So essentially... you're quite welcome to make a 1-to-1 perfect copy, as long as you've got the hardware to do so. Which means either specialist hardware, hacked hardware, or some old-ass DVD drive that wasn't quite following the spec until the associations behind DVD smacked 'm around a little.
Similarly - I don't recall the right to make a copy stating that you have the right to make a 1-to-1 perfect copy; so there shouldn't be anything stopping the person from recording the display output stream.. either directly or by pointing a videocamera at the screen (which will happily defeat HDCP as well).
You're left with a less-than-perfect copy, but it's still a copy.
That's one of the arguments I would make if I were trying to defend the copyprotection crap, at least.
( I'm actually less bothered by copy protection than I am by region locking. I'm here waving good money at 20th century fox; but I can wave 10 times that and they still wouldn't release SAAB on region 2. Thanks to both drives not being region-unlockable, the lack of desire to get a stand-alone DVD player, and not being interested in fussing about with ripping tools that remove the region encoding 'on-the-fly' ('on the crawl' they mean), I had to get an el-cheapo external DVD drive and set that to region 1. I'm willing to bet that by doing -that- I'm still breaking some manner of law or agreement or whatever, though. F. )
And land yourself in real jail as you are effectively defrauding people. Thanks to the money involved, there's either a trail to follow, or if you meant actual cash, a person who's collecting it who can be arrested directly in a sting operation.
Neither of which seem to be 'so expensive' or have ridiculous limits. Granted, I haven't read the fineprint.
It might not be -cellphone- mobile, but it's certainly using the cellular networks.
I'd dig up a cellphone plan, but as in the U.S. and NL, finding details on plans on operators' sites is next-to-impossible. I'd imagine T-Mobile offers their web-and-walk plan in the UK as well, though.
Sharing your connection using Joiku with a file-sharing felon might tar you with the same brush. 3 strikes and you're all out.
Well you're the one deciding to share your connection. Shouldn't it then be your own responsibility to check just exactly -who- you're sharing the thing with?
If you decide to share your gun - which you only use for plinking - with some random stranger, they shoot somebody, and the ballistics end up matching a gun that's registered to you, you'd have some explaining to do, too.
Due process? We flushed that crap down the toilet years ago.
While I agree with this, I can't help but put myself in the shoes of the other (Evil) side and see - in practice, in discussions on slashdot and even in newspapers - that the aforementioned is also being exploited as a defense.
"Your honor, the accused lives in a household with 3 other persons - his wife and his two children - any one of these could have performed this unauthorized sharing of copyrighted materials. The defense has not shown evidence which of these four individuals in fact performed this unauthorized sharing of copyrighted materials. Therefore, the defense moves for the accusation against the accused to be dropped." Well gosh isn't that convenient. So next time I want to download something using a sharing client, all I'll have to do is go to a busy spot downtown, open up my connection and broadcast it to the world as, say, "FreeInternet", and hey presto.. I might be doing something illegal but good bloody luck proving that it was actually -me- and not one of the dozen people that were using my shared connection; They can't. Pirate-me wins.
If these issues were on a scale, then they're neither balanced, nor tipped over in either direction; the entire mechanism simply broke and both sides claim things in their favor where they shouldn't be able to.
, If there are terms to the sale other than the purchase then I must agree before i accept possession.
I fully agree that you should accept to the terms of whatever constitutes the purchase - including the Windows EULA if you're getting a computer-with-Windows - *before* purchase. Hence why the EULA after booting the thing up seems rather redundant.
Hence the line of thought that if you're getting a computer-with-Windows then you've already indicated you want Windows.. probably even if the EULA said to sacrifice your first-born to Steve.
But even if you end up disagreeing with the EULA, I personally think you have two options...
1. Return the computer-with-Windows 2. Disagree with the Windows EULA, format, install something different.
That Microsoft even offer option.. 3. Disagree with the EULA, go to the store for a refund on just that part..is, quite frankly, bizarre.
I can't think of any other coupled-product that lets you do this. To go with car analogies.. I can certainly nag the car dealership to remove the pioneer stereo from the car and subtract the cost from the total, but if they say "no can do", I can go take my business elsewhere. I wouldn't be able to buy the car-with-Pioneer stereo, then decide I don't much like the Pioneer stereo for whatever reason, and go back to the dealership saying "here's the radio, now gimme the money". ( the analogy mostly fails because the stereo will happily work without agreeing to an EULA, but you get the idea )
But your computer doesn't even do that. Your computer is already happily done starting by the time you hit that popup. Heck, drop in your favorite Ubuntu Live CD or UBCD(4Win) and you can use your computer just fine.
