From the article: >>"If we can't build businesses around ideas, and feel comfortable that we have the right to those ideas, then our entire business is threatened."
I have an idea. Build a business around a real product, not some ethereal thing. I do not practice nor condone piracy in any way, but I do not feel any pity for those fat cats trying to make billions of dollars out of intangible, non-quantifiable concepts such as the (so called) Intellectual Property.
From the article: >>"Piracy has the very real potential of tipping movies into becoming an unprofitable industry [...] If that happens, they will stop being made,"
So, if the Studios (tm) will not make an insane amount of profit from their lackluster, unoriginal products, they will stop financing them? Hum, I wonder if that will be really all that bad.
Sure, apart from the collapse of an entire industry dependant on the strictly controlled production and distribution of movies (which is not A Good Thing to begin with), will it even matter all that much? Even that industry, like many others before it, will just need to adapt to survive, as I am sure it will. If "Hollywood" stops making movies, the world will *not* end. Perhaps films will go back to offer a bit more culture in them; maybe "entertainment" will be produced by others more capable; maybe movie theaters will turn into something else, just as they once changed from opera houses, vaudeville theaters, etc.
The point is that the world will move on, and people will find something else to do.
As I mentioned before, I agree with the point that the behaviour problem seems to stem from the suburbs as opposed to the inner cities. I guess at the moment of writing my original comment, I confused both, but on further reflection I realized that my bad experiences took place in suburban areas -- close to metropolitan areas, mind you -- not within the cities themselves. After living in NYC for a year or so, I can vouche for the general "Live and Let Live" attitude of most people.
But my original point stands: This is not a universal "theater" problem, but seems to be isolated to those (suburban) areas where people tend to be less considerate of each other. And kids growing up in this environment learn to accept and adopt this attitude, and help perpetuate it.
In my opinion, in these places you will encounter such behaviour at the mall, the park, a restaurant, or any other place where people gather in numbers, not just the movie theater. Even standing in line at a Bank or Post Office in my neighborhood in Puerto Rico, as I remember it, you could see the same anti-social and unruly behaviour manisfested. Yet there are other places conspicuously lacking of this problem.
Look, men are groomed from childhood to be smart, be athletic, make money, get a hot girlfriend or wife and work for a living their entire life.
Women are groomed to be cute, pretty and attract a rich, athletic, successful, smart man.
Women have as much potential as men. It's just a matter of where we, as a society, influence them to go. Girls are never praised for being so smart, but you're praised for being so cute and adorable the day you're born, then hot and sexy the rest of your life after some teen-ish age.
I see. So what you're saying is that... you are a woman, and you disagree with the results. SHOCKING!
So let me get this straight... According to the research, on the one hand the highest ranking intelligent people are males; and on the other hand, the lowest ranking bottom-of-the-pile-dumb-as-nails people are also males?
So we are both smarter *and* stupider than women. Did they even bother to include women in this research?
I would have to say that I agree. On further reflection, my bad experiences have been mostly in suburban areas, perhaps close to metropolitan areas, much more than within the city itself.
Having gone to the movies at least once every two weeks for the past 10 years (usually once a week), I have never once had a showing ruined by a phone ringing, someone's kid screaming, or someone else throwing food.
I think you exaggerate the problem a bit much.
This is a localized problem, particularly on big cities, were people tend to be a bit more unruly and care a lot less about how their behaviour affects others -- and I'm not only talking about kids.
Back when I used to live in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where some people tend to be rowdy and obnoxious and most others don't seem to mind; going to the theater there was a frustrating experience. I remember the countless times I had some idiot kicking the back of my seat, others talking loudly (on the phone or otherwise!), etc. Calling on an usher or politely asking them to chill out was an invitation to an altercation.
Needless to say, it was not much fun, so I eventually learned to dread going to the movies, and resigned to wait for movies to come out on DVD, even if it was something I really wanted to see.
