Unless I'm mistaken all FCC complaint filings are available to the public, with name and address of the filer.
It would be interesting to interview each of these people, and get answers to the following questions:
1. What percentage of them actually pay attention to what their children watch and actively keep their kids from watching "bad" shows.
2. What percentage of them own TVs that include a V-Chip.
3. What percentage of those whose TVs have a V-Chip are actually making use of it. (!!!)
It would be a pretty sad statistic if, say, 60% of parents who have filed complaints say stuff like "I don't have time to monitor what my kids watch on the babysitter, uhh, I mean, the television!"
Far more damning would be the revelation that many parents filing complaints have V-Chips in their televisions and have never bothered activating and configuring them. Oh yes, that would be too much work, but when they walk by and see Fear Factor on TV and their jaw drops, they passionately write the FCC via the PTC's website.
Seriously, all this complaining about indecency aside, the V-Chip *IS* actually a pretty effective solution, as is the TV ratings system. Really the only problem I see is that some shows really push the boundaries of their ratings, but I rarely see FCC filings complaining simply about shows going beyond their ratings.
The problem is, many of these people writing in are simply outraged that everyone else's kids are watching this "smut," they want to usurp the authority of all the other parents out there, perhaps so that their kid doesn't grow up in a world where everyone around him is a whole lot smuttier than he/she is. A sympathetic but ultimately illegitimate and immoral goal.
You know, before I go asking that my local police department do a better job protecting the streets, I do other, more basic, security checks, like CLOSING AND LOCKING MY DOORS (firewall, antivirus, password protection), and I exercise COMMON SENSE and CAUTION in who I give the access code for my garage door or home alarm system to (phishing, social hacking).
Who DDOS'ed you America? Why, it was your fellow Americans who want the freedom of having an open line of communication with the rest of the world but don't want to be burdened by any sense of responsibility for what their own computer sends out over that communication line.
Before you ask the governemt to waste our time and money "securing the Internet," and sacrifice freedoms that you obviously are too irresponsible to use prudently, a better starting point would be securing your own damn computer.
I don't ask that every person become a security guru, but it seems like wreckless, complete and total irresponsibility has become the status quo. Your computer is connected to the entire world, every country on the map. Why can't people be convinced to CARE, to even MAKE AN EFFORT to secure their own computers?
I didn't read TFA, but this sounds dumb. If you're going to drive drunk, you're usually not too concerned with questions like "am I too drunk to drive?" or "am I legally intoxicated?" So in that respect it offers no assistance to drunk drivers or their parents.
And as a method of actually preventing the driver from using the car, that's not gonna happen. All it takes is a pair of gloves. Worse yet, it may actually backfire, when the drunken individual tries to circumvent this system, leading to an even MORE dangerous situation. Like say they use their shirt or jacket to hold the steering wheel, which of course is going to further degrade their driving skills.
Finding a way to prevent drunk drivers from driving their cars is a good and important idea, and it's good that someone's trying to make something like this. Ultimately this idea doesn't seem effective though. Maybe it will motivate someone else to come up with something though.
Well...gamers do seem to have shorter attention spans and desire instant gratification, so maybe this is simply an issue that the children in Set B needed to be more persistently provoked before getting violent.
That may sound like a good thing, but quite frankly if x% of the population could be feasibly motivated to commit murder, and is simply MORE EASILY motivated as a result of video games, doesn't this suggest a more basic problem that should be addressed?
Then again, it is the natural tendency of humans to desire violence/murder against those they dislike or are made to compete with. What we try to do here, in our "civilizations," trying to convince everyone that it's in all our best interest not to kill or commit violent acts, this is a somewhat unnatural, artificial thing.
Unnatural, at least for the animalistic side of humans. I suppose the rational part of us would agree that it's worth promising not to commit murder or violent acts in exchange for the security of knowing such acts will not be committed against you.
The author of TFA makes some good points, even if he does insult the vast majority of us in the process.
When Mom buys a new PC for her 12-year old son, or for herself, in their minds they are buying a consumer product. They have certain *expectations* of what it will allow them to do, and they have certain *expectations* that they can treat it the same as they would any other product they buy from The Big Retail Store.
It's certainly true that consumers are generally irresponsible with how they use and maintain their PCs. But the blame for that belongs more with the companies that are so heavily marketing the computers to them, selling them that new HP Pavillion the same way they'd sell them a new TV.
Consumers, and also, I'd say, many small businesses, have no understanding of the total cost of ownership for their computers. As someone else pointed out, a computer illiterate person or business that breaks enough things in their Windows installation will quickly find the cost of "repair" exceeding the price of the original computer.
This, too, isn't so much the consumer or business' fault as it is the people selling these machines.
Many posters have commented that consumers know to factor in costs of maintenance/repair when buying a car, dishwasher, etc, "so why don't they do it with computers?" The answer is, they do! The PROBLEM is, when Joe Consumer asks Joe Salesmen "what do I do if I need support," the answer they get is that Dell/HP/Compaq/Emachines provide unlimited, free technical support.
They never mention that technical support will likely be of little or no help. But Joe Consumer *was* smart enough to consider the question of support, it's just that they were misled into thinking they had nothing to worry about.
