(Related from memory. I did not experience this first-hand.)
SFX took their B5 news from some less than professional convention organizers. Which meant that they had quite a few errors because of it.
Then, JMS made some hand-gesture to a fan, and SFX made a big issue out it, (mis-interpreted it?) and made it their cause to insult JMS in their magazine.
Copyright laws being what they are, SFX is of couse entitled to quote parts of his posts if they want to. But the disclaimer is a threat to sue them over it anyway.
Unfortunately, there's little concern for "suspense", which the vast majority of the TV viewing public prefers.
Funny. Whenever I'm asked to describe Babylon 5, I say "Epic Science fiction suspense and political drama." The season-wide "suspense" was mostly resolved by the end of season 4, though.
WB wouldn't do it, so two independent producers without any credits to their names got involved trying to make it work. How about the fans hiring some people on their own and financing the production? It's a high-risk enterprise, and they would absolutely need to hire industry professionals. But they might be able to see some of the gross income that way.
But they do share some of the same fate those two shows. Firefly was canceled but gets a movie. Babylon 5 barely got to run for a full 5 years, and then its movie was canceled...
I read EULAs too. Nowadays I usually just skim really fast through them though, since many are so similar in structure.
I know they aren't enforceable, at least where I live. However, if I'm requested to use a product from Microsoft - yes, work dictates - I make sure to read every clause of the EULA, privacy policy, etc. If I find some crazy clause I can use it as a good legal argument for not using the program. And I don't want to be semi-legally bound to perform in a naked marriachi band outside Bill Gates' home. Even if it IS for charity.
iii) Good question. They could offer reduced premium on home posessions insurance to those that install such equipment. With direct feed to a security company, say, or the insurance company, which looks at the webcams and then calls the police whenever there's an unknown person in the picture and the alarm is on. In the UK, big brother watches your burglars! Then after some years, they could REQUIRE all insured parties to install those cameras and leave them on 24/7. (See Nineteen eighty-four by George Orwell.)
This is Norway we're talking about, right? Yeah, "decent hotel" sounds about right. Actually, "decent motel" would be more accurate.
Anectdote: I remember Linda Blair, (Pierce Brosnan?), and other actors held a press conference in California to raise awareness about the fact that anti-whaling activists were having their throats slit in Norwegian prisons. Trouble is, there hadn't been a person killed (murder, manslaughter or capital punishment) in Norwegian prisons for years. If at all in living memory...
Yeah, "belay that"-post has been reported here several times. BTW: Let me thank you for the tremendous job you do moderating the newsgrous, keeping it somewhat sane, spam-free, and free of story ideas.:-)
Correction: JMS had the story planned out for 5 years. (As well as having the storyline planned out for years in each direction.) And he knew what the main plot points for each episode was going to be before writing the season.
But he didn't write every episode. There were some guest writers along the way. Towards the end, he wrote every episode.
What you said. It's not as if there's a drought for writers in Hollywood. There are litterally thousands of out-of-work writers hovering around the studios. They might not all be very GOOD writers, though.
I'm not the one to excuse his every failing, even JMS doesn't do that. (He has said that he wouldn't be sad if some of the less good episodes of B5 were lost off a pier somewhere). And the Legend of the Rangers pilot wasn't great.
However: Crusade is a special case. Crusade was deliberately killed by the network.
It turned out that TNT-Atlanta had looked at the demographics from season 5 of Babylon 5 (which they actually saved from the failing PTEN), and saw that those who watched B5 wouldn't watch their wrestling. So they decided to get rid of the show. One of the ways to get rid of the show is to back out of the contract. But that would cost money. So instead, they sent insane network notes to JMS and sent the episodes out of order. That doesn't make for a good viewer experience, now does it?
So thanks to TNT for giving us an extra year of Babylon 5. And thanks to TNT-Atlanta for making a mush of Crusade.
Some think that this is also a hidden message to the fans that their campaign KeepB5Alive has worked. The campaign was calling for the original cast to play their roles in the upcomming Babylon 5 theatrical movie "Babylon 5: The Memory of Shadows"
He was calling for a letter-writing campaign when it's "common knowledge" that those campaigns have become devalued because everybody is doing them these days.
The retraction also references a TV show for the fall of 2006. A TV show. One that sounds like a done deal. Which probably means that it's a new show that they believe so strongly in that they know it'll be picked up (a B5 universe show maybe), or that it's an existing TV show.
