Whenever I went in there it seemed like they had more in common with lazy construction workers than goths. There were always a bunch of bored twenty-somethings standing around doing exactly nothing. Then when you'd try to call them to ask about a product nobody would answer the phone. Maybe it wouldn't be the end of the world if Circuit City closed up shop for good.
I think it says something that the filmmakers have made an entirely separate feature out of the "Tales of the Black Freighter" scenes from the original work. This is getting released on DVD right after the movie debuts. They are putting a lot of time and care into doing this right, and I don't think it's going to turn out as just another explosion-fest.
Actually, 300, the director's last film, was released in March and made north of $400 million. It was widely acclaimed and considered an excellent translation of Frank Miller's graphic novel. Watchmen definitely has a chance to turn out well.
As far as I know, 1.85:1 is actually more common for films, but it's typically used more for comedies that don't need that "epic" scope as opposed to action films. The 16x9 ratio (I'll amend my earlier comment to mention it is actually not quite 1.85:1, though it's close) was chosen as a compromise between the US and British 35mm standard ratio (1.85:1) and Europe's 1.66:1 ratio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1.85:1#16:9_standard
In any event, I think it's best to let filmmakers decide what kind of frame they want to shoot on. Frame composition is essential to filmmaking and unique to the individual, and having the liberty to choose that wider palette is important.
Also, they're just black bars. Who cares? Being genuinely bothered by the black bars seems as silly to me as being bothered by the walls of the movie house around you when you take in a theatrical viewing. If it really bugs you that much, you could just get a projector and stretch the image out a little more when it's not big enough for you.
Educate yourself. The 16x9 ratio breaks down to roughly 1.85:1, which is the same ratio at which many theatrical films are released. True, many other films are released in 2.35:1, but if you had to pick one to standardize on, the 16x9 ratio is as good as any. All widescreen TV shows are shot in 16x9. If they'd made your TV to fit a 2.35:1 ratio, you'd still have gotten black bars on a LOT of widescreen content, only they'd be on the sides instead of the top and bottom.
Actually, I believe that term is used to denote a cover version rather than the original recording by the band. Even if the band didn't write the song, they wouldn't use "As Made Famous By" if the game was using that song's original master tracks. At least, that's how it is for Rock Band.
I believe that $871 million figure is only for the first film, actually. The three films put together grossed over $3 billion at the worldwide box office. Their production costs, not including marketing, were around $300 million. I'd estimate it was perhaps $500 million to actually make, market and release the three films, but even with unimaginably expensive hidden costs, I can't see the whole thing costing over a billion to put out, which would make the trilogy at $2 billion in profit, just from box office receipts. Of course this doesn't consider the ancillary merchandising, where the real money is made. I don't know how New Line could expect to make a credible argument that they didn't make a huge profit from this venture.
I wonder if these aren't going to be the same digital comics as have already been released in packages by GITCorp. They've already released full runs for X-Men, Avengers, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Incredible Hulk, Captain America and Iron Man. I've bought them all. It's not been exactly cheap at $40 per package but since you get 500+ comics with each package you're getting a lot of bang for your buck.
I have often thought that I would be very interested in a subscription service for comics, but now with these complete packages the service would need to offer new comics to get me to subscribe. But if they did it, I'd be all over that as far as reading new monthly comics. I don't want to buy them and instead wait for trades, but it would be worth $5 a month to me to be able to read whatever comes out and follow along instead of spending $100+ a month on single issues and having to go into the comics shop every week.
My dad used to do the flight simulator thing and now for some reason he plays Call of Duty obsessively. I never would've pegged him as someone to enjoy a first person shooter (he certainly looked down his nose at enough of the games I played growing up) but throw World War II into it and he's hooked!
Actually, the value proposition is incredibly high if you're a music lover with eclectic taste. I use the service to listen to probably at least 40 new albums a month, and all it costs is about half the price of a single cd...per month. If I had to buy those albums I'd be spending at least $400 instead of $6. So yeah, the value's definitely there.
