AOL is allowing customers to elect not to receive the spam.
I see nothing in any of the linked articles to suggest that AOL is giving their users the option *not* to have their spam blocked. Users aren't "electing" not to receive spam, AOL is deciding for their users what is and is not spam, and then preventing that mail from hitting their inbox. This is my only contention to their anti-spam measures.
However, what AOL did in blocking the spam, IE, controlling the use of their own property isn't censorship.
It's censorship from the standpoint that they are making a determination for their users as to which content is acceptable and which is not. "Controlling the use of their own property" would be a valid argument if they simply tightened their acceptible use policy in regards to their own users, and restricted access to their own mailservers by preventing open relay, checking for mangled headers, referencing blackhole lists, etc.
The point at which I think it goes too far is when AOL starts analyzing messages and deciding for their users whether or not a particular message is in fact, spam. I think what would be better is to give the users tools that would allow them to filter their own mail (ie, reject messages with specific keywords or combinations of keywords, like penis+enhancement or Nigerian+ambassador).
I would even be satisfied if AOL simply ranked email with a spam meter, and then flagged the message as "Possible Spam" or something. As long as the message itself is actually delivered to its intended recipient. The user can then decide for themselves if they choose to trust AOL's ranking system and simply auto-delete anything flagged, or if they want to inspect it themselves.
I'm kind of torn on this issue. On the one hand, I hate spam and those who allow it to proliferate. On the other hand, I abhor censorship in any form. I wouldn't have an issue with this at all if AOL simply provided its users with the *tools* to eliminate their own spam if they choose to do so. My problem with this is that AOL itself is deciding to filter its members' email, and making the determination itself as to what is and is not "spam". That's a reckless step down a slippery slope, in my opinion.
I don't think this is as big a problem as the article lets on:
1) BGP neighbor relationships are statically defined, permitting path information from specific autonomous systems advertised by specific peers.
2) Any major ISP is going to be running stringent as-path filters on inbound updates, to prevent blatantly false path information from being accepted.
3) BGP has internal controls that can be added to a config to specify preferred paths for outbound traffic, regardless of the inbound path preference information from a router's peers.
4) Compromising a properly secured router is no simple feat. At that level, remote access is always restricted, passwords are always strong, terminal access to every device is always logged, and network monitoring is always employed. An attack on a core router is going to be detected rather quickly through either automated log analysis or network management alerts.
All of that being said, if a router were compromised, ISP traffic is monitored in realtime. A sudden change in traffic will bring the immediate attention of an ISP's NOC, and the problem will either be corrected immediately, or the router will be taken offline, allowing traffic to fail over to another NAP until the problem can be solved. Barring a large-scale, coordinated attack (the logistics of which would be almost impossible to manage given the environment), the impact of such an attack would likely be minimal.
Just look at the credentials of the people involved:
Directed by Michael Rymer:
Queen of the Damned - The worst hack job of a novel in recent memory, and a snooze-enducing piece of crap that made me want to just get up and walk out in the middle of the movie.
Written by Ronald D. Moore:
Mission: Impossible II - Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to make a movie even dumber than Mission: Impossible.
Produced by David Eick:
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys - NEED I SAY MORE???
Those damned aliens and their stealth ball bearing technology. From what I've read in the Enquirer, they have apparently setup two giant posts, one each on Pluto and Charon. As soon as they construct a big enough rubber band to string between them, they will launch their devastating onslaught and our cosmic goose will be cooked.
You could just toss it towards the earth, it will burn up on reentry.
There was an awful lot of shuttle pieces that didn't burn up on re-entry and found themselves littered from Arizona to Louisianna. Safer I think to send it away from Earth rather than towards.
I think that would be a lot easier considering how much harder it is to actually hit the moon.
At 1/6 the size of the Earth, the Moon is exactly *tiny*. I don't think it would be that hard to hit. I was going to suggest sending into the Sun, but that just seemed so... cliche.
... is orbital garbage collection. When you see the damage a paint chip can cause, imagine the damage a 1" steel ball bearing (moving at 50,000mph) could do.
Here's an idea: equip a spacecraft with a giant kevlar net and put it into orbit to collect debris, then jettison the debris bag to impact the Moon. It's just barren rock sitting there unused, the Moon would be the perfect orbital landfill. Hmm... kind of an Orbital Quicker-Picker-Upper. Maybe we could get corporate sponsorship from Bounty to offset the cost...
