Aye on the special powers. I thought the dismembering was to allow Flynn to regrow her arm showing his user powers. Ditto on the bar scene. It felt out of place and matrix like (more than star wars) tho I liked "Zeus" character who sparkled.
The isos were basically Lulu from 5th Element. Translated into the real world, they do change philosophy and likely change a lot of medical technology and genetic science. However, given only one of them, the government would snap her up in a second as soon as they found out about her existence.
Aye, the tron storyline was better dropped and replaced with something more useful.
The young face wasn't a big distraction-- but it didn't look real either. So close tho. this side of the uncanny valley for me. It felt like the lighting didn't match on it.
I recently painted room and realized how much everything in the room modifies the lighting of everything in the room. Add a green couch and all the walls are now a little green. Add a black jumpsuited guy and there is less light radiating from there. So a given area has nearly infinite light sources, reflection sources, and transmutation sources.
So it may be hard to get the lighting to look real. maybe they need to measure the light mask of the actor's face in a white room and then compare it to the actor's face in the scene (the real one who is acting) and then use that lighting mask difference to modify the lighting of the face laid over the real face.
The fake face looked too evenly lit.
Re:Tron 1.0
on
Tron: Legacy
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
FWIW, I hate modern cutting. I frequently can't tell what's happening or form an emotional response before it cuts again to something else. The epitome of this is a Michael Bay fight scene. Some body part hits someone. It doesn't look cool and exciting. It looks like 30 to 60 seconds of incomprehensible mess and then they show you the outcome. I suppose they just don't want to pay money for decent fight choreography and think the cutting is good enough.
Then you get a movie like inception and the fight scene in the hotel corridor with longer cuts and it blows you away emotionally. I think they are getting away from the hyper cutting.
Agree on most of the rest. It was mostly "B" actors (who went on to be TV stars or secondary actors). And the plot/writing was average.
Re:Saw it Sunday
on
Tron: Legacy
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Olivia was channeling Real genius Michelle Meyrink and Galaxy Quest Missi Pyle with a couple eye shots and black wig of Meg Ryan in "something wild".
Basically the short black hair, non-threatening pliable child adult, vaguely mischievous thing is very sexy and not nearly as threatening and 'real' as the bisexual "13" of House.
Real women like real men are actually very difficult to deal with. Most people would want a faithful companion that matched them over an interesting companion who might show them up, leave them, or screw around on them.
I'm at a point where even the 90% rule isn't sufficient for me to keep up and watch everything. I miss good books, songs, shows, and movies all the time now.
I'm headed towards 99% of everything isn't "awesome".
Of course, my quirky taste means things that are awesome for me are only good for others.
Like...
TiMER, Pushing Daisies, Recent Animated DC movies (seriously good shit, excellent acting by name stars, great animation, wonderful writing, good plots), Yes, Minister, Jeckyl, etc.
Over the last year, I have a new technique for watching merely good shows. I fast forward through 25% of them.
I'm not saying our data centers are big, but I think they found a lost amazon tribe in the back of one. They use carts with indy 500 engines to get around inside them. And when one of the Texas data centers comes on line, the power flickers in several adjacent states and all of Mexico.
No, there were no provisions for any type of benefits to children in the Social Security Act of 1935.
The promised benefits have been increased. Per business week, "If Social Security checks had been adjusted for inflation ever since the program started in 1935, retirees today would take home only $425 a month." What we consider a minimum fair amount has grown.
If you donated $129k, then a fair benefit would have been about $7000 (about 6%) for most of the last century and 6 or 7 years of this one. The current interest rates are unrealistically low.
But actual benefits are considerably higher. Part of the reason we can't afford them over the long term.
But again, it won't go bankrupt, they estimate it will pay about 75% (so about $8400 inflation adjusted).
