I noticed the exact same thing in my theater. Interest in the movie, people were thinking "wow, what the hell is this?" Then when Shyamalan's name appeared, half the audience started laughing, the other half groaned loudly in disappointment. It's amazing how far he's fallen.
I have the feeling this movie is squarely in the sights of RiffTrax, a group headed by Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbet who release audio commentary files designed to be synchronized to your DVD playback. Since they're only releasing audio commentaries, they can Riff on any movie without getting the rights, so they've been able to skewer a whole bunch of movies.
There's another group which does something similar called Cinematic Titanic, composed of Joel Hodgson (Joel), Trace Beaulieu (Crow T Robot), J Elvis Weinstein (Tom Servo from Season 1 of MST3K), and Frank Conniff (TV's Frank), but I believe they only release DVDs with Riffs of movies they can get the rights to.
I think both groups finally made up and performed together, but they're still separate groups of people working on separate projects.
Oh trust me, they'll go crazier about coal than they will about nuclear. No one wants NE United States air quality in Northern California. But really they'll only go nuclear when it's shown that wind and solar just won't cut it. And maybe not even then.
As someone familiar with the area, while Marin County is pretty much hippie central, it is not stoner hippie central, nor does a noticeable amount of drugs come from there. Northwards, Mendocino County, while not especially liberal or hippie-like, produces an amazing amount of pot. Those are the places where it's no longer safe to hike on public natural park trails, lest you stumble upon a hidden professional grow operation and get shot.
Five years ago or so it wasn't so bad, but lately Slashdot is beginning to decay in terms of skill at handling argumentation. There's too many posts like that other one to which I responded. I find myself spending too much time responding not to a clever objection that makes me reconsider my position and think differently about the subject, nor to a helpful individual who shows me why I was wrong and corrects my errors, but instead to things like basic failures of reading comprehension or trivial logical fallacies or an inability to realize that if I stop short of making a claim, it's because I intended to not make that claim.
I'm starting to wonder if Slashdot is getting an influx of readers from the Daily Kos or similar. Many of the opinions and arguments are sounding like they were developed in an echo chamber of only like-minded attitudes.
It represents a drastic reduction of the quality of discussion on this site. With no ego I say I am definitely schooling a few who really had it coming, yet I regret that this mostly concerns basic things for which they should not need my help or anyone else's. In other words I don't believe I am so clever. I just believe I am often confronted with individuals who so desperately need to feel like they told someone a thing or two that they won't let things like facts, easily inferred information, or basic inductive logic to get in their way. I'm setting that straight as best as I can, with what great or small skill I may possess, but it doesn't look good. Most of them are not so interested in helping me learn new information or to realize that I made a mistake; instead they want to feel better than someone and in my case, they chose someone who can see right through that.
Anyway, if you read through all of that, thanks for your support. It's encouraging that some folks can see what I am trying to cultivate. I am open to any honest criticism you may have and will gladly entertain it.
How much research is done in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's versus Huntingdon's and ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease)? Lot's of people have the first two, not so many the other two. It's a smart profit decision to do research into the first two, yes?
It is. It also would be a better moral decision to cure two diseases that affect about 6 million people in the US rather than the two that affect roughly 60,000. Sorry, but it's just a lot more important in just about every way to find cures for the former instead of the latter. And I say that as a Huntington descendant.
But if you have a loved one dying from the other two, that's too bad, no?
Yes it is too bad, but resources are finite. Different people have different interests, which is why not every dollar going into research goes towards the most prevalent diseases, but it should come as no surprise that as a disease becomes more prevalent and affects more people and more family members, the higher the research priority becomes.
In a world of saintly researchers and Pharmaceutical companies, each disease would have equal priority
I disagree, I think that would be a foolish approach, and I'm not arguing from a business bottom line. It's a zero sum game -- you take from one, there are fewer resources for the other. Is it better to save 10,000 or 100,000? Certainly, "I'd like to save 110,000" is a wonderful goal. But if you don't have the cash and the expertise to do both, it's better to save the 100,000. Of course, all the numbers in this paragraph are totally made up, and the 'real world' is rarely as black and white.:P
This is what frustrates me every time one of these stories comes up on Slashdot, that so many people think that everyone who works in the pharmaceutical industry is evil, that all of them are conspiring to keep the "real" cures secret or undiscovered. This is the legacy from getting everything you know from poorly-written Hollywood movies or the Daily Kos. I don't understand why they think that -so many- people who have to have no morals or empathy.
