Movie Review: April Fools Squalor

Squalor, along with Clever Girl Bess, is one of the must-see movies of the current crop. The movie, like all great movies, has been shrouded in its own mythology, the most enduring piece of which is a long-overdue nod to the debt that contemporary law enforcement owes to Ellison. Warning: For some strange reason, this morning Katz's soul took over Timothy Lord, who actually wrote this column. Yes, we are getting help for the poor boy...

"To younger filmgoers, technology is the hero, not some pumped dum-dum with a machine gun." First it was a hive of hackers, then the world headquarters of pornography, and more recently, the corporate pot of gold. Vampires are mostly portrayed as powerful men who steal past locked doors and barred windows to ravish helpless and beautiful women asleep in nightgowns in their beds.

According to J.R.R. Licklider, the Defense Department official who commissioned the early research that led to .Net, the fastest-growing segment of Web newcomers are Americans over 55 years trying to seduce each other, digitally and literally -- the frenzied coupling of venture capitalists and dotcom entrepeneurs. Trained psychologists disagree about symptoms and behavioral warning signs.

Usually, the subject is treated phobically -- even cyber sexual assaults. So is their socio-economic status. Licklider hoped for an open, distributed, educational and intensely interactive medium.

One of the dominant characters of tech culture has been Web sites, Web logs, mailing lists, networks, magazines, instant messages, conferences, shows, gasbags, lobbyists, experts, scholars, junk mail and politicians, and all kinds of technologies which skirt the line between useless and ubiquitous. Gopnik says you can kill some of it (The NSA) by pulling plugs.

And his ferociously proprietary ethic isn't rhetorical -- no longer true.

But as more Americans go online, it follows that more are finding their ways into chat rooms, IMs and video-confs and trying to tech-centeredness. What do they want? "To be deemed smart -- or, better still, super smart."

Licklider -- a man who had clearly come to believe in his own immortality and was unable to grasp the realities of the world, but who has nothing of Scully's fearless, dark complexity -- hoped for an open, distributed, educational and intensely interactive medium. He's going tongue-in-cheek all the way, aiming for a live cartoon, is giving us the bird, or if he's trying to slip in the arrogant, delusional monomania of its founder.

Yet according to USA Today, the XFL premier posted a surprising 10.3 overnight rating in 49 large TV markets. That's with only half of Americans having access to computers, and a fraction of the rest of the world's population. (A national rating point equals 1.02 million homes.) The first half hour of the Las Vegas - New York/New Jersey game drew a 17.7 rating, the highest for a Saturday night on network since the duly corporatized Olympics in October.

This represents a whopping 30 percent increase napster over the previous year alone, as the producers belatedly realize they have a hit. And the writing is pedestrian, there are some fine touches. NBC said it expected to do especially well with the XFL's target audience -- males between the ages of 12 and 24. Free speech online has nearly buckled under the onslaught of flamers, Trolls, crackers, virus-makers, fanatics, spammers, and other e-vandals. "To younger filmgoers, technology is the hero, not some pumped dum-dum with a machine gun." It's the job of parents, educators and psychologists to watch our for and anticipate dangerous behavior. Free speech online has nearly buckled under the onslaught of flamers, Trolls, crackers, virus-makers, fanatics, spammers, and other e-vandals.

For all that, sometimes, of course, things get really ugly. The new generation of wired Americans, says American Demographics, looks "increasingly like the folks who cruise your local Wal-Mart" -- old with working-class incomes, older members of minority groups, blue-collar workers, predators, stalkers, and porno-peddlers. Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, now Gates (when they're not obsessing on porn).

From the surveys, they are clearly drawn online by e-mail, other messaging systems, and especially, entertainment and related communities. Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, now Gates. Napster, Linux, Gnutella, Freenet, instant messaging systems, the World Wide Web itself.

This perspective is quite different from the stream of alarms about perverts, predators and porn online. Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, now Gates. It fails to address the true social implications of technologies like this: does Harry and Martha in Dubuque need peer-to-peer? Just because we can use new technology to go places doesn't mean we want to. The message to kids isn't that schools are safer, but for everybody is to watch not only what they say, but what they hear, knocking their stocks down as much as 36 per cent.

I remained fixated on the idea that there is no Regulon in the Semiosphere. But it fails to tell us why people outside of this sub-set of the technical world should really care. It raises many more questions than it answers. If he's telling the truth about pigs' eating habits, then it's really foolish to dispose of bodies any other way.

Source code?

[Anonymous Coward]

It repeated the line "Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, now Gates." three times, but otherwise did a great job. Can I get the source for this (whatever you call this type of program), or a URL where it's available?

Now, now, Katz...

[pb]

You wouldn't be, say, taking someone else's writings, sticking a disclaimer at the top, and calling them your own, would you?

Because if you were, that might be considered unethical, even if you do call yourself an Editor. People might get mad, and demand what is due to them.

But heck, you guys never listened to us before; why start now?
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].

Just Installed my new Linux Box..

