but I think what you are trying to say, is that when you flip it to Farscape, there aren't always 30 ships zipping around each other,
No, what I refer to are the poor production values, cheesy sets, melodramatic acting, dreary lighting, and a cast of characters that spend all of their time scheming and double-crossing one another -- much like a daytime soap opera.
You probably saw the characters TALKING to each other, contemplating their sad state of affairs.
If I want to contemplate a sad state of affairs, there are any number of real-life countries I could think about today. I want something that holds out hope that the future will be an improvement over the present.
bbspot.com is a humor site so this isn't actually a real program taking place. Just thought you'd like to know.
I think everyone else already knew that. That would explain the +5 funny moderation of my post, wouldn't it?
I wish it was a real program since there's tons of Chinese people out there that have to be making less than minimum wage that could be used much more efficiently to filter spam.
Most Slashdot readers are tech-savvy, and buy their components mail order, from places like newegg.com, or here in the UK, dabs.com. They know how to get the cheapest price, and that's CERTAINLY not retail !
I just bought two Western Digital 120GB/8mb/7,200rpm drives for $49 each after rebate. Where did I buy them? CompUSA. I recently got a 40gb/7,200rpm Maxtor for $10 after two rebates and a $20 off coupon. Where? Office Depot's web site. I bought a 24X internal CD-RW drive for $10 after rebate from OfficeMax. I bought five USB 2.0 24X CD-RW cutters for $19.99 each from CompUSA. So beat those prices with OEM parts!
People who are truly "tech-savvy" realize that by playing the rebate and pricematch game with large retailers, they can get hard drives, CD-ROM drives, and CD-RW drives for a fraction of what you pay for OEM parts. OEM parts used to be the way to save money when building a PC, but now, if you can wait for the deals to become available, peripheral prices and even memory prices are often better when you buy through large retail stores. When is the last time you bought an OEM drive and got a $100 rebate?
From http://www.bbspot.com/News/2002/03/block.html
Microsoft Unveils New Spam Blocking Technology
By Francisco Rangel
Redmond, WA - Microsoft has taken a new step in the ongoing fight against spam. The software company will offer a new Spam Blocking service named "Block XP". Initially, the service was tested on Hotmail accounts, but now is included as an IIS Service.
At a press conference, Steve Ballmer explained, "Our new system is guaranteed to only let through the e-mail that you want to see." He then proceeded to dance around singing, "Unspamable! Unspamable! Unspamable! Unspamable!"
Bill Gates spoke to the audience, explaining how the system works. "We've replaced unreliable computer filtering with specially trained third-world laborers. These workers, or 'Spam Blockers' as we like to call them, will personally check each and every one of the e- mails you are getting. Any suspicious messages will be sent to a Junk Mail folder or deleted right away."
The initial Hotmail users, were impressed by the new technology. "This system really has cut down on the spam I've been receiving. Come to think of it I haven't gotten any e-mails recently," said Harold Gorman, MSCE.
Consuela Xiang a 12 year old veteran employee of Microsoft's Block XP project said, "I get mail. I delete mail. I eat today."
Some users did remark that they were receiving more "special offers" about Windows XP and MSN than they did before the system was put in place.
George W. Bush chastised Microsoft for exporting e-mail monitoring jobs when the US had a fully staffed FBI already in place.
Sorry, but it looks like someone beat you to the idea.;-)
That's where most Slashdot readers shop -- the retail market. It's all very well and good for Seagate to be duking it out with Samsung for inclusion in Walmart $199 PCs, but it's Maxtor and Western Digital that are what matter to those of us that build and upgrade our own PCs. They are the competition that spurs on lower prices, larger drives, and faster speeds.
I don't want to see a retail market consisting of only one manufacturer. Nor would I like to see one where there were two, with, say, Western Digital as the sole performance IDE manufacturer and Samsung as the bargain drive.
But you are right, without question, that the OEM market is much bigger than the retail market. It is also much less trouble-prone since the OEM drives are being installed by skilled assemblers rather than any doofus with a Circuit City credit card. For that reason, I could easily see the prices having to go up substantially in the retail market before many of the big OEM manufacturers would enter it.