They use phrases like the great-grandparent's post: "Just imagine how much better the world would be if you had a $1000 lifetime cure instead of $100/month treatments." Well no shit, of course that would be better, but in their fantasy world the medical industry is composed of monsters, and they believe that if a large group of people could financially benefit from an immoral action, then all those people will choose to do so. Therefore, if your industry could benefit by refusing to develop cures, well by God, that must be what's happening. When conflict of interest is so vaguely defined, any action is seen as malevolent rather than just lack of scientific progress.
So thank you, once again, for your post. The more people who are reminded that people in the big bad corporation are real, thinking, feeling, humans, the better.
Most likely talking about famed skeptic James Randi who offers a $1 million reward for anyone who can demonstrate psychic abilities under scientific conditions.
I'd give a hyperlink for it, but for unknown reasons Google Chrome likes to just flat-out reject any hyperlink pasting. You can find the info out about it on the JREF page on wikipedia.
I had a transplant and will be on immuno-suppresents for ever. There's never going to be some magical pill that changes my body's ability to create antibodies
Maybe not, but some day it might be possible to clone your own organs and eliminate the rejection issues rather than use donor organs. That could certainly be a medical coup.
It sort of depends on what you're allergic to. And as we age, we naturally tend to become allergic to more and more things.
I'm lucky I was an exception! I have no allergies that I know of anymore, but I used to have horrid allergies when I was younger.. to pollen and dust mites. When I was a child I used to have to have a dust-mite-proof anti-allergenic wrapper around bed mattresses. Not so anymore, I get exposed to quite a bit of dust every day and haven't had issues in years. I credit the allergy shots I used to get on a weekly basis. >_> I never liked those things, but getting a shot was nothing compared to having your skin scraped raw in a dozen spots for an allergy scrape test. That was one of the most miserable medical experiences of my life.
Well I do have one final mild allergy -- shellfish. Nothing serious, and I can and do eat them, but they still cause a weird tingling and numbness in the lips and tongue. Good times.
She's using her position as a celebrity to give parents harmful advice: "Don't vaccinate." It's one thing to give advice on issues that don't matter or wouldn't cause genuine harm (like "drink orange juice to ward off sickness in winter" or something like that), but the advice she gives is quite dangerous to the health of the children in this country. The diseases that the vaccines were created to combat are no joke, and in the absence of credible data showing vaccines are harmful (or at the very least more harmful than the diseases they are preventing), the responsible thing for parents to do is to vaccinate their children. I don't doubt that she actually thinks she's doing good, and her reasons for doing this are probably pure, but Jenny McCarthy's crusade (and it's more than just giving one's opinion when asked) is dangerous.
Judge, "You're telling me that YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOUR 'BUSINESS MODEL' IS WORTH?!"
Walker, "No your honor, we have no idea what our patent is worth."
Actually, that makes sense. The dollar value of a patent is going to depend on how useful and used it is, and the only way to find that out is through discovery.
"of course, those with the deepest coffers will by cherrypicked first."
I would be surprised if that were to happen. A company like Activision has the resources to defend itself. A startup, however, usually doesn't. Rarely do you start with the big guy; instead it makes sense to try picking off the little guys first, since successful cases strengthen your hand to win future cases. These frivolous lawsuits can destroy small businesses, but the lawyers and board of Walker Digital won't care.
Yeah, well at least the film hilariously lampooned the ultra-fascism of the original book, so I can forgive some licence on the science.
I've always felt that Starship Troopers the Movie was exactly the sort of adaptation that Starship Troopers the Book deserved, and have made a number of hardcore Heinlein fans very angry when expressing such ideas. >_>
"Any natural disaster travels at the speed of the transportation you happen to be in at the time."
Almost, but not quite! A natural disaster needs to travel "just slightly faster" than your transportation. That allows people to yell obvious things like "It's getting closer!" and "We're not going to make it!" right before the heroes make it to safety.
You don't have to be left-wing to find Palin to be an idiot.
Seems to be the prevailing characteristic.
