And how long before we're mining the crap out of these planets to get our un-obtainium? BTW: The one thing that bothered me most in Avatar was that, while they mentioned it takes 6-years to get to Pandora, they never mention how long it took to discover Pandora. That's a lot of Galaxy to look at.
My prediction is that somehow, we're going to discover, within the next 20 years, something that can be confirmed as "earth-like" in that it appears to have atmosphere and water (from what we can see, being tens of light-years away). At that point, there will be a multi-national effort to reach this planet, which will bankrupt the world because the cost of such an expedition will be in the hundreds of trillions of dollars.
And then, when we get there, we'll find out that it's not *exactly* "earth-like". There will be something different enough that we can't live there, or terraform, or do anything with it. The entire trip will be a huge waste of resources.
And then for the next 300 years because of this failure, we will stop looking up at the sky and wondering.
Oh no! Why... Stricter regulation will cost AMERICAN JOBS... It will raise OIL PRICES meaning more "pain at the pump!" Let the market sort it out, Capitalism rules! If you have the government dictating to corporations, why that is SOCIALISM!
The industry can self-regulate and besides, any oversight by government is just wasted money on innefectual beauracracy because the industry watchdogs will end up on the payrolls of the corporations anyhow via corruption and will be asleep at the wheel when the next diaster comes.
Meanwhile, our head-in-the-sand dolts in Congress will just yammer away and waste what little time is left for our nation, and distract us with wedge issues, and the American public with gross A.D.D. will be distracted by some celebrity horrorshow or maybe something about race relations.
The USA has a bad habit of arresting anyone with the skills and curiosity to perform such tasks. Instead of arresting and jailing "hackers" they should employ them, and then maybe we'd have enough people for the "cyberwar" they are talking about
Terrorism doesn't have to have the bomb explode. It's mere presense makes for a successful attack. Was the "Times Square Bomber" successful? The answer is YES, HE WAS -- because it created a sense of "terror" to the population. The "bomb" didn't have to explode. In fact, the bomb couldn't have "exploded" because it was so poorly built, the best it could have done was burn brightly. It would have been a car-fire and nothing more, the kind you see on the Cross-Bronx expressway almost every day and ignore.
But because it was reported as a "bomb", the populace was scared. Job done. Terror is created. The Media and the Government create more "Terror" than the actual terrorists do.
Successful attack? It doesn't matter if the 'bomb' explodes or not. Frankly, it doesn't matter if there's even a bomb at all. Just the "act" of terrorism in any way that gets the population to be scared, change their travel plans, worry about their homes, run out and buy duct-tape and plastic sheeting, build bomb shelters, yadda-yadda, is a *successful attack* because it's done the job intended.
And the job is to CHANGE OUR BEHAVIOR. Spend money on security theater. Waste our time fearing the bogeyman.
Because HP isn't in the OS business, yet. Think about it, right now, HP is beholden to Microsoft for stuff to run on their hardware. And right now, it is clear that MS is screwing up right and left in anything OTHER than a desktop OS/Office suite. They have *no* mobile solution. And mobile is the future.
Apple has lead the way, and Google is catching up fast. We're not sure where RIM is, but they have annoucned a Tablet, which means that *maybe* they have an OS for it.
But HP's "slate" will be an abysmal failure, UNLESS they have a killer OS... something that can take on the iPad and really revolutionize the market. And who has a Tablet OS that's actually good enough to take on Apple?
Why, that would be Palm. Poor Palm, hamstrung by lackluster marketing and so-so hardware, with mediocre sales as a result. Yet, their OS (and patent portfolio) is so valuable, I'm surprised half of Silicon Valley isn't trampling over each other to get it.
A Tablet running WebOS could actually compete with the iPad. *If* if were marketed properly, and *if* the hardware was good too. Ironically, HP is the only company I would trust to make decent hardware, even after the purging of all their good engineers due to Carly. But they have the muscle and the East Asia contacts to make it happen.
In other words, HP could make Microsoft irrelevant in the mobile marketplace... With Google playing catch-up. Now wouldn't *that* be ironic?
I think everything on that TV show is rented. I cannot believe that skateboarding hot-kid-of-the-month can afford a McMansion, 18 Escalades, a room full of arcade machines, yadda-yadda, from 2 or 3 endoresement deals when he will be old and stale before the year is out.
Either that, or the repo men have a heck of a time 6 months down the road.
That TV show, just like *everything* on TV is totally fake. It's just not possible given the realities of these situations.
Sooner or later, every entrenched government becomes corrupt. As was seen back in the days when you couldn't fight the corrupt system, you left, formed a new country and then grew into a power that eventually becomes corrupt and then a section of your people leave and the process starts anew.
