I'm going to keep a positive outlook towards this and hope it will be good. Damn, they could do it justice if done well... The cgi would just add flavor and spice to an already epic tale.

Up next? Ringworld? That would be incredible.

In the 80's people, especially teens weren't plugged into a non-stop media-info system like they are now. The only people aware of things like the Libyans or the PLO were those(like myself) who read the paper(remember that...?) or watched the nightly news. Teens didn't do those things...

None of the people I hung with had parents like that. We were the latchkey gen, unless you forgot about that? We came home from school, watched Star Trek re-runs, then went and did whatever we wanted, with no cell phones, no internet, no way for parents to know where we were or what we were doing. That was the 80's I grew up in.

Agreed.

Agreed.

Nothing like it is now. Not even close. That is a ridiculous assertion. Ridiculous. Do you think Earth First or the other environmental groups could pull off today what they did in the 80's?

My student debt was paid off in five years. There is no way I could do that now starting out as a student. Perhaps you had a different experience, but an un-biased look at the cost of a college education today shows it is much, much higher.

I agree, I also dealt with physical harassment. But as you point out, it was usually a fist fight. Generally, people would fight like that as opposed to bringing assault weapons to school and killing loads of students like what happens now on an almost monthly basis. A totally different world we live in now.

Again, how can you compare how it was then to today, Completely different world. I suggest you speak with a teacher at a public school who has to deal with the changes since No Child Left Behind took affect.

Good point, but like I said about terrorism above, we, as teens at that time, weren't bombarded with info like teens today are. We had a fairly carefree experience when it came to media and information. Unless we read the papers or watched the news we never knew about what was going on. Now, you've got tweets, FB, texts, etc; etc;

Slashdot has ads?

I agree, and do similar to what you describe.
I think the shit-fit we are seeing in the posts here is driven a lot by the fact that we can all see where this is going.
Where is that?

Well, we can see a day, not too distant, where we won't be able to run "safe" browsers, a day when the list of browsers will be like the list of political parties in the US or ISP's in the US: TWO

I've seen you post this info a few times before it seems...
Got me thinking about the hosts option.
So I use the one listed here
and still use ad-block plus, script block, etc;

I'm curious why you post your info as AC...?

2015? No problem:
"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night nor wormholes stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds"

Mod points!

I think you're onto something there...

Great post, and right on the money.

I remember going to high school in the early 80's...
Holy shit did we have it made.

I've been saying for years now that I'm glad I was a kid when I was. Kids today have it rough, and from a multitude of angles:

• Slowly declining economy...
• Constant threats of terrorism in the media
• Parents who won't let them leave their sight
• Very poor examples from adults
• Poor job opportunities after graduation
• Life in a surveillance state
• Massive student debt to achieve degree
• Having to be careful about what they post online...
• Declining education system
• Constant threat of school shootings
• Online bullying, etc
• Constant reminders of the end of the ecosystem as we know it
• etc;...

I'll tell you straight up, I have a lot of respect for Millennials, if for nothing else, all the crap they are faced with...
And the fact that as a whole they are optimistic in the face of it.

My generation(X) had bad attitudes right out of the gate...

For some reason, this DNS-and-BIND guy has to bring up McCarthy at every opportunity, like he was some kind of national hero. It's ridiculous.

You are misinformed. There are loads of people inside the US who are critical of it, the gun culture, etc;
I'm one of them.

Essentially the way it works is, when the NSA creates a "profile" on you they weigh various factors to determine how much of a "perceived threat" you are. Sure, you disagree with policy and protocol, etc; but unless you are actually a threat, they just monitor.

However, I'm sure they keep a neat little treasure trove of things by which in the future they can put pressure on anyone they want, which really is the real reason behind the surveillance.

The main thing people need to understand is, what happens to all that data about people, the "profiles", when a regime comes into power that isn't hesitant to "put pressure" on those it doesn't like, whether they have done anything wrong or not.

That is the real question.

I went and saw this film last Friday. It was pretty good up until the scenes where they interviewed Snowden. It was interesting seeing him speak about what he did, why he did it, etc; He is obviously very intelligent and eloquent. However, it starts to get boring, and I felt that the film makers need to do some editing towards the end.

However, with that being said, the concepts behind the film, the point they tried to make, was made very well.

There was a great article in the NYT recently, that I can't find the link to now, that showed how surveillance, and the knowledge of being watched are inherently detrimental to a functioning democracy and actually cause people to be less creative. The self censoring that is now going on(unless of course you want to expose your sex life, drug use or any number of ordinary vices, as long as they don't question state or corporate power) is a direct result of what Americans now know.

We are being monitored on a 24/7 basis, and have been since the Patriot Act was passed.

That is a great point, and it appears to be an under-appreciated view of how things are developing.

Right. It appears everyone wants to instantly make the connection to illegal trade.

Great post, and I agree it wouldn't be difficult to shut down something that enables the illegal trade to flourish, ala Silk Road.

However, I'm not looking at OpenBazaar or the others I referred to as "here is where I'm going to buy my child porn and meth" sort of sites. I'm looking at them as just another instance(and they keep piling up) of how decentralized economics is and will change the bigger picture of the future of capitalism and economics. As the guy at OpenBazaar seems to allude to, "Why let eBay/AliBaba/Amazon dictate online trade?"

The nature of careers and work are changing, the increased "production" of workers due to robots and computers, etc. "Micro jobs" and people working small hours, etc;

Combine all that with the fact that unemployment will only increase as time goes on.