Nah, though leftist hacks will hate her, she's also fairly unpopular in the Tea Party movement (or at least she was six months ago. Not sure if that's still true), though she's been trying to ingratiate herself to them every opportunity she can get. Conservative pundits are not backing her for a presidential run at the moment either. The smart money seems to be on Huckabee or maaaybe Romney.
Will it ever be Palin's time to be president? God I hope not, because it would mean 80% of the country has died,
I'm not so sure about that, Palin's group doesn't need the informed electorate dead, just not to vote. Voter turnout was shitty in the midterm elections (something like 11% in the 18-21 age group? Really?), so that worked out great for them.
Because (b)(1) enumerates the rights of the copyright owner rather than access, the above arguments hold to these points as well. Simply put, Glider enhances gameplay, it does not afford you access to a protected work nor does it invalidate the copyright held by the owner, it merely allows you to do actions which Blizzard wishes you would not do.
It provides the program access to the copyrighted work, and the program is not authorized. Blizzard Entertainment is the only group that gets to decide what programs are allowed to play the game, and only -players-, not programs are authorized to access the game client.
Glider circumvents warden. No one's debating that point. Warden is what protects the game client from unauthorized access from programs, so Glider is guilty of (b)(1) -- it "is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof."
The content inside WoW can only be accessed via a client which Blizzard controls.
I understood glider uses the proper client.
You misunderstood the part where Blizzard controls the client. As soon as you start Glider, you are breaking the ToS on Blizzard’s client and you no longer have the right to use it.
Where is the circumventing copy protections part? Nobody argued that is isn't against the TOS. I wonder where the breaking of law happened.
If running the client isn't copyright violation, how is warden a copy protection mechanism? It doesn't seem to be protecting blizzard's copyright according to the judge.
It's not a copyright control mechanism, it's an access control mechanism. Copyright was really only part of the DMCA -- it's the access control provisions that may be the most controversial (and the worst part of the sprawling law, IMO).
Note to mods and meta-mods: The parent's post was not that controversial. Whether you agree or disagree with his position, there's no way that it earned a Flamebait mod.
Slashdot Mirror
I noticed the exact same thing in my theater. Interest in the movie, people were thinking "wow, what the hell is this?" Then when Shyamalan's name appeared, half the audience started laughing, the other half groaned loudly in disappointment. It's amazing how far he's fallen.
I have the feeling this movie is squarely in the sights of RiffTrax, a group headed by Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbet who release audio commentary files designed to be synchronized to your DVD playback. Since they're only releasing audio commentaries, they can Riff on any movie without getting the rights, so they've been able to skewer a whole bunch of movies.
There's another group which does something similar called Cinematic Titanic, composed of Joel Hodgson (Joel), Trace Beaulieu (Crow T Robot), J Elvis Weinstein (Tom Servo from Season 1 of MST3K), and Frank Conniff (TV's Frank), but I believe they only release DVDs with Riffs of movies they can get the rights to.
I think both groups finally made up and performed together, but they're still separate groups of people working on separate projects.
Oh trust me, they'll go crazier about coal than they will about nuclear. No one wants NE United States air quality in Northern California. But really they'll only go nuclear when it's shown that wind and solar just won't cut it. And maybe not even then.
As someone familiar with the area, while Marin County is pretty much hippie central, it is not stoner hippie central, nor does a noticeable amount of drugs come from there. Northwards, Mendocino County, while not especially liberal or hippie-like, produces an amazing amount of pot. Those are the places where it's no longer safe to hike on public natural park trails, lest you stumble upon a hidden professional grow operation and get shot.
Oh dear, cut and paste fail. Please ignore the last two paragraphs of that post. >_>
A decade ago I would flayed myself for leaving in so much unnecessary quotation.
Five years ago or so it wasn't so bad, but lately Slashdot is beginning to decay in terms of skill at handling argumentation. There's too many posts like that other one to which I responded. I find myself spending too much time responding not to a clever objection that makes me reconsider my position and think differently about the subject, nor to a helpful individual who shows me why I was wrong and corrects my errors, but instead to things like basic failures of reading comprehension or trivial logical fallacies or an inability to realize that if I stop short of making a claim, it's because I intended to not make that claim.
I'm starting to wonder if Slashdot is getting an influx of readers from the Daily Kos or similar. Many of the opinions and arguments are sounding like they were developed in an echo chamber of only like-minded attitudes.
