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The vast majority of people loved TLJ. It's consistently polled high, it had extremely high ratings when viewers were polled on opening day, and Blu-ray sales are through the roof.

Here is some of SWTLJ's unprecedented popularity and success.:

http://fortune.com/2018/01/18/... So successful that they stopped showing it. But hey - thd Chinses market means absolutely nothing, it's nonexistent amirite? Disney doesn't need any money from them.

Fiugurine/promotional item sales are through the roof - never better! http://fortune.com/2018/01/18/...

That's okay, no one needs that stuff anyhow.

https://www.theguardian.com/fi...

Everything is doing so well that they put further spinoff movies off. Becoming more popular by austerity.

You sound like an SJW version of Republicans defending Trickle-down theory. Other than that - I've managed to be pretty successful in life by thanking people when I get criticisms, analyzing them, and acting on them to improve my product. I recently retired from running an event that had thousands of passionate fans. They stayed passionate because I respected that and them. Even if I disagreed with them. This doesn't mean I would take actual abuse. I had rules of no name calling, no threats, and keep swearing to a minimum. But they always knew I would listen. And they kept sending money so the happieness index was high.

As one wag noted about Rian Johnson's reaction to criticism - positively, I mimght add!"Eventually, Rian Johnson would hear the criticism made by fans, but ultimately decide it didn't matter." https://www.cinemablend.com/ne...

By the way - that would have been Johnson's last act in my employ. He'd be escorted out of the building by security. You work for me - you don't ignore the customer.

I take it that you approve of the idea that any criticsm must be responded to by calling the person offring it a sexist, racist, and too weak to handle your product. Because that was the Pro-TLJ narrative. https://www.salon.com/2018/07/...

Look - a critic might be wrong. But you don't just reject them by calling them names. They did care for your product enough to make the criticism. A variation on the "If we ignore the customer long enough, they'll quit bothering us"

Then there is the golden age of name calling: https://www.starwarsnewsnet.co... JJ. Abrams called them sexist and racist, but he really didn't because they are racist and sexist. Anytime you need your statements clarified its interesting.

Next time you get a performance review, try personally attacking your boss, if they offer anything other than glowing reviews of your perfection. Then deciding to ignore any critique. Then let us know how that works out for ya.

As I've told climate deniers, young earth creationists, anti-vaxxers, and now SJW Star Wars sycophants - You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. Not even your alternative facts, Kellyanne!

No completely. He did throw Snoke under the bus. But Rey's story did not change between Ep7 and Ep8:

https://www.cinemablend.com/ne...

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but it looks like Dark Matter was canceled:
https://www.cinemablend.com/te...

The colony is fantastic though. I can't wait for that to come back.

damn.. that's what I get for not really keeping up with TV stuff :\

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but it looks like Dark Matter was canceled:
https://www.cinemablend.com/te...

The colony is fantastic though. I can't wait for that to come back.

Like Florg Tweaking, Florg Alignment, Florg Replacement and Florg Synthesis. And then someone comes up with an algorithm that can boop any type of florg automatically and that field's gone, too.

But there will always be a market for people who know how to use a fleam.

Free country, free to exchange goods and services, and free to engage in known workplace risks for such, yadda yadda yadda.

Not even hard-core neoliberal economists believe this tripe.

There are many categories of market that capitalist democracies prohibit universally and unconditionally, such as selling your children, burial remains (but I dug them up on my property!), endangered-species penis powders (as in "made from" rather than "made for"), consumer products under a severe-hazard safety recall, and Oscar statuettes.

I added that last one just to get your bile up, but before you do, take heed that it's the only one on my short list imposed by the market itself, rather than government fiat.

Why Academy Award Winners Can't Sell Their Oscars

Seriously, raise your game. All you're managing to do is give respectable libertarians a bad reputation.

Whether sexual service constitutes a valid marketplace has been hotly contested in nearly every society known.

Clay Shirky: "Little Rice" | Talks At Google

Around 51m11 Shirky talks about duplicity on the part of the Chinese government in allowing corporate VPNs to bypass the firewall, but not personal firewalls. Somewhere else in that talk, he talks about the (large) category of activities which are "illegal, yet allowed" (until further notice—which will arrive abruptly, if it arrives at all).

Most societies "allow" the dopamine trade (sex, drugs, alcohol) but make substantial efforts to push it to the dark margins. (This compromise vastly predates neoliberal ideology, which hasn't changed a damn thing about how this part of the economy works.)

