But the technique does not matter when we are discussing terminology.
The principle of watermarking is to 'damage' the file to mark it. That is exactly what watermarking in the 'real world' does.
I agree, the 'technique', the 'how' the object is damaged , or what is used to damage it is fairly immaterial.
The software that you use to purchase and manage that file cannot by itself alter or even view that mark.
What part of 'select the file in itunes and select "Show Info" would that be? Viewing it is trivial.
The iTunes software doesn't let you change a number of the tags directly -- including play count. (although you can increment it by listening to the song.) These tags aren't watermarks.
Just because other software enables you do to so, does not mean that for most people it truly is tamper resistant, just as most people could not undo a semi-translucent watermark in a digital image without some trace.
Look, I've got some of those 'watermarked' songs. You know how to remove the tag?. Open it with notepad, search for your email address, change it. Save the file.
All done. All traces of the mark are gone.
I suppose at this point all we can do is agree to disagree.
The fact that Adobe or Apple allow you to use a very poor choice as your overlay image doesn't detract from the validity of the underlying -technique-.
Just as the weakness of a lock design doesn't it cease being a lock. Like the little combination locks on cheap luggage that can be shaken open. They're still locks. Their ineffective, but they're still locks.
I know that I'm arguing that a watermark is tamper resistant by definition, and something that is easy to tamper with isn't water mark. But its not a hypocritical stance. Just as a lock is defined by its ability to keep people out, an ineffective lock is still a lock. It looks like a lock, acts like a lock, operates on the same principles as lock... its a lock. Ditto for a weak watermark.
Back to the original debate - an iTunes tag still isn't even a 'weak watermark'. Its to a watermark what a sign saying 'do not enter' is to a 'lock'.
However, in my defence I was thinking of semi-translucent watermarks which are often used with images - those can be easily undone because knowing the color of the overlay it's mathematically easy to regain the original data (sort of like an XOR). Are you saying the semi-transparent versions are not watermarks?
You mean if you stuck a uniformly translucent square or other simple shape on it. Then no, I wouldn't consider that watermarked. It is to watermarking what ROT13 is to encryption. Just because the 12 year old thought it was encrypted, doesn't mean it was.
However, that's not to say a translucent image applied to an image can't be a watermark. Consider a complex translucent shape superimposed onto a photo, where both the translucency, and colour are non-uniform, e.g. some random 'noise' was added as well. It would be impossible to automatically remove all traces of such a mark because; not only would it be impossible to determine exactly which pixels were even affected, but it would also be impossible to know by how much any given pixel was affected. There would be no way of guessing the random noise distribution, or the exact shape of the mark. (Unless you tried to watermark a simple pattern or other completely symmetrical image -- that type of image cannot be effectively damaged (watermarked) because it contains a great deal of redundant information. It would take FAR more damage to overwhelm it. Complex photos are much easier, because there is far less redundant information.
Its true automated tools might be able to help mitigate the watermark and render it invisible to the human eye, but any sort of automated watermark checker would still be able to see that the file had been damaged.
Basically any sort of lossy compression or adding random noise can be used as a digital watermark. The very nature of lossy compression or the addition of noise is that the original data cannot be exactly determined. It can be imperfectly guessed at, at best. But any comparison between the original and the guess will show up the fake for what it is.
But again digital watermarks are about unqiueness, not about damage.
I remain unmoved as well. I think the damage caused by watermarking may often be used as a unique identifier, but they are fundamentally about causing damage that can be detected and not undone, at least not without access to original file.
I also think achieving this level of damage is relatively easy on many types of digital file.
What would you have done differently, if presented with a drunk driver who had zero command of the common language of your country? How do you expect the cops to behave in a situation like this? Really, I'm curious.
I dunno. How about act like professionals?
How is this any different than the militaries treatment for PoW, 'enemy combatants', and anyone else they encounter while 'peace keeping'? They manage to cope. They are expected to treat other *people* with dignity and respect, even if they are drunk and don't speak the same language.
If we can expect it of a private in the Army, we can expect of a beat cop in Texas. Hell, I expect it MORE of the beat cops in Texas... policing is their primary JOB. Its no secret that some people in this country don't speak English (whether they are visiting the country, just arrived and learning, or just don't care isn't relevant).
Its still your JOB to to deal with them professionally without acting out like a juvenile idiot.
Don't ever visit France, you'd hate it (unless you speak French).
Ah, ok, so because there a dicks in another country, we should stoop to their level here. America doesn't lead by example; it just wants to be more like France. Really? Is that the message we project?
The fact is with the right software any watermark is easily removable
That simply is *not* a fact.
A watermarked image file is *not* easily repaired. The data is fundamentally DAMAGED by the overlaid mark. It can't be undamaged because there is no way to determine what the original data was.
In fact, the only way to effectively remove a digital watermark is to have the original file available, so that you can compare it with the watermarked one to restore the damaged data.... but that's irrelevant because if you have access to the original file you really don't need to be removing the watermarks.
Watermarks -damage- the file in a way that cannot be easily undone.