PS: When it comes to his reading of the poll on ScifiWire: "This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane."
It's generally thought that DS9 was a pretty good series, getting better as it went along and getting a story arc.
However, JMS might be reluctant to speak about DS9 for a personal reason. JMS had tried to pitch Babylon 5 to a number of studios, such as Paramount, but they wouldn't have it. After years of work, WB finally took up the show. After the Babylon 5 pilot was shot, Paramount just happens to shoot a pilot of their own new show that just happens to be set on a space station, and get the pilot to air just before the Babylon 5 pilot. (Why are some of the sets from the Enterprise?)
Although this had happened, JMS vocally disliked rivalry between the fans of Trek and B5 and advocated that one could like both.
DS9 turned out quite different in the end, so the competition from B5 was kind of good for Trek, wasn't it?
...and in Norway, the Swedish chef Swedish. I assumed that he was Swedish only in Norway, but then I discovered that the in the rest of the world (read: the USA) he was Swedish too!
You're citing the Court of Appeals judgement that was later struck down by the Supreme Court.
So far, downloading illegally uploaded music files is legal in Norway. The appeals court tried to make the argument that the crime of making the files available had been committed and was over after the files were uploaded, thus he could not be an accessory to the crime. I guess they hadn't heard about the term "Accessory after the fact".
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The sad thing is, that's probably exactly the reasoning that's exactly what goes through the executives' collective hivemind.
(Related from memory. I did not experience this first-hand.)
SFX took their B5 news from some less than professional convention organizers. Which meant that they had quite a few errors because of it.
Then, JMS made some hand-gesture to a fan, and SFX made a big issue out it, (mis-interpreted it?) and made it their cause to insult JMS in their magazine.
Copyright laws being what they are, SFX is of couse entitled to quote parts of his posts if they want to. But the disclaimer is a threat to sue them over it anyway.
"Nothing's the same anymore."
For those of you who can go to Hollywood: There's a show benefit for Richard Biggs' kids on the 19th of March.
Some of Rick's colleagues from Days of Our Lives, Babylon 5, and General Hospital will be there.
http://www.richardbiggs.com/
Wow. I must have missed some amazing sci-fi shows. I'd like you to give me a short list of your favourites.
Unfortunately, there's little concern for "suspense", which the vast majority of the TV viewing public prefers.
Funny. Whenever I'm asked to describe Babylon 5, I say "Epic Science fiction suspense and political drama." The season-wide "suspense" was mostly resolved by the end of season 4, though.
You're aware that some of the writers worked on Trek as well, right?
Now it's time to do it ourselves.
Take 2
WB wouldn't do it, so two independent producers without any credits to their names got involved trying to make it work. How about the fans hiring some people on their own and financing the production? It's a high-risk enterprise, and they would absolutely need to hire industry professionals. But they might be able to see some of the gross income that way.
I hope you know about why Crusade seemed to suck so much. It was basically stabbed by the guards before the door opened into the Colosseum.
"one of the best"
"one of"
But they do share some of the same fate those two shows. Firefly was canceled but gets a movie. Babylon 5 barely got to run for a full 5 years, and then its movie was canceled...
That's a good idea. But it's something that benefits the customer instead of the lawyers, so I don't think so.
At least each company usually stay with one licence, so those who only use programs from one vendor would have less EULAs to read.
AFD copyright does this for closed source freeware and shareware.
Of course, in most jurisdictions the EULAs are meaningless drivel that neither add to or remove rights from the customer, since law regulates everything there. They really just would need a few lines saying "This is owned by X, ©,® we have legal rights, look it up in Z and Y legal code. No warranties."
I read EULAs too.
Nowadays I usually just skim really fast through them though, since many are so similar in structure.
I know they aren't enforceable, at least where I live. However, if I'm requested to use a product from Microsoft - yes, work dictates - I make sure to read every clause of the EULA, privacy policy, etc. If I find some crazy clause I can use it as a good legal argument for not using the program. And I don't want to be semi-legally bound to perform in a naked marriachi band outside Bill Gates' home. Even if it IS for charity.
i) False positives
ii) No. Not yet, at least
iii) Good question. They could offer reduced premium on home posessions insurance to those that install such equipment. With direct feed to a security company, say, or the insurance company, which looks at the webcams and then calls the police whenever there's an unknown person in the picture and the alarm is on.
In the UK, big brother watches your burglars!
