Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL!
on
Pornified
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· Score: 1
"the more porn they watched, the more intensely they defended porn"
OK, so they demonstrated that people defend their right to something they enjoy. Which applies equally to the nicotine example, but proves nothing. Nicotine withdrawal passes pretty swiftly.
No addiction to pornography has been demonstrated. It appears also that the authors of this study demonstrated no real-world negative outcomes.
"they were developing a demand for more of it, and more explicit porn, and more violent porn."
Were these people who had never seen pornography before? It sounds like it. So they were curious and wanted to see more. Proves nothing. Violent? How did the researchers define violent? It is usually defined as something like expressing negative thoughts or getting agitated. That's right if you get excited and vocal about something you'll be defined as violent.
"If you find yourself angry at the thought of this book"
Well I'm a fervent demander of some real research into pornography, something that so far is actually lacking. I don't really look at porn all that often though.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL!
on
Pornified
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· Score: 1
Quite wrong. You can get pretty much any drugs you want. Yes, cannabis is typically all around because it is a relatively mild intoxicant and it is fairly easy to produce. Yes, there are some people just set out to get as loaded as possible who will probably go for heroin if they can get and afford it, but if they couldn't they'd just smoke insane amounts of weed. Or they could move to an easily available, highly toxic drug known as alcohol. You can't get much harder than that.
Cannabis is supposedly a gateway drug because it allegedly introduces people to getting high. Well then alcohol should be the real culprit since that is most people's first introduction to getting high.
If many drugs are available some people will try them all out, but each person will have their preferences and it isn't matter of graduating from one to another for most. You move onto something else because you're after something the current drug doesn't give you, not because the drug itself induces the need to move to something else.
Drug users can be idiotic snobs just like any group. In the end though each person chooses what they want to use and there is no inducement from whatever drug they currently use.
Re:I haven't read the book, but...
on
Pornified
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· Score: 1
Harm to relationships - reminds me of a story told by a local anti-porn campaigner, about a woman whose marriage was destroyed by porn. When you read her account you discover the following - she was upset that her husband was spending a few hours a week looking at online porn - obsession according to her reckoning, she felt threatened, she started to feel like he was cheating with the pictures, she started to feel inadequate physically and sexually, she started to worry that he was having fantasies while engaged in sex with her so she started refusing sex. Firstly nowhere does she ever refer to having actually mentioned to her husband that it was making her feel inadequate or that her body and sex with her were not satisfying him. Without ever talking to the guy she became increasingly neurotic and agitated, working herself into her own homemade psychological pit, until she demanded a divorce and blamed it all on his obsession with porn. Naturally they don't present his side either.
As for calling a few hours a week an obsession that would make almost any pastime into an obsession.
"The well-adjusted folk of the world who can look at porn, play violent video games, and eat fatty foods without going overboard and ruining their lives wish that everybody else would just get a freaking grip already."
Quite right, the vast majority of people do not turn into homicidal lunatics because of the media. It takes a lot more to cause that kind of behaviour and the media, whether games, movies or pornography, are merely a convenient scapegoat.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL!
on
Pornified
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· Score: 1
"The results of a scientific study?"
Not quite. It alleges such, but it is skewed by not presenting the vast evidence that counters the general bent of the book.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL!
on
Pornified
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· Score: 1
Well, then please post the peer reviews of his research. It has of course been repeated and verified right?
Just because he is not a man of "conservative sexual knowledge" does not mean he didn't start with a basic dislike of pornography.
The important thing though is that others must have been able to repeat his results and check his research for problems.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL!
on
Pornified
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· Score: 1
"His view of what a women should 'be' becomes skewed."
It's great then that we have good conservative influences correcting us on what a woman should be.
"He might start to think his wife is not good enough, since she's not what he sees in the videos."
Good to know then that the rest of our culture teaches us to accept people for what they are.
"because the topic is difficult, instead of asking if she might be into 'that' (whatever it is) he goes out the door in search of it."
That's a relationship problem, not porn. Funnily enough humans don't require porn to think of sexual things they'd like to do. Only conservative nutjobs think humans are so stupid and lacking in creativity that everyone could only come up with what they consider the right, godly way.
