Slashdot Mirror
Superbowling
An assortment of Super Bowl tidbits: Supposedly sports gambling sites are being threatened with denial of service attacks if they don't pay protection money - also a Reuters story. Infinitus writes "The NFL's legal firm has a PDF up that outlines the NFL's intellectual property rights to words like 'Super Bowl' and 'NFL'. Including a neat little chart that tells you what you can and can't say..." VeggiePossum23 writes "Panthers Upset Patriots, 29 to 21... at least in the Sony Sponsored '989 Sports Game Before the Game' played on NFL Gameday 2004 on the PS2 Console. This annual event, held Wednesday night in Houston, has a perfect 8-year track record of picking the winner of the Super Bowl. Carolina Panthers Wide Receiver Steve Smith controlled the Panthers, winning an upset victory against New England Patriots' Wide Out Troy Brown, also controlling his own team." lordbyron writes "CBS is doing a SuperBowl of commercials that will include a vote for the best commercial in history. You can watch the top 10 now and make sure that you vote at 9pm on Sunday 1/31. It includes some classics like the Apple commercial and the exploding mosquitos from Tabasco."Wing Bowl.--->
Here in Los Angeles, KROQ is doing a "Super Bowl" contest where they send someone to the "Super Bowl" game, but they cannot call it the "Super Bowl" becuase of the NFL restriction. So they are referring to it as the "Big Game". It would cost them an insane amount of money to call it the "Super Bowl Contests" and its ridiculous. This whole trademark BS is so stupid sometimes. How can we live in a age where you cant refer to something by its official name without paying money??? I read slashdot all the time and I am so disgusted by the crap going on around us, what IS this world coming to?
Mario
stainless steel
For those who don't know, American football is a sissy version of rugby (rugby players don't wear helmets and armored plates). European football, on the other hand, is played mostly with the feet, and sometime the head, but in most player's case, there isn't any difference, which is why it's called "foot"ball.
There are 2*11 players in a football game. It's called "team spirit" : 11 players, only one spirit, so they learn to share.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
If that was true then CBS certainly would not run the white house ad that connects marijuana users to terrorism. but that is exactly that they are doing.
Sure, laugh at how not intellectual football is. Heck, it's as simple as:
From Youth Football knowledge base
Simple, right?
Cheers
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
Do this for 8 years and four of your friends thinks you are a genius and the remaining 1020 have forgotten the whole thing.
This works with stock tips and is a scam that has been used for ages.
Help fight continental drift.
It is amazing how many people do not understand what censorship actually means.
Sad really
I guess it is now censorship when a corporation decided not to play an ad that would piss off the majority of the country
Just like it is censorship when the public decides to not boycott a movie/tv show because the ignorant actor/actress made some boneheaded statements about their assinine political views.
Oh, and we cannot forget book publishers not publishing books that contain views they don't like. Obviously this is censorship, and not a business decision.
Finkployd
A few notes on this ... if you haven't seen the MoveOn Child's Pay ad, it's not exactly incendiary rhetoric. Even Bill O'Reilly said he was surprised they refused to play it.
CBS defends the policy by saying that if they allowed issue ads, large corporations could buy time to push their favorite issues and it would disenfranchise us folks with smaller ad budgets. Eli Pariser of MoveOn responded by pointing out that this creates an awfully friendly environment for the status quo, and those same corporations. We have oil company ads but no anti-oil ads, shoe company ads but no sweatshop ads, drug war ads but no decriminalization ads.
What we're really getting here is a one-sided agenda, and, yes, censorship, in the guise of fairness.
I'd love to see this stuff hold up in court. Has it before? I doubt it.
It is perfectly legal (and EXPLICITLY legal) to use trademarks in news and mention as long as they don't cause brand confusion.
Also, the use of copyrights to protect news is not legal. No one is allowed to rebroadcast the the coverage of the game verbatim, but nothing prevents someone from relaying the general events from the game. This is in the First Amendment, and there are no exceptions.
--Just because it has its own jargon doesn't make it intellectual. Car salesmen and McDonald's burger-flippers too have their own jargon you'd be hard-pressed to understand if you're not in the know.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Most pot (in these parts) is locally grown. The whole "pot==terrorism" line is tired and disingenuous. It's an excuse to keep the jail busy. Many jails now use private management which support the Republicans.
CBS is making a smart business decision not to air this ad. Why should CBS want to bring in unneeded controversy into the Super Bowl that would distract from the game? Since it has a product that is in high demand for advertisers, CBS can pick and choose which advertisers it wants to fill in those 30 second gaps between plays. Also, if you are spending $2 million an ad as advertiser would you want your commercial message to be drowned out by adjacent partisan political message? Heck no! This would make it hard for CBS to sell the ad space next to the MoveOn ad.
This isn't political censorship, its smart business on the part of CBS.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Scottish people are British! (The word you were looking for was English - I think). Although I'm not quite sure why you think English people would be embarrased by excitement.
Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
A corporation not playing an ad because of its political viewpoints is censorship. It's their right, and it's perfectly legal (unless you want to get into some argument about the "public" airwaves), but it's still censorship. Besides nothing in that ad is at all controversial - the deficit estimate is even a bit low, according to the Congressional Budget Office. If they're gonna air ads from the White House (containing some very shaky statements about drugs and terrorism), they should air this ad (which doesn't even promote a candidate).
