AC posted posted my first impression of the problem.
Ads.
Countless amounts of legal and technical efforts go into trying to make us ingest a nauseating pill. Its like trying to get a cat to swallow a pill. If you have ever owned a cat, you know this routine.
I have seen ads that were entertaining, but very seldom.
Most ads are delivered with all the finesse of a panhandler trying to bum the price of a beer off some restaurant's clientele - and if the beggars get too annoying, the clientele goes elsewhere just to get away from the beggars.
Since a lot of decision makers read Slashdot, I'll offer up this bit of feedback... instead of trying to coerce your audience to watch your ad through skip-resistant technologies, frequent interruptions, punitive and legal means, and other highly annoying tactics and threats.... instead how about getting some artisans to work on your idea to make it entertaining... something people will hold their pee for.
Look to Google. I note they apparently are doing research on ads.
On YouTube, the ads are often skippable, but you know what? Some of the ads are better done than the thing I dialed up in the first place - I end up watching the whole ad and then skipping the video when what I had originally intended to watch turned out to be a disappointment.
My guess is Google figured it was probably better to let people skip the ad if it was simply annoying to them, lest they leave the website completely; ramming a ad onto someone non-receptive to it is completely counterproductive. However introducing a new product to someone interested in it is the ultimate goal. The problem is matching them up. The cat does not like the oats which interest the horse, nor does the horse find birds of culinary interest.
TL:DR You are wasting your time trying to force people to watch your ad. Make them interesting!!!
Yes... is the Universe rotating? Kinda hard to tell if I am in it - it seems no matter where I stand, everything looks like its rotating around me, and I am the center of the Universe. Being everything I observe out there seems to be in some sort of equilibrium between gravitation and centrifugal force, I have to conjecture the Universe is rotating. Its the only thing I can come up with as to why the universe hasn't imploded.
I have seen some data saying the rate of expansion of the Universe is increasing... now that one is a puzzlement to me.
Somehow, I had the notion that at the event horizon, from above, it would look pitch black, as anything incoming would not be able to escape. However, should I ( hypothetically of course ) be able to pass through the event horizon, I would expect enormous pressures and light. Lots of it. From this perspective, the event horizon should look perfectly reflective.
I figured if the thing wasn't spinning, it could go on this way forever, eating and eating, and getting bigger and bigger, until it consumed everything.
But, the way I see it, the spinning is the fly in the ointment. The black hole eats so much, and in doing so spins up so fast it can't contain itself. When it has so much spin the gravitational field can't contain the innards. Part of the substance of the hole extrudes beyond the event horizon, the hole becomes unstable, and we get another cycle of the big bang.
Sometimes I wonder if we are also living in a great black hole - meaning there is no way out of our universe. Galaxy - yes, but universe, no. For us, nothing would exist outside it.
Consider what the gravitational tug of a black hole is, as well as the matter spiraling in ( as observed )... it was my understanding that the incoming matter and energy would be traveling at the speed of light as it crossed the event horizon. From there on in, I have no idea what state the matter is in, but I highly suspect its completely broken down into something highly compressible, maybe not taking up volume at all as we know it.
I believe what we are seeing is the explosion of a big black hole. One that had consumed the universe before it.
What made it explode? Centrifugal force. The Universe the black hole ate was rotating. What we have now is rotating. Rotational inertia is conserved. Remnants of the great centrifugal slingout (aka "Big Bang") can be observed everywhere with everything spun out still spinning. This giant black hole kept on eating and eating and eating matter spiraling into it. Eventually it got to spinning so fast the mass/energy within could no longer be constrained by its gravitational force, it became unstable, resulting in one helluva bang. In the black hole, elements as we know them were completely disassembled and packed as energy and subatomic particles. Those were spewed off into the void with great vigor. In the void, they reassembled themselves into the elements, mostly the simplest one, hydrogen, that we observe.
Even today, one can observe smaller black holes already at work on the next cycle, matter and whatever else they can eat spiraling in... spinning them up. They will eat each other too. I believe we are destined to go through this as well ( but definitely not in our lifetimes ). This cycle appears to have a period of trillions of years.
I get the idea there are a lot more universes out there than the one we can observe. I get the whole idea the whole shebang is rotating. That's what makes it work. Where did the whole shebang come from - I have to leave that one to theologians. I believe the correct word to describe the whole shebang is "infinite". In energy, time, space, and matter ( and all four are manifestations of each other )
The universe we live in, the one we can observe, is exactly that.... the observable universe. I believe we are one infinitesimally small part of the whole shebang.
If you and I are on opposite sides of a merry-go-round in motion, are you traveling with respect to me, despite the fact neither you nor I are moving around on the platform of the merry-go-round? From my perspective, you do not appear to be moving, but if I holler to you do I get a doppler shift in the sound? If I attempt to spray you with a jet of water, does not the water take a curved course to get to you? If I tried this with light, would I not get a red-shift - more pronounced the further away you are from me? Is that not what we observe already?