Then again these are same loons that worry about children being exposed to nudity.
The fact is that real humans generally like to try out different experiences and sensations. That is why we have a wide variety of foods, why we have music and art.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL!
on
Pornified
·
· Score: 1
"doesn't mean it's not harmful in a lot of cases"
In some cases it is. We don't know how often it is harmful because you simply cannot get funding to research something like this.
"It's simply foolish to say that porn is never harmful to anyone. The only question is how harmful and in what numbers."
Exactly, but that is just what this book is not doing, and that is what is being pointed out. It is presenting a skewed view, pretending that there is this huge pile of research showing negative results, even alleging it has been kept hidden it is so bad, implying that positive research doesn't or barely exists.
It would be useful to do some real research into pornography, just as it would be useful to know for instance what percentage of heroin users come to harm and how much of that harm has nothing to do with heroin, but is entirely caused by its legal status. Good luck getting funding. Of course if you want to add more research to the 'It's bad' pile the government will throw money at you.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL!
on
Pornified
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· Score: 1
"Does this mean that anybody who publishes a study showing links between cancer and tobacco should be modded down"
Yes, if they failed to mention an equally huge body of research that could find no link, or worse had found positive effects from long-term smoking. This doesn't really exist for smoking (we can ignore any research carried out by those who sell cigarettes just as we can ignore research carried out by those who sell pornography).
Far too much negative research into pornography, violence in games etc, starts with something along the lines of 'We set out to find and demonstrate the harm'. It is all loaded from the beginning. Research results are distorted after the fact. It is actually really hard to get money for unbiased research in this field. Probably as hard as getting money to test fingerprint theory.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL!
on
Pornified
·
· Score: 1
"some people who drink alcohol become alcoholics, but not all"
And that would typically be emphasised in any discussion about alcohol. Suddenly when it is other recreational drugs or porn, if they even bother to mention that these negative effects apply to a small minority, they mention it in passing in the small print.
If someone comes to a school and gives a talk about how they started out with a little wine, but before they knew it, inevitably, they were drinking all day and living in a gutter, most listeners would be thinking 'Yeah, well that was you, we know this won't happen to most people', but with other drugs and porn we've been brainwashed with the implicit assumption that these things must do serious harm to almost all those who are exposed to them and that it is in fact just the very lucky few who escape being destroyed.
When I was at school some ex-junkie came round and told us his tale of woe. Afterwards I asked him if he ever drinks alcohol. 'Yes, he said, but that's different'. I suggested that perhaps while he clearly had a problem with heroin he might be OK with say LSD. He launched into an increasingly ridiculous anti-drug tirade. I thought what a hypocritical, lying waste of my time. As I discovered over the years this hypocrasy is pretty much typical amongst self-righteous ex-illegal-drug users and those who work at rehabilitation clinics for those drugs.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL!
on
Pornified
·
· Score: 1
The review completely failed to indicate the book appears to be based on lopsided research. If the book were balanced it would indicate there is at least as much research completely contradicting the research showing serious harm.
It is ridiculous to claim there is all this damning research. Unfortunately research into the alleged negative effects of pornography is like the research into the alleged negative effects of violence in games, movies etc. - the researchers invariably set up loaded criteria, then allow there prejudice to further distort the results. So far no reliable research has materialised and neither pornography nor graphic violence has been linked to real negative effects in the real world. Although research that finds no harm is also not without problems the onus is not on us to prove there is no harm, but for others to prove there is harm. So far they've failed, dismally.
Sure some people get obsessed with porn. There will always be some people who lose it with something. Trying to extrapolate from a tiny sample, 100 people, results in the same drivel about drugs you'll hear from people who work at rehab clinics - they only see one side, and it is the minority side too.
Just as some research claims that someone with inclinations towards children will escalate to actual abuse if they're allowed to look at naked children, there is research that finds the opposite.
"It dampens empathy, it changes expectations, and it damages relationships."
Many things will change your expectations. Actually these three things can be linked something else - religion.
"requiring escalation to maintain a constant level of stimulation."
Pretty much true of almost anything that is initially thrilling. Then again what percentage of all those who view pornography have problems?
