You are correct about the useless nature of "treat levels" which this system provided, however you missed the point of why it existed in the first place. It was brought about because the government needed to look like it was doing something, and in America that's just as important as actually doing something. Specific information would be far more useful, but it takes time and effort to collect, connect and distribute. If a threat is centralized in one place and that place gets a proper, specific warning, people everywhere else are going to say "Why didn't I get anything?" even if there's zero chance they were at risk. Additionally, there isn't always reliable or detailed intelligence with which to make good warnings. When there isn't, the government can't just say "Yeah, we have no intel today." because they'd look lazy and incompetent. Enter the Color Coded Terror Alerts, the government can please everyone by making something that sounds like a warning, but without the burden of correlating data, or the risk of revealing there is none.

There's a nice little add-on program for Photoshop called Exposure that will emulate all sorts of film stocks. Kodachrome, Portia, Velvia, Tri-X... hell, it'll even emulate Daugarrotype. Granted it's far from the real thing, but it does preserve the color palettes that give these film stocks their various personalities.

"The Gettysburg Address"

Four score and seven frags ago...

"None of these people are proven to be pirates. Uwe Boll claims they are."

Uwe Boll also claims to be a film-maker, so I think it's clear we should take anything he says with a grain of salt.

The library makes things freely available with no limits on re-rental. Is there really much of a difference between me renting and ripping vs. me renting the same thing over and over? At least in the former scenario, I'm not denying other library patrons the ability to rent something.

Grandparent pays taxes. Taxes support the library. Library buys books, movies and music to make them freely available to the community. If the RIAA/MPAA don't want their products freely available like that, they should stop selling to libraries and/or sue them for lost sales.

The bad guys didn't win. The fact is, they can't. Every major DRM scheme has been cracked so far, and it's more than likely that anyone in the future will be as well. But I digress...

I use the term "pirate" to describe myself, as do most of my friends who download movies, music and software (I use methods other than downloading, but that's splitting hairs). I don't mind being called a pirate, and I have no qualms calling anyone who does similar the same. But consider this: We all know what the worst word a white can say to a black guy is. However, plenty of black people use the epithet casually with eachother. The context is different, of course, but the use of the word is in and of itself a strike back at the racism that bore it in the first place. It is a re-definition of the word on the terms of the people to whom it was applied rather than the people who applied it.

To compare the struggle for civil rights and the fight against racism to this war of words between corporations defending an antiquated business model and the people who are getting content for free would be downright farsical. But I think that a sense still exists in all people to take certain words used against them, redefine them, and then self-apply them as a sort of "Fuck you!" to the other side.

You can, Lifehacker just posted this article about doing that today:

http://lifehacker.com/5542041/block-sites-from-using-your-facebook-login-with-adblock-plus

"Do you really think someone else would have come up with a better screen play from the same source material?"

Yes, but the finished product would have looked nothing like the source. It would have required cutting parts out, adding new material in and seriously revising whatever remained. The human race fighting to overcome alien oppressors is not the worst movie concept I've ever heard. In the right hands it could be a pretty good movie, or at least something better than it ended up being.

It was pretty clear from the article that the CoS insisted that he write it their way. They didn't give him much leeway to adapt it into something that didn't suck so hard I took the DVD outside and curb-stomped till it shattered after watching it for Bad Movie Night.

I'm on the Wave preview right now, and I'm surprised they didn't put this Buzz feature into that instead. I suspect they were trying to get it out the door in time to beat Facebook's email system to the punch and retain/grab users.

As for Wave, I like it alot. I can't see it replacing email, though. For correspondence between just two people email is simple and effictive, no ammount of bells and whistles that Google or any other company can throw in will change that. What Wave does do extremely well is group communications. I use it to coordinate Bad Movie Nights with my friends, and I've even recommended it to some former co-workers and given them invites to try it out within their organization. I've seen how nasty and incomprehensible emails can get when 3 or more people are involved and all responding, and I'm sick of it. Wave isn't revolutionized email, but it will fill a niche where email is lacking.

"Romantic Comedies are popular in large part because they try and reflect what women dream of happening..."

You focus the rest of your post on the Big Romantic Stunt, but I think there's more to it than that. While seeing idealistic stunts in the name of love is part of the draw, there's also something to be said for the happily-ever-after ending. I've heard friends talk about big romantic gestures they've done for their significant others, and a good chunk of them are now broken up or divorced. The stunts are nice, but the ending where True Love blossoms is a very attractive and re-assuring part of the movie. I even know guys who watch romantic comedies from time to time because of this.

Not using a pen and paper may atrophy one's penmanship, but it has nothing to do with the ability to express a coherent thought on a page. I have been typing everything I hand in in school since about sixth grade. My handwriting sucks, but my writing hasn't suffered for it, the same goes for most of my friends my age (22).

Technology is merely a tool. It doesn't make people and dumber or any smarter. Like everything else, it all depends on how it's used. To paraphrase an old saying, "The technology opens the door, but the user must step through."

The wealth of knowledge available through technology gives us the opportunity to become collectively smarter than any other time in human history. Printing presses gave way to libraries and now literacy is expected when once it was a mark of wealth and privilege. Computers gave way to the Internet which gave way to a faster and easier method of sharing information. The increased computer literacy makes us more resistant to Skynet

I'm 22 now, and in the last five years, I've almost completely stopped watching TV, but I was never bothered by the appointment with the media. Freshman year of college, knowing my night would end with The Daily Show was something to look forward to. More recently, How I Met Your Mother became a staple of my Monday nights. The problem I have is the advertising. I still watch plenty of shows, from DVDs mostly, and they're without the advertising that was a part of the original broadcast. When I watch something on TV now, I get angry when a show gets broken up by ads. I can barely make it through a full episode of anything before my loathing for the advertising drives me to do something else. Like I said before, the appointment doesn't bother me, but when it can get something on my own time with no ads, I'm going to take it over any other option.

The more I think about it the more I agree with you that this is a bad idea. I'd love to see Humphrey Bogart in a new movie, but he's dead and that's that. CGI Bogey is not an acceptable substitute. There's a big risk for abuse that I think outweighs just about any possible good. The worst I can imagine is something like what was suggested in Thank You For Smoking (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxIGcpas_wk see 3:04 for relevant part) where some moral busybody goes back and tries to politically correct old movies...

Why not use this technology to create photo-realistic CGI actors that are totally unique? You side-step the "But it's not really him!" problem at the very least, and it guarantees you an actor who will do exactly what the director wants, how the director wants, never lock themself in a trailer, never snort coke, never die unexpectedly. I'd pay to see a totally CGI actor that could pass for a human... assuming it's in a movie that I would want to go and see in the first place.

That was actually one of my pet peeves from the Rainbow Six series, especially Raven Sheild, which was the one I played the most. Bullets affected my character realistically. Most times I was hit, I'd die. If I was lucky, I'd have my movement and aim severely comprimised. I'm not comlpaining about that, it lended an air of realism to the game and a necessity for strong planning and loyal execution that I enjoyed very much. My problem came in when I'd shoot NPC terrorists. They seemed to die less easily than my character, and worst of all, even if I wounded them, their aim was unaffected. Numerous times I would bang on the keyboard in frustration as a guy I had just shot in the arm could level his gun and kill me just an instant after I shot him.