Social security will survive with at least 75% benefits through at least 2050 (and probably beyond-- once the boomers start dying off the pressure drops). It would be better than that if they removed the payments to children and other survivors and if they treated it as insurance against poverty and means tested it. They could basically cap it at the inflation adjusted median income. You do not get any social security that exceeds $60,000 when added to your other income.
But "what about me, I PAID all my life ! I want what's coming to me!!!!!" Well for one thing, most boomers paid about $120k. It's insane to pay them a $29,000 a year on their $120k investment. At current rates, that assumes their $120k has grown to about 1.2 million dollars. The benefits are too high (and I'm only 12 years away from early retirement so this hits me too).
Medicare is in serious trouble. It's bankrupt (not 75%) by 2020 (some say 2019).
Fertility rate is not down for hispanics and islamics in the 1st world. It's also not down for other subsets of the population (I know three strippers and all three had 4 or more children).
Picture the 1st world lifestyle as penicillin. Some parts of the population are resistant to it. Over time, they will grow to dominate the population (in the south USA, hispanics will be a majority by 2040). Increased poverty also increases the birth rate. The wealth is not being shared equally by the top 2% any more. So the benefits of sacrificing having children are not as large as they were only 20 years ago.
It would be one thing if you were healthy, 35, and live to 200 or 500. You would work and be productive. Birth control would be no more of a concern than it is now ( imo earth is already past the carrying capacity so it's just a question of critical failure in 35 years or 75 years.) Obviously, you'd need a strong tie between the immortality treatment and birth control (vasectomies for men, not sure what for women-everything we have now is invasive except iud/pill and those don't work for everyone)
OTH, if any people (say.1% per year) got a chronic illness and could not work or be productive then over 500 years, a huge portion of the population would be invalids.
nah. Even with google set on "safe", hard core porn occasional comes up with innocent search terms. And some non-porn is filtered when safe search is on. I guess they use a combination of flagging and automated filter software (too much skin and it's automatically flagged?)
I do think most of the media are pro corporate and I believe both political parties have been captured by the corporations. The republicans and democrats are both also captured by the wealthy (but different groups of wealthy).
The fact is, if the corporations and wealthy were just a teensy bit poorer, they would still be doing fine and the rest of society would be doing much better.
"No republican will ever vote for anything that increases spending"
Ah if only it were true. I'd hold my nose and vote republican.
They just voted to increase the deficit by 1.2 trillion. That included 400 million in new spending.
Republicans (and Democrats) will only vote to increase spending between the 1st and 31st of the months between january and december.
The only exceptions are ron paul and a few others (including one or two democrats whose names escape me at this late hour).
Both parties raise spending our grandkid's money as long as they get a pet project or they get lobby money to be reelected or (occasionally) if they are offered a solid job after leaving congress by a corporation or lobbying firm.
NPR- hard left MSNPC - left CNN - left to hard left FOX - hard right Drudge (web)- hard right. Rush (talk) - hard right Hannity (talk) - hard right O'Reilley - Right to hard right (had a few principles left a couple years ago, not sure about lately, like letterman, he ran afoul of sex issues that would not have been an issue 20 years ago).
No centrist to "very mildly left" news sources available.
I also listen to BBC, BLOOMBERG, and CNBC.
I think the older caucasion CNBC anchor (Mark?) in the morning may actually be Centrist/Pragmatist/Realist.
Bloomberg comes across as very dry-- it is probably pro business but the bias would come in the pre-fact selection because the actual presentation seems fairly balanced but with a pro business bias. Not biased either way socially- it doesn't give a damn about social issues.
BBC is maybe the closest to centrist with a british bias but I don't spend hours on it so it may be.
No, this was Street Talk, a local houston financial program on AM700 (available by internet). It was a real guy and it was last week sometime (so may still be in the archives).
However, with a million people a month running out of benefits, and 55% of them republicans, this story is going to come up a lot.