Countries, like corporations, don't really have 'friends'. American interests in Israel, Kuwait, Mexico, etc may not all center around oil or have been founded on 'oil', but the bottom line is that foreign policy has always been about economics.
Consider the scenario you allude to above, of mexico being invaded from a foreign power. What is the real risk there? All of Mexico's trade agreements, the real security of that border (as opposed to the bullshit fear of illegal immigrants), and corporate interests in Mexico, *these* are the reasons. Hell, if the invading power assured the US that these things would be left intact or even enriched, we'd see the current Mexican government painted as a hostile threat, and the foreign invasion would proceed with full US support.
Consider the French connection you mention in Iraq. Yes that is largely what motivated and/or allowed Iraq to be a dick. But that just underscores my point -- the French were more concerned about their bottom line (like any country). And as a result the US *invaded* Iraq, toppled its government, and ultimately condoned and permitted the execution of its head of state, violated the Geneva convention, institutes torture, secret prisons, and so forth. And for what exactly? Who is going to view that as the 'good guys'?
Hell, if the French were the superpower, they'd likely have bailed out Iraq when the US invaded them to protect their own interests.
Genocide is taking place in several places around the world, and the US (and the rest of the world) does little more than issue 'stern criticisms'. It has little to do with humanitarian grounds.
I am not suggesting the US is any more a villain than any other country. I'm saying that any country that much stronger than its neighbors, that throws its weight around to support its interests is ultimately going to breed a lot of hostility. And the most powerful countries are the most likely to become corrupt and offensive simply because they are the only ones that can get away with it. I have little doubt Canada would be just as bad, given the opportunity.
But worst of all the US can't actually even really afford its spending. If it keeps it up, it will ultimately facing the same fate as the USSR in the cold war - economic collapse.
If you hardly get any faxes switch to an internet fax service. You get a phone number (or toll free number), and a certain number of free incoming / outgoing pages per month, and after that its rated per page.
Incoming faxes are automatically sent to you via email as PDF, or BMP, JPG attachments (usually your choice).
You can also send out, by sending your email to a particular address, with the destination phone number, in the subject line, and they can usually take, word, excel, pdf, and image files as attachments...
They cost like 10 bucks a month for a very basic package (which works out if you don't send or receive many faxes), but this can end up saving you money if it means you no longer need to pay for a dedicated fax line/fax number to your home/office/whatever.
You obviously no longer need to maintain a physical fax machine if you don't want to, or deal with a modem, etc. Plus you can send, and retreive faxes from anywhere, because its email/web based, that alone can make it worth it.
You sort of make the whole "We'll stand down when they stand up" argument but applied it to half the world.;)
But be honest, you aren't prepared to defend Canada etc out of altruism. Its out of self-interest. If Canada were to fall to an enemy, that would be a hostile nation right next door... can't have that. The cold war, NATO, NORAD, all that was just to keep Soviet missiles out of the US... the fact that 90% of Canadians lived within a 100 miles of the border made extending the 'security umbrella' in exchange for our cooperation a pretty minor issue.
Your military action in the Middle East is ultimately tied up in commercial oil interests. Kuwait was bailed out because you had a sweet deal with them that you didn't want to lose. -- you protect their sovereignty from the likes of Iraq, they give you access to the oil, then when you 'buy the oil' from them, you demand to get paid in US dollars propping up your currency, and as a further part of the deal they must build infrastructure by contracting with US corporations a la haliburton... its a lot of things... but it ain't altruism.
I do agree that US military spending can't be simplisticly reduced to 'you spend too much, fix it', but you DO spend far too much, and have the country embroiled in a lot places it really shouldn't be; leading to increased hostility against the US, leading to the need for more military.
The US as the only remaining superpower seems to think it should become the worlds police. Worse, they are becoming the worlds self-interested corrupt police. How is that going to ever end anything but badly?
But again it goes with the shift to what "Digital Watermark" means, because no "Digital Watermark" is really tamper resistant. That word perhaps should not have been the one to be brought in, but it was and so in the digital domain the meaning changes.
And that's where I think you are mistaken. A complex translucent image overlaid onto another image, which is what watermarks on digital images are is *tamper resistant*. Not in the sense that those bits are harder to change than the other bits, but restoring the image to what it looked like before the watermark can be extremely hard, especially to the point that the owner of the unwatermarked image can't determine that someone tried removing the mark.
Similiarly in the case of songs for example we do have 'real' watermarking techniques. It is possible, even easy, to overlay someone saying 'this is a sample track' in the middle of a song, and it would be fairly difficult to remove all traces of it. Or if they want the mark to be less intrusive they can vary the sound levels in the song ever so slightly - so that the ear wouldn't be able to hear the difference but a computer would be able to determine the marked one from the unmarked one trivially. Again, removing that 'mark' would be exceedingly hard.
In fact its possible for that type of watermark to be preserved even through a digital-analog-digital conversion. So even streaming the file through the analog hole might not damage the mark enough to make it undetectable.
I don't think simple 'Uniqueness' is enough to qualify as a watermark, at least given that we do have techniques for tamper-resistant marking. I think serial/uniqueness marking can be done with watermarks and often is... but I don't think bearing a unique id alone is sufficient to be a watermark.
