When I was a kid, DST or no DST was decided on a town-by-town basis in the province where I live. It made things very interesting when making a doctor's appointment in the next town and other things like that.
When Canada was first being more-or-less forcibly converted to the Metric system, it was illegal for businesses to post signs, mail flyers, or sell stuff labelled in both Imperial and Metric sizes.
I have yet to buy a magazine where an ad was pasted over the article and took 10 seconds to peel up to read the text underneath.
Actually, I have.
I have had magazines in the past with "postage-paid reply cards" glued into the center binding, where the glue in the binding has slopped over enough that the card is pasted partly over the first several words of the inside column of the text on that page.
The page generally gets torn when trying to remove that to read text underneath, unfortunately.
And how many of those 777's are there compared to the number of computers in the world? How many of them are being operated by untrained "don't-wanna-know" pilots? How many of them are being fueled by Billy Bob's Discount Aviation Fuel and Liquid Fertilizer, who wasn't even in the fuel business until 2 hours before he got the call to report to the airport?
I'd ask for it in writing that the product will be serial number past xxxx, whatever the cutoff is.
As this merchandise has apparently been deliberaately randomized by the manufacturer, exactly how are you going to determine what serial number xxxx is?
One of the best remarks that I ever heard was from a bank loan officer who told me, "We won't put you into business."
When you think about it, that both makes sense and explains a lot of why people looking for funding sometimes run into what they perceive as a brick wall.
The entire experience of going to the movies is just awful, one brutal and unsophisticated marketing blugeon after another.
I play music in my theatre until a few seconds before the show starts. I show between zero and three trailers that I try to match to the movie type before the real movie starts.
You know that bag of small popcorn for $2.95? You know how much it cost to make it? 1/7 of a cent. It takes less than a penny to make a bag of popcorn.
The popcorn itself, maybe. If it's purchased in large enough quantities. I buy popcorn in 45lb bags for my theatre and it's about $27 per bag. But I have a small theatre so I don't buy huge numbers of bags.
Having said that, the popcorn itself is indeed the cheapest part of the "small popcorn". The most expensive part is the container. A "small container" costs me between 26 and 32 cents, and a "large container" costs about 56 to 65 cents. The next most-expensive part is the butter. I put real butter on my popcorn (not that topping oil stuff) and butter costs me $3.49 per pound today. The popcorn machine itself costs about $4500 for the model that I have, and it uses 220 volts 1680 watts of power to run that. Plus I have to pay someone to run it and make and sell the popcorn, and clean the machine and so on. I had to put a new kettle into it a few months ago and the kettle alone (without the lid or anything else) was over $900.
I charge $2 for a small popcorn and $4 for a large popcorn. Including sales tax.
Do you really feel ripped off at that price? I think it's not unreasonable. I do, after all, have to live too.
The equipment can be expensive and ticket prices might have to be increased to help offset the costs, but these people seem to really think that it'd bring back people to the theater. I thought maybe in the short term...but maybe it's just another fade ?
Another problem is the technology itself.
A 35mm projector will last for 40 years and the picture will look just as nice at year 40 as it did at day 1. And it's reliable as all hell. I read a statistic that said that there is an equipment failure that prevents showing the movie at approximately 1 in 5000 showings.
That's pretty good uptime and long-term reliability and usefulness. I doubt digital technology will give either that reliability or the same longevity. And the price for the equipment is (so far) about 5x the price of a decent 35mm installation.
Where is the payback for the theatre owner?
It is pretty compeling to see this stuff, but I don't know if I'd wear 3D glasses for 2 hours.
Again, it may be a passing fad and if it is, then where does that leave the theatre owner and his investment in expensive equipment.
It's my opinion (and I own a theatre, if you can't already tell) that it comes down to the movies. Tell a compelling story and make that story available only in theatres for a reasonable period of time, and people will come to watch it.
When Twentieth Century Fox started putting out home videos of movies that were less than (gasp!) TEN YEARS OLD, theatres screamed. Now, the video is out almost before the film is out of the theatre.
