So why did John Carter flop?

Disney is writing off the $35o million spent on John Carter. They figure the movie will earn no more than $150 million. It's too bad, there will be no sequels. So why? What did they mess up?
The fans have been generally supportive with their Internet reviews. The pro's have panned it from the beginning.
First off, the camera work was bad. Here we are on Mars, with big green men, exotic animals, strange scenery, and we want to see it, take it in. But the camera never steadies down to let us admire the view. For that matter we would like some good views of Dejah Thoris looking beautiful and John Carter looking heroic. In Avatar, we get a good look at the colorful, romantic, and beautiful world of Pandora. In fact Avatar was a National Geographic documentary of the wonders of far off Pandora. And we viewers enjoyed the show. On Mars, the camera never steadies down long enough to enjoy the view, and, what little we can see is dusty and shabby, not red romantic desertscapes under two moons.
Then the movie lacks the deep love between John Carter and Dejah Thoris. In the book it goes like this.
"I understand your words John Carter," Dejah Thoris said, " But you I do not understand. You are a queer mixture of child and man, of brute and noble. I only wish that I might read your heart."
"Look down at your feet, Dejah Thoris; it lies there now, where it has lain since that other night at Korad, and where it will ever lies beating alone for you until death stills it forever." replied John Carter.
No American man from this age of instant hookups, pre nuptial agreements, no fault divorce, and single parent families, is going to make such an irrevocable declaration of love and loyalty to a woman. Not in the 21st century. But oh boy, how we would love to meet a woman worthy of such devotion. This relationship made the Mars books what they are. The movie lacks it, and turns Dejah Thoris into Xena the Warrior Princess. Xena had many virtues, but you wouldn't want to fall in love with her.
In the book, John Carter and Dejah Thoris escape from captivity among the Tharks and set off riding double across the red ocher moss of the Martian desert. Along the way they are discovered and attacked by yet another tribe of green Martians. In an emotional scene, John Carter sends Dejah Thoris to safety over her protests, and takes his long radium rifle, with 100 rounds in the magazine, and another 100 rounds in a backpack, and stands off a charge of mounted green Martians. After expending all that ammunition, he lays into them with the sword. The movie skips the gunfight and cuts the sword fight down to just another passage of arms. They did not show John Carter pulling the strangely wrought Martian firearm from a scabbard on the riding animal, snapping down the bipod legs, and taking a prone shooting position hidden on a ridgeline. We did not see the crosshairs line up on a enemy, and the explosive round blowing the target off his mount. Couple more such shots, and we would believe that a great battle had occurred. The movie skips all this.

MacBeth

So I got it from Netflix. It's the 1979 version with Ian McKellan. Bad idea. No sets, no scenery, just a dark black stage. No costumes. The actors recite Shakespeare's verses in a sing song tone, no life, no warmth. Ian McKellan's black hair is all slicked down with Brylcreem. That greasy kid stuff. And it's all dark, just the actor's faces show in the darkness. No tartans. I mean what's Macbeth without at least a tartan scarf? The three witches don't even have a kettle simmering over a fire.
There must be better Shakespeare than this one.

Harden the electric power grid against hackers

NHPR did a long piece this morning. They talked about regulation, deregulation, and who was in favor of more regulation. Not once did they talk about what to do about vulnerabilities.
What to do is straight forward. Do not use the public internet to monitor or control generators, circuit breakers or other equipment. And do not use Windows computers for any of the same purposes.
Back when we were selling data acquisition equipment to the electric generating industry, I saw a remote controled generator. A big gas turbine unit was humming happily away. They had an ordinary desktop computer running a remote control program. The computer monitor showed an image of the turbine, a little arrow showed it was turning, instrument readings for oil temp, oil pressure, exhaust gas temp, rpm, amps, volts, engine pressure ratio, and more. It was about 10:30 AM, and the power station man sat down at the remote control and ordered the generator to shut down. It was a peaking plant, only run for the morning and evening power peaks, and 10:30 was the end of the morning peak period. A few key clicks, and the big turbine obediently shut down, we could see the RPM and EGT winding down on the display.
The turbine was l0cated a couple of miles away. The controller sent little messages (Start Up, Shut Down) over the internet. A computer at the remote generator listened to the internet and acted upon orders coming in from the net.
All an enemy hacker needs do, is learn the addresses and the codes used and send his own commands to the turbine. If the computer at the turbine is a Windows machine he can load his own code into it and really go to town. First step of such an invasive program is to reject all messages from it's proper owner, and only accept commands from the hacker.
The fix is simple. Connect the remote computer to the control center with a pair of your own wires, hung on your own poles, by your own people. Then the command link is secure against any sort of Internet attack. To gain control the hacker has to climb a pole and splice in a tap. Hackers are swivel chair people, they don't climb poles.
As for Windows, we all know how vulnerable Windows is to anything. The famous Stuxnet program that did great damage to the Iranian nuclear program spread via Windows "autorun" feature. Windows has so many security holes that it's beyond fixing. Computers running Linux, Unix, MAC OS, anything, can be made secure. Windows is so bad that it is beyond hope.

Israelis think an air strike will work

As in Israeli Air Force strikes Iranian nuclear sites. Blomberg News reporter Jeffrey Goldberg has a piece here. He spent some time in Israel, talking to Israeli officials. They talked about a favorable reaction inside Iran, a strengthening of the Iranian internal opposition, and the Iranians not immediately declaring war on Israel. And setting back the Iranian A-bomb project by 5 years. Goldberg writes mostly about the political angles to such a strike.
A weakness of the Goldberg piece is lack of objective data, such as how many nuclear sites do the Iranian's have? And how deeply are they buried? Are they buried under loose desert sand or under hard granite? Can Israeli deep penetration bombs go that deep? Do the Israeli's have enough planes to strike ALL the sites on the same night? Or would they have to fly multiple strikes on successive nights? Do Israel's aircraft have the range to fly the mission round trip, or will they need aerial tanker support? How many tankers do the Israeli's have? In short, would an Israeli air strike actually hurt the Iranian A-bomb project, or would it merely give the Iranians an expensive fireworks display?
And then there is disinformation. Was I running Israel, I'd tell my people to keep the Iranians worried about an air strike, just to make life harder for them. And to encourage Israelis who are under terrible pressure of events and could use a little hope.

Romney wins Puerto Rico

To bad Puerto Rico doesn't have any electoral votes, yet. According to CNN, Romney won by 83%, the best landslide ever.
I hear Puerto Rico has a referencedum on statehood coming up. I wonder how that is going to come out? Used to be, the Puerto Ricans liked the deal they have, no Congressional representation but no US income tax. Has that changed? I haven't seen anything about it in our hard working news media.

Spring It's Grill Day

It's up to 76 degrees. Sun is out, no wind. I rolled the Weber out of the garage and onto the deck. A steak is about to marinate on the kitchen table. Summer cannot be far away.

The Sea Wolves 1980

Great flick (Netflix) It has Gregory Peck, David Niven and Roger Moore. It's WWII in British India. They are all British, and very proper, at least in polite company, the gentleman's club in Calcutta. They all are recruited for a cutting out expedition against a German ship anchored in neutral Goa. There is some really funny work with Roger Moore attempting to seduce a beautiful enemy agent while she is attempting to seduce him. And, proper or not, the British can be ruthless in action. German captives who make just one wrong move get tommy gunned immediately. No "Put your hands up" No "Stop or I'll shoot", just Brrap and blood all over the walls. Both Peck and Niven have great roles, and play them well.
No redeeming social values here, but a good action movie.