Claiming that adding further newsgroups
"Consider this -- prior to the Internet, law enforcement believed that child porn had been basically wiped out. It was a crime from a previous age, like body snatching. But then came the Web. Between 1996 and 2004, child-porn cases handled by the FBI increased 23 fold."
This means that the cops were deluding themselves, the child pornography networks were well-established and secretive. Along came the net and people started using this as a means of distribution instead of the much safer, but slower postal service - they exposed themselves and made it easier to get caught. I expect these groups to once again become much more secretive.
Consider this - there remain members of law enforcement who convinced that snuff movies exist despite no snuff having been found, ever.
The facts is that cops live in their own world.
"started with modest porn searching online, then graduated to more heinous stuff"
Odd Hyundai's are usually pretty good quality and value for money, although I don't think they're the best Korean cars, and they still have a way to go to beat the Japanese, especially Toyota and Honda.
Foreign cars might feel cramped. When they call them compact they don't mean slightly smaller than an aircraft carrier, which appears to be the American manufacturer definition.
Fuel consumption should always be good on these cars and you'd have to seriously abuse the brakes to wear them out in only 10k miles.
just about everything Stanely Kubrick did ("2001", "A Clockwork Orange", "The Shining") is generally considered a greater work within their field of cinema than the books they were based on were within their respective fields
This doesn't mean the movies were better than the books, rather simply that they are better than most movies. In each of those cases the books were better than the movies, but Kubrick did create something unique in the movies.
Shakespeare
It is rather humorous that Shakespeare's plays were the pulp trash of his day, but now we consider them unbelievably great. Probably a minority opinion, but while I find them enjoyable they are to me quite obviously pulp trash.
I wouldn't go quite that far, summarily throwing someone out if their phone rings, because sometimes people forget their phone is still on. I've done it - thought I had already turned it off. But on the one occasion when my phone rang I pulled it out immediately and switched it off, I didn't even bother to check who was calling. I also have my ring volume set fairly low; some people insist on having theirs set to rock concert volume just to be extra obnoxious.
Of course if you've been warned pre-show, that means you should check your phone to be sure it is off.
Do audiences in the US typically buy snacks at the cinema?
The movie costs can't be like this elsewhere because in my experience very few people actually buy snacks at the cinema. Despite the signs up at my local cinema saying I can't bring in my own food I just do anyway - sweets go in pants or jacket pockets, drinks and popcorn go into a backpack or my coat. I'm certainly not paying their snack prices.
If its so crappy, why are people trading it like theres no tomorrow
Because downloading it costs what it is worth
Software, music and movie creators have to consider that perhaps their products should be cheaper - get them under the threshhold so buying is less hassle than downloading
Actually many download because they can, not because what they're downloading is anything they really want or would even remotely consider buying no matter how cheap. There's a definite hording tendency when the downloading is easy and cheap.
That would be most of them. I do my best to filter out previews because invariably they show you far too much of the movie.
There is the other kind of course, the ones that show a serious of flashes that is supposed to get you intrigued enough to come see the movie. Guess it makes sense on Planet Marketing.
If copying movies over the net was technically impossible, movie piracy wouldn't be as bad as today
I'm not so sure. Before I could download music I taped what came my way - anything and everything interesting, much of it things I either couldn't buy or couldn't afford. All the internet has added is the ability to search for something specific. The internet has given me the ability to find interesting independent music that I'll never hear on the radio, and I can usually buy it direct from the artists if I like it.
And just because we can potentially or even do make more copies because of downloading doesn't necessarily result in buying less. Most people I know download because they can, not because what they're downloading is something they specifically want - they've accumulated 100s of gigabytes of MP3s, more than they can ever listen to, and they keep downloading more. If the music industry look at this they see escalating lost sales, but really all that's changed is that instead of copying a small amount due to less access or simply because there is more time and hassle involved in analogue copying, we can now copy more material than we can actually use - it hasn't changed how much we would buy, we're just less circumspect about what we choose to copy.
I actually like my movies to have this thing called a plot.
You're suggesting a movie with a plot? You must be some sort of extremist radical. I'm sure the government's total police state thugs will be kicking down your door soon.