It's not that hard to control an audience. Bars/Clubs/Concerts throw out rowdy customers all the time
I own a theatre. It's not as easy as you may think.
First, I can't see in the dark and I can't see exactly what everyone in every row is doing even if I could see in the dark. Customers (including you) would not like it if I walked up and down the rows during the show with a flashlight and shone it across your laps and your faces. And there is really no other way to do it that I'm aware of (and yes, I have given this matter some thought before).
Second, sometimes it would be more disruptive to throw someone out than it is to just leave them or quietly come up behind them and tell them to quiet down. Throwing someone out during the show generally involves making a greater-or-lesser scene that can disturb more people than would otherwise be disturbed. "What the hell, man!" and "If my friend is going then I'm going too. Are you coming with us too, Joe?" and so on, loudly.
Not that I've never thrown anyone out of my theatre. I find that throwing someone out (mostly for drinking but sometimes for very disruptive behaviour) about once in six months serves as a reminder to the others (teenagers) that they can't get away with murder in my theatre.
Having said that, I also depend on audience members to tell me when something "bad" is going on beside them. As I said, I can't really tell what's going on in a big dark room sometimes, and I failed my mind reading course too.
but with all the users seeding as they download (and after they're complete), that 6TB would last much longer.
Not as much longer as you may assume.
If I download something for free via BitTorrent, I will leave my torrent window until I have returned at least as much bandwidth as I used for my download, and usually many times over as well.
If I am paying MultiNationalConglomerate Inc. for the content that I am downloading, what incentive do I have to donate my bandwidth to them on top of the amount that I have paid in cash (or the cash that they have collected from advertisers in exchange for access to my eyeballs or my desktop or whatever).
the ONLY things in public domain are those (a) that do not involve creative work and (b) those whose copyrights terms expired.
What about stuff that is explicitly stated to be public domain by the author? I used to release odd bits of software with a license that said, "This software is truly public domain. You can run it, distribute it, hack it or anything else that your little heart desires." That's the exact text of the license that I made up and used.
Is that not a legally recognized action on my part?
Xerox people used to get their knickers in a twist when someone used 'xerox' as a verb, and thier sales and technical people were required to correct you -- you weren't xeroxing something, you were photocopying it.
Xerox's legal department used to send (nicely worded, non-threatening) letters to authors who referred to "Xeroxing something" in their novels or short stories, requesting that they recognize that the wording be changed to copying with a Xerox(r) brand machine.
You can recognize all those things over the century, but a lot of details have changed.
And many things haven't.
I read an article some time ago about how difficult it was to specify a standard thread and size for the base of an incandescent lightbulb so you can screw a standard lightbulb into a standard socket.
Look around you and see how many other things you have and rely on daily depend on "open standards". What about the screws that hold your chair together? The gasoline in your car?
For us non US people, what's a "visible minority" ?
I'm not a US person either, but a "visible minority" is generally defined as someone who can be immediately seen to be non-Caucasian.
Are there invisible minorities ?
Yes indeed there are. An invisible minority might be someone who belongs to a particular religious cult, for example. If he doesn't carry a sign saying "I believe in the power and glory of Frabnatz", you probably won't know immediately upon meeting him that he's a Frabnatzian. Contrast this with if he's black; you'll know immediately.
I haven't tried to change this, but one thing some people might find annoying is that is leaves white blocks where ads were removed that notify you that the ad was removed by privoxy. I'm not sure if it is configurable to simply remove the ads altogether the way adblock does.
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When I was a kid, DST or no DST was decided on a town-by-town basis in the province where I live. It made things very interesting when making a doctor's appointment in the next town and other things like that.
When Canada was first being more-or-less forcibly converted to the Metric system, it was illegal for businesses to post signs, mail flyers, or sell stuff labelled in both Imperial and Metric sizes.
Also stuff that's a little more critical than your VCR. Like traffic lights.
Many (most?) publications pay for articles by the word, or give assignments like "write 1700 words on subject x for the next issue."
Point to one example where they have sued people because the code is similar. I have never heard of it happening.
This is a new licensing scheme.
I have yet to buy a magazine where an ad was pasted over the article and took 10 seconds to peel up to read the text underneath.