Thanks for your considered reply, its helped me refine my position.
Quite Simply there is no 'automatic' association with unique identifiers and watermarks. Then describe a use that does not do just that.
Samples, demos, and drafts are often simply watermarked with the word 'sample', 'demo', or 'draft'. Copies of important documents are often watermarked with the word 'Copy'. In these cases the watermarks do not identify the owner at all. Never mind 'uniquely'. They are simply used to 'damage' the copy so that it can't be mistaken for a paid for, legit, complete or original copy.
In fact, many of the watermarks websites use to mark images are primarily for *that* purpose. The fact that the watermark happens to identify the website it came from is a completely secondary concern. The watermark would be just as effective for their purpose if they watermarked with a generic design. They use their logos and website address as the watermark because its free advertising.
And the itunes tag is EASILY removed and or altered which is the antithesis of a watermark. Tell your grandmother to remve it, with no instructions. In fact while you or I may be able to remove it, I'll bet 95% of the populace could not do so correctly.
True. But my grandmother wouldn't be able to change the 'genre' tag either without instructions, nor could she lower the skip count, or most of the various other meta-data in/about the song file.
Similarly, an email my grandmother sends contains a variety of plain-text headers. These headers are not remotely tamper-proofed in any way. The fact that our grandmothers wouldn't have a clue how to remove or modify them doesn't make these sorts of things 'watermarks'. And calling them watermarks is inappropriate.
There aren't watermarks. They are not hard to remove, nor did it require a one time investment in time to 'crack' in order make it easy to remove, it was simply never intended to be hard to remove.
I think what differentiates a watermark from just a mark. Is that a watermark is a tamper resistant mark, it ranges from difficult to impossible to remove, and it was specifically designed that way. When I hear something has been watermarked I think not that the thing has been uniquely identified, but that rather that it bears a mark that cannot be removed.
In point of fact, watermarks are so named precisely because they originally used water to irreversibly damage the paper to leave a permanent mark.
Simple plain-text meta-tags and file attributes do not qualify, in my opinion. They do not conjure up the sort of tamper resistance implied to be by the word 'watermark'. They are little more than an easily removed sticker.
On futther reflection you are correct, the serial number is a form of watermark.
Actually, I was arguing that serial numbers were NOT a form of watermark.
I think this is interesting because you think they are watermarks I've come around to somewhat agreeing with you here. But not because a serial number uniquely identifies a product or even its owner or even its manufacturer, but because, separately from being unique identifiers they are often designed to be tamper resistant marks -- and THAT is what I think the threshold for watermarking is.
The test of a digital watermark should likewise be a mark applied to a file that cannot be easily removed, and the various plaintext meta-tags in an mp3/mp4 container do not pass that test, our grandmothers lack of ability notwithstanding. If I send you a PDF file and the last page is short disclaimer saying it belongs to so and so and was sold to so and so, it is indeed 'marked' or 'tagged', but not 'watermarked'. The disclaimer is not tamper resistant, and is utterly trivial to remove or alter for anyone knows anything about pdfs.
That does not imply a unique value per file the way the term "Watermarking" does automatically.
Watermarking means no such thing.
Watermarks were used in drafts, demos, and other such things, partly to identify them as such and partly to prevent someone from stealing it. e.g. if you hired a design firm to create a poster for you they might send you a watermarked draft so that you could see the finished result, but if you decided not to pay for it, the poster was still useless because it had a giant watermark through the middle that said 'draft copy - property of design company'. Once you'd approved and paid, they'd send you an un-watermarked version for you to reproduce.
Watermwarks were also used in coporate letterhead, cheques, and other docuements to help prevent forgery and authenticate that they were genuine. For the most part this was just used to help foil attacks. The same way most banks.
Never to uniquely identify individual documents.
but I would still argue in the shift to the digital domain the meaning is more of uniqueness than ability to remove
Again not true. With the digital transition, the primary motivation for watermarks was, as before, to 'damage' files so that people could see images but not steal them due to the watermark. (or more precisely, they could steal the watermarked image, but because the mark was hard to remove it wasn't worth it, and you couldn't leave the mark on for obvious reasons.)
Watermarks have been used for a long time on sites hosting high res photos or other digital art to prevent people from just downloading the image and using it. In order to get an image with the WATERMARK removed, you had to pay for the picture. Because the watermarks were translucent and applied over of the picture they are relatively difficult to simply remove.
Only very recently has watermarking technology been applied like a serial number, to uniquely identifying documents or files.
** Quite Simply there is no 'automatic' association with unique identifiers and watermarks. **
Aha, but that is external to the device, visible and alterable (potentially) by the user. The iTunes mark is not.
The itunes meta tag is not part of the song data, although it is in the same file.
It is visible in the sense that *any* program that can view the meta tags can see it -- and iTunes software itself will show you this information if you tell it to show info about the song. And the itunes tag is EASILY removed and or altered which is the antithesis of a watermark.
