By all reports? Most reports I've read was that the Interview was ok. Not good, not great, but not terrible. It was probably going to make a profit, like most other passable movies of its kind. It'd be no Pineapple Express, not even a This is the End, but probably better than Movie 33.
When they finally relent and release it, will the overall ticket sales be up or down?
Nah, Sony is much too honest and honorable of a company to consider such a thing......
You have to be braindead, utterly braindead to think that Sony was behind the hack. I can think of few things that have been more damaging to Sony Pictures in my lifetime. Nothing, in fact. Maybe if the entire executive team was discovered running a child prostitution ring... MAYBE that would be more damaging.
The reputations of most of the executives have been shredded. Many of them won't be taken seriously in the industry again. The reputations of the company with many Hollywood professionals is shredded. Think Angelina Jolie will want to work the guys who said she was a bitch again? Will any screenwriter want to entrust his script to a studio that has gotten hacked like this? The decision to shelve the movie has further tarnished the reputation of the company. Will top-tier producers want to work with Sony, knowing that the studio will not stick up for them like other studios have?
The answer to all of the above might be "Well, some will." But many won't. The hack is more than just the release of embarrassing information today, it's a loss of opportunity for the studio for tomorrow.
But they're also saying, "If you don't do what we want, we'll do it again!"
So....
Wait, where's the source for that second quote? DPRK's claim is "We didn't do it." Guardians of Peace's claim is "If you don't do what we want, we'll do it again!" I haven't heard an admission from the north that they are GOP, or a duplication of the rhetoric that GOP said.
Even Bin Laden is on camera admitting to 9/11. NK hasn't gotten that far yet.
Most of the guards on the North side looked bored and didn't care particularly what you did. In contrast, the guards on the South side look like they will kill you for looking in the wrong direction.
I think that might more accurately illustrate which side suspects the other might try to invade.
Dude, have a kid. It's cheaper, more reliable and far more fun.
Not a fan of Thiel or his stupid island, but if a guy doesn't want to have a kid, more power to him. The last thing we need is yet more kids from couples who don't want them.
I doubt, Joe Biden will score even so much as a nomination â" despite his desires â" which will, of course, be even more embarrassing for the Democrats, than him losing the subsequent election.
This is likely the number one reason why no one has attempted to assassinate Obama. They know we would get Biden in his stead.
No surprise that Fox News has been beating the impeachment drum for awhile. Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Republican Trey Gowdy was asked on Bill O'Reilly's show when they would start impeachment proceedings. Gowdy quickly poured cold water on the idea of any Obama impeachment.
Gowdy: "Have you met Joe Biden, is my response to that. So, no. Nobody's discussing impeachment except pundits and commentators." [...] O'Reilly: "All right. So you see it as a bait that you're not going to take?" Gowdy: "I'm not going to take it because I've met Joe Biden. That's not the answer."
Obama is a lying liar who despises his own country. [...] He is a lying pussy because he said he would close gitmo but didn't have a fucking clue on how to do it except "get er done".
Ok, big shot, how would you close Gitmo? I'd like to hear real plans for how to do it in a politically realistic way. Obama is a disappointment as a president, but he also had very few supporters in Congress interested in closing Gitmo down. And to do it properly, you need Congress's support.
lol re: "Tiny Zone".. Chicago, and it's suburbs, is f'in HUGE...
No surplus of geography majors here on Slahdot for sure, lol.
Oh please. It's huge if all you can do is walk. But drive for a few hours and you're back in gun country. Chicago is TINY compared with the rest of the country.
So the people in North Korea have access to the media to know about this movie and the internet access to wage these attacks? That doesn't sound like the North Korea I've ever heard of.
The upper levels of the NK government have access to the Internet; they always have. The state certainly has Internet ties. North Korea is poor and disconnected, yes... that is, the citizens of North Korea are. The elites, they most certainly are not. Keeping an entire populace THAT in the dark, and keeping the rest of the world in the dark about the country, requires some sophistication.
This is also why if a sophisticated hacking attempt came from North Korea, it would have to be government-sponsored. They're the only ones with access. Of course the DPRK employs hackers. They would be incredibly stupid not to.
Also If you were the leader of North Korea wouldn't you go out of your way to make sure no one saw this movie to maintain the illusion of grandeur?
That's what they were doing. The hacking group made all sorts of threats against Sony employees, their families, and any theaters that chose to show the movie. Of course, they don't have any power to back up those threats, but that sort of thing isn't uncommon from DKPR.
And why didn't they do anything in response to Team America?