Actually, I have.
I have had magazines in the past with "postage-paid reply cards" glued into the center binding, where the glue in the binding has slopped over enough that the card is pasted partly over the first several words of the inside column of the text on that page.
The page generally gets torn when trying to remove that to read text underneath, unfortunately.
we don't see 777's dropping from the skies daily.
And how many of those 777's are there compared to the number of computers in the world? How many of them are being operated by untrained "don't-wanna-know" pilots? How many of them are being fueled by Billy Bob's Discount Aviation Fuel and Liquid Fertilizer, who wasn't even in the fuel business until 2 hours before he got the call to report to the airport?
I'd ask for it in writing that the product will be serial number past xxxx, whatever the cutoff is.
As this merchandise has apparently been deliberaately randomized by the manufacturer, exactly how are you going to determine what serial number xxxx is?
When they have to close down the video shop and convert the space into Winners, of course.
*tee hee*
Eh?
None of the applications which were actually broken by XP SP2 are something granny would run.
Don't bet on that. What about an obscure networked bridge game or something.
One of the best remarks that I ever heard was from a bank loan officer who told me, "We won't put you into business."
When you think about it, that both makes sense and explains a lot of why people looking for funding sometimes run into what they perceive as a brick wall.
The entire experience of going to the movies is just awful, one brutal and unsophisticated marketing blugeon after another.
I play music in my theatre until a few seconds before the show starts. I show between zero and three trailers that I try to match to the movie type before the real movie starts.
And that's it.
Plus he smuggles a whole Thanksgiving dinner into a theatre!
The most amazing thing that I ever picked up after the show in my theatre was a whole case of beer. Case and all.
I still don't know how that got smuggled through.
On the other end of the scale, I found a used condom in the back row after one late show. I don't think I want to know the story behind that one.
I worked in a Carmike during high school.
I don't think you were doing the books for them.
You know that bag of small popcorn for $2.95? You know how much it cost to make it? 1/7 of a cent. It takes less than a penny to make a bag of popcorn.
The popcorn itself, maybe. If it's purchased in large enough quantities. I buy popcorn in 45lb bags for my theatre and it's about $27 per bag. But I have a small theatre so I don't buy huge numbers of bags.
Having said that, the popcorn itself is indeed the cheapest part of the "small popcorn". The most expensive part is the container. A "small container" costs me between 26 and 32 cents, and a "large container" costs about 56 to 65 cents. The next most-expensive part is the butter. I put real butter on my popcorn (not that topping oil stuff) and butter costs me $3.49 per pound today. The popcorn machine itself costs about $4500 for the model that I have, and it uses 220 volts 1680 watts of power to run that. Plus I have to pay someone to run it and make and sell the popcorn, and clean the machine and so on. I had to put a new kettle into it a few months ago and the kettle alone (without the lid or anything else) was over $900.
I charge $2 for a small popcorn and $4 for a large popcorn. Including sales tax.
Do you really feel ripped off at that price? I think it's not unreasonable. I do, after all, have to live too.
The equipment can be expensive and ticket prices might have to be increased to help offset the costs, but these people seem to really think that it'd bring back people to the theater. I thought maybe in the short term...but maybe it's just another fade ?
Another problem is the technology itself.
A 35mm projector will last for 40 years and the picture will look just as nice at year 40 as it did at day 1. And it's reliable as all hell. I read a statistic that said that there is an equipment failure that prevents showing the movie at approximately 1 in 5000 showings.
That's pretty good uptime and long-term reliability and usefulness. I doubt digital technology will give either that reliability or the same longevity. And the price for the equipment is (so far) about 5x the price of a decent 35mm installation.
Where is the payback for the theatre owner?
It is pretty compeling to see this stuff, but I don't know if I'd wear 3D glasses for 2 hours.
Again, it may be a passing fad and if it is, then where does that leave the theatre owner and his investment in expensive equipment.
It's my opinion (and I own a theatre, if you can't already tell) that it comes down to the movies. Tell a compelling story and make that story available only in theatres for a reasonable period of time, and people will come to watch it.