I'm sure it's an unpopular view amongst the freedom of IP at all costs crowd that's common here, but maybe for the duration of the Iraqi conflict, we can stop posting exploit and bug notifications, at least until the US has installed a nascent capitalist, western ideologued democracy in Iraq.
Flip the issue around and see if your suggestion makes any sense:
For the duration of the war, let's refrain from posting notices of vulnerabilities and exploits so that sysadmins in places other than Iraq can't keep their systems properly defended from cyber-terrorists who are sympathetic to the Iraqi cause (or are simply anti-American).
Makes no sense, right? Withholding vulnerability information is far more likely to adversely affect civilian and public service networks in the US and supporting nations than the Iraqi military/industrial complex.
Absolutely. In fact, I'd say that a "good movie" has far more potential to be profitable, because people will want to see it again and again. Look at the box office sales for movies like the Lord of the Rings series and the Harry Potter series. People WILL PAY for good entertainment.
The problem is, the studios need to get out of the mindset that special effects, car chases, and big explosions make a good movie by themselves. They seem to regard anything with a real story as an "artsy" film, and assume that no one will go to see it. Granted, "Terminator 2" probably got a larger draw than "Sense and Sensibility" but T2 was a movie with a compelling story that simply appealed to a wider audience. Not every movie has to be an introspective, cerebral drama. We can have "good" movies that are also blockbuster hits.
In Charlotte, NC the average matinee price is around $5.50. Oddly enough, when I used to work at a movie theatre about 10 years ago, that's what a night ticket cost. There are a couple of cheap theatres playing second-run stuff with matinee price of about $2.50. The problem is, by the time the film gets there it's usually been trashed and looks like absolute crap.
I don't even know what a night ticket costs here, since I haven't bought one in about 3 years.
Look chum, the "good movies" are what pay for the "crap". With your logic we'd only get the biggest sure-hit blockbuster movies in the stores, and no other movies would be made.
According to George Lucas, it's the other way around. Except he substitutes "popcorn movies" for "crap" and "artsy films" for "good movies".
In any event, I fail to see a problem with studios only producing quality material...
Please don't say "lower prices" because that's just a rationalization that they're somehow forcing pirates to do it.
It's not the price, it's the VALUE. People buy the good stuff, and pirate the crap. Why? Because it's all priced the same.
Despite the ready availability of pirated media content, people are STILL buying CDs and DVDs (and sales are continuing to grow). I think the difference is in what they are buying. People buy movies like Lord of the Rings and CDs by talented artists. People pirate copies of movies like Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever and songs by the latest bubblegum fad boy band.
The reason is simple: they might get some short-lived enjoyment out of watching or listening to the crap a few times, but they know they will quickly get tired of it, because it really isn't all that good.
DVDs and CDs present value when they have good re-play ability. After all, they are an INVESTMENT. Add up the cost of your music and movie collection at $10 a videotape, $15 a CD, and $20 a DVD. Even just ballparking it, mine's up around $8,000. I would bet there are real mediaphiles out there with collections in excess of $20,000.
If the media industry wants to stamp out piracy, they do need to lower prices... on the CRAP. If $20 is the price for a premium quality movie on DVD, than they should be charging $10 for a crap movie on DVD (and trust me, they know which are good and which are just crap). A crap movie might not be worth $20, but it might present a value at $5 or $10, and people would rather simply drive down to Best Buy and pick it up, rather than spending two days on WinMX trying to download it.
One the one hand, the robot will probably count faster than old Mr. Mulligan at my local drug store, so I'll get my prescription in 5 minutes instead of 30 minutes.
On the other hand, the robot will probably count more accurately than old Mr. Mulligan, so I won't get the extra 5 or 10 pills that always seem to end up in my prescription bottle.
Mr. Mulligan counting: "15... 20... 25... 30... 25... 30... 35... I think they're making these bottles smaller. I remember when one of these would hold 50 pills... Damn Koreans! I fought a war so we could have decent sized pill bottles..."
I just hope they wait until he croaks before giving the robot his job. He's like 90 or something, it shouldn't be long.
I guarantee that more people than those "right next" to you are aware when your phone vibrates (say, during a meaningful quiet point in any movie), let alone when you pull it out to check the caller ID.