Ok - I may be full of it, but that is my personal pet theory of how it all began, well, er, how what we see now began, as my pet theory has everything, the mix of energy, time, space, and matter, always existed in past, and will always exist in the future, albeit the proportions are constantly in oscillation, much like the interchange of potential and kinetic energy in a resonant object.
There is an eclectic mix of quite knowledgeable folk here - I invite comments on this.
You hit the nail squarely on the head as to why a copy of a movie is of far more value to me than the boxed version from the store. Comparing a pirated copy of a movie to the boxed version is like comparing a nice bone-free filet of whitefish to a catfish. ( those of you who have ever tried to eat one of those bony catfish know exactly what I mean.)
I try to cut the marketing professionals a little slack, as I know the business education they receive is sorely lacking in common sense, relying mostly on legal tactics to enforce their business model. If it were engineering instead of marketing, this would be the paradigm of "get a bigger hammer" for fixing technical problems. The marketing equivalent is "lobby for more law". Law fixes piracy about as effectively as a hammer fixes technical problems.
Like you, I feel we all build on foundations laid by others.
My observation is its a case of "monkey-see-monkey-do" and its been that way since we became a species capable of doing so. Many scientists study animals doing so as an indicator of their intelligence.
Lately though, within our species, in our fervor to own everything, we claim ownership of stuff like this and consume much of our resources and creativity trying to own the wind.
As far as I am concerned, Disney owns Mickey Mouse as long as they are around to claim it. They made it. Its theirs. Period. I do not feel they can lay claim to any drawn mouse, but if it looks like Mickey to the man on the street, its Mickey. I feel I have as much right to draw Mickeys and sell them as Disney's work as much as I have the right to affix Disney's name to my work. Not right.
However I do have a problem with someone else having a problem because a restaurant staff sings "happy birthday" to a customer. I am have a hard time explaining why I feel the way I do about a hard product as a drawn mouse, yet not feel that way at all about something like a song. Why would I feel Disney owns Mickey, but feel Apple does not own the look and feel of a user interface no more than Ford owns the shape of a steering wheel?
There are snoops and malicious activity everywhere on the net. Seems a lot of governments as well as shysters are doing it. This does not seem centered on one group of people as I can see. We are snooping. They are snooping. Businesses are snooping. Many people are hoarding other's personal data, but trying every way they can to protect theirs - our own government is snooping like heck, but let their beans get spilled and they come all unglued.
Information I volunteer on a business form becomes public for the business "associates", but a song aired is still considered private property and having others store an unauthorized copy being deemed illegal. If my storing a copy of information copyrighted by someone else is illegal, why isn't it illegal for them to store a copy of my doings? I claim copyright over my life, but who is going to enforce my claims?
As things go global, I guess a lot of you know that there are Chinese counterparts to Ebay and Amazon. Its AliExpress, Alibaba, Baidu, Taobao. I use AliExpress a lot to get things that are hard to find in the USA - or when I do find them, they are often marked way up. AliExpress is geared for international sales, where the others I listed are internal Chinese sites and it would help a lot if you can read Mandarin.
So far I have not noted unusual activity coming from the shopping sites, however I did note some software behaving suspiciously as I was researching shipping sites and was visiting a lot of unknown Chinese sites in search of how the shipping systems worked. The legit sites were not doing it, but in my ignorance, I was hitting a lot of decoy sites.
No-Script saved my ass a lot of times. The legit sites worked without requiring me to "drop my shields". I only wish American business sites would do likewise, as I often do not know who is legit and who is trying to pull a fast one until I have done business with them a few times. When the first thing a business site does is demand I "drop my shields", thereby becoming vulnerable to a malware attack, I become suspicious, I guess for the same reason if I entered a bank wearing a ski mask, I would expect the bank personnel to suspect I may have an ulterior motive for my presentation.
Interesting.... Here's a lot of pics concerning Kimba, a lot of which look like a lot of cross-influencing between Osama Tezuku's (Kimba) and Disney - obviously rendered by additional artists. While I believe Disney's image of Simba is significantly different from Tezuku's image of Kimba, the blending of elements of both by other artists yields a spectrum of similarities to both.
If I were a juror, I would be very hard pressed to define a line between what does and what does not constitute an infringement - as there is such a gradual progression of similarity. One could get very persnickety on why one image violates copyright, but a very similar image does not.
Think if you were handy with a paint brush and drew Disney's copyrighted characters on a T-shirt and tried to sell them, I bet you will receive a letter from a Disney lawyer.
I am aware of one person who was a Disney fan and drew Lion King characters on her own shirt - no money or sales involved - and she was denied admission to Disneyland on the basis of what she had drawn on her own shirt with her own hand for her own enjoyment. ( It was damn good work if I say so myself - not offensive at all ). Meanwhile kids were getting into the park wearing all sorts of offensive shirts...
I do not know if you were drawing a lion, at what point does the lion become Simba?