I'm sorry for those people that enjoy Farscape, but I could never get into it.
I could never get into it. It just seemed like Days of Our Lives in spaceships. It had that same dark, dreary lighting and slow pace that is so typical of soap operas. Even the character summaries from the show's web page sound like a soap opera:
Chiana's happiest when she has the opportunity to show off her scoundrel skills; she's a thief, a liar, a seductress and a drama queen.
I'll take Enterprise any day. The story line is inspirational. The recurring characters are admirable. The production values are top-notch. The special effects are beyond reproach. And each episode stands on its own and does not require that you watch the show serially from the pilot up to the current episode to understand what is going on -- though, taken together, it tells a larger story.
but the original point in the thread was that if the manufacturer is giving you a 3 year warranty then the manufacturer is confident that the drive will probably not fail for at least 3 years.
That's not how warranties work. Manufacturers use statistics. They measure failure rates to project warranty service costs, passing those projected costs along to the consumer in the form of higher drive prices.
It's easy to have a longer warranty: Just increase the drive price to cover the projected warranty replacement costs.
Maxtor apparently decided that the market was more driven by price than warranty. I agree with them. I don't want to pay for a three year warranty when I keep drives an average of one year.
Think about it another way: Hyundai and Kia boasted about new-car warranties of 5 five years/60,000 miles of bumper-to-bumper coverage, plus 10 years/100,000 miles on powertrain and five years/unlimited miles of free roadside assistance.
The Hyundai/Kia warranties are considerably more liberal than those offered by Lexus, the long-time import leader in terms of quality and customer satisfaction. On its 2002 models, Lexus offers four years/50,000 miles bumper-to-bumper coverage, six years/70,000 miles on powertrain and four years/unlimited mileage of free roadside assistance.
So, you see, that a longer warranty does not necessarily mean a more reliable product.
And you're right -had drive prices have fallen a lot over the past 10 years. But then again, sales are way way way up, and mfg costs are way way way down. They're a commodity now.
If all of that balanced out, we'd have a lot more manufacturers from which to choose. Prices have fallen far faster than have manufacturing costs. Drive sales are tightly tied to computer sales, which are down now that consumers are in a replacement (vs. acquisition) mode. The profit margin on drives today is almost non-existent. That's why so many manufacturers have either left the hard drive market or have gone belly-up.
When a manufacturer made $30 profit per drive, a 3-year warranty was reasonable. But at $3 per drive, it's not. (I don't claim the above to be exact figures, just estimates to make the point.)
Good luck getting your CompUSA rebate. They are a PITA. CSR: "Sorry, yours just went through the shredder. How else can I help you today?"
First of all, it's a Western Digital rebate, not a CompUSA rebate. Secondly, getting it is not luck at all. It's a matter of keeping copies of everything you sent and making reminder calls if the rebate is not sent.
I don't get why all drives they sell must have identical warranties. It seems to me that people would be willing to pay a small price for more security, if they planned on having the drive for awhile.
Ask about an "extended warranty/product replacement plan." The salesman will be so happy he'll kiss you.
I personally can't imagine keeping a drive in active use for three years. I like to replace my drives before failure becomes likely. I don't want to spend two weeks getting my system put back the way that it was, invariably losing data in the process.
Of course when you sent in all those rebates, you were essentially taking a paltry sum in exchange for supplying accurate contact info to direct marketers. The Man just updated your demographic info and spending habits in his database.
So you think $100 is a paltry sum to tell someone where they can mail advertising to you for computer-related products? It's not like I gave them my real email address (just a throwaway that I get rid of after the rebate arrives).
I just went to CompUSA. Didn't see any Seagate drives. Same thing at Microcenter. Same thing at Circuit City. While Seagate may be a big player in the OEM arena (as is Samsung), their presence in the retail market is not comparable to Maxtor or Western Digital.
VIA PLE133 Chipset, it's just an appliance. Buy it, show it off to your friends, get stuck with it.
