Getting people to switch is probably the best support you can ever give them. You know the saying - "Once you go Mac, you never go back."
The ultimate goal is supporting IE users, which is not the same as supporting IE. The best support you can give an IE user is links to competing, and better, browsers.
What's best for Microsoft isn't what's best for their users - otherwise, they wouldn't be trying so hard to lock people in with restrictive file formats, etc.
In a lot of cases, what's best for EVERYONE is "Anybody But Microsoft". A good example of that is Vista - how much extra greenhouse gases will be released because of the extra power consumption needed to run all the eye candy? Vista is literally harmful for the environment.
Several tags are being "repurposed" or "overloaded". MENU is one of them. Read the discussion in TFA on the DIALOG tag for how definition lists are being re-worked.
""Sarcasm should be banned. It's just so frustrating in text."
I agree 100%!
You'll be charged $10 more each month, since you obviously have interited 2 copies of the sarcasm gene; as such, you're at a much higher health risk, from pissing off some fat slob who'll sit on you or some redneck who won't like your "still datin' your sister, I see - I guess that's okay, as long as you keep it in the family" comments.
"a crime to bring a recording device into the theater regardless of whether or not you used it to record anything or even intended to"
They're going to have a hard time with this, since almost all cell phones sold nowadays are also "recording devices." Come to think of it, so are my eyeballs and brain.
And ipods, mp3 players, etc. Heck, even a PENCIL is a "recording device".
"Another poster in this discussion mentioned that when he worked for a theater chain (not Regal) there was a poster in the break room advertising $1000 for a sworn statement that leads to a conviction following the arrest of patrons recording the movies."
If this is true, it can be used to impeach the credibility of any witness, as they certainly have a motivation to "exaggerate" or outright lie. They're already not partial, being employees of the theatre... so people in that situation should
erase the clip, then start recording everything going on around them - the cops, etc. They are under no obligation to present a defense, and with witnesses with a clear bias, and no hard evidence, no conviction.
"and quite often that water comes from the tap anyway!"
Quite often? MOST of the time. Dasani and Aquafine are both just bottled municipal tap water; they usually have higher bacteria counts than the tap they came from because the water sits stagnant in the bottle.
You're better off refilling the bottle than opening a "new" one that's been on the shelf for a month.
Well, considering that the theatre is not the police, she should have exercised her legal rights and walked out - and when they illegally try to detain her, record it; the minute they lay a finger on her, she has the right to scream assault. A few lawsuits like that, and they'll change their policy.
Its a 2-2ay street - the big chains have a lot of leverage. Without the theatres, what are the studios going to do - release verything direct-to-dvd?
And yes, the theatres DO have an option - contracts that contain clauses that are contrary to public policy or unconscionable are open to all sorts of remedies. As you point out, the studios are exerting enormous power, and forcing theatres into deals that no peopel bargaining from a position of equality would ever agree to.
All it takes is for one of the big chains to say "showing these anti-piracy clips is insulting to our clients, and we're not going to do it any more. That clause in unconscionable, and we're prepared to go to court and get an injunction prohibiting you from stopping distribution of your films to our chain while the courts settle the matter.... and we're also suing you for damaged good-will with our customers".
"think about it from the standpoint of Regal Cinemas, they have no way of knowing, at the time that the recording is being made, how much has already been recorded"
All they had to do was explain the law, then ask the owner if they could kindly cooperate and delete the stuff... not make a federal case out of it! This would have met the needs of the copyright holders, as well as gotten out the message that (1) its a no-no, and (2) not everyone who wants to see copyright enforced in a particular way is a total asshole. They're ID-10-Ts.
Its the same as showing those stupid "you wouldn't steal a car" clips they show - "HEY ASSHOLES, IF I'M IN YOUR THEATRE WATCHING THE MOVIE, DON'T ACCUSE ME OF BEING A CROOK!!!" Insulting your customers ethics and intelligence will just drive them away.