The iTunes tag is as much a 'watermark', as putting your email address in the filename.
And a watermark is just as identifiable if a record of which marks were sent to who is kept.
This whole 'invisible digital watermark serial number thats hard to remove' thing is pretty new, and really isn't entirely in keeping with the historical meaning or use of watermarks. Moreover, the apple meta tag is really none of those things. Its not invisible, not hard to remove.
If you didn't like the analagy of the laptop serial number because it was visible and alterable. Consider that at least half a dozen parts inside the laptop are also serialized. And that even if you scratch off the laptop serial number, if someone found the laptop they could not only infer what that number was, but potentially also who bought it.
Point is: laptops aren't 'watermarked' despite having serial numbers. And neither are iTunes files.
Its easy to say "I wouldn't give up my phone for a million pounds". It has no meaning. Nobody is offering them a million pounds, and people utter hyperboles all the time.
I say, "Put the money in a suitcase, and then ask."
No way 1 in 3 people would turn it down if the offer was actually REAL.
For those who haven't watched it just go watch it, don't read this post as spoilers follow...
For crying out loud, she was shot in the stomach.
If she'd been shot in the head, death would (at least according to the rules of guns in movies) have been instantaneous which wouldn't have worked as well for the scenes that followed.
The bleeding was crucial to the plot element requiring an innocent blood sacrifice to open the portal to the other world so she could return home. Captain Vidal, by killing her, ultimately frees her from a world she didn't belong in.
If you believe the fairy tale was real, then she didn't really die, her spirit is returned to the fairy world where she was a princess reunited with her parents. And even if you are in the camp who feels that the fairy world was her own invention, and that she simply died a tragic death you still have to accept that she believed herself to have been freed.
As she dies she smiles, showing that she was happy and at peace.
By refusing to sacrifice her infant step-brother she gave up her chance to go home, and demonstrated her ability to think for herself, to refuse to obey the Faun. Thereby demonstrating she was worthy to be a princess of the fairy world. The Faun was very much a parallel to Captain Vidal. And her test to refuse to obey the Faun mirrors the Doctor's refusal to obey the Captain.
There is *so* much more depth to this movie than you seem to have gotten out of it.
At current launch costs, a "colony" (read: independent, unlike a base) is so far beyond the realm of possibility that it's laughable to even consider.
I would have thought the US spending a thousand billion dollars every two years on the military would be laughable too. Yet... there you are.
Someone said a couple posts up that would costs 10s of thousands per kilo of payload to get to Mars, and many times that to get back... so lets run with that... say... oh... how about a million dollars a kilo. That should MORE than comfortably cover 'many times 10's of thousands' right?
So... whats 2 years of military spending worth in in kilos to mars and back? A thousand billion divided by a million??? What that's a million.
A million kilos to mars and back? I dunno... seems like something useful could be done with that much weight. Not a 'colony' not by a long shot, but surely a manned mission would be more than doable.
Of course, with a thousand billion available, I suspect we'd be able to afford some decent R&D into bringing that cost down...
Granted the US can't and shouldn't cancel its military... but really a country that makes up less than 5% of the worlds population doesn't really need to be responsible for 50% of the worlds military spending. I dunno... maybe tone it down to the same level as the number 2 spot... they'd still save up that thousand billion in under 3 years, and have enough money left over to catch up on literacy & education.
How about a 'metadata tag' or even just 'tag'?...to my mind watermark is an acceptable term even if it's a variant of the core meaning.
Maybe, if you interpret the core meaning of a "watermark" as simply a "mark". But then why have this separate word 'watermark'?
This iTunes thing is the same as the serial number on the bottom of your laptop, or the service tag stored in bios (if you have a dell or whatever). Actually, the iTunes thing is even MORE transparent -- its your bloody email address so you KNOW its "personally identifying" when you see it. And its stuck right there with all the other meta-tags on the song.
Meanwhile the serial number on the bottom of your laptop is far more insidious... it appears 'anonymous' and its on the bottom where you won't likely see it... sometimes its even inside where the battery goes. the laptop manufacture can lookup what store they sold it too, and then store can probably look up who they sold it too.
Manhunt 2 got an AO rating, and bottom line is that Manhunt 2 wasn't intended to be an "AO" game. And its probably NOT really an AO game in its entirety. I suspect it 'crossed the line' in a couple places. AO is a designation generally reserved for porn or sex. Manhunt 2 isn't a porn game, so it shouldn't be an issue.
So why EXACTLY did MH2 get rated AO? Is there something that crossed the line? Implied rape? Implied or on-screen S&M or bondage with sexual overtones? Does any body KNOW what the ESRB objected to?
I suspect its a relatively minor part of the game, that they'll work with the ESRB to remove that bit of over the top content and then it will be M, which is what was intended.
Movies have the same kiss-of-death when they get rated X. And they invariably cut, edit, or re-shoot a scene or two and it heads to theatres with R or NC-17 or whatever they are using in your area. The odds of the game isn't getting cancelled.
And the whole console makers doing the whole 'morality police' thing is really blowing it out of proportion.