So you really can't imagine a use for this? You don't think that it would be good for a firewall, mail server, web server, FTP server, file server, print server, fax server, NAT box, or some combination thereof?
Not every computer has to be used for first-person shooter games and attempts at setting SETI records.
Since I'm really only interested in the SCSI market, I wouldn't call either of those companies "major" players. You're forgetting that it's perfectly possible for a company to charge more by offer a higher quality item.
I was referring to their market share of the hard drive industry. It does not matter if you measure in dollars or units, SCSI is an increasingly less important part of the market. That's pretty obvious when you look at the last-years-technology that leaves SCSI drives wanting for capacity.
There are still some applications where SCSI is king, but the performance and capacity increases in IDE drives is making SCSI less and less important. When you can put together an IDE RAID array that holds half a terrabyte for less than you spend on a single 200GB SCSI drive, it's a no-brainer for most applications. Even people doing digital video work are frequently turning away from SCSI to IDE RAID systems. 1U rack systems, fighting against heat problems, also don't typically run 15,000rpm SCSI drives for obvious reasons.
I used to run nothing but SCSI as did a couple of professional acquaintances of mine. None of us have any SCSI drives now.
Unless a manufacturer has a failure rate of zero/year, a longer warranty increases costs. Drive manufacturers are looking for any way to cut costs so that they can survive in this cut-throat market.
How bad is it? I just paid $49 (after rebate) for a 120GB/7,200rpm/8mb cache Western Digital drive. (Microcenter sells the drive for $149 while CompUSA has a $100 rebate. Made CompUSA match Microcenter's price and then submitted the rebate). I got a Maxtor 40GB, 7,200rpm drive for $10 after discounts and rebates (OfficeDepot: $20 coupon, two $30 rebates, and the drive was on sale for $90). Yes, those were not typical prices, but it helps to show how cheap drives have gotten.
In recent years, hard drive prices have fallen -- even ignoring the cost/megabyte measurement and simply considering the total drive costs. The average cost for a hard drive is less than it was two years ago. And the drives of today still have the same basic parts. There has been no drastic reduction in the cost of aluminum castings, electric motors, and ball bearings. So the manufacturers have to get the money from somewhere. Manufacturing efficiencies are certainly nice, but they don't cover the total cost reductions necessary.
I'd rather have a one-year warranty from a manufacturer that is still in business than a three year warranty from one that went bankrupt. The hard drive manufacturing field is littered with the carcasses of manufacturers. Remember Micropolis, Miniscribe, Quantum, Conner, and Rodime (to name a few)? We are down to a field of two major players: Western Digital and Maxtor. If one of those goes away, what do you think will happen to hard drive prices?
Kinda stupid to reply, but do you think someone actively went around correcting the spellings of words?
I am glad that you asked. Benjamin Franklin "actively went around correcting the spellings of words." As you can see from this page, Benjamin Franklin was a proponent, early on, of reforming spelling in the English language. His work inspired Noah Webster, leading to many of the spelling reforms we enjoy today.
It was the Americans that had the foresight and intelligence to correct idiotic spellings that the British imposed. Examples include:
color vs. colour check vs. cheque maneuver vs. manoeuvre license vs. licence
Given the British penchant for inconsistency and convoluted spellings of what should be easy-to-spell words, Americans are far less "moronic" than the British when it comes to the English language.
Side note: MyCleanFlicks is the rental side, while CleanFlicks is the sales side.
Thanks for that clarification. But the important point is that they sell movies (whatever the name of that web site might be) and that's not a co-op operation.
As for the sales side, as I asked already, what does happen to your argument once DVD players become sophisticated enough to run complex programs and people start writing one that recognize DVD's and skip over and mute particular scenes on the fly.
Then they will have found a legal way to do what they are now doing (IMNSHO) illegally.
I'll be sorry when that happens, but I'm a purist and I think that films should be viewed as intended by their creators and copyright owners. I was a vocal opponent of colorizing old movies, too.
(I think you should have added another possibility: All my posts get modded down when I write I'm a Mensa member)
A very good suggestion. Another option would be:
Every time that I have mentioned being a Mensa member, my post was modded down.