"he manager doesn't have the authority to detain her, investigate the quantity of movie she has recorded, etc;"
Any reasonable human being would have just asked, heard the explanation, explained the law, and asked her if she would cooperate by deleting the clip. If so, then let her back in the movie... and she'd then go and tell all her friends that, while they could have been assholes, they ewren't so bad about it.
Instead, they come off as total jerks who are more interested in playing gestapo film nazis than in resolving the issue in a way that serves everyone's best interest (including the MPAA, btw).
Thanks for the memories... I loved my CoCo2 (16k upgraded to 64k ram) - I learned assembler on that old box. When the CoCo 3 came out, with 128k of ram (which I upgraded to 512k + 3 floppy drives + 2 tape drives + multi-io + speech synth + mouse + touchpad + remote electrical control unit, etc., Microware OS9 + RGB monitor yadda yadda yadda, I was one happy camper. People with their early PCs were stunned! True multi-tasking, a graphical environment, multiple console terminals + multiple consoles per screen on both text and graphics, and v and pascal compilers. w00t!
Sometimes the "good old days" really were the "good old days."
"Hi, this is google phoneSense. We see you are calling 911."
"... Before putting your call through, we would like you to listen to these great opportunities from some of our advertisers..."
"... For bodily injury, remember to call 1-888-SUE-THEM!..."
"... Need a tow? Call 1-888-TOW-TRUK NOW!..."
"... Want a phone that works in an emergency... dial 1-888-NO-FONE-ADS..."
"... click..."
"911 emergency services. Your call is important to us... please hold. In the meantime, please take a moment to listen to these grat opportunites from our sponsors..."
A 20-second clip isn't a clear case of copyright infringement
Would 20 seconds of penetration not be a clear case of rape?
Nope. Consenting adults do it all the time. It's the sexual equivalent of "fair use", I guess... Just shows that absolute prohibitions don't work in real life.
Also, many sexual assaults don't even involve penetration... that's the reason the crime ws changed from rape to sexual assault - because the impact on the victim can be just as bad in both cases.
"This law prohibits even ATTEMPTING to record a movie in a movie theater, and has no exceptions for actions that would otherwise be fair use.
"
So if I'm a movie producer, I can't film any scenes that have a setting in a movie theatre?"
Alternatively, I can't explicitly allow people to film my film, say, if I'm looking to generate some buzz, and don't mind crappy reproductions floating around, since I'm making my money from product placement, etc.?
It seems that both these violate the Constitution's freedom of speech provision. Producers are no longer allowed to film certain settings, and they're also not allowed to use distribution and revenue models outside industry norms, restricting how far their products can be distributed.
"The problem with your argument is that the theater manager or whoever reported to the manager that she was recording the movie doesn't know how much she recorded or for what purpose, and it's not his job to find that out"
Actually, you're wrong. Try calling the police the next time you hear someone playing cards and jokingly saying "I'm really gonna kill you this round!" Or try reporting a murder you see on Law and Order.
"But officer, its not my job to find out if they were serious or not, or if it was real or not..." - yeah, riiiight. This ranks right up there with charging a 5-year-old with sexual assault because they touched someone of the opposite sex while playing dodge-ball.
"You have to be careful about attacking the theatre owner here. Theatres, to my knowledge and I am open to correction here, as part of their license to show the film open themselves up to the a possible lawsuit from the content owner/distributor/etc. if they are complicit in allowing unauthorized reproductions to me made"
So confiscating the clip and ejecting the person should be enough, since that is definitely not being complicit, but rather being proactive. Regal made a mistake with this one. The excuse "we can't educate theatre owners on what to do" is just CYA BS.
"The only problem is, that's not your decision to make. That's the content owner's decision.
"
The theater wasn't the "content owner." And the theatre owner doesn't understand the concept of "de minimus" - the law doesn't deal in trifles. They're just being dickheads. A 20-second clip isn't a clear case of copyright infringement, since copyright allows for short exerpts to be used without the copyright owners' permission, for example, in reviews. Getting kicked out of the theatre should have been enough, but that's what you get for treating your customers like criminals (guess they've adopted the Microsoft CRM model).