I find the Windows EULA popup a bit redundant but I guess that's because stores don't show it/have it easily available before you purchase the thing (even if you can readily look it up online). The reason I find it redundant is because you're purchasing a computer -with Windows-. By making that purchase you've already indicated you either want Windows (if you very strongly did NOT want Windows, you could've just gotten a Mac or an OS-less machine or a machine with Linux/whathaveyou pre-installed), OR that you want the machine and the fact that Windows is on it is not of particular importance at all (in which case, why come running for a refund on it? just format the drive and do whatever you want with the machine).
If nothing else, being able to get a refund (per MS's own writings) on that part of the configuration at all is.. odd.
It's commonplace with just about anything else you buy where, after the fact, you find something like a defect.
A hole in a pair of pants' pocket, for example. You never deal with the manufacturer of the pants, just the store. The store in turn can either decide to give you *some* money back (to cover mending costs, say), give you the full amount back as long as you return the pants, or give you the option to exchange for a similar model (with the difference in price, if any, being resolved as appropriate).
So if you now buy some manner of computer that has Windows 7, you come home, boot the thing up, read the EULA, and decide you do not agree... you contact the store you got it from, tell them you do not accept the EULA, and either they will refund you the Windows bit (presumably you have to disable windows or they disable the key registered to that machine or however that works), or you'll just have to return the entire thing. Sounds fair to me.
Of course, the best part of your post is pointing out that the EULA -is- available before purchasing the machine. Perhaps stores should just point to that and let the user declare that they read that darn thing and agree to it -before- purchase. Problem solved (outside of the people who buy machines with Windows with the express purpose of tossing another OS on there and then raising a stink-a-la-"nobody actually reads it, they just declare they have to be able to continue with their purchase" anyway, of course).
What's the most someone could do with this exploit? Basically it just allows for a more accurate exit-poll.
Basically.. all of the reasons you want voting to be done anonymously apply here.
If you can couple the emissions at the location of the machine with the emissions from a particular user - say, their mobile phone's signature - then you can go back to forcing people to vote for X and make sure that they do, roughing them up as an example to the others you told to vote for X if you detected a vote for Y instead, without a need to plant something on them or leaving any trace.
It's actually why I've got ThunderBird's RSS thing set to only ever show me the summaries, and I click on from there, instead of loading the full article. It's far easier for me to click through each item I'm interested in, opening them in FireFox, -then- going on to read them (each article is then already loaded), then it is for me to click one item, wait for it to display in ThunderBird, read it, click the next, wait again, etc.
The only real difference is that 'wait'.. and yes, it's only 2-4 seconds - but it's a very, very annoying wait. If I could make ThunderBird pre-download the full articles, I would. ( if there's an add-on that does this, feel free to drop a link.. I'll search the add-ons site later myself )
It is strange to see a company advocate using a device for a workout, but having that device break in response to some sweat.
Define 'some sweat'?
Although I do find it peculiar that Apple's sensors are near the edges of the device, rather than somewhere near the middle, and I certainly wouldn't put it past them to have done this on purpose (they'll claim it's so they can check without even opening the thing.. which, of course, isn't as easy as most phones where you can just remove a few screws), I have to wonder just how much you're going to have to sweat to get it into your iPod/iPhone even just that far into the casing. Do people stick them under their armpits or something?
There are little pouches and whatnot specifically for joggers (as well as a bunch of other accessories for the iPod for that group).. they might do well to actually purchase them.
Even if you're not getting sweat inside your iPod/iPhone, does the idea that they just sweated all over the outside not make them go a little.. I dunno.. "yuck"?
I'm wondering why the measurement is with the equipment at all. 'The Internet' isn't so much the hardware it's being run on, is it? Wouldn't do much good if that hardware wasn't moving bits and bytes around.
So perhaps the question should be... how much data traffic is there for 'the internet' and, by splitting that up into electrons and photons (presuming wireless signals have no mass), how much does that weigh.
I wonder if that could actually end up being an appreciable amount if measured over the course of seconds/minutes/hours/days/a week/a month/a year.