Your point about English perhaps not being his native language is well-taken, however, from reading his other posts, and taking into account their U.S.-centric nature, I'd be very surprised to learn he was not a native English speaker.
What I have to wonder is this: If writing that he is a Mensa member causes his posts to be modded down, why is that automatically tacked on to each one as a signature?
What is a journal good for if people can't discuss your opinions?
It's like a book -- you know, where the author expresses their views and you read them. I'd be happy to discuss them with you, but I don't want everyone to be able to permanently leave their opinions in my journal. At one time, I thought about allowing discussion, but after seeing some of the unpleasant, insulting, and rude comments that appear on Slashdot, I thought better of it.
Well that's what cleanflicks does. Go read their site. They're a co-op.
I have read their site fairly thoroughly. I see no evidence that they are a co-op and, in fact, substantial evidence to the contrary. Clean Flicks offers over 400 movies for SALE. So the co-op argument clearly does not cover their business model.
Even if you disagreed that that was their objective, it would certainly be easier to convince judge and jury that a movie edited for cleanliness by say, broadcast TV standards, maintains that essence, than it would be to convince them that the adding of content as you describe does.
I used an extreme example to make a point. Suppose that I believe that directors are making changes to get PG-13 ratings and that I want to "spice up" the movie, while maintaining its "essence."
Out of respect for your tastes, I will not give graphic examples, but suppose I were to dub in the "F" word in place of phrases like "have sex", "make love", etc.? What if I hired body doubles to make the existing sex scenes more explicit or to replace an implication that the characters had sex with an explicit scene?
In both cases, whether deleting content or adding content, the party doing so is making a subjective judgement as to the intent and vision of the film's director.
This is the slippery slope that I see when you allow private firms to modify copyrighted material that they don't have the rights to.
--only that the DoJ does. I wonder why it is that every time an issue like this crops up, armchair lawyers like you come out of the woodwork and tell the people who have devoted 30+ years to interpreting and enforcing these statutes how to do their jobs.
Did it occur to you that, perhaps, the DoJ may not have looked at this matter? That had been my assumption from the beginning. You portray their lack of action as a profession rejection of the points I made.
You're obviously running out of things to pick on.
And, based on your unwillingness to address the points and questions I raised in my previous post, you apparently are unwilling to continue the discussion.
Slashdot Mirror
Why the fuck is there a comma here?
Because someone made a typo or a mistake while editing the original text.
Do they get extra credit for each comma or something?
What do you mean "or something"? Did you mean to say Do they get extra credit or something for each comma?
FUCK. Fucking morons.
Given your own displayed lack of ability to reliably compose complete, coherent sentences, you are throwing stones from a glass house.
but I think what you are trying to say, is that when you flip it to Farscape, there aren't always 30 ships zipping around each other,
No, what I refer to are the poor production values, cheesy sets, melodramatic acting, dreary lighting, and a cast of characters that spend all of their time scheming and double-crossing one another -- much like a daytime soap opera.
You probably saw the characters TALKING to each other, contemplating their sad state of affairs.
If I want to contemplate a sad state of affairs, there are any number of real-life countries I could think about today. I want something that holds out hope that the future will be an improvement over the present.
The acting on Farscape is top-notch.
On that, we will have to disagree.
bbspot.com is a humor site so this isn't actually a real program taking place. Just thought you'd like to know.
I think everyone else already knew that. That would explain the +5 funny moderation of my post, wouldn't it?
I wish it was a real program since there's tons of Chinese people out there that have to be making less than minimum wage that could be used much more efficiently to filter spam.
You're kidding, right?
Most Slashdot readers are tech-savvy, and buy their components mail order, from places like newegg.com, or here in the UK, dabs.com. They know how to get the cheapest price, and that's CERTAINLY not retail !
I just bought two Western Digital 120GB/8mb/7,200rpm drives for $49 each after rebate. Where did I buy them? CompUSA. I recently got a 40gb/7,200rpm Maxtor for $10 after two rebates and a $20 off coupon. Where? Office Depot's web site. I bought a 24X internal CD-RW drive for $10 after rebate from OfficeMax. I bought five USB 2.0 24X CD-RW cutters for $19.99 each from CompUSA. So beat those prices with OEM parts!