The one dopamine trade, fructose/sucrose, that historically escaped the heavy thumb, having recently been identified as such (the American metabolic syndrome epidemic is impossible not to notice in the healthcare spending balloon) has actually gone mano a mano in public debate in the way you seem to think this whole sphere operates.

Sugary Drinks Portion Cap Rule

What this rule amounts to is not having more than half a liter of dangerously sweet liquid show up on your receipt as a single line item (no-one is stopping anyone from ordering a six-pack of 12-ouncers, all for personal consumption; I don't even think the rules prevented McSodaCorp from offering three for the price of two).

Because homo economicus is a giant myth, the inability of McSodaCorp to list the 50-ounce portion on their display menu changes the purchasing behaviour of people who never in their wildest dreams would have purchased a 50-ounce portion (this effect is known as the framing effect). The putative "cap" doesn't stop you from arriving in the same place, supposing you were choosing on such a rational basis in the first place (which most people are not, in small affairs).

I'm legitimately torn and I see both sides. On this issue, I think either path is viable. A society might choose more nudge or less nudge, and then experience different pros and cons (please note when adding up the utilitarian total that the prematurely dead fail to exercise much big-f Freedom during the imprudently excised portion of their otherwise naturally allotted span).

Society also regulates alcohol portion size, but this rarely prevents anyone determined to do so from getting entirely slozzled. Fructose eventually kills through one of the same metabolic pathways by which excess alcohol consumption leads to fatty liver disease. Both chemicals lead to dependency loops, but only one causes people to slur their words. There's even a perspective that alcohol is ultimately less dangerous for many people, because you can only get shit-faced once per evening, rather th

This article has an embedded video that explains some of their reasoning for using 70mm. Interestingly, they thought that 70mm was an advantage in the interior locations.

http://www.cinemablend.com/new...

The only thing that would be legal is the copying for personal use (hence: no reselling)

Reselling or not, if I can download it for free watching at home, I am unlikely to pay to watch anywhere else.

Besides, what argument is there to make it freely available to individuals, that would not also apply verbatim to owners of venues like bars, for example?

people want to see a movie in a cinema

Some people still do, but there many fewer of them.

own a blu ray disk, instead of downloading it to a harddisk

Sorting through plastic disks is a nuisance — hard-drives are much more convenient. Indeed, the survival of disc-based media is very much in doubt.

Movies are already increasingly sponsored by product-placement — as people continue to steal content in larger numbers, the practice is going to increase.

Now, maybe, most of the entertainment is overpriced crap, but to consume it anyway — without paying the creators whatever they want — is hypocrisy.

Who's to say the capability of the hardware doing 1080P didn't have headroom to do more

Though PlayStation 4 has 1080p on a lot of games where Xbox One needs to upscale, several PlayStation 4 games still end up running at 900p on PS4, such as Battlefield 4 . But what you say about headroom is likely for any game that's 1080p on both consoles.

I don't understand the delays. Just sell it HIGH right out of the gate. Make movies something crazy like $60-$80 on opening weekend.

That's already an option, sort of. But these are movie studios. Their idea of "something crazy" is quite different from yours. PRIMA Cinema costs $35K for the machine and $500 per movie.

First of all, this is all way off topic from TFA.

Second, most of the time the DMCA is used to bully people who have legitimate claims over content through fair use or in some cases direct contracts with content providers.

Probably the best one can be read about in Ars -- http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

The video was mentioned by name in the official recommendations by the US Copyright Office on exemptions to the DMCA as an example of a transformative noncommercial video work. In other words, the US government said this was clearly a good example of fair use.

Fast forward a few months (I think) and Lionsgate issued a DMCA anyway, taking down the video, closing down the youtube channel of the poster and generally making themselves a nuisance-- despite the fact that the incredibly popular video was already named as a clear example of Fair Use.

For some reason the crappy movie Pixels created all sorts of DCMA takedown requests on content predating the movie, and even trailers for the movie itself

http://www.slashgear.com/dcma-...
http://www.cinemablend.com/new...

Yeah well, teachers, books, and other classroom materials are expensive.