For a long time, movies have been losing their appeal to me. The "theatrical experience" is not near what I expect anymore.
I am told the movie starts at 7. I arrive no later than 6:45 so I can be seated well before the movie starts. So its already dark in the theater and they continuously bombard me with loud ads, keeping me from conversing with my friends. And I am considered rude for trying to communicate with my friends before the movie even starts? Ok, 7PM arrives. Movietime! More ads. Previews. Yet more ads. Coke, cars, TV personalities. When is the show? Ok, 30 minutes go by - they have screened all their crap and finally the splash screen for the feature presentation. By this time I am wondering just what I am doing here. This was delay upon delay trying to get eat the popcorn I had ( served in a little box ) so I would have to get some more. And the drinks are single served so I gotta pay for another specimen.
Kids laughing. Babies crying. Phones ringing. Lots of distracting lights from texters. The guy behind me taking off his shoes and propping his feet up on the vacant seat right next to my nose. I ask myself why oh why did I do this?
It took several years to delete my old ways, as the old perceptions I had of the theatrical experience had lost its flavor and no longer delivered satisfaction. I felt entering into a theater was just dropping my pants for a financial screwing at the snack counter, and a royal waste of time in front of the screen. If they are going to screen all those ads to me on my time ( time between when they *say* the movie starts to when the movie actually starts ), they should at least compensate me with free snacks.
Many industries abuse their customer base. This is what happens. Demand destruction will not happen overnight, as there is a lot of habits formed over the years that have to be broken. But once broken, the onus is now on the marketer to re-establish the habit if they want to have a viable business model.
It may look like a good business move to go ahead and hike the admission price to $15, surcharge the "silver experience" tickets sold last year, take money from other businesses to run ads to your audience when they came for the movie, mark up the snacks ungodly amounts, and sell dirt-cheap popcorn in little boxes to encourage repeat sales. Consider the demand destruction as your neglected audience finds other things to do. Then make your business decision.
Consider once your customers have other plans, how do you lure them back?
I would not go as far as saying old people hate computers.
But I will say old people have had enough people pull fast ones on them that they see it coming and try their level best to avoid it. Never sign contracts you have not read.
And a lot of us are very apprehensive about installing software in our machine when the EULA is full of "hold harmless" clauses and the software has a reputation of not being very trustworthy. It is almost like going to a quack doctor or religions that for all intents and purposes seem little more than tithe collectors selling fire insurance.
Younger, less experienced folk are apt to do whatever some "leader" tells them to do. Old people are very apt to see through it and not do as they are told.
Old people can be very crotchety. Experience will do this to you. I know. I am one of them.
I grew up in a rural area. A farm. We had an aerial, and one TV station was North, another NorthWest, another to the SouthEast, and another due East.
The antennas were directional.
I still remember going outside to turn the antenna mast running along side the house, while my Dad was in the house hollering out the window until I got the antenna pointed correctly. A few years later, Dad got this remote control antenna motor, maybe that was what got me interested in electronics....
I am going to speak as a senior citizen... as I am one.
Movies and music... yes, once they were a big part of my life. Now they are not. I have other things I would rather do than mess with pre-recorded "entertainment". I would much rather roll my own.
Once AM radio ( and its DJ, which I considered a personal friend ) was almost my god. The DJ is gone, replaced by a pre-recorded script. I would not even think of asking him to play anything for me - he can't - he is owned by the media ( clear-channel ) and is responsible to them, not pandering to me. He plays what he is ordered to play... me - I feel I am on the receiving end of an audio enema.
Movies have got so full of terribly boring repetitive ads which make my blood pressure boil upon the relentless pestering and consuming my time. If the ads were at least interesting, it would be OK, but business people have the idea its the "impression count" that matters - as if I am some sort of bolt that can be hammered away at until it opens the wallet. I am not. I end up turning the system off and leaving. Often angry. Its simply not worth it.
I was in a Carl's Jr restaurant today... the overhead TV was discussing various snippets of news the media saw fit to allow us commoners to see for free. Among the useless drivel was the "Top 10 music". I did not know a one of them. And frankly only one of them sounded the least bit interesting. All you media companies who have control and insisting on pay for every play, I concede defeat. You keep your music. It does not mean anything to me anymore. I would rather go tinker with my Arduino, blog on Slashdot, go tinker with an old oven my neighbor tossed out - and make a little place for me to tinker with lithium battery chargers but not burn the house down should an experiment go awry.
I guess what I am trying to say is as people get older, their drives change. Things that used to mean a lot no longer mean anything. Conversely, things that used to hold little value to me now mean a lot. Peace, for instance. Having a simple lifestyle. I am trying my best to divorce myself from all these companies who are trying their level best to marry me so they can pester me for the rest of my life with monthly bills.
Your grandparents may not be interested in this at all.
Talk to them.
I can not speak for all senior citizens, but for what its worth, this was one senior citizen's take on this.
I have often pondered this as well... if there are another civilization out there. Advanced enough to build interstellar transport. Would they by their advanced technology be benevolent?