...not Safari. And until Apple sees fit to put its browser on a Windows platform, that's the way it will stay since neither I nor my employer is willing to buy an entire Mac for the sole purpose of testing stuff in Safari.
That said, the site I work on uses tons of ASP.NET and it's not particularly difficult to make it look fine in both IE and Firefox (and by extension, other standards-compliant browsers).
At least for me, subscription services have eliminated even the temptation of piracy. For the equivalent cost of one cd purchase a month, I get access to practically unlimited supplies of music, perfectly suited to my tastes since I get to pick everything. Over the course of the last year, I've listened to 400+ cds I had never heard before, and only spent around $100 to do it. Try doing that another way without either pirating the music or borrowing from someone who spends thousands of dollars a year on cd's (even then that person isn't likely to own every single album you might be interested in listening to).
Well, I suppose I should amend myself and agree with you in terms of the "contract" that you sign because there really isn't one, but at the same time we are bound by the social contract that anyone living in a civilization enters into. That is to say, we know not to copy our cd's and give them out to all in our friends in the same way that we know not to take a cd off the shelves at the music store.
But I still think your attitude is tantamount to sanctioning the violation of copyright. What good is a copyright if it only lasts two years? And even if you can renew it for a fee, what's the point of the fee unless it's rather high? Why not just make it last for the holder's lifetime? It's a mistake to try to set some arbitrary amount of time for a copyright to last. After all, many artists spend years putting out cd's before finally getting noticed and getting a lot of sales out of those old albums. The idea that you should have to continually jump through hoops in order to retain ownership of something that is your sole creation is an unreasonable one. Now, if you're talking about extending copyright past the owner's lifetime, that's a different issue. To me, the main thing is that people who create something have their rights to profit from their creation be protected.
You make my point for me:) Once he sells me the chair I can make a copy of it. I can take it down into the basement and study it and build another one. I can then even sell the new chair. Same with a cd, except for the temporary violation of my rights called copyright. Of course, I can't sell the chair as one made by the original builder (counterfeit). Nor can I sell my cd copy as one authorized by the artist. If the chair builder wanted to keep his chairs private, he did not have to sell it to me. I have no right to break into his house and steal his chairs. Similarly for the musician, who can keep his music private by declining to release recordings. Once the recordings are released and sold they become the property of their buyers. The buyers can do whatever they want with them -- except for the limitation on their property rights called copyright. Of course, copyright is a monopoly. It provides for a single organization or person to have sole ability to sell a certain product. This drives the price up (you may have noticed) like in any monopoly situation. This is bad. It is the judgment of the government that this bad situation is worth preserving for the benefit of encouraging artists.
Ah, but if he sold you the chair only after you signed an agreement not to copy the design or allow someone else to reap the benefit of that chair without some payment (someone borrowing your chair falls under this since you have still paid for it whether you're using it or not), then you wouldn't be able to do those things without breaking the law. And I'm fairly sure that if it was possible to copy chairs as easily as you can copy a cd, woodworkers would demand those kind of agreements from anyone who buys their work.
The point remains that you are making an agreement when you buy a cd, saying that you won't violate the copyright binding on the works contained therein. As far as I know, there is text announcing the copyrighted nature of any work that is copyrighted printed right on it, so it's not a hidden agreement. It's just the same as EULA's, which everyone agrees are binding, even if they come off as a bit shifty.
Wait a minute, movies are fake? That stuff isn't real? I guess that's why my neighbor's body didn't turn to dust after I stabbed that sharpened stake through his heart.
That's true - as long as the someone keeps it private. Once a recording is sold to me then I have right to do whatever I want with my newly purchased object. The law of copyright is an addon that restricts my right for the sole purpose of encouraging artists (and others) to create. This violation of my property rights is supposed to be acceptable for this reason, but it is of course only temporarily granted. The idea that someone should have indefinite control over my stuff is odious. Furthermore, copyright is a legally imposed monopoly with all the bad effects of any monopoly - another reason that copryright is supposed to be temporary.