Anecdotally, crime is starting to go up. We've had multiple bank robbers lately. I hadn't heard about them for many years and suddenly about 30 locally. likewise, several neighborhoods are seeing an increase in financially motivated crime (do not leave even a buck in visible in your car-- better to leave your car visibly and obviously empty).
I think people are getting desperate. Could be unrelated tho.
I didn't see any value to this personally, but I could understand that maybe the hard core religious/patriotic/straight troops might have a problem like they used to have with blacks. It sucked when we lost all those Farsi translators.
Once I found out our troops were already doing joint exercises with other countries that allow openly gay solders, the DADT seemed particularly pointless and stupid. After the military said, "We are okay with it", I was really surprised even more senators didn't vote yes.
We were losing good, motivated, patriotic soldiers over the issue.
On the flip side, you've lost the ability to "go gay" if some gets really high/near suicidal mortality rate.
I think the military will do just fine. In a way, it may be yet another sideways nail in the "gay marriage" coffin too.
Funny that I can't by products from overseas where they are 20% to 95% cheaper and bring them back to the US. Oh... the freedom of contract only applies to the corporations, not to the customer.
Do you mean MTV2? MTV hasn't shown videos since the 80s.
I remember the night MTV started (video killed the radio star) and years of glorious 24x7 videos. Some cool and psychodelic, some bland and just the band, but it was always music or *brief* music news.
If he holds his principles until he starves to death, I salute him.
However, in this case, I think he held his principles because benefits were postponing the pain.
Once the pain hits, his principles will typically (about 80% of the people) fold in less than a month (for most it's actually less than a day if anyone around you is talking negatively about it-- most people rationalize massively once the slightest stress begins).
But if he says, "I voted that way, I lost everything, I'm living on the streets, covered in filth, unable to find even a minimum wage job despite years of experience, and now I'm going to vote that way again... because I sincerely believe the wealthy actually help create jobs rather than just take money out of the mass market and destroy jobs." then cool. He may be right- he may be crazy- but I'm down with his principled position.
But if he starts going apeshit and threatens violence, I hope he gets what's coming to him for being an idiot and slitting his own throat.
Raising taxes by 10% and providing extended unemployment benefits would not hurt the wealthy (just return them to the 1990s) and would reduce the pain to about 12 million americans (they are rolling off at about 1 million a month now- so about 12 million of them next year when it peaks 3 years after the 2008 crash.).
The cuts would have expired without positive action by Obama.
First he rolled over for the health insurance companies* and then he did this.
Not very happy.
----
* Starting to get weird vibes off the health care thing tho. While they basically wrote the bill and pwned him, the "must accept regardless of previous illness" appears like it will lead to massive unintended consequences which could bankrupt the health insurance companies unless revoked (so that is what I expect).
The play goes like this... I'm healthy... so I pay $625 to ~$2000 a year in fines (tho it may be capped at $1100 for some) and pay for my own health care.
Now.. I get hideously ill (cancer + mad cow disease) and I immediately join health insurance *which must accept me* and *must pay an uncapped amount to cure me*.
I can't see how that is going to be sustainable. Massive adverse selection- no one paying premiums until they need the benefits.
I have friends with decent incomes who are now 2 years behind. They can't keep up.
We finally said, "we are going to talk about this stuff sometimes".
So yea.
OTH, other than Big Bang theory, I'm not absolutely current on anything any more. It was different in the 60's and 70's. Everyone had seen the exact same thing the night before (one of 4 stations doncha know) and talked about it. It was sorta cool.
Slashdot Mirror
Aye on the special powers. I thought the dismembering was to allow Flynn to regrow her arm showing his user powers.
Ditto on the bar scene. It felt out of place and matrix like (more than star wars) tho I liked "Zeus" character who sparkled.
The isos were basically Lulu from 5th Element. Translated into the real world, they do change philosophy and likely change a lot of medical technology and genetic science. However, given only one of them, the government would snap her up in a second as soon as they found out about her existence.
Aye, the tron storyline was better dropped and replaced with something more useful.