Or would they be desperately looking for any habitable planet that had the capacity to support life?
Would they consider us as we would consider finding a large land mass on earth, inhabited by roaches and rodents?
From what I can tell, our Earth is a veritable jewel in the vastness of space. Our water is abundant, yet we have land, a stable orbit, a stable Sun. And a rich assortment of mineral elements. Its something any entity would greatly treasure. For now, its ours because "they" do not know it exists. If "they" knew about it, would they claim it was theirs?
I feel if we are not alone, just the sheer laws of time and physics is all that separates us from other forces which could take everything we know away. I have a hard time thinking that if we are not alone in this universe, we are the most advanced. We would be in a poor position to wage any sort of war against those who have developed interstellar travel, as their ability to direct energy obviously is greater than ours, and directed energy is what wins wars.
So far, I have seen little to suggest the existence of another species out there, but lack of evidence is not evidence they do not exist. From a cockroach's point of view, I probably do not exist either. Its only been within my generation that electromagnetism has been understood to a point we can use it as a communications medium. I have no idea what other technologies are out there, as of yet undiscovered, and no knowledge whatsoever of their existence.
Its hard - very hard - not to follow orders when your paycheck ( and in China, maybe your life ) depends on it.
Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychology student, did a lot of research on obedience in a widely published study known as "Obedience to Authority". This book was recommended to me by some professors at the college I was attending when I mentioned I was having some problems with dealing with leadership types.
Our whole society is built on following orders - especially in the military, business, and religious groups. Failure to comply results in being ostracized. Being as social as we are, that is a very strong motivator. When one is subordinate, being tasked with an order from an authority, personal responsibility ( and the common sense that goes with it ) is tossed.
We can go after order-followers if we can insulate them from the retaliation of their leader for their failure to follow orders. If we too weak to be able to shield them from the wrath of their leader, we have little business asking such a thing from them. .
I know this is pure troll, but if anyone on this planet is in dire need of a throttle on resource consumption, it ain't the Chinese.
I am so disgusted with the immense amounts of waste we make - right here in the "good ole' USA". I find it amazing the world tolerates us. It seems all we do is consume and print our way our of our debt. I guess ( speaking as an unemployed engineer ), I am so pissed off that I try to make something that refrigerates more efficiently or lights a room better and I have no end of problems with the "people skills" needed to even get past the corporate firewall known as the "personnel department". I do not have the "certs" on some special language or CAD system they are looking for. They could seem to care less that I have a lifetime of experience working with the physics and thermodynamics of these things. Yet I see everyone fawning over some new fashion trend, sports hero, or teen idol.
It annoys me greatly to see us buying all sorts of stuff, shoddily made, but looks pretty in its packaging, just for a one-time use to show off that we can afford it.
I just about cried when I discovered during the oil crunch, my government was buying up "guzzler" SUV's and pouring sodium silicate in the engine to completely ruin it. These were still perfectly usable vehicles but our way, way, way overfunded governments can afford such waste. They did it to remove the chance some less fortunate individuals who did not drive much could buy them, keeping the prices high for retailers at taxpayer expense.
Then, after paying out their taxpayer money to buy up existing serviceable vehicles just to dry up the supply of used vehicles to keep poor people from having any, then the governor appears on TV appealing for yet more sales taxes to support our educational system - and no one has the guts to tell the politicians that they had the money and they irresponsibly spent it and the funding for the schools will be deducted from the retirement/healthcare costs of the politicians who backed up the irresponsible spending ( in lieu of jail time for abrogation of fiduciary duty on public funds ).
And we think the Chinese are bad? I think we are worse, much worse, but conniving.
I believe our malaise lies not with the Chinese, but the banks. For a long time we fought them off, but eventually they persuaded our Government to give them the privilege of printing unbacked money, then the right to collect interest on money they printed. Basically, they get paid rent for what was never theirs to let. The only way the banks can be paid back is with yet more ( interest bearing ) loans. They make friends with people in high places, so no-one has the power to stand up to them, lest they be called a "terrorist".
This video on YouTube is one of the best revealings I have yet seen on how this mess came to be.
Its about 30 minutes long... but once you have seen it, I think you will see how "they" are messing the whole world up.
Slashdot Mirror
AC posted posted my first impression of the problem.
Ads.
Countless amounts of legal and technical efforts go into trying to make us ingest a nauseating pill. Its like trying to get a cat to swallow a pill. If you have ever owned a cat, you know this routine.
I have seen ads that were entertaining, but very seldom.
Most ads are delivered with all the finesse of a panhandler trying to bum the price of a beer off some restaurant's clientele - and if the beggars get too annoying, the clientele goes elsewhere just to get away from the beggars.
Since a lot of decision makers read Slashdot, I'll offer up this bit of feedback... instead of trying to coerce your audience to watch your ad through skip-resistant technologies, frequent interruptions, punitive and legal means, and other highly annoying tactics and threats.... instead how about getting some artisans to work on your idea to make it entertaining... something people will hold their pee for.