Cops and teachers. They should merge into a single vocation

One of the big reasons mobile gaming is taking over is because it's always available. Practically everyone has their own mobile device

By "mobile device" you can't mean a PlayStation Vita, because that's not something that "[p]ractically everyone has". This means you probably mean a touch-controlled device running iOS or Android. One problem with these platforms is that game developers can't rely on the player owning a clip-on gamepad, in turn because the makers of said gamepads appear not to publish sales figures. So games that aren't already point-and-click have to be dumbed down to use touch control, which turns platformers into endless runners. And in part because Android devices reached some countries before Google payment processing did, the mobile audience has developed an expectation of "free to play". But the need to derive revenue from a "free" game has resulted in a proliferation of whale-driven nickel-and-dime game design that makes even basic actions take days and makes a game literally take decades to complete for a free player.

And one of the things I've figured out in the last nine months of being married is that being married means you have to share the TV

Historically, PlayStation consoles' advantage over PC gaming has been ability for multiple players to share a system and monitor by plugging in (or wirelessly pairing) two to four gamepads. The obstacle to couch multiplayer on the PC used to be the requirement of proximity between a TV and the expensive PC usually kept in another room, but Steam Link and falling prices for gaming-capable HTPCs have eroded that.

The only claim I made was that GG has influenced ethics in game journalism because a number of sites have updated their ethics policy. A quick Google search and the first link says that kotaku and polygon will: " post public messages about how they will handle disclosure between the relationships of journalists and developers from now on."

Honestly, I don't know how to take your posts seriously... I thought the first one was a poe and then this out from left field. What is your point? What point of mine are you trying to address in your reply?

GG and women in STEM because evil white men!! Have I got it right or did I miss something when you changed subjects?

Yes, this. Actually, we already have that right now. Minecraft for XBox is already full of licensed DLC for XBox, Dr. Who, etc.
http://www.cinemablend.com/gam...

Minecraft as a cash cow is complete, there's no need to do any more development. It's all business dealings from here on out.

Some Slashdotter put it best a few months back... "Microsoft didn't buy a game, they bought a generation"

Same reason I cringe at Star Trek battle scenes. I I was Picard (or Worf) I would just beam a big blob of plasma straight onto the enemy bridge. Or beam their warp core out. Or just beam them all straight off their ship into a holding cell. Or to the inside of a star. OR beam the enemy warp core containment into space. Why even launch a photon torpedo? Just beam it there ASAP. I could go on and on on on.

If enemy shields is a problem just beam the photon torpedoes en masse to a point 1 second before impact on their shilds. They can't evade and you can saturate the shield with missiles until it collapses. And then go beaming away.

A transporter beam a la Star Trek is pretty much the ultimate weapon.

Breaking Bad has a classic piece of dialogue between Badger and Skinny Pete about this.

http://www.cinemablend.com/tel...

Just shows how crazy it is to rely on Wikipedia these days.

By the way, anyone else missing comments they recall making in this thread?

Too bad adblock doesn't work on my Xbox 360. Microsoft has really gone over the edge with cramming advertising down its customers throats. At this point, quite literally, MOST of the screen now is taken up by advertisements of one form or another on the main navigation pages. What's really irksome is that this was a post-purchase change that we were required to get if we wanted to continue to play with friends online, not to mention I'm already paying them $60 a year for the privilege of watching their advertisements.

I honestly don't mind the adverts about the new games or other available content coming out, as that's obviously relevant and appropriate for the platform, but I really wish they wouldn't advertising general products or take up so damn much of the screen real-estate, which is already rather precious on a TV screen. It's not one of those "frothing-at-the-mouth-angry" dealbreakers, but rather one of those "slow-burn grumbling" issues that are irritating enough for me to complain about on Slashdot, but not quite enough to cancel my service and ditch my Xbox. Although, when I finally purchase a next-gen console, I'm much more likely to look favorably at a PS4. Essentially, the Xbox one already has another negative tick against it because of the ads.

Basically, you see there a great example of what many companies would *like* to do to the web. It's up to consumers to demand that they be kept to reasonable levels of intrusiveness.

Yes it does.

They are. http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Diablo-3-Reaper-Souls-Paragon-2-0-System-Clarified-By-Blizzard-59145.html

Wow, speaking of lying ... apparently the stuff they demoed at E3 wasn't even running on an XBox 1, but a Win 7 box.

If that's true, it's both crapware and vaporware.

Sony confirms 'you can play used games on PS4'

Shuhei Yoshida confirms: no 'always-on' requirement for PS4

This was all news in February, now it should be fairly common knowledge.

WoW is indeed losing subscribers. Not a little but a lot. It's still very profitable though, so I'm not sure where the "hemorrhaging cash" comes from, but indeed it IS hemorrhaging players, to the tune of about 1.1 to 1.3 million every quarter for the last 3 consecutive quarters (prior to that they were losing in the low to mid six digits per quarter.)