The local big theatres don't show x-rated films. The vast majority of mainstream studios won't make X-rated film at all. I can't buy X rated movies at Walmart or any where else in the local Mall for that matter. Where is the big outcry about all these people conspiring to be my 'morality police'?
There's nothing stopping people from making AO games or X movies, but yeah, your distribution channels are going to be more limited, in large part because that's how the overall market WANTS it.
Going to have to agree here. Pan's Labyrinth blew big time. And as an American I will say a large part of that was because it didn't have an English sound track. I'm sitting here trying to follow the subtitles but I'm missing most of the video because I'm halving to concentrate on them not to miss anything. And when I do miss something I have to go back and rewind to see what it was.
If there had been an English over-dub I still would have watched it in Spanish with subtitles. I have never seen a movie that was better with an over-dub. I suppose if you are a poor/slow reader subtitles are a problem, but really that's not the movies fault.
Sorry, I hate movies where kids are harmed for no reason. The ending was a kick in the balls for me. If I had known that it would have ended like that I would have passed on it. Fuck That, That Sucked.
You think she was harmed for no reason? Get fucking real. There was a hell of a good reason. And its not even certain she was even really harmed. You managed to miss the entire point of the movie.
No seriously, NASA is an acronym not a proper name. National Aviation and Space Administration. Kindly get it right. Oh yeah, this is slashdot...
Nobody enunciates 'en ay ess ay' its just 'nasa'. Its may be an acronym, but its become a word in its own right too, like radar, sonar, laser, scuba, snafu, dos, bios, ram, flak, gestapo, etc...
Or perhaps if you want an examples of 'proper names'? How about:
Fiat - Fabbrica Italianna Automobili Torino Gulag - Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-trudovykh LAGerey Gestapo - GEheime STAatsPolizei
Its really only a matter of time before some of the others become 'words'... AIDS, SARS, NASDAQ, SETI, NAFTA and NATO spring to mind as likely candidates, I've seen them written out as Aids, Sars, Nasdaq, Seti, Nafta, and Nato, respectively.
The question of how closely one identifies with a movie character vs. a 'controlled' character in a game isn't that simple to define, nor can it be answered without exceptions.
By and large, in games, you step into the character, and take possession of the action. "I killed him" not "He killed him." I don't think there is a lot of dispute on that.
What if a game only had your character do "Hostel"-level gruesome things to others in cutscenes, when not under your control? Would you expect "film standards" to be applied in that case?
Good question. I don't know. I think it depends. What if the cutscenes are rendered realtime instead of pre-recorded, what if they put your face on the character? (a la some descendant of the Wii Mii's). I think that's sort of the issue -- there is a degree to which you take ownership of a characters actions in a games -- doing them yourself is certainly more direct than watching them in a cutscene. But if the cutscene features your character with your name and face its more powerful than if your is say a "BloodRayne".
Perhaps two games, one where the character is 'you', and the other where the character is 'NOT you' would be rated differently. Perhaps they SHOULD be.
I think it's easier to reason that the levels of violence setting a PG-13 film from an R-rated film should be expected to be about the same as those setting a T game from an M game.
The 'difference' should probably be about the same, but the threshold is moved.
In the end, the ratings are all quite arbitrary. I can find R-rated films with less violence, language, sexual content, etc. than some PG-13 movies, for instance.
Absolutely, and its to be expected. The range of violence to be judged is a continuum - there is no hard line between PG and R. And context, and director intent, etc are all factors. And then the whole thing is subjective too. Ratings are a pretty rough yardstick.
For a title like manhunt to get slapped with an AO, when everyone knows what the retail situation for AO is, tells me that manhunt is going to push a lot of people buttons. It may not be the video game equivalent of Caligula in terms of what is going on on the screen, but that's how people are probably going to react to it.
If I'm not watching the show at all. I'm *certainly* not watching the ads. DVRs, by enabling me to watch a show, give advertisers the 'opportunity' to see ads I wouldn't otherwise see.
Well, enacting such violence is QUITE a step beyond playing a game that features it. That's a very important distinction to make!
The original point was that 'violence' isn't 'mature' in the first place, as young kids roleplay violence in the form of cops and robbers and what not from shortly after they can walk/talk.
My point is that 'violence' a la cops & robbers is a completely different animal from what you see in an R movie or M/AO game. Children don't 'play' that kind of violence. 'Graphic violence' is not 'natural' in the sense that kids always have been playing 'violent games' since before hoop-and-stick.
As for the double standard, of course there are two standards. They are 2 different things.
Reading the screenplay isn't the same as watching the movie. Passively watching the movie about a guy gruesomely killing people isn't the same as playing a game, taking on the role of the violent character and actively causing him to gruesomely kill people. And of course, playing the game isn't the same as picking up a lead pipe and heading out into the alley.
That we have different ratings standards for each of these actities is perfectly rational.
They rely on advertising to make money and aren't going to freely help people with a device that most people are going to use to skip advertising.