Look to Google. I note they apparently are doing research on ads.
On YouTube, the ads are often skippable, but you know what? Some of the ads are better done than the thing I dialed up in the first place - I end up watching the whole ad and then skipping the video when what I had originally intended to watch turned out to be a disappointment.
My guess is Google figured it was probably better to let people skip the ad if it was simply annoying to them, lest they leave the website completely; ramming a ad onto someone non-receptive to it is completely counterproductive. However introducing a new product to someone interested in it is the ultimate goal. The problem is matching them up. The cat does not like the oats which interest the horse, nor does the horse find birds of culinary interest.
TL:DR You are wasting your time trying to force people to watch your ad. Make them interesting!!!
Yes... is the Universe rotating? Kinda hard to tell if I am in it - it seems no matter where I stand, everything looks like its rotating around me, and I am the center of the Universe. Being everything I observe out there seems to be in some sort of equilibrium between gravitation and centrifugal force, I have to conjecture the Universe is rotating. Its the only thing I can come up with as to why the universe hasn't imploded.
I have seen some data saying the rate of expansion of the Universe is increasing... now that one is a puzzlement to me.
Interesting.... thanks for the link!
Somehow, I had the notion that at the event horizon, from above, it would look pitch black, as anything incoming would not be able to escape. However, should I ( hypothetically of course ) be able to pass through the event horizon, I would expect enormous pressures and light. Lots of it. From this perspective, the event horizon should look perfectly reflective.
I figured if the thing wasn't spinning, it could go on this way forever, eating and eating, and getting bigger and bigger, until it consumed everything.
But, the way I see it, the spinning is the fly in the ointment. The black hole eats so much, and in doing so spins up so fast it can't contain itself. When it has so much spin the gravitational field can't contain the innards. Part of the substance of the hole extrudes beyond the event horizon, the hole becomes unstable, and we get another cycle of the big bang.
Sometimes I wonder if we are also living in a great black hole - meaning there is no way out of our universe. Galaxy - yes, but universe, no. For us, nothing would exist outside it.
Consider what the gravitational tug of a black hole is, as well as the matter spiraling in ( as observed )... it was my understanding that the incoming matter and energy would be traveling at the speed of light as it crossed the event horizon. From there on in, I have no idea what state the matter is in, but I highly suspect its completely broken down into something highly compressible, maybe not taking up volume at all as we know it.
This is just my guess, I will lay it out here.
I believe what we are seeing is the explosion of a big black hole. One that had consumed the universe before it.
What made it explode? Centrifugal force. The Universe the black hole ate was rotating. What we have now is rotating. Rotational inertia is conserved. Remnants of the great centrifugal slingout (aka "Big Bang") can be observed everywhere with everything spun out still spinning. This giant black hole kept on eating and eating and eating matter spiraling into it. Eventually it got to spinning so fast the mass/energy within could no longer be constrained by its gravitational force, it became unstable, resulting in one helluva bang. In the black hole, elements as we know them were completely disassembled and packed as energy and subatomic particles. Those were spewed off into the void with great vigor. In the void, they reassembled themselves into the elements, mostly the simplest one, hydrogen, that we observe.
Even today, one can observe smaller black holes already at work on the next cycle, matter and whatever else they can eat spiraling in... spinning them up. They will eat each other too. I believe we are destined to go through this as well ( but definitely not in our lifetimes ). This cycle appears to have a period of trillions of years. I get the idea there are a lot more universes out there than the one we can observe. I get the whole idea the whole shebang is rotating. That's what makes it work. Where did the whole shebang come from - I have to leave that one to theologians. I believe the correct word to describe the whole shebang is "infinite". In energy, time, space, and matter ( and all four are manifestations of each other )
The universe we live in, the one we can observe, is exactly that.... the observable universe. I believe we are one infinitesimally small part of the whole shebang.
If you and I are on opposite sides of a merry-go-round in motion, are you traveling with respect to me, despite the fact neither you nor I are moving around on the platform of the merry-go-round? From my perspective, you do not appear to be moving, but if I holler to you do I get a doppler shift in the sound? If I attempt to spray you with a jet of water, does not the water take a curved course to get to you? If I tried this with light, would I not get a red-shift - more pronounced the further away you are from me? Is that not what we observe already?
Ok - I may be full of it, but that is my personal pet theory of how it all began, well, er, how what we see now began, as my pet theory has everything, the mix of energy, time, space, and matter, always existed in past, and will always exist in the future, albeit the proportions are constantly in oscillation, much like the interchange of potential and kinetic energy in a resonant object.
There is an eclectic mix of quite knowledgeable folk here - I invite comments on this.
You hit the nail squarely on the head as to why a copy of a movie is of far more value to me than the boxed version from the store. Comparing a pirated copy of a movie to the boxed version is like comparing a nice bone-free filet of whitefish to a catfish. ( those of you who have ever tried to eat one of those bony catfish know exactly what I mean.)