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Dear National Football League,
I am writing to you today to express my joy over a recent shopping experience at your online warehouse. It was indeed a Super Sunday because I found natural fleece coats (NFC) with angora-free cuffs (AFC) in my size. I also finally found the natural floor lighting (NFL) I have long wanted but couldn't find anywhere else.
Call us a bunch of Cowboys, but now my family and I can enjoy watching the Super Bowl while we're out in the forest waiting to shoot some Bucs and maybe some Bears.
Sincerely yours,
An NFL fan
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
I partly agree. Football is unique in the sports world, though, because of it's play-by-play dynamic (you could argue the point for baseball, but the "plays" in baseball are much, much simpler). Coaches have an amazingly complex job of deciding, for each play, which players to put on the field and what play to call. Players, too, need to read the opposition and adjust not just athletically but also who to cover and whatnot.
There's certainly a run-time (har!) atheltic component, but there is also a very cerebral component that many players have to participate in (seeing, for instance, that the pre-snap motion on offense has overloaded one side of zone coverage and will leave a receiver uncovered... and then calling a timeout to prevent the play from starting).
I'm not saying it's chess-level, at least for the players, just that people who characterize it as devoid of intellectual participation are 1) wrong, and 2) engaging in stereotyping. It's like someone saying that top-notch programming doesn't involve intelligence because "you just tell the computer what to do and it does it." Only someone with a complete lack of understanding of the process would make such an assertion, and the same goes for football.
Show me someone who actually understands the game and who says that players are generally not smart and the game isn't intellectual, and I'll concede the point. You won't find someone like that, though. (No fair going back to the 1930's when that was closer to being true).
So it's a pet peeve. Deal with it.
Cheers
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
First the NFL says NO to ads for Las Vegas during the superbowl. Then CBS says NO to ads against Bush during the game. The NFL says NO WAY to Casinos in las vegas showing the game on anything bigger than a 55" TV. They say its copyright law, but last I checked copyright law didnt say anything about TV Size. Its just the NFL's arbitrary size. The Palms was planning to show it on their huge movie theater screens. Oh well, I guess the NFL doesnt like its superbowl party being upstaged by Vegas. Now they're just taking their ball and going back to Houston. Paul Tagliabue caused lots of casinos to lose lots of money because of the NFL's childlike behavior. Hello, only so many people can go to the game! What are the rest supposed to do, wait outside and be happy they're near the game?? Paul also threatened the players with fines or possibly suspensions for "excessive celebration" during the Superbowl.
The NFL is definately the No Fun League.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Yes, apparently even you. I was under the impression that censoring simply meant to screen and edit out any material found to be objectionable.
This ad, was, apparently, objectionable as far as CBS was concerned in terms of their goals: To keep and maintain as many viewers as possible to maximise their advertising revenue.
A book publisher not publishing a book that he finds objectionable is censorship too.
Of course, most people these days presume that censorship is only evil government dictates, but that is not at all true. If a parent decides they don't want their child to watch a TV program, they are censoring the child's TV watching habits. For some reason people seem to think censorship==evil, which is just not true (certainly not by the definition of the word). By all means, be wary of state mandated censorship, but don't go misusing a perfectly good word.
Jedidiah
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
The right decision would have been not to allow policital ads at all. By airing an ad from the whitehouse, which I paid for (and I would much prefer that the money be used for education instead of fucking superbowl ads), they have basically dumped politics into the superbowl. They should either remove all the politics (arguably the wise choice) or allow everyone to advertise. Again, I agree that the superbowl should be an all-fun event. Politics and fun don't mix well. But they have clearly chosen sides, and that has already taken some of the fun out of it.
they should air this ad (which doesn't even promote a candidate).
Actually, if any of the democratic candidates were willing to pay for the ad from campaign funds (and as required, appear in the ad and indicate their approval) then CBS would be required to either accept the ad or reject all campaign ads for that election cycle. The lack of a candidate or ballot issue actually does this ad in...
If you had politely said "I don't think you can control where I'm looking from a public parking lot." what could the cop actually do? Write you a ticket for "looking?"
It may be censorship in the exact definition of the word, but not in the big brother way you're all thinking of it.
Come again? It's not censorship except in the sense of fulfilling the definition of censorship? What makes you think that no-one but you understands the distinction between censorship and government censorship? Where do you get off saying that the parent poster is "Wrong. Wrong wrong." based solely on the fact that you don't think others are capable of understanding the words they use?
Thus, this is censorship exactly as the parent said. It seems perfectly reasonable that many people find it distasteful that a large corporation is choosing to censor ads based on their own political views (rather than on the basis of public mores, which is a much more common way ads are censored).
The fact that they have the legal right to do it doesn't mean we can't object, nor does that fact that it is (in your opinion, at least) a good business model. Take a quick slashdot survey of the number of people who like Microsoft's business tactics... yet it's hard to argue that they do not form (in most cases) a good business model for Microsoft.
A cricket test (the 5 day version of the sport) is one of the greatest sporting events there is. There are great amounts of stratergy etc involved. And with what other sports can you sit on a grassy embankment drinking beer wacthing the best sport in the world in the middle of summer?
http://blog.karit.geek.nz/
Obviously, Clinton wasn't a perfect president (such a thing has never existed). I disagree with him on plenty of issues (blowjobs, for one). But against a president to whom "getting things done" means giving away money to the wealthy, when we're already spending it faster than we're making it, I'd take Clinton any day.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.