I'd pay a small fee - I have to pay for my broadband, it's capped and not that fast - to download a movie at DVD quality to watch at home at my leisure, but the overall price has to be lower than renting at a local shop because it takes several days to download a single DVD (once connections are fast enough that I can download 7Gb in 15 minutes I'll go for it costing the same overall) and they must offer a vast selection, well beyond what I could ever expect to find at a local rental outlet. DRM is an absolute no - I want to watch it at my leisure, more than once if I feel like it and if I enjoy it I might even burn a copy. I'm going to do that anyway, but I'm not paying if I have to jump through hoops to remove whatever trash they've added to protect their 'valuable' product.
"look if it's an emergency, take the call, but otherwise if you take the call we'll throw you out."
Go outside and take the call. I don't care what kind of emergency it is they can still show some basic courtesy and step outside.
Some whiners claim they need to be contactable in case something happens to their children. Well shame, I manage, my parents managed and so did their parents. If someone can't be away from their children, then they should stay at home and spare the rest of us.
Movies don't have to cost megabucks. At least not the level they're often at today. Film stock, sets etc. are not cheap, but the studios spend far too much in ever more desperate attempts to lure us to the cinema.
It is easy to forget how much detail there is in a book. A 50 page book will easily take 2 hours of screen time to cover. It seems contradictory because a movie is visual and therefore doesn't need all the space books devote to description yet still a tiny short book translates to a fairly long movie. Some books have more description, e.g. the Lord of the Rings devotes a huge amount of space to describing everything in detail so that gets compressed easily in a movie - the landscapes, creatures, etc, but still despite 3+ hour running times they had to leave a lot out.
I think much of popular fiction is also just rehashing, but people read them and don't get put off by the similarities because unlike a movie you get to experience every detail - in a movie the scenery flashes by as the camera moves about so there is more tendency for two movies to appear overly similar.
What I'd love - instead of making heaps of new movies that are really the same old movie dressed up to appear new, rather show older movies again. I'd love to be able to periodically go see movies from the 40s up to the modern day on the big screen. Instead the movies typically come around once and that's it.
There's no shortage of good actors, most of them never appear in Hollywood. Studios could use the mountain of actors out there. They could even make it a selling point - "We don't keep using the same tired, lazy, overpriced, spoiled ham actors."
There's also no shortage of good musicians or interesting new music, despite the appearance create by the major labels.
Slashdot Mirror
"the more porn they watched, the more intensely they defended porn"
OK, so they demonstrated that people defend their right to something they enjoy. Which applies equally to the nicotine example, but proves nothing. Nicotine withdrawal passes pretty swiftly.
No addiction to pornography has been demonstrated. It appears also that the authors of this study demonstrated no real-world negative outcomes.
"they were developing a demand for more of it, and more explicit porn, and more violent porn."
Were these people who had never seen pornography before? It sounds like it. So they were curious and wanted to see more. Proves nothing. Violent? How did the researchers define violent? It is usually defined as something like expressing negative thoughts or getting agitated. That's right if you get excited and vocal about something you'll be defined as violent.
"If you find yourself angry at the thought of this book"
Well I'm a fervent demander of some real research into pornography, something that so far is actually lacking. I don't really look at porn all that often though.
Quite wrong. You can get pretty much any drugs you want. Yes, cannabis is typically all around because it is a relatively mild intoxicant and it is fairly easy to produce. Yes, there are some people just set out to get as loaded as possible who will probably go for heroin if they can get and afford it, but if they couldn't they'd just smoke insane amounts of weed. Or they could move to an easily available, highly toxic drug known as alcohol. You can't get much harder than that.
Cannabis is supposedly a gateway drug because it allegedly introduces people to getting high. Well then alcohol should be the real culprit since that is most people's first introduction to getting high.
If many drugs are available some people will try them all out, but each person will have their preferences and it isn't matter of graduating from one to another for most. You move onto something else because you're after something the current drug doesn't give you, not because the drug itself induces the need to move to something else.
Drug users can be idiotic snobs just like any group. In the end though each person chooses what they want to use and there is no inducement from whatever drug they currently use.