I fail to see how this is a violation of property rights. By this logic couldn't an apartment rental agreement be considered a violation of property rights? After all, there are certain restrictions placed on your use of and treatment of an apartment, so what makes that any different? Yet there is no such furor over rental housing. It is a fact that the agreement between the purchaser of a cd and the creator of that work does not give the purchaser unlimited rights over that content. Copyright law only has power over those who choose to participate in the system which is governed by it, so it is definitely not taking anyone's rights away, unless you consider access to unlimited free content to be a right. I do not.
Additionally, a creator exercising their ownership of their created work does not qualify as a monopoly, at least in contemporary parlance. True it is sole ownership of that commodity, but to take away the right of a creator to own something they create (unless otherwise agreed) IS a violation of property rights. After all, if a woodworker wanted to sell you the chair he made, you wouldn't complain about the monopolization of that chair, would you?
"If you are a musician, you have two options: record a record and use it as marketing to get people to your shows (as my brother's band Maps & Atlases has done), or go and get a job as a studio musician creating music for commercial ventures (movies, TV shows, muzak, etc). The idea that you can spend 2 weeks or 2 years creating one record and then reap 70 years of income is ridiculous. Does a plumber go to school for 2 years to learn how to fix toilets only to get paid for 70 years whenever you flush that toilet? No, they continue to work. Does an architect spend 2 years designing plans only to get paid forever by those who live or use the building that came forth from the plans? No, they keep designing. Artists are no different -- they should continue their labors in order to continue to reap incomes."
This is a specious analogy. A plumber only gets paid once per customer because his service is only rendered once. The service rendered by the architect is to create the designs for a building which is then sold to whoever will own the building, not the people who use/work in the building. That is a single transaction.
The service that you get when you buy a record is the experience of listening to that album whenever you want. Why shouldn't the artist get paid by each person who receives this service? The consumer does not have a right to listen to someone else's private creation. If the creator chooses to sell the opportunity to listen to their work, that is their prerogative and they should continue to receive payment for as long as people continue to receive that service.
Speaking for myself, I'm waiting until an eBook reader can display high-resolution full-color PDF's so I can read my whole digital comic book collection on it.
A lot of TV may be crap, but there's still enough quality TV that I can't even watch it all and keep a reasonable schedule of doing other things. That's good enough for me. If you don't like it, don't watch it or talk about it.
As far as I can tell, free speech in America is working just like it's supposed to. The Dixie Chicks exercised their right to criticize the president, and fans and others chose to exercise their right to criticize the Dixie Chicks for their statements. The government didn't censor anyone, and no one had their rights trampled.
Slashdot Mirror
S'funny, I don't remember buying my copy of Super Mario Galaxy 2 on Steam.
I'm greatly ensaddened.
Whenever I went in there it seemed like they had more in common with lazy construction workers than goths. There were always a bunch of bored twenty-somethings standing around doing exactly nothing. Then when you'd try to call them to ask about a product nobody would answer the phone. Maybe it wouldn't be the end of the world if Circuit City closed up shop for good.
Ah, the irony of criticizing Seinfeld's show while sporting a sig which links to the grade school scribblings of Luvrgeeks. Delicious.
I think it says something that the filmmakers have made an entirely separate feature out of the "Tales of the Black Freighter" scenes from the original work. This is getting released on DVD right after the movie debuts. They are putting a lot of time and care into doing this right, and I don't think it's going to turn out as just another explosion-fest.
Actually, 300, the director's last film, was released in March and made north of $400 million. It was widely acclaimed and considered an excellent translation of Frank Miller's graphic novel. Watchmen definitely has a chance to turn out well.