Then after some years, they could REQUIRE all insured parties to install those cameras and leave them on 24/7.
(See Nineteen eighty-four by George Orwell.)
Give me my computer back, you bastard!
I can't believe you're out on bail allready...
This is Norway we're talking about, right? Yeah, "decent hotel" sounds about right. Actually, "decent motel" would be more accurate.
Anectdote: I remember Linda Blair, (Pierce Brosnan?), and other actors held a press conference in California to raise awareness about the fact that anti-whaling activists were having their throats slit in Norwegian prisons. Trouble is, there hadn't been a person killed (murder, manslaughter or capital punishment) in Norwegian prisons for years. If at all in living memory...
Yeah, "belay that"-post has been reported here several times. :-)
BTW: Let me thank you for the tremendous job you do moderating the newsgrous, keeping it somewhat sane, spam-free, and free of story ideas.
Correction: JMS had the story planned out for 5 years. (As well as having the storyline planned out for years in each direction.) And he knew what the main plot points for each episode was going to be before writing the season.
But he didn't write every episode. There were some guest writers along the way. Towards the end, he wrote every episode.
What you said. It's not as if there's a drought for writers in Hollywood. There are litterally thousands of out-of-work writers hovering around the studios.
They might not all be very GOOD writers, though.
Thanks to TNT it got to be 5 years. If they hadn't picked it up, it would have been just 4 years.
And then TNT-Atlanta killed Crusade
I'm not the one to excuse his every failing, even JMS doesn't do that. (He has said that he wouldn't be sad if some of the less good episodes of B5 were lost off a pier somewhere). And the Legend of the Rangers pilot wasn't great.
However: Crusade is a special case. Crusade was deliberately killed by the network.
It turned out that TNT-Atlanta had looked at the demographics from season 5 of Babylon 5 (which they actually saved from the failing PTEN), and saw that those who watched B5 wouldn't watch their wrestling. So they decided to get rid of the show. One of the ways to get rid of the show is to back out of the contract. But that would cost money. So instead, they sent insane network notes to JMS and sent the episodes out of order. That doesn't make for a good viewer experience, now does it?
So thanks to TNT for giving us an extra year of Babylon 5. And thanks to TNT-Atlanta for making a mush of Crusade.
Some think that this is also a hidden message to the fans that their campaign KeepB5Alive has worked.
The campaign was calling for the original cast to play their roles in the upcomming Babylon 5 theatrical movie "Babylon 5: The Memory of Shadows"
He was calling for a letter-writing campaign when it's "common knowledge" that those campaigns have become devalued because everybody is doing them these days.
The retraction also references a TV show for the fall of 2006. A TV show. One that sounds like a done deal. Which probably means that it's a new show that they believe so strongly in that they know it'll be picked up (a B5 universe show maybe), or that it's an existing TV show.
PS: When it comes to his reading of the poll on ScifiWire: "This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane."
It's generally thought that DS9 was a pretty good series, getting better as it went along and getting a story arc.
However, JMS might be reluctant to speak about DS9 for a personal reason. JMS had tried to pitch Babylon 5 to a number of studios, such as Paramount, but they wouldn't have it. After years of work, WB finally took up the show. After the Babylon 5 pilot was shot, Paramount just happens to shoot a pilot of their own new show that just happens to be set on a space station, and get the pilot to air just before the Babylon 5 pilot. (Why are some of the sets from the Enterprise?)
Although this had happened, JMS vocally disliked rivalry between the fans of Trek and B5 and advocated that one could like both.
DS9 turned out quite different in the end, so the competition from B5 was kind of good for Trek, wasn't it?
...and in Norway, the Swedish chef Swedish.
I assumed that he was Swedish only in Norway, but then I discovered that the in the rest of the world (read: the USA) he was Swedish too!
It's not a fair to compare lutefisk with surstrømming. That's a fixed race.
Rakfisk is worse than lutefisk, I think. Surstrømming might still win as the most disgusting dish, but at least it's a bit of a match.
Remember: Changing the keys means also changing the locks: both the physical lock and the electronic code.
You're citing the Court of Appeals judgement that was later struck down by the Supreme Court.
So far, downloading illegally uploaded music files is legal in Norway. The appeals court tried to make the argument that the crime of making the files available had been committed and was over after the files were uploaded, thus he could not be an accessory to the crime. I guess they hadn't heard about the term "Accessory after the fact".