But he acknowledged that there was a "huge bubble" of patent assertions that needs to be scaled back. "The question with this bubble market, as with any bubble market, is 'Can we solve it without a crisis arising?'" he said
If the patent system has generated a "patent bubble", then it already IS f$cked up, same as the housing bubble, and the dot-com bubble before it.
Apple is just being a dickhead because they profit from the current b0rked system, same as real estate agents profited from the housing bubble to put people into homes they can't afford, and stock brokers got people to buy stocks that had no underlying real value.
First item on the agenda should be abolishing all software patents and all business method patents. Neither one is a "device" as understood by the original framers of patent law.
Re:"I'm left-handed, you ignorant clod!"
on
Mouse or Trackball?
·
· Score: 1
The logitech ones I've seen sure ones aren't ambidexterous. Its like mice - look at them closely - many are right-handed. So are keyboards - the number pad, etc., are all on the right.
"I'm left-handed, you ignorant clod!"
on
Mouse or Trackball?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Using a right-handed trackball is like using right-handed scissors - awkward as all hell.
I bought a keyboard with a built-in trackball. It was nice for 15 minutes - then I gave it away because its useless!
Instead, I have 2 mice plugged into the computer - one on each side of the keyboard. I grab whichever one is convenient (dual monitors, etc). I'm thinking that for my triple-monitor setup at home I should configure X so that each monitor has a captive mouse - having to go all the way from the left side to the right side when you've got an effective horizontal resolution of 4,000 pixels is a bit much. Even with "googley eyes" it gets hard to find the mouse.
Slashdot Mirror
Getting people to switch is probably the best support you can ever give them. You know the saying - "Once you go Mac, you never go back."
The ultimate goal is supporting IE users, which is not the same as supporting IE. The best support you can give an IE user is links to competing, and better, browsers.
What's best for Microsoft isn't what's best for their users - otherwise, they wouldn't be trying so hard to lock people in with restrictive file formats, etc.
In a lot of cases, what's best for EVERYONE is "Anybody But Microsoft". A good example of that is Vista - how much extra greenhouse gases will be released because of the extra power consumption needed to run all the eye candy? Vista is literally harmful for the environment.
"I welcome new tags like datagrid and menu"
The MENU tag has been part of the spec since the earlest html drafts.
Several tags are being "repurposed" or "overloaded". MENU is one of them. Read the discussion in TFA on the DIALOG tag for how definition lists are being re-worked.
"Which, assuming you want to support IE users, means no."
You can support IE users ... just inlcude links to the download pages for Opera, Firefox, Netscape, Safari, etc.
Better yet, give them full support - have them download a bootable linux distro to replace Vista Millennium.
Of course there's no reason you can't just serve it as xml tags with an associated stylesheet ... but this is still a "Good Thing".
Neither -b bring it to McDoanlds - fatties want MORE of that "good old crusty fried-to-cholesterol-hell and bacK" taste.
""Sarcasm should be banned. It's just so frustrating in text."
I agree 100%!
You'll be charged $10 more each month, since you obviously have interited 2 copies of the sarcasm gene; as such, you're at a much higher health risk, from pissing off some fat slob who'll sit on you or some redneck who won't like your "still datin' your sister, I see - I guess that's okay, as long as you keep it in the family" comments.
"a crime to bring a recording device into the theater regardless of whether or not you used it to record anything or even intended to"
They're going to have a hard time with this, since almost all cell phones sold nowadays are also "recording devices." Come to think of it, so are my eyeballs and brain.
And ipods, mp3 players, etc. Heck, even a PENCIL is a "recording device".
(sigh) what a mess ...
I agree with you about the MDFIAA.
"Another poster in this discussion mentioned that when he worked for a theater chain (not Regal) there was a poster in the break room advertising $1000 for a sworn statement that leads to a conviction following the arrest of patrons recording the movies."