There is, of course, the separate problem of the "unqualified amateurs." But the problem is this: if YOU YOURSELF are not computer savvy, you're most definitely not in a position to determine if Kid Down The Street or Joe Consultant or Joe Job Applicant is computer savvy. So, yeah, you have no idea whether the person you're paying to fix your computer is "qualified" or not, and there's really not much way to determine this short of having them talk with a "trusted" computer person.
This especially applies to pre-Generation X'ers. How many times have you heard some kid's mom rave about how their son is so good with computers or how she's encouraging them to major in computer science, etc, etc, simply because she sees him playing computer games all the time and this looks like such a complicated and foreign world to her?
We never lost out privacy, some idiot just misread it and this most recent change is in an attempt to make it "idiot-proof" for the future.
Wrong. The language of the original legal disclaimer effectively gives AOL access and ownership of all IM communications. Your comment seems to suggest that only an "idiot" would believe that AOL logs, or would one day log, IM communications, which is a naiive point of view. Or to put that another way, you are suggesting that "only an idiot would believe that Company X would actually do what Company X's contract says it's allowed to do."
If you want to trust the ethical integrity of a giant corporation, go for it. For the rest of us, we find it more assuring to know that said giant corporation is legally disallowed from doing something completely unethical, rather than leaving it at "we'll give you the rights to do something completely unethical, but we know you'd never actually do it." Why should we be sympathetic of their legal department's desire to keep their options open?
Also -- and I'm not really sure how this works from a legality standpoint -- if AOL's contract allows them to access and take ownersihp of IM communications, that might make it more likely that law enforcement or courts could require AOL to monitor specific IM communications. And if AOL logs or ever starts logging all IM communcations (which, as another poster pointed out, would not be an especially costly endeavor), courts and law enforcement might be able to request chat logs from AOL at some time in the future. Whether or not AOL's privacy policies affect the feasibility of such activities, though, I'm not sure about.
That said, DRM is a grey area and the lobbying propaganda usually tries to argue that it's only intended to stop illegal copying, which would fall within the legitimate realm of a copy right. However, we all know that is not the case; DRM usually expands far beyond that exclusive realm, and tries to control what devices you can play things on, where you can play them, when you can play them, etc.
I agree with the non-quoted part of your post, but it's important to remember that the fact that DRM does such "excessive" things as controlling what devices you can play the content on, etc, etc, is a sore point for consumers, but not at all a legally problematic area.
The record studio has every right to sell me "The Eminem Show (DRM included!), playable only Microsoft XBox systems, self-destructs after 3 playbacks." Other than making sure the buyer is not misled and understands that the description I just gave is what they're buying, there's nothing legally wrong with this.
Similarly, they can also sell me a pre-microwaved CD, permanently sealed in titanium or some other metal (hehe, "gone platinum").
>> Hence, the advice not to eat too much is sound, if your objective is not too become fat.
It's NOT sound, because when you tell people to "eat less" they do things like skip meals, starve themselves, eat far less food than they need to sustain themselves (even if they don't feel hungry), cut out entirely certain dietary categories (fats, carbs, sugar, whatever the diet craze they're following says is bad)...
The result of which is that these people's bodies break down in various ways as they try to adapt to function on less food. That means burning muscle fibers for energy (BAD!), shutting down various bodily processes, (in cases where they do burn fat) breaking down fat deposits as a last resort method (NOT the time when you want to be burning fat), etc. These people also can get very sick from lack of proper nourishment. They also can get depressed, both because of circumstances, and because their bodies are so out of whack.
People need to eat more intelligiently. They need to eat in accordance with the body their particular body, and with what their body is doing. The absolute WORST thing you can do is not eat when you're hungry (on empty), and this is what many people do. A good diet might be eating 5 or 6 well-planned meals a day, not seeing if you can make it through the day skipping breakfast, haivng a piece of bread for lunch, and gorging yourself at dinnertime.
Exactly. (this was in part what I was trying to say but was a little too roundabout in saying it). People gain weight (in fat) when they're consuming more food at a given time than their bodies are making use of. How much fuel (food) your body uses at a given time depends on things like how much muscle you have, your lean body mass, what you're DOING physically, genetics, whether you're sick, etc, etc. In sum, your metabolism (which can fluctuate).
So, as others have said, one person's diet of eating an obscene amount of food, may actually be exactly what their bodies need to maintain their current composition (muscle mass, fat content). That same diet could turn someone else into a Gilbert Grape, though. Telling people to "eat less" is not only ambiguous but plain wrong. You have to eat according to your body and your level of activity. Another example are people with bodybuilder-type bodies. They have to eat TONS of food just to keep from losing the muscle they already HAVE.
"Eating less" often means essentially starving your body of fuel, letting it run on or close to empty. People trying to "eat less" to lose weight often skip meals and eat TINY quantities of food (like a couple leafs of lettuce!) hoping to lose weight. This is NOT the way to lose weight, all you're doing is trashing your body.
>> Sleeping less means more time available for eating!
There is VERY VERY little correlation between eating more food and being more obese because of it. Weight gain has more to do with what you eat, when you eat it, the relationship between what/when you eat and what you do or don't do physically during the day, as well as a host of other factors including stress, body chemistry, genetics, age, metabolism, medications, etc, etc.