In summary: it's far easier to add Google (or other search engines) to IE, than it is to add Bing (or other search engines) to FF. ( Opera trumps both, but only if you're aware of the right-click-on-form-field deal - FF has this partially implemented as keywords, not as a form adding a new search engine in the search field drop-down )
Cue the "yeah but who would want to add bing to ff anyway? lololol"
Second off... no, the express installation route leaves your current default search intact. In the odd situation that it doesn't detect your default search, it -is- presented *right in your face* what settings it will be applying. http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1351751&cid=29241927
Cue the "yeah, but people never read dialogs and just click next next next"
Now if you're saying that MS should make the default Google, even if the user's current default (from IE6/7) is, say, Yahoo... well I don't even know where to begin with -that- school of thought.
I watched that a few days ago, and one of the concluding points was interesting.. the archbishop of Nigeria mentioned that the other side (Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens) failed to show that the Catholic church is -not- a force for good in the world.
And he's right.. the two gentlemen merely showed that members of that church have done wrong - in the distant past, the recent past, and in current times (yea olde pope thinking condoms are evil and all that) - and are not a force for good in the world. But they have not shown that the Catholic church, as an institution, is not a force for good in the world.
Of course, therein also lies the catch... you -can't- prove that the Catholic church as an institution is not a force for good in the world if all of its mistakes can be written off as the wrongdoings of its members. And therein lies also the rebuttal.. if only its members can do wrong, then only its members can do good.
"Is the Catholic church a force for good in the world?", then, is a question that simply has no answer.
The question should have been about specific elements within the Catholic church, or its constituency as a whole, and not whether they're good or not, but whether they're good or evil ('not good' could, after all, mean that they're just.. not good.. not evil, but not good either). Stephen and Christopher do answer -that- question, just as the other side argues for their take on that question, and it is worth watching. Although it is entirely too short, the audience's questions are glossed over (in part due to the time constraints - and it should be said that the audience sure knows how to make their question long-winded, by thanking the speakers, telling them their personal stories, blabla) and it's certainly not meant to be an in-depth debate. Unfortunate.
Oddly enough, in NL, for various theaters.. - You can buy your tickets online (actually, you have to print a barcode and collect from a machine/the cashier.. usually no rows at the machines, so that's okay. They're still working on accepting a barcode off of e.g. a mobile phone using a camera system rather than the laser scanner.) - You can reserve specific seats, and even make sure seats are next to eachother if you are going with a/multiple friend(s) - You do pay less by buying online (though it's a just a smidgen less)
The fourth item is the one where you're going to have to concede on things... - You still get ads. You still get 5 trailers. You still get the theater animations. You still get the "turn your phone off.. OFF, I SAID! NOT SILENT! OFF!!!!!!" (actually they don't say the last part, but I wish they would... stupid people and their bright-ass iphone screens illuminating half the place... err, where was I).. oh and if you're unlucky you get the whole "you wouldn't steal a car" thing, though I haven't seen those lately. But, given all the above, you're quite welcome to come in late and budge your way through people to your designated seat if it's busy.
Now if you were willing to pay extra.. quite a bit extra.. I'm sure they'd love to remove the ads for you. I'm going to guess you, and most people, are in fact not willing to pay extra.
That said... theaters already give you a reason to go there rather than watch at home and rent; specifically one of the points the other poster mentioned.. namely seeing a movie early. You can't rent a movie early, and unless a screener was leaked, you're not going to get much of a piracy option for newly released movies either (unless you like wobblevision with bobbleheads in the bottom of the screen).
Beyond that, though, things get a lot more subjective. Do you like the general atmosphere of a theater? Do you like watching a movie with other people for their reactions (part of the atmosphere, one could argue)? Do you like the big screen (no, your 72" plasma really does not compare). Do you like the proper surround sound system that they can crank up without their neighbors complaining? Probably most of all.. do you like -going out-?
If your answer to most of those is really a 'no' or a 'meh'.. then theaters aren't for you to begin with and I think they'd probably have to pay you to get you in there:)
you'd have to figure out a way to suspend it inside your spaceship and travel along with your spaceship.. which would have to be spherical because different gravitational magnitudes being exerted on different parts of your body has got to be uncomfortable.
Even with it being spherical, your feet would get a noticeably larger gravitational force than your head.. blood circulation might become an issue. Somebody with too much time on their hands could probably work out the 'safe' minimal radius of the sphere surface you'd be walking on.