They seem to forget that a substantial chunk of those viewers wouldn't be watching at ALL, if it weren't for DVRs. I like a show that's on when I'm usually playing with my kids. If I didn't have a DVR, I wouldn't watch that show period. Yes, I skip through many of the commericials during playback, but not all of them, and not if the commercial catches my eye, or is for a product I'm interested in. I even rewind to watch a commercial from the start (like if I skip into the middle of a Mac/PC ad I haven't already seen) etc.
Before I had a DVR I hit mute and/or pipped the commercials while I browsed the channel guide, or checked on the hockey game, or something. Its not like I was sitting there 'attentively watching' all the ads before.
I expect advertisers are probably losing eyeballs overall as people adopt DVRs, but its probably not nearly the issue they think it is.
Unless I chuck a Manhunt 2 box at someone's face, it's probably not going to hurt you a whole lot more than chase and tag
Right but these games depict and to an extent glorifies the . When you read a review of these games I've seen them relate with glee how 'when you shoot a guy in the face it will slide off the skull', or that the "head explodes in a satisfying fountain of gore, painting the wall with its spray..."
That stuff just isn't part of the 'violence' young kids enact through play that is depicted in these M/AO games and R movies.
Kids play violent games WITH EACH OTHER from early childhood. Cowboys and Indians? Cops and robbers? People aren't naturally pacifist, nor are tendencies towards violence somehow developed after puberty.
Except those games aren't really violent in any real sense. They are little more than games of chase and tag. The Indian makes a hit with his tomahawk and your 'leg is off', so now you have to hop. The game focusses on the activity... nobody ever just sits there hacking the other player into pieces visualizing how it would really look or feel. If you take a leg hit, your 'leg is off' and you play on.
They aren't roleplaying the leg hanging by a tendon in an unnatural position while the floor becomes slick with blood as they lie there screaming in agony and then go into shock.
Children's violence doesn't really hurt.
For children to be interested in violence is FAR more natural than for them to be interested in watching people have sex.
Until they're about 11 and their sex drives start switching on.
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But the technique does not matter when we are discussing terminology.
The principle of watermarking is to 'damage' the file to mark it. That is exactly what watermarking in the 'real world' does.
I agree, the 'technique', the 'how' the object is damaged , or what is used to damage it is fairly immaterial.
The software that you use to purchase and manage that file cannot by itself alter or even view that mark.
What part of 'select the file in itunes and select "Show Info" would that be? Viewing it is trivial.
The iTunes software doesn't let you change a number of the tags directly -- including play count. (although you can increment it by listening to the song.) These tags aren't watermarks.
Just because other software enables you do to so, does not mean that for most people it truly is tamper resistant, just as most people could not undo a semi-translucent watermark in a digital image without some trace.
Look, I've got some of those 'watermarked' songs. You know how to remove the tag?. Open it with notepad, search for your email address, change it. Save the file.
All done. All traces of the mark are gone.
I suppose at this point all we can do is agree to disagree.
-cheers.
a routine stop of a drunkard
A routine stop of a drunkard where the cops couldn't maintain an appropriate level of professionalism.
Rather like you really.
Please do not vote in the next election.
Oh... and please don't reproduce.
To be fair I should really let you argue with my daughter. She's closer to your level. You both act 4. Of course, she has an excuse.
The fact that Adobe or Apple allow you to use a very poor choice as your overlay image doesn't detract from the validity of the underlying -technique-.
Just as the weakness of a lock design doesn't it cease being a lock. Like the little combination locks on cheap luggage that can be shaken open. They're still locks. Their ineffective, but they're still locks.
I know that I'm arguing that a watermark is tamper resistant by definition, and something that is easy to tamper with isn't water mark. But its not a hypocritical stance. Just as a lock is defined by its ability to keep people out, an ineffective lock is still a lock. It looks like a lock, acts like a lock, operates on the same principles as lock... its a lock. Ditto for a weak watermark.
Back to the original debate - an iTunes tag still isn't even a 'weak watermark'. Its to a watermark what a sign saying 'do not enter' is to a 'lock'.
However, in my defence I was thinking of semi-translucent watermarks which are often used with images - those can be easily undone because knowing the color of the overlay it's mathematically easy to regain the original data (sort of like an XOR). Are you saying the semi-transparent versions are not watermarks?
You mean if you stuck a uniformly translucent square or other simple shape on it. Then no, I wouldn't consider that watermarked. It is to watermarking what ROT13 is to encryption. Just because the 12 year old thought it was encrypted, doesn't mean it was.
However, that's not to say a translucent image applied to an image can't be a watermark. Consider a complex translucent shape superimposed onto a photo, where both the translucency, and colour are non-uniform, e.g. some random 'noise' was added as well. It would be impossible to automatically remove all traces of such a mark because; not only would it be impossible to determine exactly which pixels were even affected, but it would also be impossible to know by how much any given pixel was affected. There would be no way of guessing the random noise distribution, or the exact shape of the mark. (Unless you tried to watermark a simple pattern or other completely symmetrical image -- that type of image cannot be effectively damaged (watermarked) because it contains a great deal of redundant information. It would take FAR more damage to overwhelm it. Complex photos are much easier, because there is far less redundant information.