There MAY be a correlation between how much sleep a person gets (and when/how they get it, quality of sleep, etc) and their tendency to be obese, but it is not likely to be because they're spending that extra 1.8 hours EATING! (though the absurdity of that theory is quite amusing)
Since you say you're knowledgeable about sleep, though, perhaps you can shed some light on the following question, which I'm quite curious about:Since we can't realistically consume enough food to last us for the 7-8 hours we're asleep, that means (I think) our bodies are running on a deficit of food-based energy while we're asleep. Of course this is when our bodies start taking energy from other places, like our muscles, etc...
So, given that, would we be better off on a 4 hours asleep, 8 hours up, 4 hours asleep, 8 hours up schedule (so that we could eat between sleeping cycles), instead of the "normal" 8 hours asleep, 16 hours up schedule?
After seeing Cat woman, I'm scared to even bother looking at this! Man ohh man was that Cat woman film ever bad! How... how on earth did they forget to add a plot?
Interestingly, Batman Begins will be good for the same reason Catwoman was an atrocity: WB took a hands-off approach and let "Pitof" (the French director of Catwoman) do the movie just as he wanted to.
Similarly, when Batman Begins comes out, it will be the vision of Christopher Nolan and David Goyer, without WB's traditional meddling. And trust me, it's quite a vision.
The pessism about a new Batman film is understandable, given how bad the first four films were (many feel Burton's films were good but I'm not one of them). But you have to keep in mind that you're unfairly judging this new film by your opinions on films that are by completely different people. You're drawing premature conclusions about the work of one artist based on the work of other, unrelated artists.
I suppose that some of you just aren't going to believe in this film until you see it for yourself next summer, but I urge you to keep an open mind. If you thought Spiderman 2 was good (or didn't)...this film is going to blow it out of the water.
>> I have heard they will, once again, mistakenly >> have 2 villians.
Quoth writer David Goyer from the San Diego Comic-Con last weekend:
Goyer: I know some people were concerned...Oh My God, they are going to do two villains, but we wouldn't have done it if it didn't fit in an organic way. Chris is a real task master and a perfectionist and when you are working with him, and Cillian can attest to this, he is hyper-cricital about everything has to make sense and everything has to be motivated. He won't even use a line the audience would love, even if doesn't make sense, if it is just there as sort of an easter egg for the audience he won't do it, so he holds everything up to a very high criteria and fortunately we were able to come up with a story that made perfect and total sense why there were two of them and why they were interwoven in the story and it was very organic.
It surprises me that there aren't many comments in my +4 threshold from those who have been closely (or...obsessively) following this film. A lot of the pessimistic comments users have posted reflect concerns about things that are already known to be untrue (for example, the suit is not stiff, inflexible rubber like in the past four films).
Here's my sincere attempt to provide some better information to this thread.
This *teaser* trailer is primarily intended to give the mainstream audience a heads-up that this film is coming (next summer), and that it's going to be not only nothing like any Batman film that's been made before, but that it's not even going to feel like a comic book movie.
Christopher Nolan (cowriter and Director of "Memento" and "Insomnia") is the helmer of this film. In a remarkable move, WB gave him carte blanche control of the film and has been adamant about not getting in his way (a remarkable feat for WB). The script is co-written by Nolan and David Goyer. Goyer has written for Batman comics in the past, and is as familiar with DC comics as any obsessed fan.
The script harkens to Frank Miller's "Year One" comic, as well as some aspects of "Dark Knight Returns." But the story told in this film is highly original and inspired, and actually tells a story that even the comics have never really told: It's the story of how Bruce Wayne trained himself to become the Batman, how he travelled the world, learning from every martial arts master he could, etc. It's the story of his constant struggle avenge the murder of his parents.
The "villains" of the film are Ra's Al Ghul (one of Batman's "ultimate" enemies...google him if you don't know who he is) and the Scarecrow. But rest assured, these villains play critical and organic roles in the film. They're not here because WB "every Batman film since Batman Returns has two villains in it"...it's just coincidence.
The cast is a filled with REAL actors who were all hand-picked by Nolan (as opposed to by WB). Nolan's got a good reputation for having a strong eye for casting. Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Michael Caine as Alfred, Morgan Freeman as Lucious Fox (head of Wayne Enterprises), Liam Neeson as Ducard (a central character who I will bite my tongue and say nothing further of), and Ken Watanabe as Ra's Al Ghul (Ken Watanabe was Katsumoto in "The Last Samurai," his first English-speaking role, and one which earned him an Oscar nomination). Rounding out the cast, Gary Oldman is Lieutenant James Gordon (who has a central role, unlike the previous four films), Cillian Murphy as Dr. Jonathan Crane AKA the Scarecrow (Murphy is best known for his role in "28 Days Later"), Katie Holmes as Assistant DA Rachel (I forget the character's last name).
All in all, a solid cast of solid actors. No George Clooneys or Arnold Schwarzaneggers in here.