No, it really is very quiet. I've been standing around having a conversation with someone before and the phone rang, and they looked surprised when I pulled it out to answer it, because they never heard it go off. Now, there was one time when I happened to be leaning against a plate glass window when it went off, and a lot of people heard that. In fact, that's a real difficult noise to explain...
Now, the backlit LCD might be a distraction, but it's pretty dim, and sometimes a little hard to read in the dark. I can't imagine anyone except those to my immediate left or right even noticing it if I pulled it out of my jacket pocket.
But you go further, depending on the call's "importance" (to you and the caller only) and, by your own admission, answer some calls.
It would have to be a pretty important call from someone I was expecting a call from (ie my doctor with lab results or something). I've had a cellphone for about 8 or 9 years, and I think the total number of times I have answered the phone in a theatre was two. One was to hear whether a relative 1000 miles away made it through surgery okay, and the other was from a client who was calling to tell me whether or not I got a big contract. And my idea of "answering a call" is to pick up the phone, quietly say, "Hi. Hold on just a second, okay.." and then step out of the theatre to take the call. That is no more disturbing than quietly saying to your wife, "I'll be right back" and then stepping out to use the restroom.
You condemn the woman for being "above any petty social convention", but then proceed act virtually identically, ignoring the "Cellphone Free Zone" sign yourself, to answer a call if you "absolutely need to speak" to that caller. Wha...? What part of "No Cellphones" did you not understand?
Actually, I said I "often" carry my cellphone at a theatre, but I don't always do it. That time, I DID turn off my cellphone and even reminded my wife to turn off hers, BECAUSE they had actually posted a sign (and that's the first time I've ever seen a sign like that at a theatre, although I expect they'll probably become a lot more common). If they hadn't had a sign, I probably would have left it on vibrate, if I had even brought it in to the theatre in the first place.
If she is sitting next to you, why don't you just grab her phone, and throw it. Seems like a much better solution, and one she is more likely to remember than some crude threat(which I thought was funny.)
Because once you make physical contact with a person, you enter into a whole new arena of legality. If I had reached out and grabbed her cellphone, then chucked it across the theatre, I could find myself facing a slew of criminal charges (assault, theft, and destruction of private property to name a few). Besides, why resort to violence? Public embarrassment worked just fine in that case.
Well I do, since I was there at the time. And my wife does, since she was there also and tried to crawl under her seat after I did it. Of course, it's only my word. I don't have videotape of the event or a police report or anything. So feel free to believe it or not. If you knew me, you wouldn't have a hard time believing it at all. I have a "history"...
It isn't particularly clever, at any rate.
Sorry, I didn't have a lot of time when it happened to come up with something truly creative. My thought process was something like, "you're pissing on me by using your cellphone in a movie, so I'll piss on you..."
I'm sure you would have come up with something far more creative on a moment's notice. Or maybe you would have just sat there and taken it, because you couldn't say something to the offender anonymously.
Why do people need to make up cockamamie stories about public heroics? The guy sat there and suffered through the phone call, later fantasized about what he wish had happened, then decided to tell people it did to make him feel better. How pathetic.
I don't know, why do people need to anonymously refute other people's stories in order to feel good about themselves?
I think the real issue here is that this sort of thing has happened to you, and YOU just sat there an did nothing. Later on, you wished you had said something bold or witty. Now you feel like less of a man because I actually had the balls to say something and you didn't. So in order to regain your self-esteen you have to believe that my story is a fabrication, and that everyone else is a meek little mouse just like you.
Small annoyances like cell phones or crying children do not bother me.
That depends on how small an annoyance it is. A short ringing of a phone followed by a muffled "oh, shit" from the owner as he rushes to stifle it is a small annoyance (and not worth making an issue of). The person who gets a call in a theatre, lets it ring long enough to read the caller ID, then answers it and proceeds to carry on a conversation during the movie is more than a small annoyance. They are a nuisance.
Also, I've never once complained to a parent about a crying baby if the show was a kid's movie. If you go to see Ice Age, you'd better expect to see children there, and to accept the social effects that children create. Now, the parent who brings a baby to a 9pm show of Two Towers is just an inconsiderate piece of human shit. Especially when the baby starts howling during the battle at Helm's Deep and the parents refuse to take the baby out (because THEY don't want to miss anything). Can you tell I've been there..?