The United States has reached the stage that a segment of the population needs to leave and form a new country. Unfortunately, I believe we've run out of land. Used to be you could expand into "new world" or just form a country out in some desert where no one else lived. Not so easy anymore now that all lands are claimed and/or spied upon by Google Earth.
Nevertheless, it's time to form an independent country. Move out to international waters, and create a floating continent perhaps similar to "Snow Crash". Or everyone bring a rock, like in that beer commercial.
If Lucas is claiming the "lightsaber handle" is *his* intellectual property, he's on very shakey ground as the prop in the ORIGINAL STAR WARS was a Graflex handle, a fairly off-the-shelf item in the moviemaking biz.
Similarly the prop control panel for the Death Star's main weapon was a Grass-Valley video switcher. These are not Lucas's intellectual property. They are common items that were used in the movie because the guy was strapped on the budget.
Is Lucas going to sue anyone making a 3-wheeled two-seater with no top, even though *they* used the chassis from a Reliant Robin for the landspeeder? And what about blasters? The guns used in the movie were slightly re-dressed real weapons, he really doesn't have much copyright on existing designs that were around long before the film.
Will it never end? How many years must something be in the dust and the the lawyers just feed off themselves, sueing everyone who sneezes near them? The song "Down Under" is from the 80's, early 80's I think, we talking almost 30 years! And just now we're getting to the lawsuit?
Quick, I think Ben Franklin's estate should sue for all the shit he created that everyone uses without paying for. Ben wanted it to all be freely available, but who cares what *he* wanted, he's dead, and now it's in lawyer hands.
And they aren't thinking about the benefit of all men like Franklin, they are thinking about the benefit of one man. Themself.
#1) Do something stupid, or watch someone else do something stupid
#2) Video it.
#3) Post to Youtube
#4) PROFIT!!!!
But the question is: Are you getting a signed release? How much are you going to spend in visits to the shrink after your kid is emotionally scarred by being an internet celebrity? And when Tosh.0 visits you for a web redemption, how are you going to get out of it?
You're the CEO of a multi-billion dollar international corporation that insures credit default swaps. You're goofing off as usual, playing golf on a weekday when your phone rings. It's your personal assistant, telling you that the stock market has crashed because CDS's are worthless. You're leverged to 175% of market cap, so you don't even have enough cash to make payroll next week.
Should you be allowed to continue getting your $20 million dollar a year salary while you're borrowing money from the government, and in the meantime, your inaction, stupidity, and greed has cost the entire economy trillions of dollars and basically bankrupted the entire nation?
Frankly, EVERY corporation should provide a "I'm in the military" checkbox which, once verified the checkbox is valid (some proof is required), it would be in the best interests (PR-wise) of that company to provide reduced cost services, and complete waiving of fees if necessary.
I'm tired of companies talking about how they "support" the country and/or the troops, while they avoid paying taxes, they actively lobby to steal more from every American, they skirt the law to avoid any responsibility for any action they do or do not take, and all they do is make commercials about how patriotic they are.
Think about all the 9/11 victims. Every damn family of some high-paid white-collar worker who died that day got tons of money and all kinds of waivers on paying anything for months! Those guys were insured up the wazoo, and even when they weren't the families sued for "what they would have earned in the lifetime", which meant millions.
Meanwhile someone truly serving the nation, some military grunt, when he dies, all the family ever gets is grief and hassle from every corner of our country. Some gratitude. I have to wonder what mental illness makes anyone *want* to serve our country when our country won't do jack shit for them when the tables have turned. It makes me want to vomit.
Ah, Mr. Lucas, your ability to write dialog never ceases to amaze me... And yet, fully cognizant of the irony, I continue to quote from your films. What a loser I am.
But nevertheless, I agree. How this douchebag got re-elected, I have no idea. The voters of CT must be insane. This man is a danger to everything we hold dear in this country.
You seem to have conveiently forgotten that Big Oil gets Goverment Money.
If we're paying them, they are *supposed* to be our bitch! Yes, that's right, even with record profits and some of the most overcompensated officers of any industry, the oil industry still recieves government subsidies, as if they are too poor to drill on their own dime.
You're acting like the disaster was an accident. It wasn't. It was willful negligence. So what they were drilling in 5000 feet of water? There were safety measures in existence which could have prevented this catastrophe. BP *chose* to ignore every single safety protocol and measure.
To make the car analogy, it's like building a car with no brakes and then saying "well, people shouldn't drive, it's dangerous" when there are ALREADY other cars with brakes on the raod that aren't slamming into trees.