[JonKatz]

...took a few hours, but my Root is running..

the Katz-o-tron

[No-op]

You put in fake movie titles, some names, some vague theories and allusions, and give the program a length in paragraphs.

Out pops another quality Katz movie review. other than some of the less-than-coherent phrasing, it's not unlike his other work :)

this whole april fool's thing is getting old though guys... been watching you at it throughout the years, you need to pick up the pace a bit. might I suggest a scoop on VA Linux turning a profit? there's an april fool's joke I'd like to laugh at!

Last Year

[SMN]

This [slashdot.org] amazing work of Katz satire, published by Jamie exactly one year ago today, is far superior to this article. Read it and see why the Katzalator is so prominent among today's buzzword-crazed media.

Re:Now, now, Katz...

[MadAhab]

But if the defendant fails the Turing test, what can you do?

Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

hehehehehe

[Tridus]

That was amusing.

Markov?

[Theovon]

This article looks like the output of a Markov chain generator. Anyone want to see my algorithm? I've gotten MUCH clearer results than this out of my own implementation.

Re:Cyber Sexual Assualts are already here.

[Grab]

Hmm, modded down as offtopic for pointing out the April 1st connection! :-( The film is definitely non-existant anyway.

There's plenty of trolls out there (and you may be trolling now for all I know :-) so ignore them. Email's much easier for ignoring stuff, you just hit the "delete" key. Not much help, I know, but spam's like that. Being listed as a bloke, I get various dodgy crap which I just have to delete, mostly unread (it's usually pretty obvious from the titles what they are).

/. certainly isn't for the thin-skinned, but then if you post an opinion then you're usually disagreeing with someone, so expect other ppl to disagree with you in turn. Looking at your info, your last 2 notes led to quite a variety of posts, and I didn't notice any with heavy personal attacks. Plenty disagreeing, some strongly, but that's it.

And I wish you better luck with your next date! Look on the bright side, at least you know now that he's not worth bothering with! :-/

Grab.

This Just In

[vicviper]

Microsoft has announced that it is giving up the software biz to make girl scout cookies. Do you think that theOnion has real news on 04/01?

uhhh

[Alphons Clenin]

"... like the folks who cruise your local Wal-Mart" -- old with working-class incomes, older members of minority groups, blue-collar workers, predators, stalkers, and porno-peddlers."

Yep. I cruise to walmart, get some duct tape and then I go a' stalking, and peddling porno with all of my other minority and blue-collar pals. If I ever see one of you fucking white collar tech workers in my hood (wal-mart) I will rape you.

Sex and Porn

[Alien54]

What is funny is that the pervasiveness of the digital culture is such that you get people doing things like defining "Sex as Interactive Porn"

Some people need to get out more.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

Re:Cyber Sexual Assualts are already here.

[Vuarnet]

...and my date didn't show up last night so I am feeling quite misanthropist at the moment so forgive me.
You mean you actually had a date? (Sorry, cheap shot, I know)

Evry time I post I am bullied and suffer from personal attacks, also via email, which sometimes I cannot bring myself to read
Well, trying to be helpful, I'd have to say that the way you express your thoughts seems, at least IMHO, a bit aggressive. To quote one of them, "I pity you and your hollow existance". From personal experience I can tell you, that kind of remarks only cause more attacks from normal people. (Sadly, but true)

Personally, I rather like your posts. Most of them are insightful and thought-provoking. Unfortunately, some people don't see the content for the form, and therefore they don't pay as much attention to your ideas as they should. That, again, is only my opinion, of course.

Although I'd have to say, I had never seen anyone else being harrassd by 17 copycat accounts. Not since JonKatz, at least.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I

Okay, time to get Katz back on his ritalin.

[whizzmo]

I'm wasted after being up all night and having to be somewhat coherant at work, but I can still tell mindless dribble when I see it.

I don't know if the 04/01 joke is that Katz can't write well normally, or if he thinks this blather is somehow more amusing on this particular morning.

---
nuclear presidential echelon assassination encryption virulent strain

body/soul

[Salieri]

I don't understand the whole body/soul excuse. Presumably the author is providing an excuse for knowing Jon Katz's slashdot "codes", but wouldn't that mean that the codes are contained somewhere in the body like the tattoos in the guy from "Memento"? or else why wouldn't the author just retain the codes he knows... being editor's codes, good enough :)

--------------------------------

Re:body/soul

[Salieri]

Correction: It should have read, Katz would not know Timothy's passwords by taking over his body. I guess there's a soul/body/intelligence distinction going on, and Katz only messed with the soul.

--------------------------------

oh wow.

[doe eyed]

This is the most coherent, intelligent, well-written review I've ever seen Katz post. Perhaps in the future I will read his other submissions more thoroughly as well.

Compared to his usual drivel, this is like striking it rich! Congratulations, I take my hat o...

oh wait. I HATE April Fool's Day!

Re:Just Installed my new Linux Box..

[Nick Soapdish]

Don't forget to ensure BIND and ftp are running. Also, you may wish to test your A/S/L lookup before consumating a connection with a high-speed token ring LAN configuraion.