It's much worse to have a bozo making a big deal of those things.
I think it is because NOT ENOUGH people make a big deal about these things that rudeness and discourtesy are allowed to flourish. Our societal structure works on about 10% legislation and 90% peer pressure. You can't legislate courtesy and police rude behavior. You can only use peer pressure to correct the behavior. Often, verbal censure is enough to do that. In general, people want to be thought well of. If they suddenly realize that their behavior has caused them to be cast in an ill light, they will alter their behavior to fit into society's boundaries of polite behavior. I think there are a lot of people who simply don't realize their behavior is inappropriate, because no one has ever said anything to them.
Like a neighbor who threatens to talk to my manager because I use a dance pad at 8pm.
Here's a perfect example. Your neighbor is a bozo because you think YOU should be able to DDR anytime you like. Take a minute to put yourself in your neighbor's position: you work all day, come home, eat dinner, get the kids off working on their homework, sit down in your comfy chair to watch a little ESPN before you pass out from exhaustion, and your neighbor starts jumping up and down on the floor above. Don't you think your neighbor is entitled to watch ESPN in relative peace whenever they want?
If you want to be able to DDR whenever you feel like it, simply get an apartment on the ground floor (I assume you are second story plus, because a concrete slab doesn't reverberate). You can put on headphones and DDR at 3am and no one will complain. All it takes is a little awareness of how your behavior impacts those around you, and a small amount of accomodation. If you happen to be the Lord of the Dance, well then (DUH!) don't get an apartment on the second floor! It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.
It's no fun to live if you have to be polite and considerate all the time, in every aspect.
I don't think that's true. I think you can be very happy and have a lot of fun while still being considerate of those around you. Unless you simply can't have fun without jumping up and screaming "Yeeehaaww!!" in the middle of a crowded restaurant because you just beat your friend at that peg game thing. Maybe your mommy never taught you this, but we have "indoor voices" and "outdoor voices"...
If you want to be regarded by society as an adult, you have to act like an adult. Unfortunately, there are a lot of 21+ children running around in our society today.
Sometimes needs of a few or one outweigh the needs of the many.
People were irritating in theaters before they had cell phones. There have been people talking, having big hats, having big hair, being fat, having crying children, having body odor and everything else ever since we've gathered in groups to enjoy things together.
I agree. It's not that the cellphones themselves are bad, they are just one more tool for people who tend to be rude and inconsiderate (the same type of people who talk, wear big hats, and don't bathe). Blaming the technology for the way it is used is total bullshit.
I often carry my cell phone in movies and restaurants, but I put the ringer on vibrate. If it rings, you have to be right next to me to even hear it buzz. I check the caller ID, and if it's someone I absolutely need to speak with I answer it, and quietly tell them to hold while I step out of the theatre. If not, I let it go to voicemail and check it after the show.
Are there a lot of phones that don't have vibrate? Or just a lot of people who don't care about irritating the people around them? I think it's less an issue of invasive technology, and more an issue of a culture of self-obsession.
Case in point:
I was in a theatre this past weekend. Outside the auditorium there was a bigass sign that said "Cellphone Free Zone". During the trailers, there was an announcement to turn off your cellphone. But sure enough, halfway through the movie, a cellphone rang in the row behind me, and the woman not only answered it, but sat there and carried on a conversation. No doubt, the woman felt she was above any petty social convention, and she was too important for the "rules" to apply to her.
At this point, I lost my patience and decided to teach her a lesson about social convention. I stood up, turned around, and announced loudly, "turn off your phone or I will whip out my dick and piss on you!" I think she thought I was kidding until I reached for my fly. Then she told the caller "gotta go" and just hung up. I said, "thank you for your cooperation," sat back down, and tried hard not to ruin the moment by laughing my ass off...
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AOL is allowing customers to elect not to receive the spam.
I see nothing in any of the linked articles to suggest that AOL is giving their users the option *not* to have their spam blocked. Users aren't "electing" not to receive spam, AOL is deciding for their users what is and is not spam, and then preventing that mail from hitting their inbox. This is my only contention to their anti-spam measures.
However, what AOL did in blocking the spam, IE, controlling the use of their own property isn't censorship.