People that do stupid things with hazardous materials often die. But, if you follow a few safety procedures, it's amazing how often people can handle hazardous materials and live. That's the difference. BP took a risk to save a few bucks and now they are paying the price for being idiots.
See the movie "Flash of Genius". In this film, an American invents something useful, patents it, and is then ripped off by a big company. He sues and wins his case. It's about as close as you're going to come to what you asked for.
I think copyright law is too complex an issue for a movie unless you dumb it down to "good guy versus bad guy" (which is kind of how Avatar played out).
A better idea is to develop a sitcom about an average american family that has to deal with the struggles of the insane laws we face in this country. Like M*A*S*H, the best way to make a statement is through humor, and it will get people to think, kind of like the Daily Show. Now that "Law and Order" has been canceled, we need a show that is "ripped from today's headlines", and a sitcom using real issues our country faces hasn't been done since "All in the Family", which is constantly cited as one of the greatest TV productions of all time.
Real geeks are constantly excited by new tech. Real geeks are too busy to have families, so they have no problem with 80-hr weeks. Hell, real geeks can put in an 80-hr week from home. Google doesn't know what they're missing.
If anything it's the kids that are a problem. Most of the 20-somethings I've worked with are irresponsible, couldn't show up on time if you held a gun to their heads, don't understand the word deadline, and tend to overestimate their abilities big-time. Sure, a few of them turn out to be better than expected, but that's the minority.
I'm 45 and I'm still willing to kill myself for the job. I feel like I'm making a difference every day. I know people are depending upon on me. Sure, I've never been married, but I never wanted to be married. Why anybody would want that is beyond me. All that does is take away from time that could be spent being productive.
Slashdot Mirror
The "Hello Kitty Car".
And how long before we're mining the crap out of these planets to get our un-obtainium? BTW: The one thing that bothered me most in Avatar was that, while they mentioned it takes 6-years to get to Pandora, they never mention how long it took to discover Pandora. That's a lot of Galaxy to look at.
My prediction is that somehow, we're going to discover, within the next 20 years, something that can be confirmed as "earth-like" in that it appears to have atmosphere and water (from what we can see, being tens of light-years away). At that point, there will be a multi-national effort to reach this planet, which will bankrupt the world because the cost of such an expedition will be in the hundreds of trillions of dollars.
And then, when we get there, we'll find out that it's not *exactly* "earth-like". There will be something different enough that we can't live there, or terraform, or do anything with it. The entire trip will be a huge waste of resources.
And then for the next 300 years because of this failure, we will stop looking up at the sky and wondering.
And then *they* will show up to harvest us.....
Here's the spoiler: The Slashdot summary is about as long as the article it links to. WTF? Who allows crap like this to get on the front page?
Scientsist Discover Biggest Star : Kirstie Alley.
Oh no! Why... Stricter regulation will cost AMERICAN JOBS... It will raise OIL PRICES meaning more "pain at the pump!" Let the market sort it out, Capitalism rules! If you have the government dictating to corporations, why that is SOCIALISM!
The industry can self-regulate and besides, any oversight by government is just wasted money on innefectual beauracracy because the industry watchdogs will end up on the payrolls of the corporations anyhow via corruption and will be asleep at the wheel when the next diaster comes.
Meanwhile, our head-in-the-sand dolts in Congress will just yammer away and waste what little time is left for our nation, and distract us with wedge issues, and the American public with gross A.D.D. will be distracted by some celebrity horrorshow or maybe something about race relations.
The USA has a bad habit of arresting anyone with the skills and curiosity to perform such tasks. Instead of arresting and jailing "hackers" they should employ them, and then maybe we'd have enough people for the "cyberwar" they are talking about
Now all they have to do to ban all books is just silently delete them remotely from your kindle while you sleep. No firemen required.
And you'll have people in small camps living like vagrants reciting books to each other.
We've already got the wall-sized TVs blaring idiot-shows at us all day long, so banning books can't be far behind.
Never mind Orwell, we're closer to Bradbury's reality. Oh Montag, we need you!
Terrorism doesn't have to have the bomb explode. It's mere presense makes for a successful attack. Was the "Times Square Bomber" successful? The answer is YES, HE WAS -- because it created a sense of "terror" to the population. The "bomb" didn't have to explode. In fact, the bomb couldn't have "exploded" because it was so poorly built, the best it could have done was burn brightly. It would have been a car-fire and nothing more, the kind you see on the Cross-Bronx expressway almost every day and ignore.
But because it was reported as a "bomb", the populace was scared. Job done. Terror is created. The Media and the Government create more "Terror" than the actual terrorists do.