Harm to relationships - reminds me of a story told by a local anti-porn campaigner, about a woman whose marriage was destroyed by porn. When you read her account you discover the following - she was upset that her husband was spending a few hours a week looking at online porn - obsession according to her reckoning, she felt threatened, she started to feel like he was cheating with the pictures, she started to feel inadequate physically and sexually, she started to worry that he was having fantasies while engaged in sex with her so she started refusing sex. Firstly nowhere does she ever refer to having actually mentioned to her husband that it was making her feel inadequate or that her body and sex with her were not satisfying him. Without ever talking to the guy she became increasingly neurotic and agitated, working herself into her own homemade psychological pit, until she demanded a divorce and blamed it all on his obsession with porn. Naturally they don't present his side either.
As for calling a few hours a week an obsession that would make almost any pastime into an obsession.
"The well-adjusted folk of the world who can look at porn, play violent video games, and eat fatty foods without going overboard and ruining their lives wish that everybody else would just get a freaking grip already."
Quite right, the vast majority of people do not turn into homicidal lunatics because of the media. It takes a lot more to cause that kind of behaviour and the media, whether games, movies or pornography, are merely a convenient scapegoat.
"The results of a scientific study?"
Not quite. It alleges such, but it is skewed by not presenting the vast evidence that counters the general bent of the book.
Well, then please post the peer reviews of his research. It has of course been repeated and verified right?
Just because he is not a man of "conservative sexual knowledge" does not mean he didn't start with a basic dislike of pornography.
The important thing though is that others must have been able to repeat his results and check his research for problems.
"His view of what a women should 'be' becomes skewed."
It's great then that we have good conservative influences correcting us on what a woman should be.
"He might start to think his wife is not good enough, since she's not what he sees in the videos."
Good to know then that the rest of our culture teaches us to accept people for what they are.
"because the topic is difficult, instead of asking if she might be into 'that' (whatever it is) he goes out the door in search of it."
That's a relationship problem, not porn. Funnily enough humans don't require porn to think of sexual things they'd like to do. Only conservative nutjobs think humans are so stupid and lacking in creativity that everyone could only come up with what they consider the right, godly way.
Then again these are same loons that worry about children being exposed to nudity.
The fact is that real humans generally like to try out different experiences and sensations. That is why we have a wide variety of foods, why we have music and art.
"doesn't mean it's not harmful in a lot of cases"
In some cases it is. We don't know how often it is harmful because you simply cannot get funding to research something like this.
"It's simply foolish to say that porn is never harmful to anyone. The only question is how harmful and in what numbers."
Exactly, but that is just what this book is not doing, and that is what is being pointed out. It is presenting a skewed view, pretending that there is this huge pile of research showing negative results, even alleging it has been kept hidden it is so bad, implying that positive research doesn't or barely exists.
It would be useful to do some real research into pornography, just as it would be useful to know for instance what percentage of heroin users come to harm and how much of that harm has nothing to do with heroin, but is entirely caused by its legal status. Good luck getting funding. Of course if you want to add more research to the 'It's bad' pile the government will throw money at you.
"Does this mean that anybody who publishes a study showing links between cancer and tobacco should be modded down"
Yes, if they failed to mention an equally huge body of research that could find no link, or worse had found positive effects from long-term smoking. This doesn't really exist for smoking (we can ignore any research carried out by those who sell cigarettes just as we can ignore research carried out by those who sell pornography).
Far too much negative research into pornography, violence in games etc, starts with something along the lines of 'We set out to find and demonstrate the harm'. It is all loaded from the beginning. Research results are distorted after the fact. It is actually really hard to get money for unbiased research in this field. Probably as hard as getting money to test fingerprint theory.
"some people who drink alcohol become alcoholics, but not all"
And that would typically be emphasised in any discussion about alcohol. Suddenly when it is other recreational drugs or porn, if they even bother to mention that these negative effects apply to a small minority, they mention it in passing in the small print.
If someone comes to a school and gives a talk about how they started out with a little wine, but before they knew it, inevitably, they were drinking all day and living in a gutter, most listeners would be thinking 'Yeah, well that was you, we know this won't happen to most people', but with other drugs and porn we've been brainwashed with the implicit assumption that these things must do serious harm to almost all those who are exposed to them and that it is in fact just the very lucky few who escape being destroyed.