That works fine several days after the movie first comes out. Before then, you have to be early to get a better seat.
Well then that's the choice you make, isn't it?
- See the movie on or shortly after release day - Get a great seat - Skip the commercials Choose any two.
Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
There is, of course, another option... - Go see the pre-premiere - Get a great seat 'cos these are at impossible hours like 1am - Skip the commercials if you want - Deal with any technical issues that might arise due to it being the first audience screening outside of their regular test booth.
( And then there's the 'piracy' route - but that only works if the movie has in fact been released in any reasonable format. )
"We have also have received MORE than 20 000 SEK, (2000 EUR!) by now. This means we have covered more than 20 percent of the bank loan!! Thank you so much to all of you!"
So worst case scenario, they took out a EUR20,000 loan, or roughly $30,000.. which puts it in the realm of the Blair Witch Project (at least for principal shooting - google about for the nasty details of the numbers by the time they got that thing in a traditional release with any hope for the success it eventually achieved).
However.. it's -not- the Blair Witch Project.. and, as pointed out, they have -not- even recouped that $30,000 loan. Maybe eventually by the goodness of people visiting TPB or reading about it here and there, etc. they will. I certainly wish them good luck.
and will happily poke them past the shutters - even if they're the better type where you need to press both shutters (i.e. pressing to only one will not open them.. unless you force past).
.You usually see a chassis-mount IEC male connector and a cord-mount female connector, but the reverse forms are available.
Anybody who didn't know this should hand in their geek card - it's how computer monitors (the big ol' bulky CRT things) of lore used to get powered. Not via an extra plug that you have to find an extra outlet for (nowadays via wallwarts/converter bricks for 12V or 24V LCD panels), but via a male male IEC connector going straight into the computer chassis' female IEC connector - usually situated right next to the male IEC connector used to power the PC. The situation of "at no time are energized pins exposed" thus retained as well.
Slashdot Mirror
So essentially... you're quite welcome to make a 1-to-1 perfect copy, as long as you've got the hardware to do so. Which means either specialist hardware, hacked hardware, or some old-ass DVD drive that wasn't quite following the spec until the associations behind DVD smacked 'm around a little.
Similarly - I don't recall the right to make a copy stating that you have the right to make a 1-to-1 perfect copy; so there shouldn't be anything stopping the person from recording the display output stream.. either directly or by pointing a videocamera at the screen (which will happily defeat HDCP as well).
You're left with a less-than-perfect copy, but it's still a copy.
That's one of the arguments I would make if I were trying to defend the copyprotection crap, at least.
( I'm actually less bothered by copy protection than I am by region locking. I'm here waving good money at 20th century fox; but I can wave 10 times that and they still wouldn't release SAAB on region 2. Thanks to both drives not being region-unlockable, the lack of desire to get a stand-alone DVD player, and not being interested in fussing about with ripping tools that remove the region encoding 'on-the-fly' ('on the crawl' they mean), I had to get an el-cheapo external DVD drive and set that to region 1. I'm willing to bet that by doing -that- I'm still breaking some manner of law or agreement or whatever, though. F. )
And land yourself in real jail as you are effectively defrauding people. Thanks to the money involved, there's either a trail to follow, or if you meant actual cash, a person who's collecting it who can be arrested directly in a sting operation.
Are you referring to Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning? /nokarma
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472566/
( yes, it has an imdb entry )
Well there's mobile (netbook/notebook USB things) plans...
http://mobile.broadbandgenie.co.uk/3g-broadband
Neither of which seem to be 'so expensive' or have ridiculous limits. Granted, I haven't read the fineprint.
It might not be -cellphone- mobile, but it's certainly using the cellular networks.
I'd dig up a cellphone plan, but as in the U.S. and NL, finding details on plans on operators' sites is next-to-impossible. I'd imagine T-Mobile offers their web-and-walk plan in the UK as well, though.
Well you're the one deciding to share your connection. Shouldn't it then be your own responsibility to check just exactly -who- you're sharing the thing with?
If you decide to share your gun - which you only use for plinking - with some random stranger, they shoot somebody, and the ballistics end up matching a gun that's registered to you, you'd have some explaining to do, too.
While I agree with this, I can't help but put myself in the shoes of the other (Evil) side and see - in practice, in discussions on slashdot and even in newspapers - that the aforementioned is also being exploited as a defense.