The young face wasn't a big distraction-- but it didn't look real either. So close tho. this side of the uncanny valley for me. It felt like the lighting didn't match on it.
I recently painted room and realized how much everything in the room modifies the lighting of everything in the room.
Add a green couch and all the walls are now a little green. Add a black jumpsuited guy and there is less light radiating from there. So a given area has nearly infinite light sources, reflection sources, and transmutation sources.
So it may be hard to get the lighting to look real. maybe they need to measure the light mask of the actor's face in a white room and then compare it to the actor's face in the scene (the real one who is acting) and then use that lighting mask difference to modify the lighting of the face laid over the real face.
The fake face looked too evenly lit.
FWIW, I hate modern cutting. I frequently can't tell what's happening or form an emotional response before it cuts again to something else. The epitome of this is a Michael Bay fight scene. Some body part hits someone. It doesn't look cool and exciting. It looks like 30 to 60 seconds of incomprehensible mess and then they show you the outcome.
I suppose they just don't want to pay money for decent fight choreography and think the cutting is good enough.
Then you get a movie like inception and the fight scene in the hotel corridor with longer cuts and it blows you away emotionally. I think they are getting away from the hyper cutting.
Agree on most of the rest. It was mostly "B" actors (who went on to be TV stars or secondary actors). And the plot/writing was average.
Olivia was channeling Real genius Michelle Meyrink and Galaxy Quest Missi Pyle with a couple eye shots and black wig of Meg Ryan in "something wild".
Basically the short black hair, non-threatening pliable child adult, vaguely mischievous thing is very sexy and not nearly as threatening and 'real' as the bisexual "13" of House.
Real women like real men are actually very difficult to deal with. Most people would want a faithful companion that matched them over an interesting companion who might show them up, leave them, or screw around on them.
I'm at a point where even the 90% rule isn't sufficient for me to keep up and watch everything.
I miss good books, songs, shows, and movies all the time now.
I'm headed towards 99% of everything isn't "awesome".
Of course, my quirky taste means things that are awesome for me are only good for others.
Like...
TiMER, Pushing Daisies, Recent Animated DC movies (seriously good shit, excellent acting by name stars, great animation, wonderful writing, good plots), Yes, Minister, Jeckyl, etc.
Over the last year, I have a new technique for watching merely good shows. I fast forward through 25% of them.
I'm not saying our data centers are big, but I think they found a lost amazon tribe in the back of one. They use carts with indy 500 engines to get around inside them. And when one of the Texas data centers comes on line, the power flickers in several adjacent states and all of Mexico.
After this, I read that insurance companies are willing to sell an annuity which pays $10,000 a year for $120,000.
So it seems reasonable the government could provide $10,750 for $129,000 contributed.
Annuities work like this because everyone gives $129,000, half of them die by 75ish, and not many make it to 100.
No, there were no provisions for any type of benefits to children in the Social Security Act of 1935.
The promised benefits have been increased. Per business week, "If Social Security checks had been adjusted for inflation ever since the program started in 1935, retirees today would take home only $425 a month."
What we consider a minimum fair amount has grown.
If you donated $129k, then a fair benefit would have been about $7000 (about 6%) for most of the last century and 6 or 7 years of this one. The current interest rates are unrealistically low.
But actual benefits are considerably higher. Part of the reason we can't afford them over the long term.
But again, it won't go bankrupt, they estimate it will pay about 75% (so about $8400 inflation adjusted).
Social security will survive with at least 75% benefits through at least 2050 (and probably beyond-- once the boomers start dying off the pressure drops). It would be better than that if they removed the payments to children and other survivors and if they treated it as insurance against poverty and means tested it. They could basically cap it at the inflation adjusted median income. You do not get any social security that exceeds $60,000 when added to your other income.