Its true automated tools might be able to help mitigate the watermark and render it invisible to the human eye, but any sort of automated watermark checker would still be able to see that the file had been damaged.
Basically any sort of lossy compression or adding random noise can be used as a digital watermark. The very nature of lossy compression or the addition of noise is that the original data cannot be exactly determined. It can be imperfectly guessed at, at best. But any comparison between the original and the guess will show up the fake for what it is.
But again digital watermarks are about unqiueness, not about damage.
I remain unmoved as well. I think the damage caused by watermarking may often be used as a unique identifier, but they are fundamentally about causing damage that can be detected and not undone, at least not without access to original file.
I also think achieving this level of damage is relatively easy on many types of digital file.
-cheers
What would you have done differently, if presented with a drunk driver who had zero command of the common language of your country? How do you expect the cops to behave in a situation like this? Really, I'm curious.
I dunno. How about act like professionals?
How is this any different than the militaries treatment for PoW, 'enemy combatants', and anyone else they encounter while 'peace keeping'? They manage to cope. They are expected to treat other *people* with dignity and respect, even if they are drunk and don't speak the same language.
If we can expect it of a private in the Army, we can expect of a beat cop in Texas. Hell, I expect it MORE of the beat cops in Texas... policing is their primary JOB. Its no secret that some people in this country don't speak English (whether they are visiting the country, just arrived and learning, or just don't care isn't relevant).
Its still your JOB to to deal with them professionally without acting out like a juvenile idiot.
Don't ever visit France, you'd hate it (unless you speak French).
Ah, ok, so because there a dicks in another country, we should stoop to their level here. America doesn't lead by example; it just wants to be more like France. Really? Is that the message we project?
The fact is with the right software any watermark is easily removable
That simply is *not* a fact.
A watermarked image file is *not* easily repaired. The data is fundamentally DAMAGED by the overlaid mark. It can't be undamaged because there is no way to determine what the original data was.
In fact, the only way to effectively remove a digital watermark is to have the original file available, so that you can compare it with the watermarked one to restore the damaged data.... but that's irrelevant because if you have access to the original file you really don't need to be removing the watermarks.
Watermarks -damage- the file in a way that cannot be easily undone.
Countries, like corporations, don't really have 'friends'. American interests in Israel, Kuwait, Mexico, etc may not all center around oil or have been founded on 'oil', but the bottom line is that foreign policy has always been about economics.
Consider the scenario you allude to above, of mexico being invaded from a foreign power. What is the real risk there? All of Mexico's trade agreements, the real security of that border (as opposed to the bullshit fear of illegal immigrants), and corporate interests in Mexico, *these* are the reasons. Hell, if the invading power assured the US that these things would be left intact or even enriched, we'd see the current Mexican government painted as a hostile threat, and the foreign invasion would proceed with full US support.
Consider the French connection you mention in Iraq. Yes that is largely what motivated and/or allowed Iraq to be a dick. But that just underscores my point -- the French were more concerned about their bottom line (like any country). And as a result the US *invaded* Iraq, toppled its government, and ultimately condoned and permitted the execution of its head of state, violated the Geneva convention, institutes torture, secret prisons, and so forth. And for what exactly? Who is going to view that as the 'good guys'?
Hell, if the French were the superpower, they'd likely have bailed out Iraq when the US invaded them to protect their own interests.
Genocide is taking place in several places around the world, and the US (and the rest of the world) does little more than issue 'stern criticisms'. It has little to do with humanitarian grounds.
I am not suggesting the US is any more a villain than any other country. I'm saying that any country that much stronger than its neighbors, that throws its weight around to support its interests is ultimately going to breed a lot of hostility. And the most powerful countries are the most likely to become corrupt and offensive simply because they are the only ones that can get away with it. I have little doubt Canada would be just as bad, given the opportunity.
But worst of all the US can't actually even really afford its spending. If it keeps it up, it will ultimately facing the same fate as the USSR in the cold war - economic collapse.
If you hardly get any faxes switch to an internet fax service. You get a phone number (or toll free number), and a certain number of free incoming / outgoing pages per month, and after that its rated per page.
Incoming faxes are automatically sent to you via email as PDF, or BMP, JPG attachments (usually your choice).
You can also send out, by sending your email to a particular address, with the destination phone number, in the subject line, and they can usually take, word, excel, pdf, and image files as attachments...
They cost like 10 bucks a month for a very basic package (which works out if you don't send or receive many faxes), but this can end up saving you money if it means you no longer need to pay for a dedicated fax line/fax number to your home/office/whatever.
You obviously no longer need to maintain a physical fax machine if you don't want to, or deal with a modem, etc.
Plus you can send, and retreive faxes from anywhere, because its email/web based, that alone can make it worth it.
Its the future of fax, in my opinion.
You sort of make the whole "We'll stand down when they stand up" argument but applied it to half the world. ;)
But be honest, you aren't prepared to defend Canada etc out of altruism. Its out of self-interest. If Canada were to fall to an enemy, that would be a hostile nation right next door... can't have that. The cold war, NATO, NORAD, all that was just to keep Soviet missiles out of the US... the fact that 90% of Canadians lived within a 100 miles of the border made extending the 'security umbrella' in exchange for our cooperation a pretty minor issue.
