This is the first movie I have ever walked out of. There was little or no plot, the attempt to inject modern rock and pop into the storyline was pathetic, awkward and unnecessary, and it was simply an attempt to 'modernize' the movie so that little teen girls can squeel over the pretty faces.
Yeah, it had a few funny moments, but they're all at a superficial level and require absolutely no understanding of the characters or the storyline. You could walk into the movie to see one joke, get it, and leave. My girlfriend and I chose the latter - we left and had an intelligent, deep conversation in the parking lot.
You underestimate the value of a CD. I'm in a band that's recording a demo tape consisting of three songs. Studios are going to cost us about $50/hour to record, plus the same price for the time it takes their technicians to work with the sound itself and to mix it.
For one single track, it took about six or seven 'takes' (recordings) of each instrument to finally get something we liked. With four instruments (two guitar, bass, drums) and vocals, that's about 35 takes total. Now, considering that it takes us half an hour to set up and take down drums each day, that's quite a bit of time.
True, we could have gone to a studio that allowed us to all play at once and do six or seven takes *total* (and I wish we had). But most of those places also charge hourly totals to pay their technicians/engineers/producers.
To record our demo tape, it's going to cost us well over a thousand dollars. Actually, no, I'm lying - we're not paying a dime, because we have some really cool friends who believe in our talent.
Yeah, printing a CD is cheap - about a dollar, if you do it through the indie companies (probably cheaper if a major label does it). But it's the other things (recording, engineers, producers, managers, agents, lawyers, etc.) that cost a lot of money. Plus, the labels actually *are* needed for some bands and the people there *do* deserve money. Just not that much.
The people most harmed are the musicians. When you pirate music, you are stealing from the artist who slaved to create it for you. Gnutella and Napster are theft on a huge and organised scale.
Gosh, it seems to me that the industry does the same thing. Stealing from the musicians that slaved to create a product for them. The only difference is that these companies can make millions off the people they abuse.
I'm not advocating piracy, I'm pointing out the fact that the system is lose-lose. Give copyright back to the artists.
Wow - it's been a long time.
I worked/volunteered for Hotline Comm. when the Adam Hinkley thing was big, hot news. I was there when Jason Roks was in charge (is he still around?) and when HLServer.com actually pointed somewhere.
There was a group of people that had been abandoned by a company that was working with HL, Hotwire Communications. We kind of just fell into place at HL when Hotwire folded; I honestly don't know how it happened.
We served HL as the test group for all their new betas. I was (I believe) their sole PC tester in that group.
Anyway, I think there's fault on both sides of the line. Hinks was an idiot for believing that verbal agreements actually mean something and the people at HL were arrogant in their assault of him. Man, there was a lot of flaming of him going on - we weren't even allowed to talk about it or bring it up.
Plus I think that HL has nicely screwed up their self-titled product. Or, at least, it's concept is obsolete because of the various other platforms of communication/"p2p". Are they still trying to produce online applications similar to HL for businesses?
If only I could find all the people I used to work with - Willa, Dave and company. You guys out there? It's me, Adamm - adam@nozone.net.
Actually, I never signed an agreement - the webmaster did.
All I did was explain the situation to my site's audience, helping to provide avenues for contacting the company. They said we were 'spamming' them because their TOS dictated that the emails were 'unwanted'. One of their guys came over to my site and posted messages anonymously before revealing his status as a CT employee; he used the anonymity to harass me and call me various names - rather unprofessional.
This, too, was about a year ago.
If you've had a bad experience with CT - send it to me via email and I'll see what I can do.
Woah - someone had a bad experience with Communitech? I'm surprised.
Wait, just the opposite of that.
Communitech (known as "Communistech" by the little online cliche I'm a part of) is a company which loves changing its TOS and being sneaky/deceitful about it just to make a quick buck.
First, according to one of their abuse department guys, the 'president' of the company went through a friend's site, SimStuff.com. Without consulting the owner, he deleted the entire site (including several dozen hosted sites) because they had.ZIP files that MIGHT have been pirated software. The company also said that SimStuff.com had 'pornographic' content on it.