I try to cut the marketing professionals a little slack, as I know the business education they receive is sorely lacking in common sense, relying mostly on legal tactics to enforce their business model. If it were engineering instead of marketing, this would be the paradigm of "get a bigger hammer" for fixing technical problems. The marketing equivalent is "lobby for more law". Law fixes piracy about as effectively as a hammer fixes technical problems.
It could be worse.
The Post Office could easily see fit to give you a "free" PO Box at the post office....
And eliminate delivery altogether.
Like you, I feel we all build on foundations laid by others.
My observation is its a case of "monkey-see-monkey-do" and its been that way since we became a species capable of doing so. Many scientists study animals doing so as an indicator of their intelligence.
Lately though, within our species, in our fervor to own everything, we claim ownership of stuff like this and consume much of our resources and creativity trying to own the wind.
As far as I am concerned, Disney owns Mickey Mouse as long as they are around to claim it. They made it. Its theirs. Period. I do not feel they can lay claim to any drawn mouse, but if it looks like Mickey to the man on the street, its Mickey. I feel I have as much right to draw Mickeys and sell them as Disney's work as much as I have the right to affix Disney's name to my work. Not right.
However I do have a problem with someone else having a problem because a restaurant staff sings "happy birthday" to a customer. I am have a hard time explaining why I feel the way I do about a hard product as a drawn mouse, yet not feel that way at all about something like a song. Why would I feel Disney owns Mickey, but feel Apple does not own the look and feel of a user interface no more than Ford owns the shape of a steering wheel?
There are snoops and malicious activity everywhere on the net. Seems a lot of governments as well as shysters are doing it. This does not seem centered on one group of people as I can see. We are snooping. They are snooping. Businesses are snooping. Many people are hoarding other's personal data, but trying every way they can to protect theirs - our own government is snooping like heck, but let their beans get spilled and they come all unglued.
Information I volunteer on a business form becomes public for the business "associates", but a song aired is still considered private property and having others store an unauthorized copy being deemed illegal. If my storing a copy of information copyrighted by someone else is illegal, why isn't it illegal for them to store a copy of my doings? I claim copyright over my life, but who is going to enforce my claims?
As things go global, I guess a lot of you know that there are Chinese counterparts to Ebay and Amazon. Its AliExpress, Alibaba, Baidu, Taobao. I use AliExpress a lot to get things that are hard to find in the USA - or when I do find them, they are often marked way up. AliExpress is geared for international sales, where the others I listed are internal Chinese sites and it would help a lot if you can read Mandarin.
So far I have not noted unusual activity coming from the shopping sites, however I did note some software behaving suspiciously as I was researching shipping sites and was visiting a lot of unknown Chinese sites in search of how the shipping systems worked. The legit sites were not doing it, but in my ignorance, I was hitting a lot of decoy sites.
No-Script saved my ass a lot of times. The legit sites worked without requiring me to "drop my shields". I only wish American business sites would do likewise, as I often do not know who is legit and who is trying to pull a fast one until I have done business with them a few times. When the first thing a business site does is demand I "drop my shields", thereby becoming vulnerable to a malware attack, I become suspicious, I guess for the same reason if I entered a bank wearing a ski mask, I would expect the bank personnel to suspect I may have an ulterior motive for my presentation.
Sorry... my memory does not work nearly as well as the cut and paste buffer which had the URL in it. Did I ever botch a name... Osamu Tezuka.
Interesting.... Here's a lot of pics concerning Kimba, a lot of which look like a lot of cross-influencing between Osama Tezuku's (Kimba) and Disney - obviously rendered by additional artists. While I believe Disney's image of Simba is significantly different from Tezuku's image of Kimba, the blending of elements of both by other artists yields a spectrum of similarities to both.
If I were a juror, I would be very hard pressed to define a line between what does and what does not constitute an infringement - as there is such a gradual progression of similarity. One could get very persnickety on why one image violates copyright, but a very similar image does not.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1366&bih=639&q=kimba+the+white+lion&oq=kimba+&gs_l=img.1.0.0l10.2864.4426.0.7743.6.6.0.0.0.0.101.548.4j2.6.0....0...1ac.1.21.img.DgZDU3joRhk
Which ones would you pick if you had to make a decision?
Yeah, you probably would.
Think if you were handy with a paint brush and drew Disney's copyrighted characters on a T-shirt and tried to sell them, I bet you will receive a letter from a Disney lawyer.
I am aware of one person who was a Disney fan and drew Lion King characters on her own shirt - no money or sales involved - and she was denied admission to Disneyland on the basis of what she had drawn on her own shirt with her own hand for her own enjoyment. ( It was damn good work if I say so myself - not offensive at all ). Meanwhile kids were getting into the park wearing all sorts of offensive shirts...
I do not know if you were drawing a lion, at what point does the lion become Simba?
I'll drop my two cent's worth here...
For a long time, movies have been losing their appeal to me. The "theatrical experience" is not near what I expect anymore.