Successful attack? It doesn't matter if the 'bomb' explodes or not. Frankly, it doesn't matter if there's even a bomb at all. Just the "act" of terrorism in any way that gets the population to be scared, change their travel plans, worry about their homes, run out and buy duct-tape and plastic sheeting, build bomb shelters, yadda-yadda, is a *successful attack* because it's done the job intended.
And the job is to CHANGE OUR BEHAVIOR. Spend money on security theater. Waste our time fearing the bogeyman.
Job done. Successfully. Every time.
Because HP isn't in the OS business, yet. Think about it, right now, HP is beholden to Microsoft for stuff to run on their hardware. And right now, it is clear that MS is screwing up right and left in anything OTHER than a desktop OS/Office suite. They have *no* mobile solution. And mobile is the future.
Apple has lead the way, and Google is catching up fast. We're not sure where RIM is, but they have annoucned a Tablet, which means that *maybe* they have an OS for it.
But HP's "slate" will be an abysmal failure, UNLESS they have a killer OS ... something that can take on the iPad and really revolutionize the market. And who has a Tablet OS that's actually good enough to take on Apple?
Why, that would be Palm. Poor Palm, hamstrung by lackluster marketing and so-so hardware, with mediocre sales as a result. Yet, their OS (and patent portfolio) is so valuable, I'm surprised half of Silicon Valley isn't trampling over each other to get it.
A Tablet running WebOS could actually compete with the iPad. *If* if were marketed properly, and *if* the hardware was good too. Ironically, HP is the only company I would trust to make decent hardware, even after the purging of all their good engineers due to Carly. But they have the muscle and the East Asia contacts to make it happen.
In other words, HP could make Microsoft irrelevant in the mobile marketplace... With Google playing catch-up. Now wouldn't *that* be ironic?
I think everything on that TV show is rented. I cannot believe that skateboarding hot-kid-of-the-month can afford a McMansion, 18 Escalades, a room full of arcade machines, yadda-yadda, from 2 or 3 endoresement deals when he will be old and stale before the year is out.
Either that, or the repo men have a heck of a time 6 months down the road.
That TV show, just like *everything* on TV is totally fake.
It's just not possible given the realities of these situations.
There, fixed that for you...
That actually has freedoms.
Sooner or later, every entrenched government becomes corrupt. As was seen back in the days when you couldn't fight the corrupt system, you left, formed a new country and then grew into a power that eventually becomes corrupt and then a section of your people leave and the process starts anew.
The United States has reached the stage that a segment of the population needs to leave and form a new country. Unfortunately, I believe we've run out of land. Used to be you could expand into "new world" or just form a country out in some desert where no one else lived. Not so easy anymore now that all lands are claimed and/or spied upon by Google Earth.
Nevertheless, it's time to form an independent country. Move out to international waters, and create a floating continent perhaps similar to "Snow Crash". Or everyone bring a rock, like in that beer commercial.
You know, that submarine thing... I smell trillions in damages. Move over RIAA!
If Lucas is claiming the "lightsaber handle" is *his* intellectual property, he's on very shakey ground as the prop in the ORIGINAL STAR WARS was a Graflex handle, a fairly off-the-shelf item in the moviemaking biz.
Similarly the prop control panel for the Death Star's main weapon was a Grass-Valley video switcher. These are not Lucas's intellectual property. They are common items that were used in the movie because the guy was strapped on the budget.
Is Lucas going to sue anyone making a 3-wheeled two-seater with no top, even though *they* used the chassis from a Reliant Robin for the landspeeder? And what about blasters? The guns used in the movie were slightly re-dressed real weapons, he really doesn't have much copyright on existing designs that were around long before the film.
Will it never end? How many years must something be in the dust and the the lawyers just feed off themselves, sueing everyone who sneezes near them? The song "Down Under" is from the 80's, early 80's I think, we talking almost 30 years! And just now we're getting to the lawsuit?
Quick, I think Ben Franklin's estate should sue for all the shit he created that everyone uses without paying for. Ben wanted it to all be freely available, but who cares what *he* wanted, he's dead, and now it's in lawyer hands.
And they aren't thinking about the benefit of all men like Franklin, they are thinking about the benefit of one man. Themself.
And that's why this world is going to shit.
No f'in way!
NASA does NOT get to name ANY moonbase "Alpha" until we have Eagles. (Coolest space pickup trucks ever!)
Or at least Shado Control and Interceptors. And I'll settle for a Doppleganger.
Maybe I'm mixing up my Gerry Anderson...
So now we all know what step #3 is...