Eventually it will reach the point where it starts to become unprofitable until they scale down their servers, which they are still running as if their subscriber base was about 50% larger than it is now (presently at 8.3 million whereas it peaked at 12.7 million.) 8.3 million is a lot of revenue (I can't say how much exactly given that the monthly subscription cost isn't the same in every region, which is what this 8.3 million figure includes, and they don't provide that information in their quarterly SEC filings.)

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Activision-Blizzard-Q1-2013-World-Warcraft-Loses-1-3-Million-Subscribers-55474.html

Their SEC filings (which detail their financial status according to GAAP, as required by law) for both annual 10K and quarterly 10Q can be found here:

http://investor.activision.com/sec.cfm

I'm sure that if they could keep their subscription numbers secret from the players, they probably would (and I don't blame them, because if I were a games developer I would want to keep real-life issues out of the game itself for the sake of avoiding effects on the actual gameplay given that it is a social game) however that information is very pertinent to investors so it needs to be disclosed there. But if/when they start downscaling their servers, you can expect player drama, so I'm betting that they'll avoid that as long as they can.

Scott Thompson, fired from Yahoo. Hired on by Shoprunner.

Fired for lying on his resume, not because he ran the company into the ground. Despite this, he went from being the man in charge of a company on the Fortune 500 list (barely, at 483), to being in charge of a company that, uhh... doesn't even have a wikipedia page. I had to dig this up to find out what the company even did. It's a startup company nobody's ever heard of.

Léo Apotheker, fired from HP. Hired on as Chairman of the Board for DMK.

HP: Ranked the 10th largest company on the Fortune 500 list. Lost over $300 billion in market capitalization under Apotheker's leadership.
DMK: Doesn't exist.
KMD: Does exist... and is a Danish IT firm with 3,000 employees. Is not on the list. Also... Chairman of a board is not the same as CEO of a company, so it's a false analogue anyway! But let's say he was the CEO -- he went from one of the largest companies on Earth to some tiny po-dunk company in another country.

Dick Fuld, CEO of Lehman Brothers, went on to work at Matrix Advisors and Legend Securities.

Lehman Brothers: Suffered a total existance failure under Dick's fearless leadership. Was only publicly traded for about a decade before folding. In other words, a nothing commanded by a nobody.

Matrix Advisors and Legend Securities: A hedge fund. It's not even a proper company. And it's primary source of income? The money that Dick was able to hide from creditors when he bankrupted both himself and his former company. Like, for example, the mansion he purchased just before it went under that he sold to his wife for $100 to evade creditors.

So as you can see, each of these people didn't get to "keep their cushy jobs"... every mistake led to a dramatic downward step in their cash flow. Far from proving me wrong, you've managed to brilliantly prove my point: CEOs get just as big of a black mark when they're fired as "the peons" do. All three of the examples you provided resulted in someone being a CEO on paper only -- they were never given a real company, with real money, to play with again.

I've read some comments that say the Wii U is "as powerful as an Xbox360/PS3", however I've also read articles that mentioned the Wii U is two generations ahead of the other two consoles... so, which one is it?

Butthurt Xbox360 and PS3 owners spreading FUD about the new Nintendo system now that they have to comment about how gameplay is more important than graphics, or dumbass writers who will say anything to have people read their articles?

Do we even know the specifications of the Wii U's GPU to make such comparisons?

The Wii U being "As powerful as the PS3 / 360" is FUD. It's more powerful and really that isn't hard to do on a budget, considering those consoles are both over 6 years old. One other telling factor is if you notice the 3rd party games that are multiform COD, AC3, etc... are running natively at 1080p60 on Wii U and not on the PS3 / 360. This is also with first generation non-optimized code for the Wii U, pretty safe to say it IS more powerful than it's Current gen rivals.

some specs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_u#Technical_specifications

I've read some comments that say the Wii U is "as powerful as an Xbox360/PS3", however I've also read articles that mentioned the Wii U is two generations ahead of the other two consoles... so, which one is it?

Butthurt Xbox360 and PS3 owners spreading FUD about the new Nintendo system now that they have to comment about how gameplay is more important than graphics, or dumbass writers who will say anything to have people read their articles?

Do we even know the specifications of the Wii U's GPU to make such comparisons?

Close. It'll be Wonder Woman.

Acoording to this

This is less than I would have been paid by a large corporation to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you...