I am told the movie starts at 7. I arrive no later than 6:45 so I can be seated well before the movie starts. So its already dark in the theater and they continuously bombard me with loud ads, keeping me from conversing with my friends. And I am considered rude for trying to communicate with my friends before the movie even starts? Ok, 7PM arrives. Movietime! More ads. Previews. Yet more ads. Coke, cars, TV personalities. When is the show? Ok, 30 minutes go by - they have screened all their crap and finally the splash screen for the feature presentation. By this time I am wondering just what I am doing here. This was delay upon delay trying to get eat the popcorn I had ( served in a little box ) so I would have to get some more. And the drinks are single served so I gotta pay for another specimen.
Kids laughing. Babies crying. Phones ringing. Lots of distracting lights from texters. The guy behind me taking off his shoes and propping his feet up on the vacant seat right next to my nose. I ask myself why oh why did I do this?
It took several years to delete my old ways, as the old perceptions I had of the theatrical experience had lost its flavor and no longer delivered satisfaction. I felt entering into a theater was just dropping my pants for a financial screwing at the snack counter, and a royal waste of time in front of the screen. If they are going to screen all those ads to me on my time ( time between when they *say* the movie starts to when the movie actually starts ), they should at least compensate me with free snacks.
Many industries abuse their customer base. This is what happens. Demand destruction will not happen overnight, as there is a lot of habits formed over the years that have to be broken. But once broken, the onus is now on the marketer to re-establish the habit if they want to have a viable business model.
It may look like a good business move to go ahead and hike the admission price to $15, surcharge the "silver experience" tickets sold last year, take money from other businesses to run ads to your audience when they came for the movie, mark up the snacks ungodly amounts, and sell dirt-cheap popcorn in little boxes to encourage repeat sales. Consider the demand destruction as your neglected audience finds other things to do. Then make your business decision.
Consider once your customers have other plans, how do you lure them back?
I would not go as far as saying old people hate computers.
But I will say old people have had enough people pull fast ones on them that they see it coming and try their level best to avoid it. Never sign contracts you have not read.
And a lot of us are very apprehensive about installing software in our machine when the EULA is full of "hold harmless" clauses and the software has a reputation of not being very trustworthy. It is almost like going to a quack doctor or religions that for all intents and purposes seem little more than tithe collectors selling fire insurance.
Younger, less experienced folk are apt to do whatever some "leader" tells them to do. Old people are very apt to see through it and not do as they are told.
Old people can be very crotchety. Experience will do this to you. I know. I am one of them.
I grew up in a rural area. A farm. We had an aerial, and one TV station was North, another NorthWest, another to the SouthEast, and another due East.
The antennas were directional.
I still remember going outside to turn the antenna mast running along side the house, while my Dad was in the house hollering out the window until I got the antenna pointed correctly. A few years later, Dad got this remote control antenna motor, maybe that was what got me interested in electronics....
I am going to speak as a senior citizen... as I am one.
Movies and music... yes, once they were a big part of my life. Now they are not. I have other things I would rather do than mess with pre-recorded "entertainment". I would much rather roll my own.
Once AM radio ( and its DJ, which I considered a personal friend ) was almost my god. The DJ is gone, replaced by a pre-recorded script. I would not even think of asking him to play anything for me - he can't - he is owned by the media ( clear-channel ) and is responsible to them, not pandering to me. He plays what he is ordered to play... me - I feel I am on the receiving end of an audio enema.
Movies have got so full of terribly boring repetitive ads which make my blood pressure boil upon the relentless pestering and consuming my time. If the ads were at least interesting, it would be OK, but business people have the idea its the "impression count" that matters - as if I am some sort of bolt that can be hammered away at until it opens the wallet. I am not. I end up turning the system off and leaving. Often angry. Its simply not worth it.
I was in a Carl's Jr restaurant today... the overhead TV was discussing various snippets of news the media saw fit to allow us commoners to see for free. Among the useless drivel was the "Top 10 music". I did not know a one of them. And frankly only one of them sounded the least bit interesting. All you media companies who have control and insisting on pay for every play, I concede defeat. You keep your music. It does not mean anything to me anymore. I would rather go tinker with my Arduino, blog on Slashdot, go tinker with an old oven my neighbor tossed out - and make a little place for me to tinker with lithium battery chargers but not burn the house down should an experiment go awry.
I guess what I am trying to say is as people get older, their drives change. Things that used to mean a lot no longer mean anything. Conversely, things that used to hold little value to me now mean a lot. Peace, for instance. Having a simple lifestyle. I am trying my best to divorce myself from all these companies who are trying their level best to marry me so they can pester me for the rest of my life with monthly bills.
Your grandparents may not be interested in this at all.
Talk to them.
I can not speak for all senior citizens, but for what its worth, this was one senior citizen's take on this.
I have often pondered this as well... if there are another civilization out there. Advanced enough to build interstellar transport. Would they by their advanced technology be benevolent?