Well, they did try to get the film banned in some countries they had relations with. But it was a different despot. Honestly, Kim Jong-Il seemed like he was comfortable in his role. Sure, he would do crazy shit, like kidnapping filmmakers so they would make movies about him, to say nothing of the hideous saber-rattling North Korea would periodically do to get attention and show they were still relevant on the global stage. Kim Jong-Un, through various government actions, has shown that he has something to prove. He doesn't want to be seen as the lesser son. He was willing to publicly execute his loyal uncle just to make a statement about his own power.
Also, the Interview is a worse offender in North Korean government eyes. Sure, Team America showed Kim Jong-Il as an evil genius. However, the Interview goes much further in that it depicts, after the interview, Kim Jong-Un being ridiculed by the people of North Korea. It depicts the ability of western media to cause a revolution in the country resulting in the overthrow of the ruling power structure. If you believe the real power is held by the military and Kim Jong-Un is a figurehead, The Interview is far worse than Team America, and its creation would be a threat to its rulers. Depict the ruler of North Korea as an evil puppet-master? That's not great, but it's preferable to depicting him as the emperor who wore no clothes.
Finally, Team America was a 2004 movie. What was the state of North Korea's Internet connections back then? Did it even have any hackers? Would it have been able to do anything to Sony Pictures ten years ago? In 2014, we're already much more connected than we were back then, though it's not like 1994, when mostly educational institutions were online. Keep in mind, no violence has been done so far. No one blew up or shot up a theater. DPKR didn't fire any missiles. No one died or even got roughed up. Everything that has happened so far is because a guy or some guys had a computer and an Internet connection.
Before the Internet became ubiquitous, DPKR wouldn't even have been able to do this. Having everyone and everything connected puts us all on an equal playing field, and it makes us all close neighbors.
The claim was that Iraq had a program and was building new weapons.
Hell, the claim made publicly to the world was that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program and had acquired nuclear material and was acquiring more. Poor Colin Powell. A promising future destroyed by being an active part of an insane administration.
If you're seriously considering pirating the game over this, you probably weren't a customer to begin with.
Not necessarily, I've seen price used as a reason for piracy before. Specifically, if something is considered to be greatly overpriced, there's a better chance it will be pirated rather than normally bought.
If North Korea got this information and threatened to reveal it, that would definitely explain why Sony caved quicker than the Iraqian army when first attacked by Isis.
You know... it's possible. I can't deny that's a real possibility. But it doesn't need to be the case either. Just a casual knowledge of how our legal system works should be enough.
See, Sony executives are well aware of the bullshit lawsuits still ongoing from the Aurora, Colorado theater shootings -- the one where a lone gunman fired on the audience at a premiere of the Dark Knight Rises. The theater is being sued for not protecting against the shooting. Rather than throwing the lawsuit out, the judge is allowing it to continue, several years later. What if, against any odds, someone attacked a screening of the Interview, and some deaths were involved? Is a case on such flimsy footing like the Aurora case has legs, the damage from an Interview attack would be tremendous. This time having foreknowledge of an attack, Sony execs know their heads would be on spikes if that was allowed to happen. So they folded.
We don't fine mugging victims for not knowing karate
But we do fire and sue security guards for sitting in the back reading Playboy while break-ins are shown on the CC TVs. And to a certain extend, we do fire incompetent sysadmins who don't secure their networks. But until we hear more details, there isn't much point in speculating how the attack did happen.
Do you want your children to be the ones dead so that the US can go avenge them? Or would you prefer they not die in the first place?
Our freedoms are, by far, our most important possession. They are more important than my life, my children's lives, your life. After 9/11, there was quite a bit of talk about us going on with our lives, still living them as we would have months earlier. If not, the terrorists get to define us. If we grant them that power, they win. This time, the terrorists won, and not because our government caved, but ball-less corporate concerns about liability. Sony was put into a bad place though; the bullshit Aurora, Colorado lawsuit is STILL ongoing. Sony didn't have a good decision to make.
But of course, this is getting into rhetorical realms. Nothing would have happened. It was your usual amount of pointless North Korean bluster.
Sorry, but since I am not a thug, I'm ok with the cops shooting first and asking questions later. I'm also ok with the fact that mistakes will be made.
Careful, someone will accuse you of racism. Apparently "thug" means "20 or 30-something black male" now, not "young man with a gangster/crime-oriented mentality and poor upbringing."
