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The Conversation (1974)

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Re: The Conversation (1974)

#11

Post by awongh »

beloch wrote: post #5

Obviously, this is being posted because of the NSA and FBI scandals even though it was, originally, more of a response to the Watergate scandal. Even if you're sick of hearing about all of those this is still a fantastic film and well worth watching. Gene Hackman plays a private consultant who specializes in the surveillance of difficult targets, such as people talking as they walk through a crowd. Technology is hand…

also, if you live in the sf bay area, it has a lot of cool location shots from that era.

Re: The Conversation (1974)

#12

Post by ojbyrne »

pvarangot wrote: post #9
beloch wrote: post #5

Obviously, this is being posted because of the NSA and FBI scandals even though it was, originally, more of a response to the Watergate scandal. Even if you're sick of hearing about all of those this is still a fantastic film and well worth watching. Gene Hackman plays a private consultant who specializes in the surveillance of difficult targets, such as people talking as they walk through a crowd. Technology is hand…

The film is also still really fresh if you are a seasoned technologist. Hackman's character goes to a trade show in one part of the movie where he looks at all the new surveilance equipment he can buy and talks to some vendors, and it really feels amazingly real and accurate.

Whenever I debug some particularly difficult bug, I think of the scene where he basically tears his house down looking for the other kind of bug.

Re: The Conversation (1974)

#13

Post by vezzy-fnord »

What I liked about The Conversation is that it showed you how the spy grid affects the ones working for it. At least, those who still have some sort of conscience left and haven't been completely swamped by cognitive dissonance.

The ending was very powerful.

Re: The Conversation (1974)

#15

Post by thex86 »

The more you know about surveillance, the more paranoid you become. And I don't mean paranoid in a derogatory way, but the more you know about these things, the more you have to sacrifice some of the easier things in life because you are spending more time making sure everything is private. The phrase "ignorance is a bliss" never matched anywhere else more perfectly.

Great movie BTW.

Re: The Conversation (1974)

#17

Post by anigbrowl »

beloch wrote: post #5

Obviously, this is being posted because of the NSA and FBI scandals even though it was, originally, more of a response to the Watergate scandal. Even if you're sick of hearing about all of those this is still a fantastic film and well worth watching. Gene Hackman plays a private consultant who specializes in the surveillance of difficult targets, such as people talking as they walk through a crowd. Technology is hand…

I, too, love this film, to the point that I ended up in the same line of work - mostly for the entertainment industry, but sometimes for other purposes.

He specializes in surveillance but values his own privacy to the point of paranoia.

There's a striking overlap between people who argue that information ought ot be free and that scraping content or user data is a perfectly legitimate business tactic, and people who are shocked, shocked [1]to discover that the government is not excluded from such activities.

1. per Captain Renault in Casablanca.

Re: The Conversation (1974)

#19

Post by jfb »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #7

The Conversation is one of the classics of 70s cinema, really worth a watch. To match today's paranoid times, Tony Scott's spiritual successor film "Enemy of the State" is also worth a watch. It's updated more as a star vehicle / action flick, but it's also pretty good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_State_(film)

Hackman plays the same character, really. It's not in the same league as The Conversation, but it is a really fun double-feature companion.

Re: The Conversation (1974)

#20

Post by olympus »

cleverjake wrote: post #2

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6348750

This was on the front page less than a week ago. It's technically not a repost, but it feels the same. While I am more tolerant of reposts of things that never made it to the front page, stuff like this makes me feel bad for HN as it indicates the arrival of one or more phenomena:

1. A reddit-like circle jerk where the same stuff gets posted and the same conversations are had multiple times.

2. A reddit-like contingent of karma whores who repost stuff just to get votes.

3. A goldfish-like memory in HNers where they forget what happened just a short while ago.

The multiple posts about the same thing happen often when big stories break(Snowden's first leak, Steve Jobs death, Apple releases product iXYZ, etc.), but I'm noticing it now with some smaller stories, and it is frustrating.

My proposal is that the mods police these posts (I know they're watching, titles get changed all the time), and keep the front page fresh. When a big story breaks, maybe create a meta post- a "Snowden related links go here" post and when people outside of that official post they are either merged in or deleted. I realize it would require substantial changes to HN to add a meta post type and change the decay algorithm to account for a meta post.

Go ahead and downvote, but I figured I'd offer up an idea (that probably isn't original) instead of just complaining.

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