I now live in Florida, and the movie theater close to home is rather tame and peaceful. Occassionally there's a loud laugh from a teenager, and rarely an annoying kick on the back of the seat, but when it happens, a simple and polite request to quiet down is all it takes to restore the peace. Granted, I also avoid the large crowds at later showings.
Still, I've gone to other some popular (read: packed) theaters in major metropolitan areas and encounter more or less the same behaviour as in PR, and as others report.
This has led me to believe that the unfriendly and frustrating movie-theater experience is not necessarily an American-cultural thing, or in anyway universal, but a more localized problem, isolated to some big cities, where people loose respect for each other.
As I remember, the Power Toys offered a WinDoskKey (what a funny sounding file, ween-dose'-kee?) hack that you could set to disable the WinKey while using DOS. But before that... oh, how many deathmatches I lost while playing at school because I would inadvertedly miss the left CTRL key...
I used to play Quake in college with a bunch of people (ah, memories), and remember always having to "Exit into DOS mode" for it. The same for many other popular games: Most of them came with Windows and DOS versions (Command & Conquer, Red Alert, to name 2 that I used), and the Windows version would always be choppy and slower in all but the most uber-spec'ed "gamer" machines. Not to mention unstable.
-dZ.
P.S. And while I'm bashing gaming under Win'95... WTF was it with that fscking WinKey?!, Arrgh!
In the original Windows (1.0), as far as I remember, you couldn't overlap windows. You could only either run 1 application maximized, or tile multiple windows side by side.
The change from Windows (1.0) to Windows 3.x was one of the most significant of all.
This is not really "New Technology" or a "Paradigm Shift", or anything extraordinary. This is just another marketeer trying to start a "buzz".
I know plenty of software out there that perform multiple tests in order to establish uniqueness of visitors. Perhaps the current big-biz log-analyzing apps do not do it, but that doesn't mean nothing else does. There was a time when Real Programmers didn't trust cookies as the exclusive identifier. I even remember some popular Log Analyzer Perl script that used to check for the following:
- First, Cookies - Then IP Address (Whether it is known to be dynamic or static) - Then compares the IP Addresses by IP pool (ISP) - Then checks the time between requests, so that requests of different IPs from the same IP pool, with the same User Agent come in within a pre-determined time, they are considered the same visitor. - Also checks the time between requests from the same IP address, so that if a certain pre-determined time has passed between requests, and the IP address is known to be dynamic, and the User Agent changed, then it is probably someone else.
I do not recall the exact details of the analysis, but it was something along the lines of the above. And there were many scripts like that one.
Comparing IP addresses geographically and in a time-sensitive manner (coupled with other potentially identifying criteria, such as Cookies, User Agent, Screen resolution, etc.) has been known and done for years! In particular, these forms of unique visitor analysis was very popular during the days when you couldn't count on Cookies being supported by all browsers, or on savvy users accepting them -- you know, when dinosaurs roam the data center; way before everybody decided to rely on Cookies as the end-all-be-all of session identification.
If they all forgot that using Cookies exclusively was never a a very reliable solution, then that's their problem.
You missed my point. People didn't become less smart because they couldn't fix their cars; they became *less active* without an incentive to walk to get to the places they needed to go. The phone also didn't make people stupid, but decreased the necessity to interact in person with others. E-mail and Instant Messaging are doing the same. This in itself is not a bad thing, and I am not advocating it is.
However, the more activies and tasks we abdicate to technology, the less we have to do. This can be A Good Thing, of course, as it frees us from some menial burdens, to do other things. But if we in turn relinquish those "other things" to technology too, we run out of meaningful tasks to perform. And if one of those meaningful tasks is rational thought, then there goes our humanity.
In a Brave New World this would be great; no need for hard work, nor difficult things such as decision making and critical thinking; just pure leisure and pleasure, all the time. But in reality, it atrophies the mind, and distorts our perception of the world around us; in essence turning people into unthinking idiots.