Er - since when is a site about SimCity 'pornographic'? And what site doesn't use.ZIP files, especially if it's a gaming site?
The company eventually changed its position to that of "the owner was inappropriately using his space" - by having.ZIP files available for download.
When I posted news about this incident on my Maxis-related site, I was harassed in my forums by an employee of the company (though I don't remember the specifics; they used a fake name to post it originally, but I was able to trace the IP back to the company.)
The site was killed because the company decided that.ZIP files are pirated files and then lied about the content of the site.
The company also refused to refund the owner of the site, despite the fact that they made a clear mistake and then lied about it (and then went as far as to harass supporters of the site).
The company didn't return phone calls from the webmaster and it took him several days to even get an answer as to why his site was simply deleted.
From what I recall, they also threatened to charge the webmaster a $500 "cleaning up" fee (I'm not sure about that number - but it was rather large) for deleting the site. I was harassed after proposing that members of the community donate money to pay for that fee in case
they pressed it. And the reason they threatened to do it was because they felt the webmaster was 'harassing' them because I, and others, had posted the email addresses of various company officials for people to write them and ask them to reverse their decision. They also threatened to charge money for each of those emails sent in, as well as file abuse reports to our ISPs.
Not to mention the fact that they got rid of one of the guaranteed features, Ultraboard, in the middle of my hosting period; thus, when their server screwed up my config styles, I couldn't re-install the program and thus had to ditch my forums.
Communitech exists to make a quick buck. They lie about their features and twist their 'contract' and 'terms of service' around just to cheat people.
I'm more than willing to help out any site dedicated to reviewing Communitech's poor decisions and actions. I can probably even host the site on a server we rent from another company. Email me: adam@!nozone.net. (Remove the "!").
Actually, around 40% of the development team for "The Sims" was female. Will Wright recently pointed out that boyfriends and husbands are the ones who usually go out and buy the game, spend a few hours with it and then get shoved aside as their female counterpart gets her fix of the addiction.
If Maxis were to do that, they, along with Electronic Arts, would be faced with the responsibility to patrol various stores for content that violates their terms of service.
That is, for the literally hundreds of 'store' web sites, Maxis would have to continually review each one and view their skins and creations to make sure that nothing potentially offensive or copyright violations are going on.
By allowing fans to act external, Maxis is giving a whole lot more freedom to the community and they're saving some resources.
A Napster-like skin-finder would be cool, but, alas, there are problems with that, too.
Maxis literally depends on these massive sites to give them good coverage of their games. Game review magazines and other publications look at the massive fan base and make mention of it and suddenly Maxis has yet another positive aspect to the game.
Adam Steinbaugh
http://www.simeden.com
Yes, there will be a "The Sims Online". Maxis is also developing a "The Sims 2", the sequel to "The Sims" (duh). The "Online" version is strictly that - online; it's also more of a self-expression and communication game.
I guess you could call it the simulation of a chat room.:)
While they may be right, the RIAA's whining about being ripped off by Napster is entirely hypocritical. "The Big Five" labels admitted to the FCC that they've ripped off consumers over $480,000,000 over the past decade by way of price-fixing (and I'm sure it goes well beyond that). Now, they're being sued by 28 US States or Territories for price fixing.
As the Recording Industry Association of America continues to whine about how Napster is stealing (they call it "shoplifting"), they continue to steal from the general consumer with their inflated CD prices.
But wait, that's not just my 'opinion', that's what 28 US States and Territories, the FCC, and the labels say.
The Attorney Generals for these States and Territories allege in a class-action lawsuit that the world's five largest record labels and three music retail chains have been fixing the prices of CDs, costing consumers $480 million over the past decade.
How is it done? Briefly, labels give retailers money to advertise certain CDs. A few years ago, the labels told the retailers that unless they sold the CDs above a "minimum advertised price" (dictated by the labels), they wouldn't give them the ad money. In fact, they said that if they sold *one* CD below these prices, it would jeopardize all future ad money for the entire chain. So, stores *had* to raise prices or lose much-needed advertising dinero for their sombreros.