It represents a drastic reduction of the quality of discussion on this site. With no ego I say I am definitely schooling a few who really had it coming, yet I regret that this mostly concerns basic things for which they should not need my help or anyone else's. In other words I don't believe I am so clever. I just believe I am often confronted with individuals who so desperately need to feel like they told someone a thing or two that they won't let things like facts, easily inferred information, or basic inductive logic to get in their way. I'm setting that straight as best as I can, with what great or small skill I may possess, but it doesn't look good. Most of them are not so interested in helping me learn new information or to realize that I made a mistake; instead they want to feel better than someone and in my case, they chose someone who can see right through that.
Anyway, if you read through all of that, thanks for your support. It's encouraging that some folks can see what I am trying to cultivate. I am open to any honest criticism you may have and will gladly entertain it.
How much research is done in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's versus Huntingdon's and ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease)? Lot's of people have the first two, not so many the other two. It's a smart profit decision to do research into the first two, yes?
It is. It also would be a better moral decision to cure two diseases that affect about 6 million people in the US rather than the two that affect roughly 60,000. Sorry, but it's just a lot more important in just about every way to find cures for the former instead of the latter. And I say that as a Huntington descendant.
But if you have a loved one dying from the other two, that's too bad, no?
Yes it is too bad, but resources are finite. Different people have different interests, which is why not every dollar going into research goes towards the most prevalent diseases, but it should come as no surprise that as a disease becomes more prevalent and affects more people and more family members, the higher the research priority becomes.
In a world of saintly researchers and Pharmaceutical companies, each disease would have equal priority
I disagree, I think that would be a foolish approach, and I'm not arguing from a business bottom line. It's a zero sum game -- you take from one, there are fewer resources for the other. Is it better to save 10,000 or 100,000? Certainly, "I'd like to save 110,000" is a wonderful goal. But if you don't have the cash and the expertise to do both, it's better to save the 100,000. Of course, all the numbers in this paragraph are totally made up, and the 'real world' is rarely as black and white. :P
Thank you, Bowling Moses, for your testimony.
This is what frustrates me every time one of these stories comes up on Slashdot, that so many people think that everyone who works in the pharmaceutical industry is evil, that all of them are conspiring to keep the "real" cures secret or undiscovered. This is the legacy from getting everything you know from poorly-written Hollywood movies or the Daily Kos. I don't understand why they think that -so many- people who have to have no morals or empathy.
They use phrases like the great-grandparent's post: "Just imagine how much better the world would be if you had a $1000 lifetime cure instead of $100/month treatments." Well no shit, of course that would be better, but in their fantasy world the medical industry is composed of monsters, and they believe that if a large group of people could financially benefit from an immoral action, then all those people will choose to do so. Therefore, if your industry could benefit by refusing to develop cures, well by God, that must be what's happening. When conflict of interest is so vaguely defined, any action is seen as malevolent rather than just lack of scientific progress.
So thank you, once again, for your post. The more people who are reminded that people in the big bad corporation are real, thinking, feeling, humans, the better.
Most likely talking about famed skeptic James Randi who offers a $1 million reward for anyone who can demonstrate psychic abilities under scientific conditions.
I'd give a hyperlink for it, but for unknown reasons Google Chrome likes to just flat-out reject any hyperlink pasting. You can find the info out about it on the JREF page on wikipedia.
Maybe not, but some day it might be possible to clone your own organs and eliminate the rejection issues rather than use donor organs. That could certainly be a medical coup.
I'm lucky I was an exception! I have no allergies that I know of anymore, but I used to have horrid allergies when I was younger.. to pollen and dust mites. When I was a child I used to have to have a dust-mite-proof anti-allergenic wrapper around bed mattresses. Not so anymore, I get exposed to quite a bit of dust every day and haven't had issues in years. I credit the allergy shots I used to get on a weekly basis. >_> I never liked those things, but getting a shot was nothing compared to having your skin scraped raw in a dozen spots for an allergy scrape test. That was one of the most miserable medical experiences of my life.
Well I do have one final mild allergy -- shellfish. Nothing serious, and I can and do eat them, but they still cause a weird tingling and numbness in the lips and tongue. Good times.