Yes, technological progress still marches on, but at what expense? The cost seems to be the alienation of its users, as they continue to lose interest in (or lack exposure to) rational thinking, problem solving, social interaction, and other basic human tasks.
The advent of the automobile certainly made transportation and communication more efficient and accessible; and so did the telephone, the personal computer, and the Internet, in their time. But just as there was a time when auto owners used to understand and be able to repair and maintain their own vehicles, there was a time when computer owners used to know how their tools worked, which ultimately resulted in better and more responsible use of them.
My point is that the more technology takes over our most basic tasks, the less humans have to perform, well, *human* actions. Until eventually, that most specific of human functions, reasoning, will not be necessary. It might make modern life easier, but some argue that the price is just too high.
>> "I don't get all the fuzz about problem-solving. What's so special about it? Why has it suddenly become so important?"
Perhaps it is because of the overwhelming lack of critical thinking and other cognitive skills in young adults nowadays. Apparently, someone thought that *barely* being capable of reading and/or writing was not enough to perform any real work.
But that could also be my totally uninformed opinion, too.
'We're looking at developing some of the softer skills that are needed for the 21st century, such as problem-solving, resilience, persistence and collaboration.'
Right. Too bad they will be lacking in social skills and cultural values.
But then again, he did say "needed for the 21st century"...
'C' is for Cookie, that's good enough for me, 'C' is for Cookie, that's good enough for me, 'C' is for Cookie, that's good enough for me, Oh, Cookie, Cookie, Cookie starts with 'C'.
Slashdot Mirror
From the article:
>>"If we can't build businesses around ideas, and feel comfortable that we have the right to those ideas, then our entire business is threatened."
I have an idea. Build a business around a real product, not some ethereal thing. I do not practice nor condone piracy in any way, but I do not feel any pity for those fat cats trying to make billions of dollars out of intangible, non-quantifiable concepts such as the (so called) Intellectual Property.
From the article:
>>"Piracy has the very real potential of tipping movies into becoming an unprofitable industry [...] If that happens, they will stop being made,"
So, if the Studios (tm) will not make an insane amount of profit from their lackluster, unoriginal products, they will stop financing them? Hum, I wonder if that will be really all that bad.
Sure, apart from the collapse of an entire industry dependant on the strictly controlled production and distribution of movies (which is not A Good Thing to begin with), will it even matter all that much? Even that industry, like many others before it, will just need to adapt to survive, as I am sure it will. If "Hollywood" stops making movies, the world will *not* end. Perhaps films will go back to offer a bit more culture in them; maybe "entertainment" will be produced by others more capable; maybe movie theaters will turn into something else, just as they once changed from opera houses, vaudeville theaters, etc.
The point is that the world will move on, and people will find something else to do.
-dZ.
As I mentioned before, I agree with the point that the behaviour problem seems to stem from the suburbs as opposed to the inner cities. I guess at the moment of writing my original comment, I confused both, but on further reflection I realized that my bad experiences took place in suburban areas -- close to metropolitan areas, mind you -- not within the cities themselves. After living in NYC for a year or so, I can vouche for the general "Live and Let Live" attitude of most people.
But my original point stands: This is not a universal "theater" problem, but seems to be isolated to those (suburban) areas where people tend to be less considerate of each other. And kids growing up in this environment learn to accept and adopt this attitude, and help perpetuate it.
In my opinion, in these places you will encounter such behaviour at the mall, the park, a restaurant, or any other place where people gather in numbers, not just the movie theater. Even standing in line at a Bank or Post Office in my neighborhood in Puerto Rico, as I remember it, you could see the same anti-social and unruly behaviour manisfested. Yet there are other places conspicuously lacking of this problem.
-dZ.
Scientists looking for ways to have their cake and eat it too.
Movie at 11.
-dZ.
>> ...I can only imagine how many women are going to protest this.
Not on this forum! Ha, ha, ha... women... on Slashdot... Ha, ha!
Funny.