People who are truly "tech-savvy" realize that by playing the rebate and pricematch game with large retailers, they can get hard drives, CD-ROM drives, and CD-RW drives for a fraction of what you pay for OEM parts. OEM parts used to be the way to save money when building a PC, but now, if you can wait for the deals to become available, peripheral prices and even memory prices are often better when you buy through large retail stores. When is the last time you bought an OEM drive and got a $100 rebate?
Sorry, but it looks like someone beat you to the idea.
The retail HD market is worthless.
That's where most Slashdot readers shop -- the retail market. It's all very well and good for Seagate to be duking it out with Samsung for inclusion in Walmart $199 PCs, but it's Maxtor and Western Digital that are what matter to those of us that build and upgrade our own PCs. They are the competition that spurs on lower prices, larger drives, and faster speeds.
I don't want to see a retail market consisting of only one manufacturer. Nor would I like to see one where there were two, with, say, Western Digital as the sole performance IDE manufacturer and Samsung as the bargain drive.
But you are right, without question, that the OEM market is much bigger than the retail market. It is also much less trouble-prone since the OEM drives are being installed by skilled assemblers rather than any doofus with a Circuit City credit card. For that reason, I could easily see the prices having to go up substantially in the retail market before many of the big OEM manufacturers would enter it.
I'm sorry for those people that enjoy Farscape, but I could never get into it.
I could never get into it. It just seemed like Days of Our Lives in spaceships. It had that same dark, dreary lighting and slow pace that is so typical of soap operas. Even the character summaries from the show's web page sound like a soap opera:
Chiana's happiest when she has the opportunity to show off her scoundrel skills; she's a thief, a liar, a seductress and a drama queen.
I'll take Enterprise any day. The story line is inspirational. The recurring characters are admirable. The production values are top-notch. The special effects are beyond reproach. And each episode stands on its own and does not require that you watch the show serially from the pilot up to the current episode to understand what is going on -- though, taken together, it tells a larger story.
but the original point in the thread was that if the manufacturer is giving you a 3 year warranty then the manufacturer is confident that the drive will probably not fail for at least 3 years.
That's not how warranties work. Manufacturers use statistics. They measure failure rates to project warranty service costs, passing those projected costs along to the consumer in the form of higher drive prices.
It's easy to have a longer warranty: Just increase the drive price to cover the projected warranty replacement costs.
Maxtor apparently decided that the market was more driven by price than warranty. I agree with them. I don't want to pay for a three year warranty when I keep drives an average of one year.
Think about it another way: Hyundai and Kia boasted about new-car warranties of 5 five years/60,000 miles of bumper-to-bumper coverage, plus 10 years/100,000 miles on powertrain and five years/unlimited miles of free roadside assistance.
The Hyundai/Kia warranties are considerably more liberal than those offered by Lexus, the long-time import leader in terms of quality and customer satisfaction. On its 2002 models, Lexus offers four years/50,000 miles bumper-to-bumper coverage, six years/70,000 miles on powertrain and four years/unlimited mileage of free roadside assistance.
So, you see, that a longer warranty does not necessarily mean a more reliable product.
And you're right -had drive prices have fallen a lot over the past 10 years. But then again, sales are way way way up, and mfg costs are way way way down. They're a commodity now.
If all of that balanced out, we'd have a lot more manufacturers from which to choose. Prices have fallen far faster than have manufacturing costs. Drive sales are tightly tied to computer sales, which are down now that consumers are in a replacement (vs. acquisition) mode. The profit margin on drives today is almost non-existent. That's why so many manufacturers have either left the hard drive market or have gone belly-up.
When a manufacturer made $30 profit per drive, a 3-year warranty was reasonable. But at $3 per drive, it's not. (I don't claim the above to be exact figures, just estimates to make the point.)
Good luck getting your CompUSA rebate.
They are a PITA.