As far as I know, 1.85:1 is actually more common for films, but it's typically used more for comedies that don't need that "epic" scope as opposed to action films. The 16x9 ratio (I'll amend my earlier comment to mention it is actually not quite 1.85:1, though it's close) was chosen as a compromise between the US and British 35mm standard ratio (1.85:1) and Europe's 1.66:1 ratio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1.85:1#16:9_standard
In any event, I think it's best to let filmmakers decide what kind of frame they want to shoot on. Frame composition is essential to filmmaking and unique to the individual, and having the liberty to choose that wider palette is important.
Also, they're just black bars. Who cares? Being genuinely bothered by the black bars seems as silly to me as being bothered by the walls of the movie house around you when you take in a theatrical viewing. If it really bugs you that much, you could just get a projector and stretch the image out a little more when it's not big enough for you.
Educate yourself. The 16x9 ratio breaks down to roughly 1.85:1, which is the same ratio at which many theatrical films are released. True, many other films are released in 2.35:1, but if you had to pick one to standardize on, the 16x9 ratio is as good as any. All widescreen TV shows are shot in 16x9. If they'd made your TV to fit a 2.35:1 ratio, you'd still have gotten black bars on a LOT of widescreen content, only they'd be on the sides instead of the top and bottom.
Actually, I believe that term is used to denote a cover version rather than the original recording by the band. Even if the band didn't write the song, they wouldn't use "As Made Famous By" if the game was using that song's original master tracks. At least, that's how it is for Rock Band.
I believe that $871 million figure is only for the first film, actually. The three films put together grossed over $3 billion at the worldwide box office. Their production costs, not including marketing, were around $300 million. I'd estimate it was perhaps $500 million to actually make, market and release the three films, but even with unimaginably expensive hidden costs, I can't see the whole thing costing over a billion to put out, which would make the trilogy at $2 billion in profit, just from box office receipts. Of course this doesn't consider the ancillary merchandising, where the real money is made. I don't know how New Line could expect to make a credible argument that they didn't make a huge profit from this venture.
Ironically enough, the sales of the core Batman comic book have been used as a base metric for comic book sales for a while now.
I wonder if these aren't going to be the same digital comics as have already been released in packages by GITCorp. They've already released full runs for X-Men, Avengers, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Incredible Hulk, Captain America and Iron Man. I've bought them all. It's not been exactly cheap at $40 per package but since you get 500+ comics with each package you're getting a lot of bang for your buck.
I have often thought that I would be very interested in a subscription service for comics, but now with these complete packages the service would need to offer new comics to get me to subscribe. But if they did it, I'd be all over that as far as reading new monthly comics. I don't want to buy them and instead wait for trades, but it would be worth $5 a month to me to be able to read whatever comes out and follow along instead of spending $100+ a month on single issues and having to go into the comics shop every week.
My dad used to do the flight simulator thing and now for some reason he plays Call of Duty obsessively. I never would've pegged him as someone to enjoy a first person shooter (he certainly looked down his nose at enough of the games I played growing up) but throw World War II into it and he's hooked!
Actually, the value proposition is incredibly high if you're a music lover with eclectic taste. I use the service to listen to probably at least 40 new albums a month, and all it costs is about half the price of a single cd...per month. If I had to buy those albums I'd be spending at least $400 instead of $6. So yeah, the value's definitely there.
...not Safari. And until Apple sees fit to put its browser on a Windows platform, that's the way it will stay since neither I nor my employer is willing to buy an entire Mac for the sole purpose of testing stuff in Safari. That said, the site I work on uses tons of ASP.NET and it's not particularly difficult to make it look fine in both IE and Firefox (and by extension, other standards-compliant browsers).
At least for me, subscription services have eliminated even the temptation of piracy. For the equivalent cost of one cd purchase a month, I get access to practically unlimited supplies of music, perfectly suited to my tastes since I get to pick everything. Over the course of the last year, I've listened to 400+ cds I had never heard before, and only spent around $100 to do it. Try doing that another way without either pirating the music or borrowing from someone who spends thousands of dollars a year on cd's (even then that person isn't likely to own every single album you might be interested in listening to).