-dZ.
So let me get this straight... According to the research, on the one hand the highest ranking intelligent people are males; and on the other hand, the lowest ranking bottom-of-the-pile-dumb-as-nails people are also males?
So we are both smarter *and* stupider than women. Did they even bother to include women in this research?
-dZ.
I would have to say that I agree. On further reflection, my bad experiences have been mostly in suburban areas, perhaps close to metropolitan areas, much more than within the city itself.
-dZ.
Having gone to the movies at least once every two weeks for the past 10 years (usually once a week), I have never once had a showing ruined by a phone ringing, someone's kid screaming, or someone else throwing food.
I think you exaggerate the problem a bit much.
This is a localized problem, particularly on big cities, were people tend to be a bit more unruly and care a lot less about how their behaviour affects others -- and I'm not only talking about kids.
Back when I used to live in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where some people tend to be rowdy and obnoxious and most others don't seem to mind; going to the theater there was a frustrating experience. I remember the countless times I had some idiot kicking the back of my seat, others talking loudly (on the phone or otherwise!), etc. Calling on an usher or politely asking them to chill out was an invitation to an altercation.
Needless to say, it was not much fun, so I eventually learned to dread going to the movies, and resigned to wait for movies to come out on DVD, even if it was something I really wanted to see.
I now live in Florida, and the movie theater close to home is rather tame and peaceful. Occassionally there's a loud laugh from a teenager, and rarely an annoying kick on the back of the seat, but when it happens, a simple and polite request to quiet down is all it takes to restore the peace. Granted, I also avoid the large crowds at later showings.
Still, I've gone to other some popular (read: packed) theaters in major metropolitan areas and encounter more or less the same behaviour as in PR, and as others report.
This has led me to believe that the unfriendly and frustrating movie-theater experience is not necessarily an American-cultural thing, or in anyway universal, but a more localized problem, isolated to some big cities, where people loose respect for each other.
"Duh, What is this Juhneevuh you speak of?"
- GWB
>> Once we get them into space, will they make roaring, whooshing noises
No, its more like "BWEEOOP!".
-dZ.
What about spirits? Aren't ghosts and saints omniscient?
-dZ.
>>Sometimes I think it's just people that are incompatible with civil society.
Maybe its just civil[ity] which is incompatible with society.
-dZ.
OH NOOOOOOOO!!!!!
Its the future of invasive/disrruptive marketing, The Hell Ads are here! Gawd help us! AAAAAAARGH!!!
-dZ.
As I remember, the Power Toys offered a WinDoskKey (what a funny sounding file, ween-dose'-kee?) hack that you could set to disable the WinKey while using DOS. But before that... oh, how many deathmatches I lost while playing at school because I would inadvertedly miss the left CTRL key...
-dZ.
You're right. I guess noone remembers it.
I used to play Quake in college with a bunch of people (ah, memories), and remember always having to "Exit into DOS mode" for it. The same for many other popular games: Most of them came with Windows and DOS versions (Command & Conquer, Red Alert, to name 2 that I used), and the Windows version would always be choppy and slower in all but the most uber-spec'ed "gamer" machines. Not to mention unstable.
-dZ.
P.S. And while I'm bashing gaming under Win'95... WTF was it with that fscking WinKey?!, Arrgh!
In the original Windows (1.0), as far as I remember, you couldn't overlap windows. You could only either run 1 application maximized, or tile multiple windows side by side.
The change from Windows (1.0) to Windows 3.x was one of the most significant of all.
-dZ.
This is more like 1984 than Fahrenhite 451. Fahrenhite 451 was about government kicking in doors and burning books.
Maybe its just Fahrenheit 1951? The temperature at which bookshelving catches fire and burns.
-dZ.This is not really "New Technology" or a "Paradigm Shift", or anything extraordinary. This is just another marketeer trying to start a "buzz".