Those who are fans of the music and cinematography of Nolan's previous entries ("Memento" and "Insomnia") will be happy to know that Nolan brought with him his core crew members from those films, composer David Julyan, and director of photography Wally Pfister. The look of the film, as glimpsed in the teaser trailer, is, much like "Insomnia," raw and bleak. Nolan, a naturalistic director, is not a fan of CGI effects, so don't expect much of that.
Nolan's focus is on realism. This film is going to be highly grounded in realism, so much so that it will not at all feel like a comic book movie. Which makes sense: Batman is "cool" in large part because it's not a far stretch to imagine him existing in a real world. Nolan's film will bring that point home.
The film is largely about the psychodrama of Bruce Wayne. In fact, don't expect to see much of Batman in the film until late in the game. This isn't an action-oriented movie. And unlike the four films preceding it (which, obviously, are not in continuity with this film), Bruce/Batman is the center of the film, not the villains.
The style of the teaser trailer, and the fact that you don't ev
> This is why do-not-call lists could actually be good for telemarketers.
I don't think this is necessarily true. Many of the people who end up buying things from telemarketers aren't necessarily people who like getting phone solicitations, they're just people who have been coerced into buying something or don't hate telemarketers to the extent that they would never buy something from one purely on principle.
Most people would say "yes" if you ask them "Would you like to stop receiving calls from telemarketers?" However, that doesn't mean they wouldn't necessarily buy something from one. The DMA doesn't want a Do-Not-Call list because it has the potential to limit their audience to only those people who _like_ getting telemarketer calls, and that's a smaller audience than the people who are likely to buy things from one.
I don't know how well people remember the plot of the RoboCop films, but, for those who don't, a significant element of the plot is that OCP (the mega-corporation) eventually ends up privately running the city of Detroit's police department.
Their eventual goal, by the way, is privatization of the city itself ("Delta City").
IANAL, but my father is, and one thing I frequently see him doing is research to find past cases similar to the one he's handling.
For situations that are relatively unique (such as this one), often you can find a similar case that helps validate your position. There are a few big legal research sites (like lexisnexis.com, etc.), though I don't know if there are any that you can use without paying for them. (I also am not too familiar with the amount of legal knowledge necessary to make productive use of these sites).
This may or may not be useful to do right now, but I'd imagine if you end up being sued, precedent-establishing cases from the past can be very useful and perhaps persuasive.
The suggestion made by others to send the CEO a letter *politely* explaining the circumstances seems like a good idea. The suggestion about sending the CEO a forged e-mail to prove the unreliability of the "from:" header is, in my opinion (IANAL), not something you should do. It's a clever idea and may prove your point, but you might be opening up an even bigger can of worms if you do that. While it's obviously not all that malicious, the CEO might equate such an approach to proving that a computer's security system is inadequate by breaking into it. Even if you break in "just to show that the system is insecure" and don't do anything malicious, you're still going to anger people (especially if you can't prove that you didn't do anything malicious). If you do happen to do this, be as tactful and un-assuming as possible in the actual message. I think there is a certain degree of automatic offensiveness to this tactic (from the CEO's viewpoint), though, and this is why I don't think it's a good idea. Also, of course, remember that whatever you send them might be used against you later on.
One more suggestion I think is worth mentioning is that you should try to obtain a copy of the e-mail message (or at least the header) if you don't already have it. I don't know whethr this would be easy or difficult to accomplish, but this would be good to have.
(Slightly O/T)
Has anyone else noticed that in the past year or so telemarketers have started leaving messages on answering machines? This seems to be an increasing trend. For instance, today I came home to find a 75-second solicitation for a trip to Disyneyland (apparently it's their 100th anniversary, according to the message) on the anwering machines for both lines in my house. Now, granted, this may not be a huge problem for most people, but I've actually had a number of occasions where my answering machine has filled up with telemarketer messages and caused me to miss "real" messages as a result.
In my situation, and that of others who have similar problems, should I not be able to argue that the inconvenience of telemarketers (or at least their recent practice of leaving messages)is not "insignificant"? If I have a relatively limited amount of recording space on my digital answering machines and I'm getting numerous 60+ second advertisements every day, I think this is quite unfair, and a good example of the not-so-insignificant problems telemarketing perpetuates.
Keep in mind that you can't record anything over 4 GB on a FAT32 partition (since the maximum file size in a FAT32 filesystem is 4 GB). You'll need to use an NTFS partition to do captures over 4 GB. The Hauppauge drivers used to automatically break up large captures into 4 GB pieces (which were somewhat unusable because it didn't write the MPEG headers on subsequent parts, meaning only the Hauppauge WinTV application could play them back).
Incidentally, if you *are* using an NTFS partition for captures, there was at one point a bug in their drivers that would cause it to cut off after 4 GB even on NTFS partitions. They've since fixed it, but you might want to make sure you have the latest version of the WinTV application itself (as opposed to the drivers, which you said you already have downloaded the latest drivers for).
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Unless I'm mistaken all FCC complaint filings are available to the public, with name and address of the filer.
It would be interesting to interview each of these people, and get answers to the following questions:
1. What percentage of them actually pay attention to what their children watch and actively keep their kids from watching "bad" shows.