It is true that he'll keep making money from this, especially because at this moment in history the act of him selling it himself is newsworthy and therefore he's gotten lots of free advertising. So he may well end up making more money, but a lot of that stems from the relative novelty of the selling method itself.

I understand the feeling behind he question of "isn't X enough money?", but it's still absurd. This pretty simple video cost $170k for him to make; his shoestring budget for Louie is $300k an episode while the relatively low budget Community costs $45 million a year. Point being that art costs much more than most people think, and him making more money could easily help him decide to put more money into his work. And he's the exception because even though he spends his money freely, he's a big enough name that he could simply rely on the tickets for the shows to pay most of the video costs (and likely fronted the rest himself). Most artists couldn't possibly get that kind of money together without funders, and those funders are purely-profit driven, so "isn't X enough money?" is the wrong question for the vast majority of shows or movies.

So from watching the first part, the guy raises some good points. And we've all ripped apart Episode One because it's so easy. Some of the points he raises are the fact that we can't identify with anyone and therefore any character that's supposed to be the protagonist fails at being a protagonist. He also points out that George Lucas doesn't have big enough genitals and intelligence as a director to be straying from this standard model. On top of that, it's George Lucas which we can all safely assume there was no second guessing King Midas on set or off set. These are problems. The other thing addressed in part one of this series is that the characters are by and large featureless in the prequel while anyone can talk for two hours about Han Solo's character. Good luck describing Qui Gon.

Now that said, I wish the voice acting for this review had been better. Or at least normal. The guy intentionally mispronounces everything. It was funny the first time but after a bit he just comes off as a one trick pony looking for a half million views on YouTube (well done, by the way). The pitch inflections actually recall me to a sort of idiot valley girl a la Alicia Silverstone. I think if the effort had been more serious he might have gotten a message out to Lucas and maybe even Hollywood but he needs to put his own humor on it so that's his choice. Now, this isn't the MST3K style of ripping apart a movie, it's deeper than that and I just wish it had been presented in a serious manner. Yes, you can still be funny when you're being serious, that's what makes great teachers, speakers and orators.

One important caveat that this review overlooks is that many of his criticisms center on complexities and different approaches that Lucas took (before that he wanted to take different approaches when he asked Lynch to direct RotJ). Just because Lucas screwed it up doesn't make these things bad. Lucas gambled and he lost. He lost everything. He made something different but he wasn't good enough at what he did to ensure that it was still great. In software development, you generally start with the basics and master them before you begin an epic endeavor into parts unknown.

Lucas made bad choices and failed. If you need to relinquish another seventy minutes of your life to this failure. Watch this series. The odds are you already know all of this.

I disagree with your disagreement. If that were true, then why are DVD sales dramatically declining?

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/190848-DVD_Backend_Is_Dwindling.php?
http://www.icv2.com/articles/home/11879.html
http://www.nypost.com/seven/12042007/business/dvd_isaster_sales_806649.htm
http://www.cinemablend.com/television/Sales-Decline-Portend-Possible-DVD-Doomsday-2110.html

Meanwhile, digital sales of video content are on the rise:

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS148561+29-Aug-2008+BW20080829
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1621/125/

I'll grant you that online sales of video content is still a developing market. But it is a market that is clearly putting a dent into the traditional distribution model of DVDs.

I think your confusion stems from far too narrow a view of the market. You're looking at Bluray discs and noting that they are failing to dislodge DVDs en masse. The reason is that Bluray is not the future. The market is going a radically different direction with its technology.

From what I've read, they are planning on having fees for certain features, but not a subscriprion fee per se.

Here is a source, although it is somewhat dated by now: http://www.cinemablend.com/games/BlizzCon-08-New-Battle-Net-Will-Have-Fees-12751.html

Saturday night they issued a statement claiming that Friedman had been fired. Everyone nodded their heads and went back about their business. Now though, the situation is suddenly much less clear.

Friedman tells Variety that he hasnâ(TM)t been terminated and from the sounds of things, itâ(TM)s business as usual for him over at Fox News. In fact Fox now seems to be backing away from their initial statement entirely. Today they issued this statement in place of their affirmation of Friedmanâ(TM)s firing: âoeThis is an internal matter that we're not prepared to discuss at this time.â

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Fox-Backpedaling-Roger-Friedman-Not-Fired-12638.html

Sometimes they flat-out lie.

Strange that truth in advertising doesn't seem to apply to films.