It's censorship from the standpoint that they are making a determination for their users as to which content is acceptable and which is not. "Controlling the use of their own property" would be a valid argument if they simply tightened their acceptible use policy in regards to their own users, and restricted access to their own mailservers by preventing open relay, checking for mangled headers, referencing blackhole lists, etc.
The point at which I think it goes too far is when AOL starts analyzing messages and deciding for their users whether or not a particular message is in fact, spam. I think what would be better is to give the users tools that would allow them to filter their own mail (ie, reject messages with specific keywords or combinations of keywords, like penis+enhancement or Nigerian+ambassador).
I would even be satisfied if AOL simply ranked email with a spam meter, and then flagged the message as "Possible Spam" or something. As long as the message itself is actually delivered to its intended recipient. The user can then decide for themselves if they choose to trust AOL's ranking system and simply auto-delete anything flagged, or if they want to inspect it themselves.
I'm kind of torn on this issue. On the one hand, I hate spam and those who allow it to proliferate. On the other hand, I abhor censorship in any form. I wouldn't have an issue with this at all if AOL simply provided its users with the *tools* to eliminate their own spam if they choose to do so. My problem with this is that AOL itself is deciding to filter its members' email, and making the determination itself as to what is and is not "spam". That's a reckless step down a slippery slope, in my opinion.
I don't think this is as big a problem as the article lets on:
1) BGP neighbor relationships are statically defined, permitting path information from specific autonomous systems advertised by specific peers.
2) Any major ISP is going to be running stringent as-path filters on inbound updates, to prevent blatantly false path information from being accepted.
3) BGP has internal controls that can be added to a config to specify preferred paths for outbound traffic, regardless of the inbound path preference information from a router's peers.
4) Compromising a properly secured router is no simple feat. At that level, remote access is always restricted, passwords are always strong, terminal access to every device is always logged, and network monitoring is always employed. An attack on a core router is going to be detected rather quickly through either automated log analysis or network management alerts.
All of that being said, if a router were compromised, ISP traffic is monitored in realtime. A sudden change in traffic will bring the immediate attention of an ISP's NOC, and the problem will either be corrected immediately, or the router will be taken offline, allowing traffic to fail over to another NAP until the problem can be solved. Barring a large-scale, coordinated attack (the logistics of which would be almost impossible to manage given the environment), the impact of such an attack would likely be minimal.
Just look at the credentials of the people involved:
Directed by Michael Rymer:
Queen of the Damned - The worst hack job of a novel in recent memory, and a snooze-enducing piece of crap that made me want to just get up and walk out in the middle of the movie.
Written by Ronald D. Moore:
Mission: Impossible II - Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to make a movie even dumber than Mission: Impossible.
Produced by David Eick:
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys - NEED I SAY MORE???
This is going to be a schlockfest!
Those damned aliens and their stealth ball bearing technology. From what I've read in the Enquirer, they have apparently setup two giant posts, one each on Pluto and Charon. As soon as they construct a big enough rubber band to string between them, they will launch their devastating onslaught and our cosmic goose will be cooked.
You could just toss it towards the earth, it will burn up on reentry.
There was an awful lot of shuttle pieces that didn't burn up on re-entry and found themselves littered from Arizona to Louisianna. Safer I think to send it away from Earth rather than towards.
I think that would be a lot easier considering how much harder it is to actually hit the moon.
At 1/6 the size of the Earth, the Moon is exactly *tiny*. I don't think it would be that hard to hit. I was going to suggest sending into the Sun, but that just seemed so... cliche.
... is orbital garbage collection. When you see the damage a paint chip can cause, imagine the damage a 1" steel ball bearing (moving at 50,000mph) could do.
Here's an idea: equip a spacecraft with a giant kevlar net and put it into orbit to collect debris, then jettison the debris bag to impact the Moon. It's just barren rock sitting there unused, the Moon would be the perfect orbital landfill. Hmm... kind of an Orbital Quicker-Picker-Upper. Maybe we could get corporate sponsorship from Bounty to offset the cost...
I'm sure it's an unpopular view amongst the freedom of IP at all costs crowd that's common here, but maybe for the duration of the Iraqi conflict, we can stop posting exploit and bug notifications, at least until the US has installed a nascent capitalist, western ideologued democracy in Iraq.