But "what about me, I PAID all my life ! I want what's coming to me!!!!!" Well for one thing, most boomers paid about $120k. It's insane to pay them a $29,000 a year on their $120k investment. At current rates, that assumes their $120k has grown to about 1.2 million dollars. The benefits are too high (and I'm only 12 years away from early retirement so this hits me too).
Medicare is in serious trouble. It's bankrupt (not 75%) by 2020 (some say 2019).
Fertility rate is not down for hispanics and islamics in the 1st world. It's also not down for other subsets of the population (I know three strippers and all three had 4 or more children).
Picture the 1st world lifestyle as penicillin. Some parts of the population are resistant to it. Over time, they will grow to dominate the population (in the south USA, hispanics will be a majority by 2040).
Increased poverty also increases the birth rate. The wealth is not being shared equally by the top 2% any more. So the benefits of sacrificing having children are not as large as they were only 20 years ago.
It would be one thing if you were healthy, 35, and live to 200 or 500. You would work and be productive. Birth control would be no more of a concern than it is now ( imo earth is already past the carrying capacity so it's just a question of critical failure in 35 years or 75 years.) Obviously, you'd need a strong tie between the immortality treatment and birth control (vasectomies for men, not sure what for women-everything we have now is invasive except iud/pill and those don't work for everyone)
OTH, if any people (say .1% per year) got a chronic illness and could not work or be productive then over 500 years, a huge portion of the population would be invalids.
nah. Even with google set on "safe", hard core porn occasional comes up with innocent search terms.
And some non-porn is filtered when safe search is on. I guess they use a combination of flagging and automated filter software (too much skin and it's automatically flagged?)
I do think most of the media are pro corporate and I believe both political parties have been captured by the corporations. The republicans and democrats are both also captured by the wealthy (but different groups of wealthy).
The fact is, if the corporations and wealthy were just a teensy bit poorer, they would still be doing fine and the rest of society would be doing much better.
"No republican will ever vote for anything that increases spending"
Ah if only it were true. I'd hold my nose and vote republican.
They just voted to increase the deficit by 1.2 trillion. That included 400 million in new spending.
Republicans (and Democrats) will only vote to increase spending between the 1st and 31st of the months between january and december.
The only exceptions are ron paul and a few others (including one or two democrats whose names escape me at this late hour).
Both parties raise spending our grandkid's money as long as they get a pet project or they get lobby money to be reelected or (occasionally) if they are offered a solid job after leaving congress by a corporation or lobbying firm.
Yes, I agree. NPR is fairly left wing.
The way I read it right now is
NPR- hard left
MSNPC - left
CNN - left to hard left
FOX - hard right
Drudge (web)- hard right.
Rush (talk) - hard right
Hannity (talk) - hard right
O'Reilley - Right to hard right (had a few principles left a couple years ago, not sure about lately, like letterman, he ran afoul of sex issues that would not have been an issue 20 years ago).
No centrist to "very mildly left" news sources available.
I also listen to BBC, BLOOMBERG, and CNBC.
I think the older caucasion CNBC anchor (Mark?) in the morning may actually be Centrist/Pragmatist/Realist.
Bloomberg comes across as very dry-- it is probably pro business but the bias would come in the pre-fact selection because the actual presentation seems fairly balanced but with a pro business bias.
Not biased either way socially- it doesn't give a damn about social issues.
BBC is maybe the closest to centrist with a british bias but I don't spend hours on it so it may be.
Hey! I'm a socialist libertarian!
Heretic!
No, this was Street Talk, a local houston financial program on AM700 (available by internet). It was a real guy and it was last week sometime (so may still be in the archives).
However, with a million people a month running out of benefits, and 55% of them republicans, this story is going to come up a lot.
Anecdotally, crime is starting to go up. We've had multiple bank robbers lately. I hadn't heard about them for many years and suddenly about 30 locally.
likewise, several neighborhoods are seeing an increase in financially motivated crime (do not leave even a buck in visible in your car-- better to leave your car visibly and obviously empty).
I think people are getting desperate. Could be unrelated tho.