If this is true, it can be used to impeach the credibility of any witness, as they certainly have a motivation to "exaggerate" or outright lie. They're already not partial, being employees of the theatre ... so people in that situation should
"Soon they will not need men to reproduce, and will begin eliminating us."
You can be sure that someone will try to patent it ... now that they've managed to get the original researcher out of the picture ...
Quite often? MOST of the time. Dasani and Aquafine are both just bottled municipal tap water; they usually have higher bacteria counts than the tap they came from because the water sits stagnant in the bottle.
You're better off refilling the bottle than opening a "new" one that's been on the shelf for a month.
Well, considering that the theatre is not the police, she should have exercised her legal rights and walked out - and when they illegally try to detain her, record it; the minute they lay a finger on her, she has the right to scream assault. A few lawsuits like that, and they'll change their policy.
Its a 2-2ay street - the big chains have a lot of leverage. Without the theatres, what are the studios going to do - release verything direct-to-dvd?
And yes, the theatres DO have an option - contracts that contain clauses that are contrary to public policy or unconscionable are open to all sorts of remedies. As you point out, the studios are exerting enormous power, and forcing theatres into deals that no peopel bargaining from a position of equality would ever agree to.
All it takes is for one of the big chains to say "showing these anti-piracy clips is insulting to our clients, and we're not going to do it any more. That clause in unconscionable, and we're prepared to go to court and get an injunction prohibiting you from stopping distribution of your films to our chain while the courts settle the matter .... and we're also suing you for damaged good-will with our customers".
The studios understand lawsuits.
"think about it from the standpoint of Regal Cinemas, they have no way of knowing, at the time that the recording is being made, how much has already been recorded"
All they had to do was explain the law, then ask the owner if they could kindly cooperate and delete the stuff ... not make a federal case out of it! This would have met the needs of the copyright holders, as well as gotten out the message that (1) its a no-no, and (2) not everyone who wants to see copyright enforced in a particular way is a total asshole. They're ID-10-Ts.
Its the same as showing those stupid "you wouldn't steal a car" clips they show - "HEY ASSHOLES, IF I'M IN YOUR THEATRE WATCHING THE MOVIE, DON'T ACCUSE ME OF BEING A CROOK!!!" Insulting your customers ethics and intelligence will just drive them away.
"he manager doesn't have the authority to detain her, investigate the quantity of movie she has recorded, etc;"
Any reasonable human being would have just asked, heard the explanation, explained the law, and asked her if she would cooperate by deleting the clip. If so, then let her back in the movie ... and she'd then go and tell all her friends that, while they could have been assholes, they ewren't so bad about it.
Instead, they come off as total jerks who are more interested in playing gestapo film nazis than in resolving the issue in a way that serves everyone's best interest (including the MPAA, btw).
They're still dickheads (NSA - Not Safe Anywhere) .
Thanks for the memories ... I loved my CoCo2 (16k upgraded to 64k ram) - I learned assembler on that old box. When the CoCo 3 came out, with 128k of ram (which I upgraded to 512k + 3 floppy drives + 2 tape drives + multi-io + speech synth + mouse + touchpad + remote electrical control unit, etc., Microware OS9 + RGB monitor yadda yadda yadda, I was one happy camper. People with their early PCs were stunned! True multi-tasking, a graphical environment, multiple console terminals + multiple consoles per screen on both text and graphics, and v and pascal compilers. w00t!
Sometimes the "good old days" really were the "good old days."
"9" - "1" - "1"
"Hi, this is google phoneSense. We see you are calling 911."
"... Before putting your call through, we would like you to listen to these great opportunities from some of our advertisers ..."
"... For bodily injury, remember to call 1-888-SUE-THEM! ..."
"... Need a tow? Call 1-888-TOW-TRUK NOW! ..."
"... Want a phone that works in an emergency ... dial 1-888-NO-FONE-ADS ..."