When I was at school some ex-junkie came round and told us his tale of woe. Afterwards I asked him if he ever drinks alcohol. 'Yes, he said, but that's different'. I suggested that perhaps while he clearly had a problem with heroin he might be OK with say LSD. He launched into an increasingly ridiculous anti-drug tirade. I thought what a hypocritical, lying waste of my time. As I discovered over the years this hypocrasy is pretty much typical amongst self-righteous ex-illegal-drug users and those who work at rehabilitation clinics for those drugs.
The review completely failed to indicate the book appears to be based on lopsided research. If the book were balanced it would indicate there is at least as much research completely contradicting the research showing serious harm.
It is ridiculous to claim there is all this damning research. Unfortunately research into the alleged negative effects of pornography is like the research into the alleged negative effects of violence in games, movies etc. - the researchers invariably set up loaded criteria, then allow there prejudice to further distort the results. So far no reliable research has materialised and neither pornography nor graphic violence has been linked to real negative effects in the real world. Although research that finds no harm is also not without problems the onus is not on us to prove there is no harm, but for others to prove there is harm. So far they've failed, dismally.
Sure some people get obsessed with porn. There will always be some people who lose it with something. Trying to extrapolate from a tiny sample, 100 people, results in the same drivel about drugs you'll hear from people who work at rehab clinics - they only see one side, and it is the minority side too.
Just as some research claims that someone with inclinations towards children will escalate to actual abuse if they're allowed to look at naked children, there is research that finds the opposite.
"It dampens empathy, it changes expectations, and it damages relationships."
Many things will change your expectations. Actually these three things can be linked something else - religion.
"requiring escalation to maintain a constant level of stimulation."
Pretty much true of almost anything that is initially thrilling. Then again what percentage of all those who view pornography have problems?
Claiming that adding further newsgroups
"Consider this -- prior to the Internet, law enforcement believed that child porn had been basically wiped out. It was a crime from a previous age, like body snatching. But then came the Web. Between 1996 and 2004, child-porn cases handled by the FBI increased 23 fold."
This means that the cops were deluding themselves, the child pornography networks were well-established and secretive. Along came the net and people started using this as a means of distribution instead of the much safer, but slower postal service - they exposed themselves and made it easier to get caught. I expect these groups to once again become much more secretive.
Consider this - there remain members of law enforcement who convinced that snuff movies exist despite no snuff having been found, ever.
The facts is that cops live in their own world.
"started with modest porn searching online, then graduated to more heinous stuff"
What? Torturing search engines for fun?
Odd Hyundai's are usually pretty good quality and value for money, although I don't think they're the best Korean cars, and they still have a way to go to beat the Japanese, especially Toyota and Honda.
Foreign cars might feel cramped. When they call them compact they don't mean slightly smaller than an aircraft carrier, which appears to be the American manufacturer definition.
Fuel consumption should always be good on these cars and you'd have to seriously abuse the brakes to wear them out in only 10k miles.
They're great, when they don't explode on impact. And they're big enough to land a small aircraft on the hood.
This doesn't mean the movies were better than the books, rather simply that they are better than most movies. In each of those cases the books were better than the movies, but Kubrick did create something unique in the movies.
Shakespeare
It is rather humorous that Shakespeare's plays were the pulp trash of his day, but now we consider them unbelievably great. Probably a minority opinion, but while I find them enjoyable they are to me quite obviously pulp trash.
I wouldn't go quite that far, summarily throwing someone out if their phone rings, because sometimes people forget their phone is still on. I've done it - thought I had already turned it off. But on the one occasion when my phone rang I pulled it out immediately and switched it off, I didn't even bother to check who was calling. I also have my ring volume set fairly low; some people insist on having theirs set to rock concert volume just to be extra obnoxious.
Of course if you've been warned pre-show, that means you should check your phone to be sure it is off.
Do audiences in the US typically buy snacks at the cinema?
