an 1842 Steam Locomotive and noticed that the butterfly hindged doors on the coal feed was granted patent #3. I thought to myself; here is something that is of a simple design, clearly useful in the confined space of the cab and probably made someone extremely rich.
So what can we do to help prevent obvious and useless patenting?
This is one shower you can take with your whole family!
If you've just started dating then you can take your date out for a late night stroll and share your first shower together.
If you have a friend who lives a long way away then just get on the phone, you can take a shower together even at long range.
And the best part it is free, as in beer, speech and worship of Artemis.
Oh the fun you will have.
The problem Verizon faces is the Forklift Problem.
Sprint has had to upgrade a lot of software. So did Verizon. However Sprint didn't have to create a whole new network. Verizon needed forklifts to move all the required new hardware.
Verizon is in 10 cities because that is all they could upgrade reliably in the time they had to beat Sprint to market. Sprint has a major advantage in being nationwide and I believe a lot of businesses will recognize that.
Also Sprint has an advantage with CDMA. Bandwidth usage. CDMA2000 uses 1.25MHz of spectrum for 3G tech. GSM, however for example, needs 5MHz! Have you seen the prices the FCC charges in the US for Spectrum?
The bandwidth glut, high prices, immature technology, inadequate implementation of the Telecom Act and the anemic capital markets have all been cited as the culprits for the recent demise of the telecom market. What we rarely hear about, however, are service providers' sub-par services to their customers. The market will be determined by quality of service I believe as much as by coverage. My hope is that Sprint can offer high quality service and make 3G technology available to everyone.
--P
Actually CDMA2000, CDMA is 2G. Some other carriers are rolling out W-CDMA (W == Wide).
Also AT&T did it in 10 cities. Sprint is rolling nationally with everything. Someone in Topeka can have as much 3G as someone in Las Vegas. I bet the NewTek guys love that idea.
Sprint's 3G has lots of great features. They are also going to compete with a lot of companies now that had no competition before. Case in point is Nextel's Push-to-Talk service. PTT is where you turn your cell phone into a walkie-talkie. It is all the rage. Nextel is the only company that offers it. With Nextel you get a range of about 250 miles. With Sprint however you will get Nationwide coverage. Assuming it works well there will probably be a large chunk of the 8 million Nextel customers taking a very serious look at Sprint.
I got to use a 3G powered notebook when I was in Lenexa KS. It was extremely cool. I had my picture taken with a 3G digital camera, which sent it's picture up to a webserver and then I was able to email my friends, family and boss the picture. Total turnaround time was about 8 minutes to do all of that. I see that technology being useful in hot real estate markets. There an agent can get the details of a property, take pictures and update the server from the car or the living room and then move onto the next site. It would be possible to get back to the office and have leads generated already.
There are a lot of interesting uses for 3G like that. I think it would be interesting to have a "singles locator" in which you indicate your basic stats and what you are looking for and when the server detects two people within a certain range of each other, informs each. You check your handset and from a description or picture go looking for the person. Hmmm, actually this sounds like a cool tool for stalkers. Um, never mind!
As for pricing - that is top-secret until the actual rollout. I don't know what it will be but I think people will be happy with it.
Disclaimer: I am a Sprint PCS employee and I have worked on 3G products for the last 14 months. However, I know as much about 3G as anyone who has bothered to read all of Sprint's Marketing material and not much more.
--Peter
There should be a game rate, perhaps a special plan where games are a set monthly subscription. Also with 3G games can be billed as kilobyte squirts so, so long as the game client handles most of the work and data requirements are kept low this can work out pretty good. A lot of analysis needs to be done. I am trying to convince the 3G managers that what we need are multiplayer euro style games. Pricing is a major issue. On the one hand it will cost a lot to develop the games, on the other hand the customer is price sensative. I know I am one of the cheapest bastards around so I am using me as a model.
I don't think it is wierd. I think it is some form of deception. In fact now that I think about it I think the physical address and the email are both bogus. Why not? If you were going to spy or spam or both wouldn't you want to be kept hidden? I wonder if Norton AV or Mcaffee and prevent their stuff from affecting my machine?
--Peter
I keep getting emails that look like they are from friends but they are instead spoofed by a company called netrax.com. The emails have no body but they have attachments that are executable. I assume Netrax is similar to Gator. I have no idea who these people are but here is their Whois entry below. Given that they are from the Advertising Capital of the US (Madision Avenue) I assume their helpful software is simply designed to flood me with spam.
Registrant:
NETRAX (NETRAX4-DOM)
509 Madison Avenue Suite 1610
New York, NY 10022
US
Domain Name: NETRAX.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Harris, Emily (INEVXBUJII) eharris@NEWSSUN.MED.MIAMI.EDU
MCY Music World, Inc.
509 Madison Avenue
Suite 1610
New York, NY 10022
US
212-944-6664
Record expires on 08-Sep-2002.
Record created on 08-Sep-1999.
Database last updated on 27-Jun-2002 11:42:38 EDT.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS.MCY.COM 204.60.119.25
NS2.SNET.NET 204.60.0.3
That's cool. I would love to see Australia. I think there should be more cowboy movies about Australia - the differences would make it more refreshing (aboriginal tribes vs. native american, those funny short black trees and blood thirsty tasmanian devils!)