The only way to end the "better safe than sorry" stupidity that results in all sorts of cowardice and mayhem from cops shooting on the slightest hint of "I was afeered for muh life" to this is to brutally punish that mentality in court in a very public way
If someone does attack a police officer, like that moron Michael Brown did, then deadly force is an acceptable outcome. Given the evidence, the grand jury in Fergusson made the right decision. That doesn't mean there aren't issues with the police force. That doesn't mean the "blue wall of silence" shouldn't be smashed with a sledgehammer. That doesn't mean that racial profiling doesn't occur, or that sentencing in our justice system isn't ridiculous. But a movement pushing for reform couldn't have picked a worse, worse poster child. What a shame. The tinder pile had built up so high that just the tiniest, insignificant spark was enough to set it ablaze.
Heck, when one someone starts advocating fundamentally subversive to the Bill of Rights legal changes, charge their ass with sedition and lock them up
The Founding Fathers would be ashamed of you for making such a statement. Why, some of them believed in entirely scrapping the Constitution every once in awhile and starting fresh, so the laws could reflect the needs and will of the people. Those laws are not set in stone. They are very hard to change for a reason, but sedition + jail time for advocating changes to the Constitution is nonsense.
People tend to rediscover common sense when the penalty for choosing to not use it is swift and severe.
As I seem to recall, that prohibition against excessive punishment comes from the inviolable Bill of Rights as well.
You have a point, though I think it's a bit unfair to factor in certain fixed costs that would be paid, regardless of whether I made this trip or not. Not having a car is no option -- with my schedule, lifestyle, the lack of timely and omnipresent public transit, I would not do without a car. But the question here is whether to drive or fly from Illinois to Florida. $50 / month of insurance is going to be paid whether I make the trip or not. The car will depreciate over time whether I make the trip or not. I don't think you should include those costs along with the trip cost.
Now if I rented a car (which I did once for a cross-country roadtrip), it is fair to include rental and insurance fees in on the trip cost.
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Sony makes a, by all reports, terrible movie
By all reports? Most reports I've read was that the Interview was ok. Not good, not great, but not terrible. It was probably going to make a profit, like most other passable movies of its kind. It'd be no Pineapple Express, not even a This is the End, but probably better than Movie 33.
When they finally relent and release it, will the overall ticket sales be up or down?
Nah, Sony is much too honest and honorable of a company to consider such a thing......
You have to be braindead, utterly braindead to think that Sony was behind the hack. I can think of few things that have been more damaging to Sony Pictures in my lifetime. Nothing, in fact. Maybe if the entire executive team was discovered running a child prostitution ring... MAYBE that would be more damaging.
The reputations of most of the executives have been shredded. Many of them won't be taken seriously in the industry again.
The reputations of the company with many Hollywood professionals is shredded. Think Angelina Jolie will want to work the guys who said she was a bitch again?
Will any screenwriter want to entrust his script to a studio that has gotten hacked like this?
The decision to shelve the movie has further tarnished the reputation of the company. Will top-tier producers want to work with Sony, knowing that the studio will not stick up for them like other studios have?
The answer to all of the above might be "Well, some will." But many won't. The hack is more than just the release of embarrassing information today, it's a loss of opportunity for the studio for tomorrow.
I think he was asking why not suspect Sony of DDoSing NK's network. I don't think he was referring to the original hack.
so it is ok then.
Not sure what you'd mean by ok, under some circumstances, yes. It's never desirable. But it can be understandable.
Well, yeah, the NorKs claim, "We didn't do it!"
But they're also saying, "If you don't do what we want, we'll do it again!"
So....
Wait, where's the source for that second quote? DPRK's claim is "We didn't do it." Guardians of Peace's claim is "If you don't do what we want, we'll do it again!" I haven't heard an admission from the north that they are GOP, or a duplication of the rhetoric that GOP said.
Even Bin Laden is on camera admitting to 9/11. NK hasn't gotten that far yet.
Ok, all of what? 2 people are offline now?
The two that matter, yes.
Most of the guards on the North side looked bored and didn't care particularly what you did. In contrast, the guards on the South side look like they will kill you for looking in the wrong direction.
I think that might more accurately illustrate which side suspects the other might try to invade.
Dude, have a kid. It's cheaper, more reliable and far more fun.
Not a fan of Thiel or his stupid island, but if a guy doesn't want to have a kid, more power to him. The last thing we need is yet more kids from couples who don't want them.
If I wanted to read juvenile fiction to bore myself some day, I'd just read a Stephanie Meyer novel. At least she eventually gets to the point.
But without most of the emotionless, pointless BDSM sex. Wait was that in the Twilight books too?
So what your saying is that if we took all the illegal -- uh "undocumented" immigrants from third-world countries that Obama lets in
Haha, "that Obama let's in." You're funny!