"Your honor, the accused lives in a household with 3 other persons - his wife and his two children - any one of these could have performed this unauthorized sharing of copyrighted materials. The defense has not shown evidence which of these four individuals in fact performed this unauthorized sharing of copyrighted materials. Therefore, the defense moves for the accusation against the accused to be dropped."
Well gosh isn't that convenient. So next time I want to download something using a sharing client, all I'll have to do is go to a busy spot downtown, open up my connection and broadcast it to the world as, say, "FreeInternet", and hey presto.. I might be doing something illegal but good bloody luck proving that it was actually -me- and not one of the dozen people that were using my shared connection; They can't. Pirate-me wins.
If these issues were on a scale, then they're neither balanced, nor tipped over in either direction; the entire mechanism simply broke and both sides claim things in their favor where they shouldn't be able to.
I fully agree that you should accept to the terms of whatever constitutes the purchase - including the Windows EULA if you're getting a computer-with-Windows - *before* purchase. Hence why the EULA after booting the thing up seems rather redundant.
Hence the line of thought that if you're getting a computer-with-Windows then you've already indicated you want Windows.. probably even if the EULA said to sacrifice your first-born to Steve.
But even if you end up disagreeing with the EULA, I personally think you have two options...
1. Return the computer-with-Windows
2. Disagree with the Windows EULA, format, install something different.
That Microsoft even offer option.. ..is, quite frankly, bizarre.
3. Disagree with the EULA, go to the store for a refund on just that part
I can't think of any other coupled-product that lets you do this. To go with car analogies.. I can certainly nag the car dealership to remove the pioneer stereo from the car and subtract the cost from the total, but if they say "no can do", I can go take my business elsewhere. I wouldn't be able to buy the car-with-Pioneer stereo, then decide I don't much like the Pioneer stereo for whatever reason, and go back to the dealership saying "here's the radio, now gimme the money".
( the analogy mostly fails because the stereo will happily work without agreeing to an EULA, but you get the idea )
But your computer doesn't even do that. Your computer is already happily done starting by the time you hit that popup. Heck, drop in your favorite Ubuntu Live CD or UBCD(4Win) and you can use your computer just fine.
I find the Windows EULA popup a bit redundant but I guess that's because stores don't show it/have it easily available before you purchase the thing (even if you can readily look it up online). The reason I find it redundant is because you're purchasing a computer -with Windows-. By making that purchase you've already indicated you either want Windows (if you very strongly did NOT want Windows, you could've just gotten a Mac or an OS-less machine or a machine with Linux/whathaveyou pre-installed), OR that you want the machine and the fact that Windows is on it is not of particular importance at all (in which case, why come running for a refund on it? just format the drive and do whatever you want with the machine).
If nothing else, being able to get a refund (per MS's own writings) on that part of the configuration at all is.. odd.
Seriously - why is that worse?
It's commonplace with just about anything else you buy where, after the fact, you find something like a defect.
A hole in a pair of pants' pocket, for example. You never deal with the manufacturer of the pants, just the store.
The store in turn can either decide to give you *some* money back (to cover mending costs, say), give you the full amount back as long as you return the pants, or give you the option to exchange for a similar model (with the difference in price, if any, being resolved as appropriate).
So if you now buy some manner of computer that has Windows 7, you come home, boot the thing up, read the EULA, and decide you do not agree... you contact the store you got it from, tell them you do not accept the EULA, and either they will refund you the Windows bit (presumably you have to disable windows or they disable the key registered to that machine or however that works), or you'll just have to return the entire thing. Sounds fair to me.
Of course, the best part of your post is pointing out that the EULA -is- available before purchasing the machine. Perhaps stores should just point to that and let the user declare that they read that darn thing and agree to it -before- purchase. Problem solved (outside of the people who buy machines with Windows with the express purpose of tossing another OS on there and then raising a stink-a-la-"nobody actually reads it, they just declare they have to be able to continue with their purchase" anyway, of course).
Basically.. all of the reasons you want voting to be done anonymously apply here.
If you can couple the emissions at the location of the machine with the emissions from a particular user - say, their mobile phone's signature - then you can go back to forcing people to vote for X and make sure that they do, roughing them up as an example to the others you told to vote for X if you detected a vote for Y instead, without a need to plant something on them or leaving any trace.
In theory, anyway.