Texas is big. Real big. And empty. Oh there are lots of things in Texas - it's not all desert. In fact just about any climate on Earth can be found in Texas. However the big cities are far apart and you will drive for hours and hours and hours to get to the next big city. It is kind of like star travel. Between the big cities there isn't a lot that is very interesting. I think that is what makes Texas seem even bigger than it actually is. Texas really is big enough to be it's own thrid world country. The U.S. relies on Texas immensely. Texas can get along fine on it's own without the U.S. but the U.S. cannot make it without Texas.
SQL-92 has much better syntax than SQL-89. I just wish more of it was implemented. MS SQL-Server actually does a better job of it than even Oracle. Compare
Select A.*
From A,B
Where A.MayorName is not null
and A.CityID = B.CityID
and B.TaxRate > 5
vs.
Select A.*
From A JOIN B
ON (A.CityID = B.CityID)
Where A.MayorName is not null
and B.TaxRate > 5
The major difference is that the join is explicityly removed from the filtering done in the where cluase. This makes queries much easier to read. Queries can get extreamly complex and when you have something like 6 joins you will soon appreciate the new syntax.
This book sounds interesting so I will be checking it out!
--Peter
This past weekend I saw a demo of Sprint's new 3G technology (CDMA2000 based) in which a 3G enabled camera posted pictures taken up on a distant web server. I was able to access the web server via a laptop with a 3G PC-Card in it. It is stronger than wi-fi (3G is available anywhere a cell phone is) and it is almost as fast as wi-fi.
The Sprint people indicated that the capacity would increase in the year that followed to make 3G a great alternative technology. I espcially liked the idea of broadband to PDA/Phone. Wireless networking isn't supposed to make me excited (I run a wifi for my apartment building) but this demo was done in the middle of a parking lot that was surrounded by fields! Now the people of Lenexa, KS can finally surf the web while driving the combines. Isn't that what technology is about?
More web-surfing and less using it to make the US a police state.
Dick was an awesome movie. One of the best takes on historical fiction I've ever seen. It's comedy was great, the use of actual history was great and the comedic acting was great. I thought the movie was a slam dunk. Highly recommended. It also explains why Woodward and Bernstein will never reveal their source!!!
Hey, it's tough being on your own. Might as well brace her for the onslaugh of unsupervised boys running willy-nilly.
Oh, and a package of condoms. Hey, not all the boys running willy-nilly are bad. If she can't be good she might as well be safe.
My I suggest 15% pepper spray with a nitrogen propellent so that it is non-flamable. You don't want her to "Rambo" some pushy dude, just disable him for 5 minutes so she can get away. Also, if you get the type with the UV dye it makes it easy to ID the creep if he was criminally abusive. The dye is invisible and he won't realize he's been marked until he gets radiated by a Black Light.
If size is an issue get the 1/2 oz. bottle and send a new one each year as they have a short shelf-life. They make great key-chains. Otherwise the 2oz. bottle is best. You can clear a room with one of those and then blast any persuers who are stupid enough to follow you after your exfiltration.
Good luck, enjoy college!
Wow, finally a Katz article I like, read from start to finish without loudly remarking to the computer screen and one that I can agree with in many respects.
I would simply add that part of Lucas's problem is that the supposed target audience shifted from movie to movie. How cool would "Return of the Jedi" have been if instead of Ewoks we had Wookies as originally planned.
Episode 1 was just completely not aimed at me. I can't believe it made as much money as it did.
Episode 2 however was much more enjoyable. Luckily the pain of having to watch Jar-Jar Binks was kept to a discrete miniumum. The story was better and of course seeing Yoda do battle was both hilarious and exactly what I wanted to see in a matinee.
Wow, excellent information. AND fianlly someone on Slashdot that will agree to disagree instead of :-)
You have certainly swayed my opinion a bit. I am interested in watching the movie again (I did like it) and seeing what you saw. I think perhaps my problem originally was they brought up the science fiction issues you mentioned (where is the line between man and machine, etc.) but didn't really explore them as thoroughly as I had hoped for.
There is an R-Rated version of "The Lord of the Rings" coming out, I am curious how they made it more violent and if it really adds to the movie. I found the movie relatively violent to begin with but necessarily so. It is interesting that there are similar parallels here.
Thanks,
--Peter
Now that is a frightening concept. It is amazing how with a properly written EULA, a deceptive mechanism to get people to "accept" it and the DCMA you could really threaten a lot of civil liberties.
--Peter
Ok, point taken. However Paul Verhoeven has specifically stated that he feels science fiction is only good for comedy (and if I could find a link to that quote I'd put it here but it will have to be hearsay for now.) The satire you see in the movie wasn't science fiction based; it was political commentary (and good satire at that.) Back then I was totally anti-corporate so it fit well with my mindset and I greatly enjoyed it. Today I can appreciate corporation and, like you, still hate the dangerous ones like Microsoft.
The science fiction concepts in Robo-cop were great: cyborgs, privitizaition of government and hypercrime. The delivery in some places was great too. Peter Weller did more acting with just 3 square inches exposed than most actors do without masks and body armor.
However, the brutal action (and you mention the existance of an X version I wasn't aware of) take away the emphasis from the ideas and focus the movie squarely on violence. That's why it doesn't make my list. It is a fun movie to watch if you like to see things blow up but the parts that are pure science fiction are eclipsed by the pure action bits.
Still, it was nice seeing Murphy shoot the rapist in the nuts...