Liberals going about saving innocent people while totally forgetting about all that innocent oil that needs saving too!
If our goal for going into these countries was for oil, you'd think we'd be a lot better at getting our hands on it.
This is likely the number one reason why no one has attempted to assassinate Obama. They know we would get Biden in his stead.
No surprise that Fox News has been beating the impeachment drum for awhile. Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Republican Trey Gowdy was asked on Bill O'Reilly's show when they would start impeachment proceedings. Gowdy quickly poured cold water on the idea of any Obama impeachment.
Gowdy: "Have you met Joe Biden, is my response to that. So, no. Nobody's discussing impeachment except pundits and commentators."
[...]
O'Reilly: "All right. So you see it as a bait that you're not going to take?"
Gowdy: "I'm not going to take it because I've met Joe Biden. That's not the answer."
Obama is a lying liar who despises his own country. [...] He is a lying pussy because he said he would close gitmo but didn't have a fucking clue on how to do it except "get er done".
Ok, big shot, how would you close Gitmo? I'd like to hear real plans for how to do it in a politically realistic way. Obama is a disappointment as a president, but he also had very few supporters in Congress interested in closing Gitmo down. And to do it properly, you need Congress's support.
lol re: "Tiny Zone".. Chicago, and it's suburbs, is f'in HUGE...
No surplus of geography majors here on Slahdot for sure, lol.
Oh please. It's huge if all you can do is walk. But drive for a few hours and you're back in gun country. Chicago is TINY compared with the rest of the country.
So the people in North Korea have access to the media to know about this movie and the internet access to wage these attacks? That doesn't sound like the North Korea I've ever heard of.
The upper levels of the NK government have access to the Internet; they always have. The state certainly has Internet ties. North Korea is poor and disconnected, yes... that is, the citizens of North Korea are. The elites, they most certainly are not. Keeping an entire populace THAT in the dark, and keeping the rest of the world in the dark about the country, requires some sophistication.
This is also why if a sophisticated hacking attempt came from North Korea, it would have to be government-sponsored. They're the only ones with access. Of course the DPRK employs hackers. They would be incredibly stupid not to.
Also If you were the leader of North Korea wouldn't you go out of your way to make sure no one saw this movie to maintain the illusion of grandeur?
That's what they were doing. The hacking group made all sorts of threats against Sony employees, their families, and any theaters that chose to show the movie. Of course, they don't have any power to back up those threats, but that sort of thing isn't uncommon from DKPR.
And why didn't they do anything in response to Team America?
Well, they did try to get the film banned in some countries they had relations with. But it was a different despot. Honestly, Kim Jong-Il seemed like he was comfortable in his role. Sure, he would do crazy shit, like kidnapping filmmakers so they would make movies about him, to say nothing of the hideous saber-rattling North Korea would periodically do to get attention and show they were still relevant on the global stage. Kim Jong-Un, through various government actions, has shown that he has something to prove. He doesn't want to be seen as the lesser son. He was willing to publicly execute his loyal uncle just to make a statement about his own power.
Also, the Interview is a worse offender in North Korean government eyes. Sure, Team America showed Kim Jong-Il as an evil genius. However, the Interview goes much further in that it depicts, after the interview, Kim Jong-Un being ridiculed by the people of North Korea. It depicts the ability of western media to cause a revolution in the country resulting in the overthrow of the ruling power structure. If you believe the real power is held by the military and Kim Jong-Un is a figurehead, The Interview is far worse than Team America, and its creation would be a threat to its rulers. Depict the ruler of North Korea as an evil puppet-master? That's not great, but it's preferable to depicting him as the emperor who wore no clothes.
Finally, Team America was a 2004 movie. What was the state of North Korea's Internet connections back then? Did it even have any hackers? Would it have been able to do anything to Sony Pictures ten years ago? In 2014, we're already much more connected than we were back then, though it's not like 1994, when mostly educational institutions were online. Keep in mind, no violence has been done so far. No one blew up or shot up a theater. DPKR didn't fire any missiles. No one died or even got roughed up. Everything that has happened so far is because a guy or some guys had a computer and an Internet connection.
Before the Internet became ubiquitous, DPKR wouldn't even have been able to do this. Having everyone and everything connected puts us all on an equal playing field, and it makes us all close neighbors.
How many people in North Korea have access to a DVD player?
We should sent in Seal Team Six paratroopers in... to do a theater reenactment.
The claim was that Iraq had a program and was building new weapons.
Hell, the claim made publicly to the world was that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program and had acquired nuclear material and was acquiring more.
Poor Colin Powell. A promising future destroyed by being an active part of an insane administration.