Indeed. These movies will only be playable on 90% of the world's computers. What the heck were they thinking?
Well, I suppose I should amend myself and agree with you in terms of the "contract" that you sign because there really isn't one, but at the same time we are bound by the social contract that anyone living in a civilization enters into. That is to say, we know not to copy our cd's and give them out to all in our friends in the same way that we know not to take a cd off the shelves at the music store.
But I still think your attitude is tantamount to sanctioning the violation of copyright. What good is a copyright if it only lasts two years? And even if you can renew it for a fee, what's the point of the fee unless it's rather high? Why not just make it last for the holder's lifetime? It's a mistake to try to set some arbitrary amount of time for a copyright to last. After all, many artists spend years putting out cd's before finally getting noticed and getting a lot of sales out of those old albums. The idea that you should have to continually jump through hoops in order to retain ownership of something that is your sole creation is an unreasonable one. Now, if you're talking about extending copyright past the owner's lifetime, that's a different issue. To me, the main thing is that people who create something have their rights to profit from their creation be protected.
Ah, but if he sold you the chair only after you signed an agreement not to copy the design or allow someone else to reap the benefit of that chair without some payment (someone borrowing your chair falls under this since you have still paid for it whether you're using it or not), then you wouldn't be able to do those things without breaking the law. And I'm fairly sure that if it was possible to copy chairs as easily as you can copy a cd, woodworkers would demand those kind of agreements from anyone who buys their work.
The point remains that you are making an agreement when you buy a cd, saying that you won't violate the copyright binding on the works contained therein. As far as I know, there is text announcing the copyrighted nature of any work that is copyrighted printed right on it, so it's not a hidden agreement. It's just the same as EULA's, which everyone agrees are binding, even if they come off as a bit shifty.
Wait a minute, movies are fake? That stuff isn't real? I guess that's why my neighbor's body didn't turn to dust after I stabbed that sharpened stake through his heart.
I fail to see how this is a violation of property rights. By this logic couldn't an apartment rental agreement be considered a violation of property rights? After all, there are certain restrictions placed on your use of and treatment of an apartment, so what makes that any different? Yet there is no such furor over rental housing. It is a fact that the agreement between the purchaser of a cd and the creator of that work does not give the purchaser unlimited rights over that content. Copyright law only has power over those who choose to participate in the system which is governed by it, so it is definitely not taking anyone's rights away, unless you consider access to unlimited free content to be a right. I do not.
Additionally, a creator exercising their ownership of their created work does not qualify as a monopoly, at least in contemporary parlance. True it is sole ownership of that commodity, but to take away the right of a creator to own something they create (unless otherwise agreed) IS a violation of property rights. After all, if a woodworker wanted to sell you the chair he made, you wouldn't complain about the monopolization of that chair, would you?
This is a specious analogy. A plumber only gets paid once per customer because his service is only rendered once. The service rendered by the architect is to create the designs for a building which is then sold to whoever will own the building, not the people who use/work in the building. That is a single transaction.
The service that you get when you buy a record is the experience of listening to that album whenever you want. Why shouldn't the artist get paid by each person who receives this service? The consumer does not have a right to listen to someone else's private creation. If the creator chooses to sell the opportunity to listen to their work, that is their prerogative and they should continue to receive payment for as long as people continue to receive that service.
Speaking for myself, I'm waiting until an eBook reader can display high-resolution full-color PDF's so I can read my whole digital comic book collection on it.
A lot of TV may be crap, but there's still enough quality TV that I can't even watch it all and keep a reasonable schedule of doing other things. That's good enough for me. If you don't like it, don't watch it or talk about it.
As far as I can tell, free speech in America is working just like it's supposed to. The Dixie Chicks exercised their right to criticize the president, and fans and others chose to exercise their right to criticize the Dixie Chicks for their statements. The government didn't censor anyone, and no one had their rights trampled.