2. What percentage of them own TVs that include a V-Chip.
3. What percentage of those whose TVs have a V-Chip are actually making use of it. (!!!)
It would be a pretty sad statistic if, say, 60% of parents who have filed complaints say stuff like "I don't have time to monitor what my kids watch on the babysitter, uhh, I mean, the television!"
Far more damning would be the revelation that many parents filing complaints have V-Chips in their televisions and have never bothered activating and configuring them. Oh yes, that would be too much work, but when they walk by and see Fear Factor on TV and their jaw drops, they passionately write the FCC via the PTC's website.
Seriously, all this complaining about indecency aside, the V-Chip *IS* actually a pretty effective solution, as is the TV ratings system. Really the only problem I see is that some shows really push the boundaries of their ratings, but I rarely see FCC filings complaining simply about shows going beyond their ratings.
The problem is, many of these people writing in are simply outraged that everyone else's kids are watching this "smut," they want to usurp the authority of all the other parents out there, perhaps so that their kid doesn't grow up in a world where everyone around him is a whole lot smuttier than he/she is. A sympathetic but ultimately illegitimate and immoral goal.
What's this? The computer built for Homer?
You know, before I go asking that my local police department do a better job protecting the streets, I do other, more basic, security checks, like CLOSING AND LOCKING MY DOORS (firewall, antivirus, password protection), and I exercise COMMON SENSE and CAUTION in who I give the access code for my garage door or home alarm system to (phishing, social hacking).
Who DDOS'ed you America? Why, it was your fellow Americans who want the freedom of having an open line of communication with the rest of the world but don't want to be burdened by any sense of responsibility for what their own computer sends out over that communication line.
Before you ask the governemt to waste our time and money "securing the Internet," and sacrifice freedoms that you obviously are too irresponsible to use prudently, a better starting point would be securing your own damn computer.
I don't ask that every person become a security guru, but it seems like wreckless, complete and total irresponsibility has become the status quo. Your computer is connected to the entire world, every country on the map. Why can't people be convinced to CARE, to even MAKE AN EFFORT to secure their own computers?
come on guys, it's a little late for an April fools joke.
I didn't read TFA, but this sounds dumb. If you're going to drive drunk, you're usually not too concerned with questions like "am I too drunk to drive?" or "am I legally intoxicated?" So in that respect it offers no assistance to drunk drivers or their parents.
And as a method of actually preventing the driver from using the car, that's not gonna happen. All it takes is a pair of gloves. Worse yet, it may actually backfire, when the drunken individual tries to circumvent this system, leading to an even MORE dangerous situation. Like say they use their shirt or jacket to hold the steering wheel, which of course is going to further degrade their driving skills.
Finding a way to prevent drunk drivers from driving their cars is a good and important idea, and it's good that someone's trying to make something like this. Ultimately this idea doesn't seem effective though. Maybe it will motivate someone else to come up with something though.
I guess the question would be how far up do you consider U.S. airspace.
I think it's fair to say U.S. airspace ends at such altitude where there's no longer any AIR in the space.
Well...gamers do seem to have shorter attention spans and desire instant gratification, so maybe this is simply an issue that the children in Set B needed to be more persistently provoked before getting violent.
That may sound like a good thing, but quite frankly if x% of the population could be feasibly motivated to commit murder, and is simply MORE EASILY motivated as a result of video games, doesn't this suggest a more basic problem that should be addressed?
Then again, it is the natural tendency of humans to desire violence/murder against those they dislike or are made to compete with. What we try to do here, in our "civilizations," trying to convince everyone that it's in all our best interest not to kill or commit violent acts, this is a somewhat unnatural, artificial thing.
Unnatural, at least for the animalistic side of humans. I suppose the rational part of us would agree that it's worth promising not to commit murder or violent acts in exchange for the security of knowing such acts will not be committed against you.
The author of TFA makes some good points, even if he does insult the vast majority of us in the process.
When Mom buys a new PC for her 12-year old son, or for herself, in their minds they are buying a consumer product. They have certain *expectations* of what it will allow them to do, and they have certain *expectations* that they can treat it the same as they would any other product they buy from The Big Retail Store.
It's certainly true that consumers are generally irresponsible with how they use and maintain their PCs. But the blame for that belongs more with the companies that are so heavily marketing the computers to them, selling them that new HP Pavillion the same way they'd sell them a new TV.
Consumers, and also, I'd say, many small businesses, have no understanding of the total cost of ownership for their computers. As someone else pointed out, a computer illiterate person or business that breaks enough things in their Windows installation will quickly find the cost of "repair" exceeding the price of the original computer.
This, too, isn't so much the consumer or business' fault as it is the people selling these machines.
Many posters have commented that consumers know to factor in costs of maintenance/repair when buying a car, dishwasher, etc, "so why don't they do it with computers?" The answer is, they do! The PROBLEM is, when Joe Consumer asks Joe Salesmen "what do I do if I need support," the answer they get is that Dell/HP/Compaq/Emachines provide unlimited, free technical support.
They never mention that technical support will likely be of little or no help. But Joe Consumer *was* smart enough to consider the question of support, it's just that they were misled into thinking they had nothing to worry about.