The movie costs can't be like this elsewhere because in my experience very few people actually buy snacks at the cinema. Despite the signs up at my local cinema saying I can't bring in my own food I just do anyway - sweets go in pants or jacket pockets, drinks and popcorn go into a backpack or my coat. I'm certainly not paying their snack prices.
Because downloading it costs what it is worth
Software, music and movie creators have to consider that perhaps their products should be cheaper - get them under the threshhold so buying is less hassle than downloading
Actually many download because they can, not because what they're downloading is anything they really want or would even remotely consider buying no matter how cheap. There's a definite hording tendency when the downloading is easy and cheap.
That would be most of them. I do my best to filter out previews because invariably they show you far too much of the movie.
There is the other kind of course, the ones that show a serious of flashes that is supposed to get you intrigued enough to come see the movie. Guess it makes sense on Planet Marketing.
I'm not so sure. Before I could download music I taped what came my way - anything and everything interesting, much of it things I either couldn't buy or couldn't afford. All the internet has added is the ability to search for something specific. The internet has given me the ability to find interesting independent music that I'll never hear on the radio, and I can usually buy it direct from the artists if I like it.
And just because we can potentially or even do make more copies because of downloading doesn't necessarily result in buying less. Most people I know download because they can, not because what they're downloading is something they specifically want - they've accumulated 100s of gigabytes of MP3s, more than they can ever listen to, and they keep downloading more. If the music industry look at this they see escalating lost sales, but really all that's changed is that instead of copying a small amount due to less access or simply because there is more time and hassle involved in analogue copying, we can now copy more material than we can actually use - it hasn't changed how much we would buy, we're just less circumspect about what we choose to copy.
I hate intermissions. I can sit for 3 hours without having to run off to the toilet. Admittedly my girlfriend can't.
You're suggesting a movie with a plot? You must be some sort of extremist radical. I'm sure the government's total police state thugs will be kicking down your door soon.
I'd pay a small fee - I have to pay for my broadband, it's capped and not that fast - to download a movie at DVD quality to watch at home at my leisure, but the overall price has to be lower than renting at a local shop because it takes several days to download a single DVD (once connections are fast enough that I can download 7Gb in 15 minutes I'll go for it costing the same overall) and they must offer a vast selection, well beyond what I could ever expect to find at a local rental outlet. DRM is an absolute no - I want to watch it at my leisure, more than once if I feel like it and if I enjoy it I might even burn a copy. I'm going to do that anyway, but I'm not paying if I have to jump through hoops to remove whatever trash they've added to protect their 'valuable' product.
Go outside and take the call. I don't care what kind of emergency it is they can still show some basic courtesy and step outside.
Some whiners claim they need to be contactable in case something happens to their children. Well shame, I manage, my parents managed and so did their parents. If someone can't be away from their children, then they should stay at home and spare the rest of us.
They're allowed to sell water that came out the tap? I thought that was generally illegal in civilised countries.
Movies don't have to cost megabucks. At least not the level they're often at today. Film stock, sets etc. are not cheap, but the studios spend far too much in ever more desperate attempts to lure us to the cinema.
It is easy to forget how much detail there is in a book. A 50 page book will easily take 2 hours of screen time to cover. It seems contradictory because a movie is visual and therefore doesn't need all the space books devote to description yet still a tiny short book translates to a fairly long movie. Some books have more description, e.g. the Lord of the Rings devotes a huge amount of space to describing everything in detail so that gets compressed easily in a movie - the landscapes, creatures, etc, but still despite 3+ hour running times they had to leave a lot out.
I think much of popular fiction is also just rehashing, but people read them and don't get put off by the similarities because unlike a movie you get to experience every detail - in a movie the scenery flashes by as the camera moves about so there is more tendency for two movies to appear overly similar.
What I'd love - instead of making heaps of new movies that are really the same old movie dressed up to appear new, rather show older movies again. I'd love to be able to periodically go see movies from the 40s up to the modern day on the big screen. Instead the movies typically come around once and that's it.
There's no shortage of good actors, most of them never appear in Hollywood. Studios could use the mountain of actors out there. They could even make it a selling point - "We don't keep using the same tired, lazy, overpriced, spoiled ham actors."
There's also no shortage of good musicians or interesting new music, despite the appearance create by the major labels.