CSR: "Sorry, yours just went through the shredder. How else can I help you today?"
First of all, it's a Western Digital rebate, not a CompUSA rebate. Secondly, getting it is not luck at all. It's a matter of keeping copies of everything you sent and making reminder calls if the rebate is not sent.
I don't get why all drives they sell must have identical warranties. It seems to me that people would be willing to pay a small price for more security, if they planned on having the drive for awhile.
Ask about an "extended warranty/product replacement plan." The salesman will be so happy he'll kiss you.
I personally can't imagine keeping a drive in active use for three years. I like to replace my drives before failure becomes likely. I don't want to spend two weeks getting my system put back the way that it was, invariably losing data in the process.
Of course when you sent in all those rebates, you were essentially taking a paltry sum in exchange for supplying accurate contact info to direct marketers. The Man just updated your demographic info and spending habits in his database.
So you think $100 is a paltry sum to tell someone where they can mail advertising to you for computer-related products? It's not like I gave them my real email address (just a throwaway that I get rid of after the rebate arrives).
I think your missing a third ... Seagate DUH.
I just went to CompUSA. Didn't see any Seagate drives. Same thing at Microcenter. Same thing at Circuit City. While Seagate may be a big player in the OEM arena (as is Samsung), their presence in the retail market is not comparable to Maxtor or Western Digital.
VIA PLE133 Chipset, it's just an appliance. Buy it, show it off to your friends, get stuck with it.
So you really can't imagine a use for this? You don't think that it would be good for a firewall, mail server, web server, FTP server, file server, print server, fax server, NAT box, or some combination thereof?
Not every computer has to be used for first-person shooter games and attempts at setting SETI records.
Since I'm really only interested in the SCSI market, I wouldn't call either of those companies "major" players. You're forgetting that it's perfectly possible for a company to charge more by offer a higher quality item.
I was referring to their market share of the hard drive industry. It does not matter if you measure in dollars or units, SCSI is an increasingly less important part of the market. That's pretty obvious when you look at the last-years-technology that leaves SCSI drives wanting for capacity.
There are still some applications where SCSI is king, but the performance and capacity increases in IDE drives is making SCSI less and less important. When you can put together an IDE RAID array that holds half a terrabyte for less than you spend on a single 200GB SCSI drive, it's a no-brainer for most applications. Even people doing digital video work are frequently turning away from SCSI to IDE RAID systems. 1U rack systems, fighting against heat problems, also don't typically run 15,000rpm SCSI drives for obvious reasons.
I used to run nothing but SCSI as did a couple of professional acquaintances of mine. None of us have any SCSI drives now.
Unless a manufacturer has a failure rate of zero/year, a longer warranty increases costs. Drive manufacturers are looking for any way to cut costs so that they can survive in this cut-throat market.
How bad is it? I just paid $49 (after rebate) for a 120GB/7,200rpm/8mb cache Western Digital drive. (Microcenter sells the drive for $149 while CompUSA has a $100 rebate. Made CompUSA match Microcenter's price and then submitted the rebate). I got a Maxtor 40GB, 7,200rpm drive for $10 after discounts and rebates (OfficeDepot: $20 coupon, two $30 rebates, and the drive was on sale for $90). Yes, those were not typical prices, but it helps to show how cheap drives have gotten.
In recent years, hard drive prices have fallen -- even ignoring the cost/megabyte measurement and simply considering the total drive costs. The average cost for a hard drive is less than it was two years ago. And the drives of today still have the same basic parts. There has been no drastic reduction in the cost of aluminum castings, electric motors, and ball bearings. So the manufacturers have to get the money from somewhere. Manufacturing efficiencies are certainly nice, but they don't cover the total cost reductions necessary.
I'd rather have a one-year warranty from a manufacturer that is still in business than a three year warranty from one that went bankrupt. The hard drive manufacturing field is littered with the carcasses of manufacturers. Remember Micropolis, Miniscribe, Quantum, Conner, and Rodime (to name a few)? We are down to a field of two major players: Western Digital and Maxtor. If one of those goes away, what do you think will happen to hard drive prices?
