Posts by Tom 13

Re: Any love...

I'm not a big fan of Ellison, but he sure nailed that one!

Re: I refuse to be drawn into this thread!....

Bump Stargate up to E&I. The TV show moved to CE, but the original was a quite a bit darker.

Move Logan's run to E&I as well. It has serious themes despite the eye candy.

Ditto Rollerball (for which, like Highlander, there can be only one). Granted the pacing is a bit slow for the modern audience, but then so is the first Christopher Reeves Superman if you go back and watch it.

Not on my list, but I know people who'd put Videodrome on the GP list. Mine would include Flash Gordon (Queen music one).

Re: A Western in space, not serious sci-fi,

Best you not watch Cowboys and Aliens then. Your brain will shutdown in a logic loop like Mudd's computer in the Star Trek episode.

Re: SF is not just about "big ideas", it only looks that way...

Yep, your post pretty much sums up why SF writing has gone to shit these days. The tent got so fracking big they have no way to get back to the real thing.

Science Fiction is about improbable, but possible futures or alternate realities. Fantasy is about impossible ones, but ones which once the impossible is accepted are plausible.

I'd put quotes around that but I've mangled it badly from a book I read back about 20 years ago on the history of science fiction. SF always has at it's heart possible technology changes, sometimes rising almost to the level of the technology itself being a character. And it looks at how humans react in such a changed environment. The rest is Fantasy, Horror, or some other genre or subgenre, related, but not the same.

Re: another film to get butchered with a sequel?

When I saw who they picked for the lead, I didn't even watch the previews. So I'm guessing yes, but don't know.

Re: underrated as a serious film

Pitch Black - maybe

Starship Troopers - no. It's one of Heinlein's juveniles, and therefore space opera. I'm not a big Heinlein fan and I'm not sure the movie made it up to even the standards of his juveniles.

Robocop - yes, but not the sequels.

Re: well you get a pat on the back from me....

On the bright side, you got some rest out of it. I was awake through the whole thing and it's still a mystery to me.

But it certainly makes the lists every time.

Re: No love for Dune?

Definitely not space opera. I love space opera. I hate Dune. Still, I would be amiss if I didn't recognize it's impact on the SF world.

Re: Is Deckard a human or an Android?

Human, but you'd have to read the original Philip K. Dick (Do Amdroids Dream of electric Sheep) to know that and why. Let's just say the ending is quite a bit different from the movie. And obviously wouldn't have made it past the test audiences. Sort of like they had to change the ending of We Can Remember It For You Wholesale when they made it into the Arnie flick Total Recall. Of course both short stories explore Dick's fascination with the question of how do we know what it real.

Re: Have to agree about Star Trek, it's my favourite Trek film

Are you and the author DAFT?!?!?!?

There's a reason Trekkies call it "The Motion Sickness." It was 110 long, boring minutes. The original show did better with less money and less time. Vger was an obvious Nomad ripoff even when the movie was released. Some damn fool making another "what would Ed Wood have done if only he'd had a budget' movie. Yes after 20 years we all went to see it because we were starved for something new and birthed the series again. But if you're picking an original crew Trek movie it's obviously Wrath of Khan.

Re: Zardoz should be avoided at all costs.

I concur. It wasn't even bad enough to make the list for our college SF club's Top 10 Bad SF movies.

Although I have since seen one that was even worse. Some soulless twit had transferred a video copy to commercially released DVD. And unfortunately for him, the previous soulless twit who transferred the film to video had the reels out of order. We knew it was transferred from video because at one point you could see the video tape scroll line roll up the screen. Yes, these were the memorable things about the plot. That, and that it somehow revolved around using guns that looked like 1970s hair dryers.

Re: attack the messenger or their motivation

I trust his grandpa more than I trust the climate fiddlers. Grandpa had one reason for recording temperatures and the rest: he wanted to know how well his plants were going to do. Getting the data wrong meant not knowing what adjustments to make based on his crop growth. His benefit came from getting the data right, not supporting this theory or that theory.

And IF ocean levels were rising the way warmists say they are, local climate, even local geography couldn't overcome the effects.

Re: Prove it...

Actually protection against self-incrimination is one of the protected rights under the US Constitution. But once you've got probable cause, certain non-confidential information can be required by the courts. That the case has been accepted is sufficient for me to believe probable cause exists and Apple are therefore bound to produce the documents. Documents would be protected if they were trade secret related, but then Apple would need to prove they fall under that category of protection.

What I'm surprised at is that Apple didn't appear to comply by burying the complaintants with too much data. Surely they could have produced it, and to me that would seem to be easier to disguise.

Re: Amazed that does not happen already.