The result is that we have been paying inflated prices for CDs for years. New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer says we've been paying "several dollars" too much for CDs for quite some time; "This illegal action... has not been music to the ears of the public. Because of these conspiracies, tens of millions of consumers paid inflated prices to buy CDs."
So, about a year ago, the labels and the FCC met and they agreed to knock all this off (from the current prices of CDs, I don't think they have quite yet) and they agreed that they'd ripped consumers off to the tune of $480 million dollars over the course of a decade. In exchange for this admission, the Feds won't take action - but states still can, and they are.
"We are delighted that the court has upheld the rights of all artists to protect and control their creative efforts," the band told reporters.
Gosh, it's too bad that artists don't have the right to control anything anymore, eh? No, Lars, the labels took that right away from you with a nice little bill they pushed through Congress called the "Satellite Home Viewing Act of 1999".
After all the meetings on the bill were over and before the artists could notice it, a Congressional aide added a technical ammendment to the bill which permenantly gives control over a song's copyright to the labels. Under previous laws, artists could reclaim a copyright on their work after 35 years; now, labels own it, period. It's called "work for hire".
"Stealing our copyright reversions in the dead of night while no one was looking, and with no hearings held, is piracy," said Courtney Love in this awesome Salon article called Courtney Love does the math.
Oh, that's right - Lars is a label-owner, so he's the one stealing from both the consumers and the artists. Shame, Lars, shame.
I think it's terribly obvious what Microsoft will have to do to appease an Ashcroft Justice Department: make the Ten Commandments a menu option in EVERY Windows(tm)(r)(c) menu and display them when starting up and shutting down.
Napster will only have gospel music (and each song would remind listeners not to dance of suffer the wrath of The Lord(tm)(r)(c).)
AOL would be inaccessable on Sundays, bringing the total up to four inaccessable days a week (the current average is only two, but AOLTW would throw an extra one in just to piss people off).
love,adam
modernempire.com
Slashdot Mirror
While IANAL, I believe that the police must proove that they would eventually have found the evidence even without their illegal invasion of privacy.
Thank God for a harsher review.
This is the first movie I have ever walked out of. There was little or no plot, the attempt to inject modern rock and pop into the storyline was pathetic, awkward and unnecessary, and it was simply an attempt to 'modernize' the movie so that little teen girls can squeel over the pretty faces.
Yeah, it had a few funny moments, but they're all at a superficial level and require absolutely no understanding of the characters or the storyline. You could walk into the movie to see one joke, get it, and leave. My girlfriend and I chose the latter - we left and had an intelligent, deep conversation in the parking lot.
You underestimate the value of a CD. I'm in a band that's recording a demo tape consisting of three songs. Studios are going to cost us about $50/hour to record, plus the same price for the time it takes their technicians to work with the sound itself and to mix it. For one single track, it took about six or seven 'takes' (recordings) of each instrument to finally get something we liked. With four instruments (two guitar, bass, drums) and vocals, that's about 35 takes total. Now, considering that it takes us half an hour to set up and take down drums each day, that's quite a bit of time. True, we could have gone to a studio that allowed us to all play at once and do six or seven takes *total* (and I wish we had). But most of those places also charge hourly totals to pay their technicians/engineers/producers. To record our demo tape, it's going to cost us well over a thousand dollars. Actually, no, I'm lying - we're not paying a dime, because we have some really cool friends who believe in our talent. Yeah, printing a CD is cheap - about a dollar, if you do it through the indie companies (probably cheaper if a major label does it). But it's the other things (recording, engineers, producers, managers, agents, lawyers, etc.) that cost a lot of money. Plus, the labels actually *are* needed for some bands and the people there *do* deserve money. Just not that much.
The people most harmed are the musicians. When you pirate music, you are stealing from the artist who slaved to create it for you. Gnutella and Napster are theft on a huge and organised scale. Gosh, it seems to me that the industry does the same thing. Stealing from the musicians that slaved to create a product for them. The only difference is that these companies can make millions off the people they abuse. I'm not advocating piracy, I'm pointing out the fact that the system is lose-lose. Give copyright back to the artists.