Or would they be desperately looking for any habitable planet that had the capacity to support life?
Would they consider us as we would consider finding a large land mass on earth, inhabited by roaches and rodents?
From what I can tell, our Earth is a veritable jewel in the vastness of space. Our water is abundant, yet we have land, a stable orbit, a stable Sun. And a rich assortment of mineral elements. Its something any entity would greatly treasure. For now, its ours because "they" do not know it exists. If "they" knew about it, would they claim it was theirs?
I feel if we are not alone, just the sheer laws of time and physics is all that separates us from other forces which could take everything we know away. I have a hard time thinking that if we are not alone in this universe, we are the most advanced. We would be in a poor position to wage any sort of war against those who have developed interstellar travel, as their ability to direct energy obviously is greater than ours, and directed energy is what wins wars.
So far, I have seen little to suggest the existence of another species out there, but lack of evidence is not evidence they do not exist. From a cockroach's point of view, I probably do not exist either. Its only been within my generation that electromagnetism has been understood to a point we can use it as a communications medium. I have no idea what other technologies are out there, as of yet undiscovered, and no knowledge whatsoever of their existence.
Mammals tolerate this stuff pretty well..... its the bees and fish that really have a problem with this stuff.
http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/malagen.pdf ( PDF warning ).
The metering system is mechanical, and if its gonna fail, its gonna fail whether or not a human is flying the thing...
We already have completely autonomous tractors on the farms... completely robotic - plowing, reaping, harvesting.
Oh, an autonomous tractor run amuck - oh! the horror! - but we do not hear of it because there are sufficient safeguards it doesn't happen.
So what's the big deal about a robotic crop duster?
Its hard - very hard - not to follow orders when your paycheck ( and in China, maybe your life ) depends on it.
Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychology student, did a lot of research on obedience in a widely published study known as "Obedience to Authority". This book was recommended to me by some professors at the college I was attending when I mentioned I was having some problems with dealing with leadership types.
Our whole society is built on following orders - especially in the military, business, and religious groups. Failure to comply results in being ostracized. Being as social as we are, that is a very strong motivator. When one is subordinate, being tasked with an order from an authority, personal responsibility ( and the common sense that goes with it ) is tossed.
We can go after order-followers if we can insulate them from the retaliation of their leader for their failure to follow orders. If we too weak to be able to shield them from the wrath of their leader, we have little business asking such a thing from them. .
I know this is pure troll, but if anyone on this planet is in dire need of a throttle on resource consumption, it ain't the Chinese.
I am so disgusted with the immense amounts of waste we make - right here in the "good ole' USA". I find it amazing the world tolerates us. It seems all we do is consume and print our way our of our debt. I guess ( speaking as an unemployed engineer ), I am so pissed off that I try to make something that refrigerates more efficiently or lights a room better and I have no end of problems with the "people skills" needed to even get past the corporate firewall known as the "personnel department". I do not have the "certs" on some special language or CAD system they are looking for. They could seem to care less that I have a lifetime of experience working with the physics and thermodynamics of these things. Yet I see everyone fawning over some new fashion trend, sports hero, or teen idol.
It annoys me greatly to see us buying all sorts of stuff, shoddily made, but looks pretty in its packaging, just for a one-time use to show off that we can afford it.
I just about cried when I discovered during the oil crunch, my government was buying up "guzzler" SUV's and pouring sodium silicate in the engine to completely ruin it. These were still perfectly usable vehicles but our way, way, way overfunded governments can afford such waste. They did it to remove the chance some less fortunate individuals who did not drive much could buy them, keeping the prices high for retailers at taxpayer expense.
Then, after paying out their taxpayer money to buy up existing serviceable vehicles just to dry up the supply of used vehicles to keep poor people from having any, then the governor appears on TV appealing for yet more sales taxes to support our educational system - and no one has the guts to tell the politicians that they had the money and they irresponsibly spent it and the funding for the schools will be deducted from the retirement/healthcare costs of the politicians who backed up the irresponsible spending ( in lieu of jail time for abrogation of fiduciary duty on public funds ).
And we think the Chinese are bad? I think we are worse, much worse, but conniving.
I believe our malaise lies not with the Chinese, but the banks. For a long time we fought them off, but eventually they persuaded our Government to give them the privilege of printing unbacked money, then the right to collect interest on money they printed. Basically, they get paid rent for what was never theirs to let. The only way the banks can be paid back is with yet more ( interest bearing ) loans. They make friends with people in high places, so no-one has the power to stand up to them, lest they be called a "terrorist".
This video on YouTube is one of the best revealings I have yet seen on how this mess came to be.
Its about 30 minutes long... but once you have seen it, I think you will see how "they" are messing the whole world up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mII9NZ8MMVM
If the Chinese let this beast in, it will do them in as it has done us.
Sounds like right out of a military R&D lab.
One of these on a reconnaissance robot and you get the 3D layout, as well as everything moving.
A rat-sized robot.