Arbitration may be less costly, but it isn't necessarily more fair. There are instances where arbitration leads to power being concentrated to the benefit of entrenched interests which are not being as economically productive as they ought to be.

Re: his acting muscles

With that script, I'm not sure it would have greatly improved things if his acting muscles had been in shape. Sort of like the second movie.

Am I the only one who noticed that the two good Jones movies were about recovering Christian artifacts and the bad ones were about other artifacts?

Re: It's science fiction after all

Technically it's space fantasy or better still space opera. Neither sub-genre pays much attention to detailing what accounts for the changes in the world space. Of course, they also tend to be rip roaring fun yarns.

Re: sensible level of funding to actually achieve its goals.

And yet your post refutes itself if we look at things honestly.

What is NASA's current goal? I can't name one. We haven't had a goal for NASA since Apollo. We've had projects, and we've got fiefdoms, which has resulted in the usual bureaucrat infighting that stifles everything.

Yes NASA did cool things that fired national and international interest. In the 60s. Since then our notable achievements have pretty much been Challenger and Columbia - both disasters resulting from PHBFH making decisions that ignored engineering input to puff up a superiors. Those kinds of things only happen when there are no clear goals.

At this point NASA has to be transformed from the point of the spear to the space going equivalent of the FAA and space exploration needs to be turned over to the private sector. For all that I've come down on Musk the last few days, at least his company hasn't killed anybody, they've admitted their failures, and they are working to correct them. I've got more faith in him and others like him getting us up there and doing it right than I do that NASA can.

Re: quietly started using North American components where he could

While I'd love that if it were true, the unfortunate facts on the ground are that any attempts at manufacturing in the US are pretty much doomed before they start because of union issues.

R.I.P Twinkies

Re: you either missed my point or I expressed it poorly!

No we got it. It's just wrong. Equally biased works out to doubly dangerous to the judicial system.

Re: Agreed

Good advice, but dangerous. The lawyers would probably sue for wrongful termination....

Which wouldn't worry me so much if it wasn't for the fact that it's 50-50 on whether they'd win. [[shudder]]]

Re: the damage award continues to head south...

The damage award was always going to head south. Part of the irony of the American court system is that a huge contributor to the outrageous initial awards is that as the defendant appeals the verdict the award keeps going down until it becomes reasonable.

What's amazing in this case is how RAPIDLY the award is headed south.

Re: That's 50 versions per building type

If only it were that easy.

It's not even the states that set the regs although they might set certain guidelines, it's the municipalities. So it gets down to at least each country, and possibly even cities within the county. That's thousands of plans per basic design.

Re: Guy's behind the times.

And as other posts have noted, the real problem to building a house for most people isn't buying the parts, it's knowing the local zoning regs, then getting the permits and the inspections. Good reasons for all of them initially, but these days a mess to coordinate, which is what the general contractor does.

Re: Trying to evade the correct paperwork and procedures in the UK is simply stupid.

Or the US. Or France. Or Canada. Mexico would probably be a 50-50 thing depending on whether you known the correct people to bribe. In point of fact, just about anywhere in the world except 3rd world countries are likely to run afoul of many building regs. And I expect in the 3rd world, you'll have trouble finding those CNC machines.

Re: I guess my question is why even hook these devices up to ANY net.

People have been working on it since around the time that toaster got connected to the internet. My second real job was for an outfit called SMART HOUSE, LP (now defunct). This is something they would certainly have included in their home automation package. It would have been marketed as part of the energy savings package. They'd also have included teasers about being able to phone home to make sure the air conditioner was off/higher temp if you suddenly were worried you forgot to change it before leaving the house. They were a bit more concerned about security than it sounds like these manufacturers are. In fact, they killed part of their planned phone automation system because they realized it opened a break-in liability issue.

Granted in the end I'm with you (I never could work out a cost/convenience justification), and given they went bankrupt about a year after I left apparently not many consumers did either, but that doesn't mean people aren't working on it. And at the low prices for internet connectivity these days, I can see manufacturers throwing it on without a lot of strategy thought.

Re: evacuate an area, for example, if we had time.

The smaller the object, the more difficult to detect and track. Then you have to get the orbital path. All theoretically workable, IF you are looking at the right place at the right time with the right equipment. You've got a better chance of winning that big Irish Lottery.

For all practical intents with current technology and money resources we can't do much about either of them. The small ones we'll spot to late to be able to evacuate. (And let's face it, we have enough trouble evacuating large cities when we have a week's notice that a hurricane is about to hit land when we've got pretty satellite pictures of it. Can you imagine trying to get people to evacuate a city based on the little white dot a meteor would be?) The large ones we couldn't deflect anyway. (And they'd be little white dots too.)