She's using her position as a celebrity to give parents harmful advice: "Don't vaccinate." It's one thing to give advice on issues that don't matter or wouldn't cause genuine harm (like "drink orange juice to ward off sickness in winter" or something like that), but the advice she gives is quite dangerous to the health of the children in this country. The diseases that the vaccines were created to combat are no joke, and in the absence of credible data showing vaccines are harmful (or at the very least more harmful than the diseases they are preventing), the responsible thing for parents to do is to vaccinate their children. I don't doubt that she actually thinks she's doing good, and her reasons for doing this are probably pure, but Jenny McCarthy's crusade (and it's more than just giving one's opinion when asked) is dangerous.
The only subject Jenny McCarthy should be considered an expert on is how to eat your own vomit on a TV show.
Actually, that makes sense. The dollar value of a patent is going to depend on how useful and used it is, and the only way to find that out is through discovery.
"of course, those with the deepest coffers will by cherrypicked first."
I would be surprised if that were to happen. A company like Activision has the resources to defend itself. A startup, however, usually doesn't. Rarely do you start with the big guy; instead it makes sense to try picking off the little guys first, since successful cases strengthen your hand to win future cases. These frivolous lawsuits can destroy small businesses, but the lawyers and board of Walker Digital won't care.
Yeah, well at least the film hilariously lampooned the ultra-fascism of the original book, so I can forgive some licence on the science.
I've always felt that Starship Troopers the Movie was exactly the sort of adaptation that Starship Troopers the Book deserved, and have made a number of hardcore Heinlein fans very angry when expressing such ideas. >_>
"Any natural disaster travels at the speed of the transportation you happen to be in at the time."
Almost, but not quite! A natural disaster needs to travel "just slightly faster" than your transportation. That allows people to yell obvious things like "It's getting closer!" and "We're not going to make it!" right before the heroes make it to safety.
Daylight Savings Time is more political than having anything to do with a calendar flaw.
You don't have to be left-wing to find Palin to be an idiot.
Seems to be the prevailing characteristic.
Nah, though leftist hacks will hate her, she's also fairly unpopular in the Tea Party movement (or at least she was six months ago. Not sure if that's still true), though she's been trying to ingratiate herself to them every opportunity she can get. Conservative pundits are not backing her for a presidential run at the moment either. The smart money seems to be on Huckabee or maaaybe Romney.
Will it ever be Palin's time to be president? God I hope not, because it would mean 80% of the country has died,
I'm not so sure about that, Palin's group doesn't need the informed electorate dead, just not to vote. Voter turnout was shitty in the midterm elections (something like 11% in the 18-21 age group? Really?), so that worked out great for them.
If it's Palin, the oil industry and military contractors will continue to run the country without her knowledge or consent.
Why are you implying she wouldn't give her consent?
However i do agree with every else you said.
Well of course you do because you're both closed-minded, left wing Marxists. What a couple of snots - oh, I forgot - it's ./, home of the snots.
You don't have to be left-wing to find Palin to be an idiot.
Because (b)(1) enumerates the rights of the copyright owner rather than access, the above arguments hold to these points as well. Simply put, Glider enhances gameplay, it does not afford you access to a protected work nor does it invalidate the copyright held by the owner, it merely allows you to do actions which Blizzard wishes you would not do.
It provides the program access to the copyrighted work, and the program is not authorized. Blizzard Entertainment is the only group that gets to decide what programs are allowed to play the game, and only -players-, not programs are authorized to access the game client.
Glider circumvents warden. No one's debating that point. Warden is what protects the game client from unauthorized access from programs, so Glider is guilty of (b)(1) -- it "is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof."
The content inside WoW can only be accessed via a client which Blizzard controls.
I understood glider uses the proper client.
You misunderstood the part where Blizzard controls the client. As soon as you start Glider, you are breaking the ToS on Blizzard’s client and you no longer have the right to use it.
Where is the circumventing copy protections part? Nobody argued that is isn't against the TOS. I wonder where the breaking of law happened.
If running the client isn't copyright violation, how is warden a copy protection mechanism? It doesn't seem to be protecting blizzard's copyright according to the judge.
It's not a copyright control mechanism, it's an access control mechanism. Copyright was really only part of the DMCA -- it's the access control provisions that may be the most controversial (and the worst part of the sprawling law, IMO).
Note to mods and meta-mods: The parent's post was not that controversial. Whether you agree or disagree with his position, there's no way that it earned a Flamebait mod.