I know plenty of software out there that perform multiple tests in order to establish uniqueness of visitors. Perhaps the current big-biz log-analyzing apps do not do it, but that doesn't mean nothing else does. There was a time when Real Programmers didn't trust cookies as the exclusive identifier. I even remember some popular Log Analyzer Perl script that used to check for the following:
- First, Cookies
- Then IP Address (Whether it is known to be dynamic or static)
- Then compares the IP Addresses by IP pool (ISP)
- Then checks the time between requests, so that requests of different IPs from the same IP pool, with the same User Agent come in within a pre-determined time, they are considered the same visitor.
- Also checks the time between requests from the same IP address, so that if a certain pre-determined time has passed between requests, and the IP address is known to be dynamic, and the User Agent changed, then it is probably someone else.
I do not recall the exact details of the analysis, but it was something along the lines of the above. And there were many scripts like that one.
Comparing IP addresses geographically and in a time-sensitive manner (coupled with other potentially identifying criteria, such as Cookies, User Agent, Screen resolution, etc.) has been known and done for years! In particular, these forms of unique visitor analysis was very popular during the days when you couldn't count on Cookies being supported by all browsers, or on savvy users accepting them -- you know, when dinosaurs roam the data center; way before everybody decided to rely on Cookies as the end-all-be-all of session identification.
If they all forgot that using Cookies exclusively was never a a very reliable solution, then that's their problem.
-dZ.
8. ???
9. Profit?
Re: "Bill Would Let Police Monitor Email"
For a moment I though "Bill Gates will let government authorities in on what's going on inside Microsoft? Wow!"
-dZ.
You missed my point. People didn't become less smart because they couldn't fix their cars; they became *less active* without an incentive to walk to get to the places they needed to go. The phone also didn't make people stupid, but decreased the necessity to interact in person with others. E-mail and Instant Messaging are doing the same. This in itself is not a bad thing, and I am not advocating it is.
However, the more activies and tasks we abdicate to technology, the less we have to do. This can be A Good Thing, of course, as it frees us from some menial burdens, to do other things. But if we in turn relinquish those "other things" to technology too, we run out of meaningful tasks to perform. And if one of those meaningful tasks is rational thought, then there goes our humanity.
In a Brave New World this would be great; no need for hard work, nor difficult things such as decision making and critical thinking; just pure leisure and pleasure, all the time. But in reality, it atrophies the mind, and distorts our perception of the world around us; in essence turning people into unthinking idiots.
-dZ.
Yes, technological progress still marches on, but at what expense? The cost seems to be the alienation of its users, as they continue to lose interest in (or lack exposure to) rational thinking, problem solving, social interaction, and other basic human tasks.
The advent of the automobile certainly made transportation and communication more efficient and accessible; and so did the telephone, the personal computer, and the Internet, in their time. But just as there was a time when auto owners used to understand and be able to repair and maintain their own vehicles, there was a time when computer owners used to know how their tools worked, which ultimately resulted in better and more responsible use of them.
My point is that the more technology takes over our most basic tasks, the less humans have to perform, well, *human* actions. Until eventually, that most specific of human functions, reasoning, will not be necessary. It might make modern life easier, but some argue that the price is just too high.
-dZ.
>> "I don't get all the fuzz about problem-solving. What's so special about it? Why has it suddenly become so important?"
Perhaps it is because of the overwhelming lack of critical thinking and other cognitive skills in young adults nowadays. Apparently, someone thought that *barely* being capable of reading and/or writing was not enough to perform any real work.
But that could also be my totally uninformed opinion, too.
-dZ.
Right. Too bad they will be lacking in social skills and cultural values.
But then again, he did say "needed for the 21st century"...
Last time I heard him, he said:
'C' is for Cookie, that's good enough for me,
'C' is for Cookie, that's good enough for me,
'C' is for Cookie, that's good enough for me,
Oh, Cookie, Cookie, Cookie starts with 'C'.
http://members.tripod.com/Tiny_Dancer/cookie.html
-dZ.