Actually it kinda does. The ability to constantly abuse the system means there is a massive flaw in said system.
There is no system of that size that cannot be greatly abused. Any large system will be.
If you're seriously considering pirating the game over this, you probably weren't a customer to begin with.
Not necessarily, I've seen price used as a reason for piracy before. Specifically, if something is considered to be greatly overpriced, there's a better chance it will be pirated rather than normally bought.
If North Korea got this information and threatened to reveal it, that would definitely explain why Sony caved quicker than the Iraqian army when first attacked by Isis.
You know... it's possible. I can't deny that's a real possibility. But it doesn't need to be the case either. Just a casual knowledge of how our legal system works should be enough.
See, Sony executives are well aware of the bullshit lawsuits still ongoing from the Aurora, Colorado theater shootings -- the one where a lone gunman fired on the audience at a premiere of the Dark Knight Rises. The theater is being sued for not protecting against the shooting. Rather than throwing the lawsuit out, the judge is allowing it to continue, several years later. What if, against any odds, someone attacked a screening of the Interview, and some deaths were involved? Is a case on such flimsy footing like the Aurora case has legs, the damage from an Interview attack would be tremendous. This time having foreknowledge of an attack, Sony execs know their heads would be on spikes if that was allowed to happen. So they folded.
We don't fine mugging victims for not knowing karate
But we do fire and sue security guards for sitting in the back reading Playboy while break-ins are shown on the CC TVs.
And to a certain extend, we do fire incompetent sysadmins who don't secure their networks. But until we hear more details, there isn't much point in speculating how the attack did happen.
Do you want your children to be the ones dead so that the US can go avenge them? Or would you prefer they not die in the first place?
Our freedoms are, by far, our most important possession. They are more important than my life, my children's lives, your life. After 9/11, there was quite a bit of talk about us going on with our lives, still living them as we would have months earlier. If not, the terrorists get to define us. If we grant them that power, they win. This time, the terrorists won, and not because our government caved, but ball-less corporate concerns about liability. Sony was put into a bad place though; the bullshit Aurora, Colorado lawsuit is STILL ongoing. Sony didn't have a good decision to make.
But of course, this is getting into rhetorical realms. Nothing would have happened. It was your usual amount of pointless North Korean bluster.
Sorry, but since I am not a thug, I'm ok with the cops shooting first and asking questions later. I'm also ok with the fact that mistakes will be made.
Careful, someone will accuse you of racism. Apparently "thug" means "20 or 30-something black male" now, not "young man with a gangster/crime-oriented mentality and poor upbringing."
The only way to end the "better safe than sorry" stupidity that results in all sorts of cowardice and mayhem from cops shooting on the slightest hint of "I was afeered for muh life" to this is to brutally punish that mentality in court in a very public way
If someone does attack a police officer, like that moron Michael Brown did, then deadly force is an acceptable outcome. Given the evidence, the grand jury in Fergusson made the right decision. That doesn't mean there aren't issues with the police force. That doesn't mean the "blue wall of silence" shouldn't be smashed with a sledgehammer. That doesn't mean that racial profiling doesn't occur, or that sentencing in our justice system isn't ridiculous. But a movement pushing for reform couldn't have picked a worse, worse poster child. What a shame. The tinder pile had built up so high that just the tiniest, insignificant spark was enough to set it ablaze.
Heck, when one someone starts advocating fundamentally subversive to the Bill of Rights legal changes, charge their ass with sedition and lock them up
The Founding Fathers would be ashamed of you for making such a statement. Why, some of them believed in entirely scrapping the Constitution every once in awhile and starting fresh, so the laws could reflect the needs and will of the people. Those laws are not set in stone. They are very hard to change for a reason, but sedition + jail time for advocating changes to the Constitution is nonsense.
People tend to rediscover common sense when the penalty for choosing to not use it is swift and severe.
As I seem to recall, that prohibition against excessive punishment comes from the inviolable Bill of Rights as well.
And China. China probably wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire,
Let's strike a flint, and see.
You have a point, though I think it's a bit unfair to factor in certain fixed costs that would be paid, regardless of whether I made this trip or not. Not having a car is no option -- with my schedule, lifestyle, the lack of timely and omnipresent public transit, I would not do without a car. But the question here is whether to drive or fly from Illinois to Florida. $50 / month of insurance is going to be paid whether I make the trip or not. The car will depreciate over time whether I make the trip or not. I don't think you should include those costs along with the trip cost.
Now if I rented a car (which I did once for a cross-country roadtrip), it is fair to include rental and insurance fees in on the trip cost.