There is, of course, the separate problem of the "unqualified amateurs." But the problem is this: if YOU YOURSELF are not computer savvy, you're most definitely not in a position to determine if Kid Down The Street or Joe Consultant or Joe Job Applicant is computer savvy. So, yeah, you have no idea whether the person you're paying to fix your computer is "qualified" or not, and there's really not much way to determine this short of having them talk with a "trusted" computer person.
This especially applies to pre-Generation X'ers. How many times have you heard some kid's mom rave about how their son is so good with computers or how she's encouraging them to major in computer science, etc, etc, simply because she sees him playing computer games all the time and this looks like such a complicated and foreign world to her?
We never lost out privacy, some idiot just misread it and this most recent change is in an attempt to make it "idiot-proof" for the future.
Wrong. The language of the original legal disclaimer effectively gives AOL access and ownership of all IM communications. Your comment seems to suggest that only an "idiot" would believe that AOL logs, or would one day log, IM communications, which is a naiive point of view. Or to put that another way, you are suggesting that "only an idiot would believe that Company X would actually do what Company X's contract says it's allowed to do."
If you want to trust the ethical integrity of a giant corporation, go for it. For the rest of us, we find it more assuring to know that said giant corporation is legally disallowed from doing something completely unethical, rather than leaving it at "we'll give you the rights to do something completely unethical, but we know you'd never actually do it." Why should we be sympathetic of their legal department's desire to keep their options open?
Also -- and I'm not really sure how this works from a legality standpoint -- if AOL's contract allows them to access and take ownersihp of IM communications, that might make it more likely that law enforcement or courts could require AOL to monitor specific IM communications. And if AOL logs or ever starts logging all IM communcations (which, as another poster pointed out, would not be an especially costly endeavor), courts and law enforcement might be able to request chat logs from AOL at some time in the future. Whether or not AOL's privacy policies affect the feasibility of such activities, though, I'm not sure about.
That said, DRM is a grey area and the lobbying propaganda usually tries to argue that it's only intended to stop illegal copying, which would fall within the legitimate realm of a copy right. However, we all know that is not the case; DRM usually expands far beyond that exclusive realm, and tries to control what devices you can play things on, where you can play them, when you can play them, etc.
I agree with the non-quoted part of your post, but it's important to remember that the fact that DRM does such "excessive" things as controlling what devices you can play the content on, etc, etc, is a sore point for consumers, but not at all a legally problematic area.
The record studio has every right to sell me "The Eminem Show (DRM included!), playable only Microsoft XBox systems, self-destructs after 3 playbacks." Other than making sure the buyer is not misled and understands that the description I just gave is what they're buying, there's nothing legally wrong with this.
Similarly, they can also sell me a pre-microwaved CD, permanently sealed in titanium or some other metal (hehe, "gone platinum").
>> Hence, the advice not to eat too much is sound, if your objective is not too become fat.
It's NOT sound, because when you tell people to "eat less" they do things like skip meals, starve themselves, eat far less food than they need to sustain themselves (even if they don't feel hungry), cut out entirely certain dietary categories (fats, carbs, sugar, whatever the diet craze they're following says is bad)...
The result of which is that these people's bodies break down in various ways as they try to adapt to function on less food. That means burning muscle fibers for energy (BAD!), shutting down various bodily processes, (in cases where they do burn fat) breaking down fat deposits as a last resort method (NOT the time when you want to be burning fat), etc. These people also can get very sick from lack of proper nourishment. They also can get depressed, both because of circumstances, and because their bodies are so out of whack.
People need to eat more intelligiently. They need to eat in accordance with the body their particular body, and with what their body is doing. The absolute WORST thing you can do is not eat when you're hungry (on empty), and this is what many people do. A good diet might be eating 5 or 6 well-planned meals a day, not seeing if you can make it through the day skipping breakfast, haivng a piece of bread for lunch, and gorging yourself at dinnertime.
Exactly. (this was in part what I was trying to say but was a little too roundabout in saying it). People gain weight (in fat) when they're consuming more food at a given time than their bodies are making use of. How much fuel (food) your body uses at a given time depends on things like how much muscle you have, your lean body mass, what you're DOING physically, genetics, whether you're sick, etc, etc. In sum, your metabolism (which can fluctuate).
So, as others have said, one person's diet of eating an obscene amount of food, may actually be exactly what their bodies need to maintain their current composition (muscle mass, fat content). That same diet could turn someone else into a Gilbert Grape, though. Telling people to "eat less" is not only ambiguous but plain wrong. You have to eat according to your body and your level of activity. Another example are people with bodybuilder-type bodies. They have to eat TONS of food just to keep from losing the muscle they already HAVE.
"Eating less" often means essentially starving your body of fuel, letting it run on or close to empty. People trying to "eat less" to lose weight often skip meals and eat TINY quantities of food (like a couple leafs of lettuce!) hoping to lose weight. This is NOT the way to lose weight, all you're doing is trashing your body.
>> Sleeping less means more time available for eating!
There is VERY VERY little correlation between eating more food and being more obese because of it. Weight gain has more to do with what you eat, when you eat it, the relationship between what/when you eat and what you do or don't do physically during the day, as well as a host of other factors including stress, body chemistry, genetics, age, metabolism, medications, etc, etc.