#1) Do something stupid, or watch someone else do something stupid
#2) Video it.
#3) Post to Youtube
#4) PROFIT!!!!
But the question is: Are you getting a signed release? How much are you going to spend in visits to the shrink after your kid is emotionally scarred by being an internet celebrity? And when Tosh.0 visits you for a web redemption, how are you going to get out of it?
How about a different situation?
You're the CEO of a multi-billion dollar international corporation that insures credit default swaps. You're goofing off as usual, playing golf on a weekday when your phone rings. It's your personal assistant, telling you that the stock market has crashed because CDS's are worthless. You're leverged to 175% of market cap, so you don't even have enough cash to make payroll next week.
Should you be allowed to continue getting your $20 million dollar a year salary while you're borrowing money from the government, and in the meantime, your inaction, stupidity, and greed has cost the entire economy trillions of dollars and basically bankrupted the entire nation?
Frankly, EVERY corporation should provide a "I'm in the military" checkbox which, once verified the checkbox is valid (some proof is required), it would be in the best interests (PR-wise) of that company to provide reduced cost services, and complete waiving of fees if necessary.
I'm tired of companies talking about how they "support" the country and/or the troops, while they avoid paying taxes, they actively lobby to steal more from every American, they skirt the law to avoid any responsibility for any action they do or do not take, and all they do is make commercials about how patriotic they are.
Think about all the 9/11 victims. Every damn family of some high-paid white-collar worker who died that day got tons of money and all kinds of waivers on paying anything for months! Those guys were insured up the wazoo, and even when they weren't the families sued for "what they would have earned in the lifetime", which meant millions.
Meanwhile someone truly serving the nation, some military grunt, when he dies, all the family ever gets is grief and hassle from every corner of our country. Some gratitude. I have to wonder what mental illness makes anyone *want* to serve our country when our country won't do jack shit for them when the tables have turned. It makes me want to vomit.
... Can only mean one thing: INVASION!
Ah, Mr. Lucas, your ability to write dialog never ceases to amaze me... And yet, fully cognizant of the irony, I continue to quote from your films. What a loser I am.
But nevertheless, I agree.
How this douchebag got re-elected, I have no idea. The voters of CT must be insane. This man is a danger to everything we hold dear in this country.
All they need are some fresh developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers!
You seem to have conveiently forgotten that Big Oil gets Goverment Money.
If we're paying them, they are *supposed* to be our bitch! Yes, that's right, even with record profits and some of the most overcompensated officers of any industry, the oil industry still recieves government subsidies, as if they are too poor to drill on their own dime.
You're acting like the disaster was an accident. It wasn't. It was willful negligence. So what they were drilling in 5000 feet of water? There were safety measures in existence which could have prevented this catastrophe. BP *chose* to ignore every single safety protocol and measure.
To make the car analogy, it's like building a car with no brakes and then saying "well, people shouldn't drive, it's dangerous" when there are ALREADY other cars with brakes on the raod that aren't slamming into trees.
People that do stupid things with hazardous materials often die. But, if you follow a few safety procedures, it's amazing how often people can handle hazardous materials and live. That's the difference. BP took a risk to save a few bucks and now they are paying the price for being idiots.
See the movie "Flash of Genius". In this film, an American invents something useful, patents it, and is then ripped off by a big company. He sues and wins his case. It's about as close as you're going to come to what you asked for.
I think copyright law is too complex an issue for a movie unless you dumb it down to "good guy versus bad guy" (which is kind of how Avatar played out).
A better idea is to develop a sitcom about an average american family that has to deal with the struggles of the insane laws we face in this country. Like M*A*S*H, the best way to make a statement is through humor, and it will get people to think, kind of like the Daily Show. Now that "Law and Order" has been canceled, we need a show that is "ripped from today's headlines", and a sitcom using real issues our country faces hasn't been done since "All in the Family", which is constantly cited as one of the greatest TV productions of all time.
Real geeks are constantly excited by new tech. Real geeks are too busy to have families, so they have no problem with 80-hr weeks. Hell, real geeks can put in an 80-hr week from home. Google doesn't know what they're missing.
If anything it's the kids that are a problem. Most of the 20-somethings I've worked with are irresponsible, couldn't show up on time if you held a gun to their heads, don't understand the word deadline, and tend to overestimate their abilities big-time. Sure, a few of them turn out to be better than expected, but that's the minority.
I'm 45 and I'm still willing to kill myself for the job. I feel like I'm making a difference every day. I know people are depending upon on me. Sure, I've never been married, but I never wanted to be married. Why anybody would want that is beyond me. All that does is take away from time that could be spent being productive.