Flip the issue around and see if your suggestion makes any sense:
For the duration of the war, let's refrain from posting notices of vulnerabilities and exploits so that sysadmins in places other than Iraq can't keep their systems properly defended from cyber-terrorists who are sympathetic to the Iraqi cause (or are simply anti-American).
Makes no sense, right? Withholding vulnerability information is far more likely to adversely affect civilian and public service networks in the US and supporting nations than the Iraqi military/industrial complex.
Palladium Books, maker of fine pen-and-paper role-playing games.
You'd think they could narrow it down a little. That's like saying, "I'm 95% sure this man is between 40 and 70".
can't a "good movie" be a profitable movie?
Absolutely. In fact, I'd say that a "good movie" has far more potential to be profitable, because people will want to see it again and again. Look at the box office sales for movies like the Lord of the Rings series and the Harry Potter series. People WILL PAY for good entertainment.
The problem is, the studios need to get out of the mindset that special effects, car chases, and big explosions make a good movie by themselves. They seem to regard anything with a real story as an "artsy" film, and assume that no one will go to see it. Granted, "Terminator 2" probably got a larger draw than "Sense and Sensibility" but T2 was a movie with a compelling story that simply appealed to a wider audience. Not every movie has to be an introspective, cerebral drama. We can have "good" movies that are also blockbuster hits.
And Waterworld was a $100M piece of whale shit.
In Charlotte, NC the average matinee price is around $5.50. Oddly enough, when I used to work at a movie theatre about 10 years ago, that's what a night ticket cost. There are a couple of cheap theatres playing second-run stuff with matinee price of about $2.50. The problem is, by the time the film gets there it's usually been trashed and looks like absolute crap.
I don't even know what a night ticket costs here, since I haven't bought one in about 3 years.
So why not skip "the crap" altogether? Are there other sorts of products you steal because they're overpriced? (A Mercedes, maybe?)
If the car industry worked the same way as the DVD industry in regards to pricing, a Mecedes S600 and a Chevy Vega would both cost $115,000.
Look chum, the "good movies" are what pay for the "crap". With your logic we'd only get the biggest sure-hit blockbuster movies in the stores, and no other movies would be made.
According to George Lucas, it's the other way around. Except he substitutes "popcorn movies" for "crap" and "artsy films" for "good movies".
In any event, I fail to see a problem with studios only producing quality material...
Please don't say "lower prices" because that's just a rationalization that they're somehow forcing pirates to do it.
It's not the price, it's the VALUE. People buy the good stuff, and pirate the crap. Why? Because it's all priced the same.
Despite the ready availability of pirated media content, people are STILL buying CDs and DVDs (and sales are continuing to grow). I think the difference is in what they are buying. People buy movies like Lord of the Rings and CDs by talented artists. People pirate copies of movies like Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever and songs by the latest bubblegum fad boy band.
The reason is simple: they might get some short-lived enjoyment out of watching or listening to the crap a few times, but they know they will quickly get tired of it, because it really isn't all that good.
DVDs and CDs present value when they have good re-play ability. After all, they are an INVESTMENT. Add up the cost of your music and movie collection at $10 a videotape, $15 a CD, and $20 a DVD. Even just ballparking it, mine's up around $8,000. I would bet there are real mediaphiles out there with collections in excess of $20,000.
If the media industry wants to stamp out piracy, they do need to lower prices... on the CRAP. If $20 is the price for a premium quality movie on DVD, than they should be charging $10 for a crap movie on DVD (and trust me, they know which are good and which are just crap). A crap movie might not be worth $20, but it might present a value at $5 or $10, and people would rather simply drive down to Best Buy and pick it up, rather than spending two days on WinMX trying to download it.
One the one hand, the robot will probably count faster than old Mr. Mulligan at my local drug store, so I'll get my prescription in 5 minutes instead of 30 minutes.
On the other hand, the robot will probably count more accurately than old Mr. Mulligan, so I won't get the extra 5 or 10 pills that always seem to end up in my prescription bottle.
Mr. Mulligan counting: "15... 20... 25... 30... 25... 30... 35... I think they're making these bottles smaller. I remember when one of these would hold 50 pills... Damn Koreans! I fought a war so we could have decent sized pill bottles..."
I just hope they wait until he croaks before giving the robot his job. He's like 90 or something, it shouldn't be long.