Wow - it's been a long time. I worked/volunteered for Hotline Comm. when the Adam Hinkley thing was big, hot news. I was there when Jason Roks was in charge (is he still around?) and when HLServer.com actually pointed somewhere. There was a group of people that had been abandoned by a company that was working with HL, Hotwire Communications. We kind of just fell into place at HL when Hotwire folded; I honestly don't know how it happened. We served HL as the test group for all their new betas. I was (I believe) their sole PC tester in that group. Anyway, I think there's fault on both sides of the line. Hinks was an idiot for believing that verbal agreements actually mean something and the people at HL were arrogant in their assault of him. Man, there was a lot of flaming of him going on - we weren't even allowed to talk about it or bring it up. Plus I think that HL has nicely screwed up their self-titled product. Or, at least, it's concept is obsolete because of the various other platforms of communication/"p2p". Are they still trying to produce online applications similar to HL for businesses? If only I could find all the people I used to work with - Willa, Dave and company. You guys out there? It's me, Adamm - adam@nozone.net.
Actually, I never signed an agreement - the webmaster did. All I did was explain the situation to my site's audience, helping to provide avenues for contacting the company. They said we were 'spamming' them because their TOS dictated that the emails were 'unwanted'. One of their guys came over to my site and posted messages anonymously before revealing his status as a CT employee; he used the anonymity to harass me and call me various names - rather unprofessional. This, too, was about a year ago. If you've had a bad experience with CT - send it to me via email and I'll see what I can do.
Woah - someone had a bad experience with Communitech? I'm surprised. Wait, just the opposite of that. Communitech (known as "Communistech" by the little online cliche I'm a part of) is a company which loves changing its TOS and being sneaky/deceitful about it just to make a quick buck. First, according to one of their abuse department guys, the 'president' of the company went through a friend's site, SimStuff.com. Without consulting the owner, he deleted the entire site (including several dozen hosted sites) because they had .ZIP files that MIGHT have been pirated software. The company also said that SimStuff.com had 'pornographic' content on it.
Er - since when is a site about SimCity 'pornographic'? And what site doesn't use .ZIP files, especially if it's a gaming site?
The company eventually changed its position to that of "the owner was inappropriately using his space" - by having .ZIP files available for download.
When I posted news about this incident on my Maxis-related site, I was harassed in my forums by an employee of the company (though I don't remember the specifics; they used a fake name to post it originally, but I was able to trace the IP back to the company.)
The site was killed because the company decided that .ZIP files are pirated files and then lied about the content of the site.
The company also refused to refund the owner of the site, despite the fact that they made a clear mistake and then lied about it (and then went as far as to harass supporters of the site).
The company didn't return phone calls from the webmaster and it took him several days to even get an answer as to why his site was simply deleted.
From what I recall, they also threatened to charge the webmaster a $500 "cleaning up" fee (I'm not sure about that number - but it was rather large) for deleting the site. I was harassed after proposing that members of the community donate money to pay for that fee in case
they pressed it. And the reason they threatened to do it was because they felt the webmaster was 'harassing' them because I, and others, had posted the email addresses of various company officials for people to write them and ask them to reverse their decision. They also threatened to charge money for each of those emails sent in, as well as file abuse reports to our ISPs.
Not to mention the fact that they got rid of one of the guaranteed features, Ultraboard, in the middle of my hosting period; thus, when their server screwed up my config styles, I couldn't re-install the program and thus had to ditch my forums.
Communitech exists to make a quick buck. They lie about their features and twist their 'contract' and 'terms of service' around just to cheat people.
I'm more than willing to help out any site dedicated to reviewing Communitech's poor decisions and actions. I can probably even host the site on a server we rent from another company. Email me: adam@!nozone.net. (Remove the "!").
Actually, around 40% of the development team for "The Sims" was female. Will Wright recently pointed out that boyfriends and husbands are the ones who usually go out and buy the game, spend a few hours with it and then get shoved aside as their female counterpart gets her fix of the addiction.