It's actually why I've got ThunderBird's RSS thing set to only ever show me the summaries, and I click on from there, instead of loading the full article. It's far easier for me to click through each item I'm interested in, opening them in FireFox, -then- going on to read them (each article is then already loaded), then it is for me to click one item, wait for it to display in ThunderBird, read it, click the next, wait again, etc.
The only real difference is that 'wait'.. and yes, it's only 2-4 seconds - but it's a very, very annoying wait. If I could make ThunderBird pre-download the full articles, I would.
( if there's an add-on that does this, feel free to drop a link.. I'll search the add-ons site later myself )
Define 'some sweat'?
Although I do find it peculiar that Apple's sensors are near the edges of the device, rather than somewhere near the middle, and I certainly wouldn't put it past them to have done this on purpose (they'll claim it's so they can check without even opening the thing.. which, of course, isn't as easy as most phones where you can just remove a few screws), I have to wonder just how much you're going to have to sweat to get it into your iPod/iPhone even just that far into the casing.
Do people stick them under their armpits or something?
There are little pouches and whatnot specifically for joggers (as well as a bunch of other accessories for the iPod for that group).. they might do well to actually purchase them.
Even if you're not getting sweat inside your iPod/iPhone, does the idea that they just sweated all over the outside not make them go a little.. I dunno.. "yuck"?
agreed.... honestly, Lenovo is going to replace a computer that was *pissed on*?
Are Lenovo insane or are you (the GP somewhere) just making stuff up?
I'm wondering why the measurement is with the equipment at all. 'The Internet' isn't so much the hardware it's being run on, is it?
Wouldn't do much good if that hardware wasn't moving bits and bytes around.
So perhaps the question should be... how much data traffic is there for 'the internet' and, by splitting that up into electrons and photons (presuming wireless signals have no mass), how much does that weigh.
I wonder if that could actually end up being an appreciable amount if measured over the course of seconds/minutes/hours/days/a week/a month/a year.
That's not nearly as f'ed up as you might think. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapheme-color_synesthesia
Ask enough people and I'm sure you can actually come to an appropriate answer to the question of just how red the number 7 is.
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1351751&cid=29242497
In summary: it's far easier to add Google (or other search engines) to IE, than it is to add Bing (or other search engines) to FF.
( Opera trumps both, but only if you're aware of the right-click-on-form-field deal - FF has this partially implemented as keywords, not as a form adding a new search engine in the search field drop-down )
First off... adding Google to IE is much easier than adding Bing to FF.
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1351751&cid=29242497
Cue the "yeah but who would want to add bing to ff anyway? lololol"
Second off... no, the express installation route leaves your current default search intact. In the odd situation that it doesn't detect your default search, it -is- presented *right in your face* what settings it will be applying.
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1351751&cid=29241927
Cue the "yeah, but people never read dialogs and just click next next next"
Now if you're saying that MS should make the default Google, even if the user's current default (from IE6/7) is, say, Yahoo... well I don't even know where to begin with -that- school of thought.
I thought the logging wasn't for the benefit of the users, but for the benefit of advertisers and other market dynamics interest groups?
I watched that a few days ago, and one of the concluding points was interesting.. the archbishop of Nigeria mentioned that the other side (Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens) failed to show that the Catholic church is -not- a force for good in the world.
And he's right.. the two gentlemen merely showed that members of that church have done wrong - in the distant past, the recent past, and in current times (yea olde pope thinking condoms are evil and all that) - and are not a force for good in the world. But they have not shown that the Catholic church, as an institution, is not a force for good in the world.
Of course, therein also lies the catch... you -can't- prove that the Catholic church as an institution is not a force for good in the world if all of its mistakes can be written off as the wrongdoings of its members. And therein lies also the rebuttal.. if only its members can do wrong, then only its members can do good.
"Is the Catholic church a force for good in the world?", then, is a question that simply has no answer.
The question should have been about specific elements within the Catholic church, or its constituency as a whole, and not whether they're good or not, but whether they're good or evil ('not good' could, after all, mean that they're just.. not good.. not evil, but not good either).
Stephen and Christopher do answer -that- question, just as the other side argues for their take on that question, and it is worth watching. Although it is entirely too short, the audience's questions are glossed over (in part due to the time constraints - and it should be said that the audience sure knows how to make their question long-winded, by thanking the speakers, telling them their personal stories, blabla) and it's certainly not meant to be an in-depth debate. Unfortunate.
Oddly enough, in NL, for various theaters..