Grats!
I didn't see any value to this personally, but I could understand that maybe the hard core religious/patriotic/straight troops might have a problem like they used to have with blacks.
It sucked when we lost all those Farsi translators.
Once I found out our troops were already doing joint exercises with other countries that allow openly gay solders, the DADT seemed particularly pointless and stupid.
After the military said, "We are okay with it", I was really surprised even more senators didn't vote yes.
We were losing good, motivated, patriotic soldiers over the issue.
On the flip side, you've lost the ability to "go gay" if some gets really high/near suicidal mortality rate.
I think the military will do just fine.
In a way, it may be yet another sideways nail in the "gay marriage" coffin too.
They will work as a cartel but they ultimately do want to crush their ceo buddies and hear the lamentation of their women.
CEO is a smiling, socio-pathic blood sport.
Huh.
Funny that I can't by products from overseas where they are 20% to 95% cheaper and bring them back to the US.
Oh... the freedom of contract only applies to the corporations, not to the customer.
Wow, completely agree. This is just an excellent way to push me to a trakfone.
If my phone is no good without extra charges, why on earth would I need a phone with those capabilities.
I think this is greedy blue skying as you surmise and that they will try but fail as someone else will be around to undercut them.
Data is data is data. If you want to limit me to 5 gig, fine. If that makes sense, I'll keep doing it. If not, I'll quit.
Do you mean MTV2? MTV hasn't shown videos since the 80s.
I remember the night MTV started (video killed the radio star) and years of glorious 24x7 videos. Some cool and psychodelic, some bland and just the band, but it was always music or *brief* music news.
If he holds his principles until he starves to death, I salute him.
However, in this case, I think he held his principles because benefits were postponing the pain.
Once the pain hits, his principles will typically (about 80% of the people) fold in less than a month (for most it's actually less than a day if anyone around you is talking negatively about it-- most people rationalize massively once the slightest stress begins).
But if he says, "I voted that way, I lost everything, I'm living on the streets, covered in filth, unable to find even a minimum wage job despite years of experience, and now I'm going to vote that way again... because I sincerely believe the wealthy actually help create jobs rather than just take money out of the mass market and destroy jobs." then cool. He may be right- he may be crazy- but I'm down with his principled position.
But if he starts going apeshit and threatens violence, I hope he gets what's coming to him for being an idiot and slitting his own throat.
Raising taxes by 10% and providing extended unemployment benefits would not hurt the wealthy (just return them to the 1990s) and would reduce the pain to about 12 million americans (they are rolling off at about 1 million a month now- so about 12 million of them next year when it peaks 3 years after the 2008 crash.).
Obama could have stopped this. He chose not to.
The cuts would have expired without positive action by Obama.
First he rolled over for the health insurance companies*
and then he did this.
Not very happy.
----
* Starting to get weird vibes off the health care thing tho. While they basically wrote the bill and pwned him, the "must accept regardless of previous illness" appears like it will lead to massive unintended consequences which could bankrupt the health insurance companies unless revoked (so that is what I expect).
The play goes like this...
I'm healthy... so I pay $625 to ~$2000 a year in fines (tho it may be capped at $1100 for some) and pay for my own health care.
Now.. I get hideously ill (cancer + mad cow disease) and I immediately join health insurance *which must accept me* and *must pay an uncapped amount to cure me*.
I can't see how that is going to be sustainable. Massive adverse selection- no one paying premiums until they need the benefits.
Thanks! Apparently, you've read my posts.
Wow. 1352! Did you help Cowboy Neal start the site?
I have friends with decent incomes who are now 2 years behind. They can't keep up.
We finally said, "we are going to talk about this stuff sometimes".
So yea.
OTH, other than Big Bang theory, I'm not absolutely current on anything any more. It was different in the 60's and 70's. Everyone had seen the exact same thing the night before (one of 4 stations doncha know) and talked about it. It was sorta cool.