Those are not different spellings of the same word. They are different words that have the same meaning.
Next time someone says "I need a lift", I'll point them to an elevator.
Kinda stupid to reply, but do you think someone actively went around correcting the spellings of words?
I am glad that you asked. Benjamin Franklin "actively went around correcting the spellings of words." As you can see from this page, Benjamin Franklin was a proponent, early on, of reforming spelling in the English language. His work inspired Noah Webster, leading to many of the spelling reforms we enjoy today.
Just because moronic Americans pronounce
It was the Americans that had the foresight and intelligence to correct idiotic spellings that the British imposed. Examples include:
color vs. colour
check vs. cheque
maneuver vs. manoeuvre
license vs. licence
Given the British penchant for inconsistency and convoluted spellings of what should be easy-to-spell words, Americans are far less "moronic" than the British when it comes to the English language.
Sorry for the typo (actually editing mistake). I meant to write:
"You portray their lack of action as a rejection of the points I made."
Side note: MyCleanFlicks is the rental side, while CleanFlicks is the sales side.
Thanks for that clarification. But the important point is that they sell movies (whatever the name of that web site might be) and that's not a co-op operation.
As for the sales side, as I asked already, what does happen to your argument once DVD players become sophisticated enough to run complex programs and people start writing one that recognize DVD's and skip over and mute particular scenes on the fly.
Then they will have found a legal way to do what they are now doing (IMNSHO) illegally.
I'll be sorry when that happens, but I'm a purist and I think that films should be viewed as intended by their creators and copyright owners. I was a vocal opponent of colorizing old movies, too.
(I think you should have added another possibility:
All my posts get modded down when I write I'm a Mensa member)
A very good suggestion. Another option would be:
Every time that I have mentioned being a Mensa member, my post was modded down.
Your point about English perhaps not being his native language is well-taken, however, from reading his other posts, and taking into account their U.S.-centric nature, I'd be very surprised to learn he was not a native English speaker.
What I have to wonder is this: If writing that he is a Mensa member causes his posts to be modded down, why is that automatically tacked on to each one as a signature?
What is a journal good for if people can't discuss your opinions?
It's like a book -- you know, where the author expresses their views and you read them. I'd be happy to discuss them with you, but I don't want everyone to be able to permanently leave their opinions in my journal. At one time, I thought about allowing discussion, but after seeing some of the unpleasant, insulting, and rude comments that appear on Slashdot, I thought better of it.
Well that's what cleanflicks does. Go read their site. They're a co-op.
I have read their site fairly thoroughly. I see no evidence that they are a co-op and, in fact, substantial evidence to the contrary. Clean Flicks offers over 400 movies for SALE. So the co-op argument clearly does not cover their business model.
Even if you disagreed that that was their objective, it would certainly be easier to convince judge and jury that a movie edited for cleanliness by say, broadcast TV standards, maintains that essence, than it would be to convince them that the adding of content as you describe does.
I used an extreme example to make a point. Suppose that I believe that directors are making changes to get PG-13 ratings and that I want to "spice up" the movie, while maintaining its "essence."
Out of respect for your tastes, I will not give graphic examples, but suppose I were to dub in the "F" word in place of phrases like "have sex", "make love", etc.? What if I hired body doubles to make the existing sex scenes more explicit or to replace an implication that the characters had sex with an explicit scene?
In both cases, whether deleting content or adding content, the party doing so is making a subjective judgement as to the intent and vision of the film's director.
This is the slippery slope that I see when you allow private firms to modify copyrighted material that they don't have the rights to.
--only that the DoJ does. I wonder why it is that every time an issue like this crops up, armchair lawyers like you come out of the woodwork and tell the people who have devoted 30+ years to interpreting and enforcing these statutes how to do their jobs.
Did it occur to you that, perhaps, the DoJ may not have looked at this matter? That had been my assumption from the beginning. You portray their lack of action as a profession rejection of the points I made.
You're obviously running out of things to pick on.
And, based on your unwillingness to address the points and questions I raised in my previous post, you apparently are unwilling to continue the discussion.