Adam Steinbaugh
SimEden.com
If Maxis were to do that, they, along with Electronic Arts, would be faced with the responsibility to patrol various stores for content that violates their terms of service. That is, for the literally hundreds of 'store' web sites, Maxis would have to continually review each one and view their skins and creations to make sure that nothing potentially offensive or copyright violations are going on. By allowing fans to act external, Maxis is giving a whole lot more freedom to the community and they're saving some resources. A Napster-like skin-finder would be cool, but, alas, there are problems with that, too. Maxis literally depends on these massive sites to give them good coverage of their games. Game review magazines and other publications look at the massive fan base and make mention of it and suddenly Maxis has yet another positive aspect to the game. Adam Steinbaugh http://www.simeden.com
All your Python belong to... aw, f*ck it.
Yes, there will be a "The Sims Online". Maxis is also developing a "The Sims 2", the sequel to "The Sims" (duh). The "Online" version is strictly that - online; it's also more of a self-expression and communication game. I guess you could call it the simulation of a chat room. :)
While they may be right, the RIAA's whining about being ripped off by Napster is entirely hypocritical. "The Big Five" labels admitted to the FCC that they've ripped off consumers over $480,000,000 over the past decade by way of price-fixing (and I'm sure it goes well beyond that). Now, they're being sued by 28 US States or Territories for price fixing.
As the Recording Industry Association of America continues to whine about how Napster is stealing (they call it "shoplifting"), they continue to steal from the general consumer with their inflated CD prices.
... has not been music to the ears of the public. Because of these conspiracies, tens of millions of consumers paid inflated prices to buy CDs."
But wait, that's not just my 'opinion', that's what 28 US States and Territories, the FCC, and the labels say.
The Attorney Generals for these States and Territories allege in a class-action lawsuit that the world's five largest record labels and three music retail chains have been fixing the prices of CDs, costing consumers $480 million over the past decade.
How is it done? Briefly, labels give retailers money to advertise certain CDs. A few years ago, the labels told the retailers that unless they sold the CDs above a "minimum advertised price" (dictated by the labels), they wouldn't give them the ad money. In fact, they said that if they sold *one* CD below these prices, it would jeopardize all future ad money for the entire chain. So, stores *had* to raise prices or lose much-needed advertising dinero for their sombreros.
The result is that we have been paying inflated prices for CDs for years. New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer says we've been paying "several dollars" too much for CDs for quite some time; "This illegal action
So, about a year ago, the labels and the FCC met and they agreed to knock all this off (from the current prices of CDs, I don't think they have quite yet) and they agreed that they'd ripped consumers off to the tune of $480 million dollars over the course of a decade. In exchange for this admission, the Feds won't take action - but states still can, and they are.
More information can be found in the Reuters article or the ModernEmpire.com editorial.
Oh, and now Metallica's whining again, too.
"We are delighted that the court has upheld the rights of all artists to protect and control their creative efforts," the band told reporters.
Gosh, it's too bad that artists don't have the right to control anything anymore, eh? No, Lars, the labels took that right away from you with a nice little bill they pushed through Congress called the "Satellite Home Viewing Act of 1999".
After all the meetings on the bill were over and before the artists could notice it, a Congressional aide added a technical ammendment to the bill which permenantly gives control over a song's copyright to the labels. Under previous laws, artists could reclaim a copyright on their work after 35 years; now, labels own it, period. It's called "work for hire".
"Stealing our copyright reversions in the dead of night while no one was looking, and with no hearings held, is piracy," said Courtney Love in this awesome Salon article called Courtney Love does the math.
Oh, that's right - Lars is a label-owner, so he's the one stealing from both the consumers and the artists. Shame, Lars, shame.
I think it's terribly obvious what Microsoft will have to do to appease an Ashcroft Justice Department: make the Ten Commandments a menu option in EVERY Windows(tm)(r)(c) menu and display them when starting up and shutting down. Napster will only have gospel music (and each song would remind listeners not to dance of suffer the wrath of The Lord(tm)(r)(c).) AOL would be inaccessable on Sundays, bringing the total up to four inaccessable days a week (the current average is only two, but AOLTW would throw an extra one in just to piss people off). love,adam modernempire.com