There MAY be a correlation between how much sleep a person gets (and when/how they get it, quality of sleep, etc) and their tendency to be obese, but it is not likely to be because they're spending that extra 1.8 hours EATING! (though the absurdity of that theory is quite amusing)
Since you say you're knowledgeable about sleep, though, perhaps you can shed some light on the following question, which I'm quite curious about:Since we can't realistically consume enough food to last us for the 7-8 hours we're asleep, that means (I think) our bodies are running on a deficit of food-based energy while we're asleep. Of course this is when our bodies start taking energy from other places, like our muscles, etc...
So, given that, would we be better off on a 4 hours asleep, 8 hours up, 4 hours asleep, 8 hours up schedule (so that we could eat between sleeping cycles), instead of the "normal" 8 hours asleep, 16 hours up schedule?
How many of us actually TRUST everyone on our buddy lists? Hell, I keep my enemies on my buddy list.
Also, this proposal doesn't answer that lingering question of what happens when a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend is an RIAA employee.
After seeing Cat woman, I'm scared to even bother looking at this! Man ohh man was that Cat woman film ever bad! How ... how on earth did they forget to add a plot?
Interestingly, Batman Begins will be good for the same reason Catwoman was an atrocity: WB took a hands-off approach and let "Pitof" (the French director of Catwoman) do the movie just as he wanted to.
Similarly, when Batman Begins comes out, it will be the vision of Christopher Nolan and David Goyer, without WB's traditional meddling. And trust me, it's quite a vision.
The pessism about a new Batman film is understandable, given how bad the first four films were (many feel Burton's films were good but I'm not one of them). But you have to keep in mind that you're unfairly judging this new film by your opinions on films that are by completely different people. You're drawing premature conclusions about the work of one artist based on the work of other, unrelated artists.
I suppose that some of you just aren't going to believe in this film until you see it for yourself next summer, but I urge you to keep an open mind. If you thought Spiderman 2 was good (or didn't)...this film is going to blow it out of the water.
>> I have heard they will, once again, mistakenly
>> have 2 villians.
Quoth writer David Goyer from the San Diego Comic-Con last weekend:
Goyer: I know some people were concerned...Oh My God, they are going to do two villains, but we wouldn't have done it if it didn't fit in an organic way. Chris is a real task master and a perfectionist and when you are working with him, and Cillian can attest to this, he is hyper-cricital about everything has to make sense and everything has to be motivated. He won't even use a line the audience would love, even if doesn't make sense, if it is just there as sort of an easter egg for the audience he won't do it, so he holds everything up to a very high criteria and fortunately we were able to come up with a story that made perfect and total sense why there were two of them and why they were interwoven in the story and it was very organic.
Note that this is a repost, as I mistakenly didn't log in the first time and posted anonymously.
It surprises me that there aren't many comments in my +4 threshold from those who have been closely (or...obsessively) following this film. A lot of the pessimistic comments users have posted reflect concerns about things that are already known to be untrue (for example, the suit is not stiff, inflexible rubber like in the past four films).
Here's my sincere attempt to provide some better information to this thread.
This *teaser* trailer is primarily intended to give the mainstream audience a heads-up that this film is coming (next summer), and that it's going to be not only nothing like any Batman film that's been made before, but that it's not even going to feel like a comic book movie.
Christopher Nolan (cowriter and Director of "Memento" and "Insomnia") is the helmer of this film. In a remarkable move, WB gave him carte blanche control of the film and has been adamant about not getting in his way (a remarkable feat for WB). The script is co-written by Nolan and David Goyer. Goyer has written for Batman comics in the past, and is as familiar with DC comics as any obsessed fan.
The script harkens to Frank Miller's "Year One" comic, as well as some aspects of "Dark Knight Returns." But the story told in this film is highly original and inspired, and actually tells a story that even the comics have never really told: It's the story of how Bruce Wayne trained himself to become the Batman, how he travelled the world, learning from every martial arts master he could, etc. It's the story of his constant struggle avenge the murder of his parents.
The "villains" of the film are Ra's Al Ghul (one of Batman's "ultimate" enemies...google him if you don't know who he is) and the Scarecrow. But rest assured, these villains play critical and organic roles in the film. They're not here because WB
"every Batman film since Batman Returns has two villains in it"...it's just coincidence.
The cast is a filled with REAL actors who were all hand-picked by Nolan (as opposed to by WB). Nolan's got a good reputation for having a strong eye for casting. Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Michael Caine as Alfred, Morgan Freeman as Lucious Fox (head of Wayne Enterprises), Liam Neeson as Ducard (a central character who I will bite my tongue and say nothing further of), and Ken Watanabe as Ra's Al Ghul (Ken Watanabe was Katsumoto in "The Last Samurai," his first English-speaking role, and one which earned him an Oscar nomination). Rounding out the cast, Gary Oldman is Lieutenant James Gordon (who has a central role, unlike the previous four films), Cillian Murphy as Dr. Jonathan Crane AKA the Scarecrow (Murphy is best known for his role in "28 Days Later"), Katie Holmes as Assistant DA Rachel (I forget the character's last name).
All in all, a solid cast of solid actors. No George Clooneys or Arnold Schwarzaneggers in here.