I guarantee that more people than those "right next" to you are aware when your phone vibrates (say, during a meaningful quiet point in any movie), let alone when you pull it out to check the caller ID.
No, it really is very quiet. I've been standing around having a conversation with someone before and the phone rang, and they looked surprised when I pulled it out to answer it, because they never heard it go off. Now, there was one time when I happened to be leaning against a plate glass window when it went off, and a lot of people heard that. In fact, that's a real difficult noise to explain...
Now, the backlit LCD might be a distraction, but it's pretty dim, and sometimes a little hard to read in the dark. I can't imagine anyone except those to my immediate left or right even noticing it if I pulled it out of my jacket pocket.
But you go further, depending on the call's "importance" (to you and the caller only) and, by your own admission, answer some calls.
It would have to be a pretty important call from someone I was expecting a call from (ie my doctor with lab results or something). I've had a cellphone for about 8 or 9 years, and I think the total number of times I have answered the phone in a theatre was two. One was to hear whether a relative 1000 miles away made it through surgery okay, and the other was from a client who was calling to tell me whether or not I got a big contract. And my idea of "answering a call" is to pick up the phone, quietly say, "Hi. Hold on just a second, okay.." and then step out of the theatre to take the call. That is no more disturbing than quietly saying to your wife, "I'll be right back" and then stepping out to use the restroom.
You condemn the woman for being "above any petty social convention", but then proceed act virtually identically, ignoring the "Cellphone Free Zone" sign yourself, to answer a call if you "absolutely need to speak" to that caller. Wha...? What part of "No Cellphones" did you not understand?
Actually, I said I "often" carry my cellphone at a theatre, but I don't always do it. That time, I DID turn off my cellphone and even reminded my wife to turn off hers, BECAUSE they had actually posted a sign (and that's the first time I've ever seen a sign like that at a theatre, although I expect they'll probably become a lot more common). If they hadn't had a sign, I probably would have left it on vibrate, if I had even brought it in to the theatre in the first place.
If she is sitting next to you, why don't you just grab her phone, and throw it. Seems like a much better solution, and one she is more likely to remember than some crude threat(which I thought was funny.)
Because once you make physical contact with a person, you enter into a whole new arena of legality. If I had reached out and grabbed her cellphone, then chucked it across the theatre, I could find myself facing a slew of criminal charges (assault, theft, and destruction of private property to name a few). Besides, why resort to violence? Public embarrassment worked just fine in that case.
I think a big part of freedom in US is that we can all annoy each other ... Those who give up freedom for quite...
Freedom taken to it's ultimate extreme is anarchy. There's an old saying that goes well in this topic:
"Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose."
I like it. The cup could whip out his straw and hold it suggestively...
OK... Does anyone believe this actually happened?
Well I do, since I was there at the time. And my wife does, since she was there also and tried to crawl under her seat after I did it. Of course, it's only my word. I don't have videotape of the event or a police report or anything. So feel free to believe it or not. If you knew me, you wouldn't have a hard time believing it at all. I have a "history"...
It isn't particularly clever, at any rate.
Sorry, I didn't have a lot of time when it happened to come up with something truly creative. My thought process was something like, "you're pissing on me by using your cellphone in a movie, so I'll piss on you..."
I'm sure you would have come up with something far more creative on a moment's notice. Or maybe you would have just sat there and taken it, because you couldn't say something to the offender anonymously.
Why do people need to make up cockamamie stories about public heroics? The guy sat there and suffered through the phone call, later fantasized about what he wish had happened, then decided to tell people it did to make him feel better. How pathetic.
I don't know, why do people need to anonymously refute other people's stories in order to feel good about themselves?
I think the real issue here is that this sort of thing has happened to you, and YOU just sat there an did nothing. Later on, you wished you had said something bold or witty. Now you feel like less of a man because I actually had the balls to say something and you didn't. So in order to regain your self-esteen you have to believe that my story is a fabrication, and that everyone else is a meek little mouse just like you.
Sorry to disappoint you.
Small annoyances like cell phones or crying children do not bother me.
That depends on how small an annoyance it is. A short ringing of a phone followed by a muffled "oh, shit" from the owner as he rushes to stifle it is a small annoyance (and not worth making an issue of). The person who gets a call in a theatre, lets it ring long enough to read the caller ID, then answers it and proceeds to carry on a conversation during the movie is more than a small annoyance. They are a nuisance.
