James Hong is also still around. And I met both Hong and Joseph Turkel at San Diego Comic-Con in 2007. Hong was getting a lot of love not just for Dr. Chew, but also for that immortal dude he played in "Big Trouble In Little China." But Turkel was barely visited, so we got to talk. Politics, Blade Runner, Old Hollywood, and other cool subjects. He signed an 8 x 10. I paid for it, because he was donating his share of the money to Doctors Without Borders, a truly deserving cause. He asked me "OK, what Tyrell quote do you want on it?" Since it was a picture of Tyrell with Batty before Batty sent Tyrell to his deserved demise, and since it was one of the best lines in the movie, I had him write "Revel in your time!" He appreciated the choice too. "Yeah, you never quite have enough time to do everything you want to do. We really are all replicants...not willing to accept just the years we have." It was poignant, because even though he seemed really vital and mentally active, Turkel was getting on in years.

I really am not happy with this. Although having Ridley Scott on board gives me wan hope this isn't going to totally suck, the prospect of a huge tentpole movie with a CGI retrofitted Los Angeles and everything in 3 FRIGGIN D just hurts when I think of it. I would prefer to see them completely strip it down, make it an almost indie movie which puts the action in the Los Angeles that exists RIGHT NOW, because there have been enough things added to the Downtown LA skyline that look like Blade Runner since the movie came out, and more is coming. If you don't believe me, google LA Live and The Library Tower. The Wilshire Grand Hotel is going to be torn down and replaced with a skyscraper that will have video walls.

Blade Runner was too special to remake. I hope this doesn't happen, like Keanu Reeves as Spike Spiegel in a live-action Cowboy Bebop won't happen, or Leonardo diCaprio in a white-washed version of Akira. But if it does, Ridley Scott will probably not allow the quality level to go too far down.

And this particular political party also has a vested interest in denying anthropogenic climate disruption. So they defund weather satellites. How utterly convenient!

BTW, this comment:
for example, if there were a heavily Democrat-leaning city on a gulf coast protected only by an out-of-date levee
should be fixed thusly:
for example, if there were a heavily Democratic Party-leaning city on a gulf coast protected only by an out-of-date levee

The same political party in question likes to call their opposite number the DemocRAT party. They spit it out like weeks-old leftovers. They want people to associate the Democratic Party of the United States of America with Rattus rattus norvegicus. Sort of like how Radio Rwanda associated the Tutsi tribe with cockroaches.

Or 4Chan.xxx . Or nsfw.xxx . The possibilities are nearly endless!

Definite win. I wouldn't visit it, but man, that's awesome.

1.) The ESPER scene in Blade Runner was epic. Remember, this was back in the day when the hot setup was a 5-slot IBM PC running DOS. GUI? WTF is that? Voice recognition? Ummm...did not exist.
2.) Having the ESPER spit out an SX-70 picture at the end of the sequence is just the piece de resistance.
3.) Come on! It was freakin' BLADE RUNNER.

Yup! Fresh out of EdNet! :P

Good real life computing movie: (with a little dramatic license) Pirates of Silicon Valley.
One that is absolutely begging to be made: Pirates of Silicon Valley II: Just For Fun. Wherein a college kid from Finland drives both Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer nuts, Bill Gates falls for one of his project managers, and a gumdrop shaped, Bondi blue little all-in-one computer saves Apple.

Best. Hacker. In media. Evar.

Edward Wong Howe Pepalu Tivruski The Fourth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKVor_sX2cg

Actually that would be quite cool...Sam Flynn takes over Encom, and he eventually thinks his crap don't stink. And furthermore he has millions of fanboys exquisitely sensitive to his Reality Distortion Field.

The Tron sequel idea I had would have had Kevin Flynn basically becoming a Bill Gates-esque zillionaire with a Jobsian fanboy following. He eventually rewrites and unleashes the MCP on the Internet cloud because he craves complete ownage. However, there is a young Eastern European hacker kid who steps up and saves the Cloud...and the world. Yeah, the young hacker would be kinda sorta based on Linus Torvalds.

However, that story was better and less hokily done as Summer Wars. When Funimation unleashes that in theatres...GO. Actually, come to think of it, Summer Wars was what Tron: Legacy should have been. And Oz is so much more visually interesting than The Grid 2.0.

Every computer outside the Grid was running Mac OS X. Didn't you recognize the Darwin command line? No big thing: Steve Jobs is the biggest shareholder in Disney now so he gets mad props. That's the way that goes.

Actually having to go into Flynn's Arcade on the way to Flynn's secret office is one of my favorite scenes in the movie. I gather that you were in diapers in 1982. I was 18. Tron was big stuff for geeks of my generation.

Oh yeah, you didn't notice the most telling nostalgia object in young Sam Flynn's room? Mac Classic. Pristine.

Get off my frakkin lawn, youngling.

I read the headline and assumed this would be another story about the TSA's screening procedures...

There is already a gaming system in place that is ideal for a Firefly game, and it's not the same one the "official" Firefly/Serenity game used. It's called "Traveller." And it's in the process of being reborn.

I hate to be the guy who complains about the headline of a story... but a "web bug" is an image in a web page or HTML email that allows the site owner to track who has visited the page or read the email. This story has absolutely nothing to do with "web bugs". How about "browser bug" instead?

The Japanese have been developing this for decades. They knew a demographic bomb was going to go off, and they knew that nurses were going to need some help in dealing with the elderly. So there are now production power suits geared towards assisting nurses in lifting patients.

Also there is a very strong possibility this technology can be applied to assistive systems for paraplegics and quadriplegics. Imagine someone who was "sentenced to the Chair" for the rest of their lives being able to walk again. I mean, neither application is particularly sexy, not like super-soldiers and being able to do the last battle in Aliens for real, but I would say that this would be a boon for humanity far greater than any military application.