This is a better article explaining the loophole.

http://www.cinemablend.com/features/Uwe-Boll-Money-For-Nothing-209.html

And I couldn't stand sounding like a mindless anti-"M$" drone like you. A company doesn't get to be as large and successful for as long as Microsoft without someone having a clue. Here is a link that literally took me 5 seconds to find - http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Report-Microsoft-To-Make-Huge-Profit-With-Xbox-Live-2414.html Also, the whole hoopla over Silver and demos is a tempest in a teapot. They said this was going to happen a LONG time ago. For some reason people are getting their panties in a knot over it now. And it's adding value to my Live membership because when the killer demos like Bioshock come out I don't have to deal with the servers getting slammed as badly now. You know, I find it hilarious that people always gun for MS because they are the biggest target and somehow claim that other companies would be better. I can guarantee that if Apple was the market leader there would be anti-Apple articles on Slashdot every day. It's just about "fighting the man" for a lot of people around here.

No, they need about $8.4 billion dollars in profit for the console division to recoup it's losses. As I understand it the consoles (including games, live and peripherals) themselves have never turned a profit, though the entertainment division has had at least one miniscule profit.

That 8.4 billion comes from:

By 2005 the Xbox had lost $4 billion.
(http://www.forbes.com/home/technology/2005/09/12/ microsoft-management-software_cz_vm_0913microsoft. html)
In 2005 the entertainment division lost 391 million.
(http://www.microsoft.com/msft/earnings/FY05/earn_ rel_q4_05.mspx)
In 2006, the Xbox 360 lost $1.26 billion
(http://www.videogamesblogger.com/2006/10/13/micro soft-lost-126-billion-launching-the-xbox-360.htm)
In 2007, Microsoft has lost $2.76 billion
http://www.microsoftmonitor.com/archives/2006/10/m icrosoft_fisca_6.html
http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Microsoft-Loses-2 89-Million-in-Q2-With-Xbox-360-2544.html
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 16432

Now there might be some overlap between Fiscal 2005, and the initial number but given the number's $8.6 billion, even an overlap of $200 million is insignificant to the final number. It is highly unlikely that the Xbox group will recoup those losses in this console generation.

If this is accurate: http://www.cinemablend.com/features/Uwe-Boll-Money -For-Nothing-209.html, then you have your answer.

This is one of the most laughable things I have ever heard.

CD prices were always higher than the equivalent cassette tape, which was much more complicated to produce and had the same production and marketing costs.

FTA: For example, when you hear a song played on the radio -- that didn't just happen! Labels make investments in artists by paying for both the production and the promotion of the album, and promotion is very expensive.

The only thing that gets played on the radio is the latest Britney Spears bubblegum crap-ola. In fact, Mandy Moore recently apologized for making such bad music

So we have to pay for all the payola in getting the radio stations bribed to play the songs on the radio.

And then when a CD gets scratched, broken, or stolen, do we get a free replacement? Oh no, we have to pay the full retail cost all over again even though the RIAA wants us to think that we have somehow "licensed" the music from them.

I am glad that they are sweating, which they must be in order to be trying to play the "victim" game. The days of the Internet are here to stay, and bands can finally distribute their own music without getting shafted.

In the linked article it says that only 10% of all CD's make a profit. The other 90% of CD's put the bands into debt to the record companies, making it a really bad deal to sign a record contract. Courtney Love does the math.

The RIAA sounds desperate, and I hope they are -- it would serve them right.

Screwed Time Machine? Check

Have you seen the 1960 Time Machine? All the news I could find about the latest production made it sound like any other movie with big whiz bang explosions.

The director Simon Wells was replaced at some point with Gore Verbinski.
Thus earning the film such reviews as this and this, and this and this..

I think it is wonderful when a movie doesn't ruin the books story. The 1960 Time Machine of the did just that.

The Time Machine of 2002 did not. H. G. Wells spun in his grave

Read Uwe Boll: Money For Nothing for a possible reason his movies are so bad. Short version: video game licenses are cheap, and German tax laws make bad movies a write-off.

I remember that, too... I think this was it. Ah yes, it was discussed here, too. That's probably where I ran into it. This bit suggests the tax loophole has now been closed.

When you disseminate all the boring legal business law surrounding it the bottom line is this - the German investors in a movie only pay tax on any RETURNS the movie makes, their investment is 100% deductible, so the minute the movie makes a profit, said investor has to start paying tax. Plus the investors can actually borrow money to put towards investment and write that off too.