Those who are fans of the music and cinematography of Nolan's previous entries ("Memento" and "Insomnia") will be happy to know that Nolan brought with him his core crew members from those films, composer David Julyan, and director of photography Wally Pfister. The look of the film, as glimpsed in the teaser trailer, is, much like "Insomnia," raw and bleak. Nolan, a naturalistic director, is not a fan of CGI effects, so don't expect much of that.
Nolan's focus is on realism. This film is going to be highly grounded in realism, so much so that it will not at all feel like a comic book movie. Which makes sense: Batman is "cool" in large part because it's not a far stretch to imagine him existing in a real world. Nolan's film will bring that point home.
The film is largely about the psychodrama of Bruce Wayne. In fact, don't expect to see much of Batman in the film until late in the game. This isn't an action-oriented movie. And unlike the four films preceding it (which, obviously, are not in continuity with this film), Bruce/Batman is the center of the film, not the villains.
The style of the teaser trailer, and the fact that you don't ev
> This is why do-not-call lists could actually be good for telemarketers.
I don't think this is necessarily true. Many of the people who end up buying things from telemarketers aren't necessarily people who like getting phone solicitations, they're just people who have been coerced into buying something or don't hate telemarketers to the extent that they would never buy something from one purely on principle.
Most people would say "yes" if you ask them "Would you like to stop receiving calls from telemarketers?" However, that doesn't mean they wouldn't necessarily buy something from one. The DMA doesn't want a Do-Not-Call list because it has the potential to limit their audience to only those people who _like_ getting telemarketer calls, and that's a smaller audience than the people who are likely to buy things from one.
I don't know how well people remember the plot of the RoboCop films, but, for those who don't, a significant element of the plot is that OCP (the mega-corporation) eventually ends up privately running the city of Detroit's police department.
Their eventual goal, by the way, is privatization of the city itself ("Delta City").
IANAL, but my father is, and one thing I frequently see him doing is research to find past cases similar to the one he's handling.
For situations that are relatively unique (such as this one), often you can find a similar case that helps validate your position. There are a few big legal research sites (like lexisnexis.com, etc.), though I don't know if there are any that you can use without paying for them. (I also am not too familiar with the amount of legal knowledge necessary to make productive use of these sites).
This may or may not be useful to do right now, but I'd imagine if you end up being sued, precedent-establishing cases from the past can be very useful and perhaps persuasive.
The suggestion made by others to send the CEO a letter *politely* explaining the circumstances seems like a good idea. The suggestion about sending the CEO a forged e-mail to prove the unreliability of the "from:" header is, in my opinion (IANAL), not something you should do. It's a clever idea and may prove your point, but you might be opening up an even bigger can of worms if you do that. While it's obviously not all that malicious, the CEO might equate such an approach to proving that a computer's security system is inadequate by breaking into it. Even if you break in "just to show that the system is insecure" and don't do anything malicious, you're still going to anger people (especially if you can't prove that you didn't do anything malicious). If you do happen to do this, be as tactful and un-assuming as possible in the actual message. I think there is a certain degree of automatic offensiveness to this tactic (from the CEO's viewpoint), though, and this is why I don't think it's a good idea. Also, of course, remember that whatever you send them might be used against you later on.
One more suggestion I think is worth mentioning is that you should try to obtain a copy of the e-mail message (or at least the header) if you don't already have it. I don't know whethr this would be easy or difficult to accomplish, but this would be good to have.
Might someone in the CEO's address book receive the same virus "from" the CEO and file a similar suit against him?
(Slightly O/T) Has anyone else noticed that in the past year or so telemarketers have started leaving messages on answering machines? This seems to be an increasing trend. For instance, today I came home to find a 75-second solicitation for a trip to Disyneyland (apparently it's their 100th anniversary, according to the message) on the anwering machines for both lines in my house. Now, granted, this may not be a huge problem for most people, but I've actually had a number of occasions where my answering machine has filled up with telemarketer messages and caused me to miss "real" messages as a result. In my situation, and that of others who have similar problems, should I not be able to argue that the inconvenience of telemarketers (or at least their recent practice of leaving messages)is not "insignificant"? If I have a relatively limited amount of recording space on my digital answering machines and I'm getting numerous 60+ second advertisements every day, I think this is quite unfair, and a good example of the not-so-insignificant problems telemarketing perpetuates.
Well, being that advertisements for Intertainer.com can be seen on the official Windows Media site... ;-)
Keep in mind that you can't record anything over 4 GB on a FAT32 partition (since the maximum file size in a FAT32 filesystem is 4 GB). You'll need to use an NTFS partition to do captures over 4 GB. The Hauppauge drivers used to automatically break up large captures into 4 GB pieces (which were somewhat unusable because it didn't write the MPEG headers on subsequent parts, meaning only the Hauppauge WinTV application could play them back).
Incidentally, if you *are* using an NTFS partition for captures, there was at one point a bug in their drivers that would cause it to cut off after 4 GB even on NTFS partitions. They've since fixed it, but you might want to make sure you have the latest version of the WinTV application itself (as opposed to the drivers, which you said you already have downloaded the latest drivers for).