"... click ..."
"911 emergency services. Your call is important to us ... please hold. In the meantime, please take a moment to listen to these grat opportunites from our sponsors ..."
Nope. Consenting adults do it all the time. It's the sexual equivalent of "fair use", I guess ... Just shows that absolute prohibitions don't work in real life.
Also, many sexual assaults don't even involve penetration ... that's the reason the crime ws changed from rape to sexual assault - because the impact on the victim can be just as bad in both cases.
"This law prohibits even ATTEMPTING to record a movie in a movie theater, and has no exceptions for actions that would otherwise be fair use. "
So if I'm a movie producer, I can't film any scenes that have a setting in a movie theatre?"
Alternatively, I can't explicitly allow people to film my film, say, if I'm looking to generate some buzz, and don't mind crappy reproductions floating around, since I'm making my money from product placement, etc.?
It seems that both these violate the Constitution's freedom of speech provision. Producers are no longer allowed to film certain settings, and they're also not allowed to use distribution and revenue models outside industry norms, restricting how far their products can be distributed.
"The problem with your argument is that the theater manager or whoever reported to the manager that she was recording the movie doesn't know how much she recorded or for what purpose, and it's not his job to find that out"
Actually, you're wrong. Try calling the police the next time you hear someone playing cards and jokingly saying "I'm really gonna kill you this round!" Or try reporting a murder you see on Law and Order.
"But officer, its not my job to find out if they were serious or not, or if it was real or not ..." - yeah, riiiight. This ranks right up there with charging a 5-year-old with sexual assault because they touched someone of the opposite sex while playing dodge-ball.
Software patents and business method patents are both BS and should never have been allowed - in fact they weren't allowed for the longest time.
So yes, to the extent that apple and google like software and business patents, they ARE evil.
"You have to be careful about attacking the theatre owner here. Theatres, to my knowledge and I am open to correction here, as part of their license to show the film open themselves up to the a possible lawsuit from the content owner/distributor/etc. if they are complicit in allowing unauthorized reproductions to me made"
So confiscating the clip and ejecting the person should be enough, since that is definitely not being complicit, but rather being proactive. Regal made a mistake with this one. The excuse "we can't educate theatre owners on what to do" is just CYA BS.
"The only problem is, that's not your decision to make. That's the content owner's decision. "
The theater wasn't the "content owner." And the theatre owner doesn't understand the concept of "de minimus" - the law doesn't deal in trifles. They're just being dickheads. A 20-second clip isn't a clear case of copyright infringement, since copyright allows for short exerpts to be used without the copyright owners' permission, for example, in reviews. Getting kicked out of the theatre should have been enough, but that's what you get for treating your customers like criminals (guess they've adopted the Microsoft CRM model).
Parent poster asketh:
Look at what you quoted :
If the patent system has generated a "patent bubble", then it already IS f$cked up, same as the housing bubble, and the dot-com bubble before it.
Apple is just being a dickhead because they profit from the current b0rked system, same as real estate agents profited from the housing bubble to put people into homes they can't afford, and stock brokers got people to buy stocks that had no underlying real value.
First item on the agenda should be abolishing all software patents and all business method patents. Neither one is a "device" as understood by the original framers of patent law.
The logitech ones I've seen sure ones aren't ambidexterous. Its like mice - look at them closely - many are right-handed. So are keyboards - the number pad, etc., are all on the right.
Using a right-handed trackball is like using right-handed scissors - awkward as all hell.
I bought a keyboard with a built-in trackball. It was nice for 15 minutes - then I gave it away because its useless!
Instead, I have 2 mice plugged into the computer - one on each side of the keyboard. I grab whichever one is convenient (dual monitors, etc). I'm thinking that for my triple-monitor setup at home I should configure X so that each monitor has a captive mouse - having to go all the way from the left side to the right side when you've got an effective horizontal resolution of 4,000 pixels is a bit much. Even with "googley eyes" it gets hard to find the mouse.