Hacker Cinema
Point of No Return
1993 · Film · 108 min
Directed by John Badham
Hardened criminal Maggie Hayward's consistent violence, even in police custody, ends in the execution chamber. However, top-secret US government agent 'Bob' arranges a staged death, so Maggie can be elaborately trained as a phantom killer and subdued into obedience.
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3 comments on Hacker News
Unfortunately, it is never revealed if the author enjoyed the Point Of No Return or not. :)
While I agree on the lack of empathy and understanding of simple thrill seeking and "unreasonable fun" (like sports, gambling, dancing, sex, music, movies, even reading...), the author unwittingly stands up for the few that are peer-pressured to take part in "fun" activities that might frighten or simply not entertain them.
However, the approach the author takes won't help them: it's better to recognize that you personally don't find a particular activity rewarding, and encourage everyone to find something that is. Perhaps it's not even a "few", but a lot. But just being negative does not help better understand how we are forced to do "fun" things we do not enjoy.
And it's also okay if you find fun in something that majority finds fun in (like water parks): you don't have to be absolutely different in every way to count as a smart person :)
By missing to realize this, the author seems like a disgruntled fake-intellectual guy who hates everyone for having any sort of fun and dismisses it as "intellectually useless": even though studies show that "fun" helps us perform better cognitively.
My guess is that "clean" includes disposal of the body and other evidence. Like in movies where people call up the "cleaner" after a murder to make the bodies disappear (e.g., "Victor the Cleaner" in Point of No Return).
That's funny because I'm also building a web-based Excel/database hybrid, and I'm also a bit concerned about demand. But your story doesn't deter me at all, for two reasons: one, because I'm crazy; two because of La Femme Nikita. Let me explain.
People talk about ideas as being worthless, etc. No, they're not. You can't get an oak tree with a mustard seed. But there's a big difference between even oak trees. Idea and execution are the same thing, just two ends of a continuous line.
The films La Femme Nikita and Point of No Return have nearly the exact same plot. The former is one of the greatest action films ever made; the latter is one of the worst.
That whole "build something people want" is only for people who want to make money. And honestly, if what you want is to make money, be a dentist.
People waant Facebook and Twitter and Farmville. But they need core technological innovation. They need better ways to work with data. You did the right thing, Andrew. It wasn't a waste of time. And I won't stop either, because the world has far too much of what it wants and far too little of what it needs.