I find it amazing that so many people are ecstatic over this movie, especially the "professional" reviewers. I guess when Hollywood churns out so much garbage, it's not too tough to look good by comparison. In my opinion, District 9 was merely watchable, with the annoyances outweighing the few redemptive aspects.
Given the plot setup I was expecting the movie to tackle some real issues that would seem relevant to today's society. Segregation, pre-emptive violence, The Other, etc. Instead I got two hours of tired Hollywood cliches. The Most Moral Man wins. Love is more important than life itself. Big Corporations are Evil. Big Guns are cool. Soldiers are assholes.
Not only that, I thought the implication that the public would reject the aliens out of xenophobia to be a depressing view of humanity. The scene where it showed the "bugger lovers" holding signs up was particularly revealing of the writers' idea of human nature: the Megacorp was about to go in and commit illegal evictions and a small handful of people show up? I'm pretty sure there would have been a much larger worldwide outcry.
In fact, the entire shantytown doesn't add up. What I got out of the movie was the implication that these aliens were shoved into the shantytown because they seemed stupid, but were actually really smart, as evidenced by the whole computer lab alien. If they were really smart, there would have been some political representation/structure that humanity could have dealt with. Instead they were apparently worthless.
Instead of exploring these (explainable) inconsistencies, which would have made an interresting movie, instead we are stuck following Wickus on his comedy of errors, who I found morally repugnant and illogical. The power of a movie like this is to put you in the main character's shoes, imagining what it would be like to be in his/her situation. In this case, Wickus is simply too stupid for me to imagine having made his choices. "Hey I'm about to be taken away in a spaceship from the people who are trying to kill me, but since it's going to take longer than I thought I'm going to punch my savior in the face, kidnap his child, and try to fly his alien spacecraft by myself!!!" Fucking retard.
On the plus side, it had good CG, with some fun gore that made a Jason flick look tame.
Actually the only way to practice "safe downloading" would be to use an anonymous protocol such as FreeNet. Filesharing services such as Kazaa and eDonkey do not allow 'pure' leeching.
Example: I have always been scared of getting sued so I had a policy of moving everything from my downloaded folder to a separate folder immediately after download. I thought this equated to leeching, but I still got a letter from my ISP saying I must cease and desist.
It doesn't seem to me that this would be a practical alternative. The only advantage that I can see of real-time processing is savings in start-up capital. Lucasarts and others already have spent the mass $ for their rendering farms, so what advantages would they get from switching to real-time rendering?
Um, I don't ever remember having a choice.. And realistically, no child is ever going to say "Teacher, I think I'll refrain from pledging allegeiance today because I don't understand the full philosophical significance of it."
Re:Commercial applications already exist
on
Think And Click
·
· Score: 1
Looks like it's been years since they've updated their site too....
Minimum computer system requirements:
Pentium CPU or compatible (100 MHz or faster clock speed)
One of the following operating systems :
MS-DOS version. 6.0 or higher
Windows 3.1
Windows 95 / 98
8 MB RAM (16 MB for Windows 95/98)
10 MB free hard disk space
Two AA batteries
~~
I think I would be a little hesitant to drop $1995.00 on this device... but look at the sweet games that come with it!:P
I'm reminded by these posts of the Simpsons Halloween episode where they get the automated house... seriously though, isn't there a point where some of this technology simply just isn't needed? It seems to me like some of this stuff is just inventing for the sake of having toys, not inventing in order to meet some necesity. Take the self-setting alarm clock, for instance... I'll take my alarm clock with an extra large snooze button any day over a machine that wakes me up (even) earlier than I have to.
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I find it amazing that so many people are ecstatic over this movie, especially the "professional" reviewers. I guess when Hollywood churns out so much garbage, it's not too tough to look good by comparison. In my opinion, District 9 was merely watchable, with the annoyances outweighing the few redemptive aspects.
Given the plot setup I was expecting the movie to tackle some real issues that would seem relevant to today's society. Segregation, pre-emptive violence, The Other, etc. Instead I got two hours of tired Hollywood cliches. The Most Moral Man wins. Love is more important than life itself. Big Corporations are Evil. Big Guns are cool. Soldiers are assholes.
Not only that, I thought the implication that the public would reject the aliens out of xenophobia to be a depressing view of humanity. The scene where it showed the "bugger lovers" holding signs up was particularly revealing of the writers' idea of human nature: the Megacorp was about to go in and commit illegal evictions and a small handful of people show up? I'm pretty sure there would have been a much larger worldwide outcry.
In fact, the entire shantytown doesn't add up. What I got out of the movie was the implication that these aliens were shoved into the shantytown because they seemed stupid, but were actually really smart, as evidenced by the whole computer lab alien. If they were really smart, there would have been some political representation/structure that humanity could have dealt with. Instead they were apparently worthless.
Instead of exploring these (explainable) inconsistencies, which would have made an interresting movie, instead we are stuck following Wickus on his comedy of errors, who I found morally repugnant and illogical. The power of a movie like this is to put you in the main character's shoes, imagining what it would be like to be in his/her situation. In this case, Wickus is simply too stupid for me to imagine having made his choices. "Hey I'm about to be taken away in a spaceship from the people who are trying to kill me, but since it's going to take longer than I thought I'm going to punch my savior in the face, kidnap his child, and try to fly his alien spacecraft by myself!!!" Fucking retard.
On the plus side, it had good CG, with some fun gore that made a Jason flick look tame.
Actually the only way to practice "safe downloading" would be to use an anonymous protocol such as FreeNet. Filesharing services such as Kazaa and eDonkey do not allow 'pure' leeching.
Example: I have always been scared of getting sued so I had a policy of moving everything from my downloaded folder to a separate folder immediately after download. I thought this equated to leeching, but I still got a letter from my ISP saying I must cease and desist.
All I can say is, I won't miss ribbon cable. I've been waiting for something to come along to replace it.. woot!
I couldn't find any information on what the Serial ATA cable would actually be like though, does anyone have any information about that?
It doesn't seem to me that this would be a practical alternative. The only advantage that I can see of real-time processing is savings in start-up capital. Lucasarts and others already have spent the mass $ for their rendering farms, so what advantages would they get from switching to real-time rendering?
Um, I don't ever remember having a choice.. And realistically, no child is ever going to say "Teacher, I think I'll refrain from pledging allegeiance today because I don't understand the full philosophical significance of it."
Looks like it's been years since they've updated their site too....
:P
Minimum computer system requirements:
Pentium CPU or compatible (100 MHz or faster clock speed)
One of the following operating systems :
MS-DOS version. 6.0 or higher
Windows 3.1
Windows 95 / 98
8 MB RAM (16 MB for Windows 95/98)
10 MB free hard disk space
Two AA batteries
~~
I think I would be a little hesitant to drop $1995.00 on this device... but look at the sweet games that come with it!
I'm reminded by these posts of the Simpsons Halloween episode where they get the automated house... seriously though, isn't there a point where some of this technology simply just isn't needed? It seems to me like some of this stuff is just inventing for the sake of having toys, not inventing in order to meet some necesity. Take the self-setting alarm clock, for instance... I'll take my alarm clock with an extra large snooze button any day over a machine that wakes me up (even) earlier than I have to.