When Twentieth Century Fox started putting out home videos of movies that were less than (gasp!) TEN YEARS OLD, theatres screamed. Now, the video is out almost before the film is out of the theatre.
It's not that hard to control an audience. Bars/Clubs/Concerts throw out rowdy customers all the time
I own a theatre. It's not as easy as you may think.
First, I can't see in the dark and I can't see exactly what everyone in every row is doing even if I could see in the dark. Customers (including you) would not like it if I walked up and down the rows during the show with a flashlight and shone it across your laps and your faces. And there is really no other way to do it that I'm aware of (and yes, I have given this matter some thought before).
Second, sometimes it would be more disruptive to throw someone out than it is to just leave them or quietly come up behind them and tell them to quiet down. Throwing someone out during the show generally involves making a greater-or-lesser scene that can disturb more people than would otherwise be disturbed. "What the hell, man!" and "If my friend is going then I'm going too. Are you coming with us too, Joe?" and so on, loudly.
Not that I've never thrown anyone out of my theatre. I find that throwing someone out (mostly for drinking but sometimes for very disruptive behaviour) about once in six months serves as a reminder to the others (teenagers) that they can't get away with murder in my theatre.
Having said that, I also depend on audience members to tell me when something "bad" is going on beside them. As I said, I can't really tell what's going on in a big dark room sometimes, and I failed my mind reading course too.
Are letters to politicians postage-free in Canada, as in some other nations?
Letters to federal Members of Parliament do not require postage.
A friend of mine works at a movie theater.
I own one.
They usually get to see the movies for free, but George Lucas forced the theaters to charge the employees to see his movie.
I never got a note from George Lucas or anyone else about that when I played SW3. It was business-as-usual for me here.
but with all the users seeding as they download (and after they're complete), that 6TB would last much longer.
Not as much longer as you may assume.
If I download something for free via BitTorrent, I will leave my torrent window until I have returned at least as much bandwidth as I used for my download, and usually many times over as well.
If I am paying MultiNationalConglomerate Inc. for the content that I am downloading, what incentive do I have to donate my bandwidth to them on top of the amount that I have paid in cash (or the cash that they have collected from advertisers in exchange for access to my eyeballs or my desktop or whatever).
Download's completed, dude. Slam 'er closed.
the ONLY things in public domain are those (a) that do not involve creative work and (b) those whose copyrights terms expired.
What about stuff that is explicitly stated to be public domain by the author? I used to release odd bits of software with a license that said, "This software is truly public domain. You can run it, distribute it, hack it or anything else that your little heart desires." That's the exact text of the license that I made up and used.
Is that not a legally recognized action on my part?
Xerox people used to get their knickers in a twist when someone used 'xerox' as a verb, and thier sales and technical people were required to correct you -- you weren't xeroxing something, you were photocopying it.
Xerox's legal department used to send (nicely worded, non-threatening) letters to authors who referred to "Xeroxing something" in their novels or short stories, requesting that they recognize that the wording be changed to copying with a Xerox(r) brand machine.
You can recognize all those things over the century, but a lot of details have changed.
And many things haven't.
I read an article some time ago about how difficult it was to specify a standard thread and size for the base of an incandescent lightbulb so you can screw a standard lightbulb into a standard socket.
Look around you and see how many other things you have and rely on daily depend on "open standards". What about the screws that hold your chair together? The gasoline in your car?
For us non US people, what's a "visible minority" ?
I'm not a US person either, but a "visible minority" is generally defined as someone who can be immediately seen to be non-Caucasian.
Are there invisible minorities ?
Yes indeed there are. An invisible minority might be someone who belongs to a particular religious cult, for example. If he doesn't carry a sign saying "I believe in the power and glory of Frabnatz", you probably won't know immediately upon meeting him that he's a Frabnatzian. Contrast this with if he's black; you'll know immediately.
I haven't tried to change this, but one thing some people might find annoying is that is leaves white blocks where ads were removed that notify you that the ad was removed by privoxy. I'm not sure if it is configurable to simply remove the ads altogether the way adblock does.
It is.