- You can buy your tickets online (actually, you have to print a barcode and collect from a machine/the cashier.. usually no rows at the machines, so that's okay. They're still working on accepting a barcode off of e.g. a mobile phone using a camera system rather than the laser scanner.)
- You can reserve specific seats, and even make sure seats are next to eachother if you are going with a/multiple friend(s)
- You do pay less by buying online (though it's a just a smidgen less)
The fourth item is the one where you're going to have to concede on things...
- You still get ads. You still get 5 trailers. You still get the theater animations. You still get the "turn your phone off.. OFF, I SAID! NOT SILENT! OFF!!!!!!" (actually they don't say the last part, but I wish they would... stupid people and their bright-ass iphone screens illuminating half the place... err, where was I).. oh and if you're unlucky you get the whole "you wouldn't steal a car" thing, though I haven't seen those lately.
But, given all the above, you're quite welcome to come in late and budge your way through people to your designated seat if it's busy.
Now if you were willing to pay extra.. quite a bit extra.. I'm sure they'd love to remove the ads for you. I'm going to guess you, and most people, are in fact not willing to pay extra.
That said... theaters already give you a reason to go there rather than watch at home and rent; specifically one of the points the other poster mentioned.. namely seeing a movie early. You can't rent a movie early, and unless a screener was leaked, you're not going to get much of a piracy option for newly released movies either (unless you like wobblevision with bobbleheads in the bottom of the screen).
Beyond that, though, things get a lot more subjective. Do you like the general atmosphere of a theater? Do you like watching a movie with other people for their reactions (part of the atmosphere, one could argue)? Do you like the big screen (no, your 72" plasma really does not compare). Do you like the proper surround sound system that they can crank up without their neighbors complaining? Probably most of all.. do you like -going out-?
If your answer to most of those is really a 'no' or a 'meh'.. then theaters aren't for you to begin with and I think they'd probably have to pay you to get you in there :)
Neither am I - but one thing is for sure.. they would ban the spork.
you'd have to figure out a way to suspend it inside your spaceship and travel along with your spaceship.. which would have to be spherical because different gravitational magnitudes being exerted on different parts of your body has got to be uncomfortable.
Even with it being spherical, your feet would get a noticeably larger gravitational force than your head.. blood circulation might become an issue. Somebody with too much time on their hands could probably work out the 'safe' minimal radius of the sphere surface you'd be walking on.
Well then that's the choice you make, isn't it?
- See the movie on or shortly after release day
- Get a great seat
- Skip the commercials
Choose any two.
Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
There is, of course, another option...
- Go see the pre-premiere
- Get a great seat 'cos these are at impossible hours like 1am
- Skip the commercials if you want
- Deal with any technical issues that might arise due to it being the first audience screening outside of their regular test booth.
( And then there's the 'piracy' route - but that only works if the movie has in fact been released in any reasonable format. )
Perhaps more tellingly, is this statement...
"We have also have received MORE than 20 000 SEK, (2000 EUR!) by now. This means we have covered more than 20 percent of the bank loan!! Thank you so much to all of you!"
So worst case scenario, they took out a EUR20,000 loan, or roughly $30,000.. which puts it in the realm of the Blair Witch Project (at least for principal shooting - google about for the nasty details of the numbers by the time they got that thing in a traditional release with any hope for the success it eventually achieved).
However.. it's -not- the Blair Witch Project.. and, as pointed out, they have -not- even recouped that $30,000 loan. Maybe eventually by the goodness of people visiting TPB or reading about it here and there, etc. they will. I certainly wish them good luck.
and will happily poke them past the shutters - even if they're the better type where you need to press both shutters (i.e. pressing to only one will not open them.. unless you force past).
I thin I much prefer the combination of shutter and twist that you can stick in front of any EU socket:
http://www.prenatal.nl/RepositoryItems/veilig-stopcontact.jpg
That motion is a lot more tricky even for toddler. Beyond that, I'd imagine education ought to take over.
Anybody who didn't know this should hand in their geek card - it's how computer monitors (the big ol' bulky CRT things) of lore used to get powered. Not via an extra plug that you have to find an extra outlet for (nowadays via wallwarts/converter bricks for 12V or 24V LCD panels), but via a male male IEC connector going straight into the computer chassis' female IEC connector - usually situated right next to the male IEC connector used to power the PC. The situation of "at no time are energized pins exposed" thus retained as well.