Also, I've never once complained to a parent about a crying baby if the show was a kid's movie. If you go to see Ice Age, you'd better expect to see children there, and to accept the social effects that children create. Now, the parent who brings a baby to a 9pm show of Two Towers is just an inconsiderate piece of human shit. Especially when the baby starts howling during the battle at Helm's Deep and the parents refuse to take the baby out (because THEY don't want to miss anything). Can you tell I've been there..?
It's much worse to have a bozo making a big deal of those things.
I think it is because NOT ENOUGH people make a big deal about these things that rudeness and discourtesy are allowed to flourish. Our societal structure works on about 10% legislation and 90% peer pressure. You can't legislate courtesy and police rude behavior. You can only use peer pressure to correct the behavior. Often, verbal censure is enough to do that. In general, people want to be thought well of. If they suddenly realize that their behavior has caused them to be cast in an ill light, they will alter their behavior to fit into society's boundaries of polite behavior. I think there are a lot of people who simply don't realize their behavior is inappropriate, because no one has ever said anything to them.
Like a neighbor who threatens to talk to my manager because I use a dance pad at 8pm.
Here's a perfect example. Your neighbor is a bozo because you think YOU should be able to DDR anytime you like. Take a minute to put yourself in your neighbor's position: you work all day, come home, eat dinner, get the kids off working on their homework, sit down in your comfy chair to watch a little ESPN before you pass out from exhaustion, and your neighbor starts jumping up and down on the floor above. Don't you think your neighbor is entitled to watch ESPN in relative peace whenever they want?
If you want to be able to DDR whenever you feel like it, simply get an apartment on the ground floor (I assume you are second story plus, because a concrete slab doesn't reverberate). You can put on headphones and DDR at 3am and no one will complain. All it takes is a little awareness of how your behavior impacts those around you, and a small amount of accomodation. If you happen to be the Lord of the Dance, well then (DUH!) don't get an apartment on the second floor! It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.
It's no fun to live if you have to be polite and considerate all the time, in every aspect.
I don't think that's true. I think you can be very happy and have a lot of fun while still being considerate of those around you. Unless you simply can't have fun without jumping up and screaming "Yeeehaaww!!" in the middle of a crowded restaurant because you just beat your friend at that peg game thing. Maybe your mommy never taught you this, but we have "indoor voices" and "outdoor voices"...
If you want to be regarded by society as an adult, you have to act like an adult. Unfortunately, there are a lot of 21+ children running around in our society today.
Sometimes needs of a few or one outweigh the needs of the many.
That's never true. Just ask any Vulcan.
People were irritating in theaters before they had cell phones. There have been people talking, having big hats, having big hair, being fat, having crying children, having body odor and everything else ever since we've gathered in groups to enjoy things together.
I agree. It's not that the cellphones themselves are bad, they are just one more tool for people who tend to be rude and inconsiderate (the same type of people who talk, wear big hats, and don't bathe). Blaming the technology for the way it is used is total bullshit.
I often carry my cell phone in movies and restaurants, but I put the ringer on vibrate. If it rings, you have to be right next to me to even hear it buzz. I check the caller ID, and if it's someone I absolutely need to speak with I answer it, and quietly tell them to hold while I step out of the theatre. If not, I let it go to voicemail and check it after the show.
Are there a lot of phones that don't have vibrate? Or just a lot of people who don't care about irritating the people around them? I think it's less an issue of invasive technology, and more an issue of a culture of self-obsession.
Case in point:
I was in a theatre this past weekend. Outside the auditorium there was a bigass sign that said "Cellphone Free Zone". During the trailers, there was an announcement to turn off your cellphone. But sure enough, halfway through the movie, a cellphone rang in the row behind me, and the woman not only answered it, but sat there and carried on a conversation. No doubt, the woman felt she was above any petty social convention, and she was too important for the "rules" to apply to her.
At this point, I lost my patience and decided to teach her a lesson about social convention. I stood up, turned around, and announced loudly, "turn off your phone or I will whip out my dick and piss on you!" I think she thought I was kidding until I reached for my fly. Then she told the caller "gotta go" and just hung up. I said, "thank you for your cooperation," sat back down, and tried hard not to ruin the moment by laughing my ass off...
... for anything I couldn't drive, sleep in, or have sex with.