Your military action in the Middle East is ultimately tied up in commercial oil interests. Kuwait was bailed out because you had a sweet deal with them that you didn't want to lose. -- you protect their sovereignty from the likes of Iraq, they give you access to the oil, then when you 'buy the oil' from them, you demand to get paid in US dollars propping up your currency, and as a further part of the deal they must build infrastructure by contracting with US corporations a la haliburton... its a lot of things... but it ain't altruism.
I do agree that US military spending can't be simplisticly reduced to 'you spend too much, fix it', but you DO spend far too much, and have the country embroiled in a lot places it really shouldn't be; leading to increased hostility against the US, leading to the need for more military.
The US as the only remaining superpower seems to think it should become the worlds police. Worse, they are becoming the worlds self-interested corrupt police. How is that going to ever end anything but badly?
But again it goes with the shift to what "Digital Watermark" means, because no "Digital Watermark" is really tamper resistant. That word perhaps should not have been the one to be brought in, but it was and so in the digital domain the meaning changes.
And that's where I think you are mistaken. A complex translucent image overlaid onto another image, which is what watermarks on digital images are is *tamper resistant*. Not in the sense that those bits are harder to change than the other bits, but restoring the image to what it looked like before the watermark can be extremely hard, especially to the point that the owner of the unwatermarked image can't determine that someone tried removing the mark.
Similiarly in the case of songs for example we do have 'real' watermarking techniques. It is possible, even easy, to overlay someone saying 'this is a sample track' in the middle of a song, and it would be fairly difficult to remove all traces of it. Or if they want the mark to be less intrusive they can vary the sound levels in the song ever so slightly - so that the ear wouldn't be able to hear the difference but a computer would be able to determine the marked one from the unmarked one trivially. Again, removing that 'mark' would be exceedingly hard.
In fact its possible for that type of watermark to be preserved even through a digital-analog-digital conversion. So even streaming the file through the analog hole might not damage the mark enough to make it undetectable.
I don't think simple 'Uniqueness' is enough to qualify as a watermark, at least given that we do have techniques for tamper-resistant marking. I think serial/uniqueness marking can be done with watermarks and often is... but I don't think bearing a unique id alone is sufficient to be a watermark.
Though it seems we disagree.
Thanks for your considered reply, its helped me refine my position.
Quite Simply there is no 'automatic' association with unique identifiers and watermarks.
Then describe a use that does not do just that.
Samples, demos, and drafts are often simply watermarked with the word 'sample', 'demo', or 'draft'. Copies of important documents are often watermarked with the word 'Copy'. In these cases the watermarks do not identify the owner at all. Never mind 'uniquely'. They are simply used to 'damage' the copy so that it can't be mistaken for a paid for, legit, complete or original copy.
In fact, many of the watermarks websites use to mark images are primarily for *that* purpose. The fact that the watermark happens to identify the website it came from is a completely secondary concern. The watermark would be just as effective for their purpose if they watermarked with a generic design. They use their logos and website address as the watermark because its free advertising.
And the itunes tag is EASILY removed and or altered which is the antithesis of a watermark.
Tell your grandmother to remve it, with no instructions. In fact while you or I may be able to remove it, I'll bet 95% of the populace could not do so correctly.
True. But my grandmother wouldn't be able to change the 'genre' tag either without instructions, nor could she lower the skip count, or most of the various other meta-data in/about the song file.
Similarly, an email my grandmother sends contains a variety of plain-text headers. These headers are not remotely tamper-proofed in any way. The fact that our grandmothers wouldn't have a clue how to remove or modify them doesn't make these sorts of things 'watermarks'. And calling them watermarks is inappropriate.
There aren't watermarks. They are not hard to remove, nor did it require a one time investment in time to 'crack' in order make it easy to remove, it was simply never intended to be hard to remove.
I think what differentiates a watermark from just a mark. Is that a watermark is a tamper resistant mark, it ranges from difficult to impossible to remove, and it was specifically designed that way. When I hear something has been watermarked I think not that the thing has been uniquely identified, but that rather that it bears a mark that cannot be removed.
In point of fact, watermarks are so named precisely because they originally used water to irreversibly damage the paper to leave a permanent mark.
Simple plain-text meta-tags and file attributes do not qualify, in my opinion. They do not conjure up the sort of tamper resistance implied to be by the word 'watermark'. They are little more than an easily removed sticker.
On futther reflection you are correct, the serial number is a form of watermark.
Actually, I was arguing that serial numbers were NOT a form of watermark.
I think this is interesting because you think they are watermarks I've come around to somewhat agreeing with you here. But not because a serial number uniquely identifies a product or even its owner or even its manufacturer, but because, separately from being unique identifiers they are often designed to be tamper resistant marks -- and THAT is what I think the threshold for watermarking is.
The test of a digital watermark should likewise be a mark applied to a file that cannot be easily removed, and the various plaintext meta-tags in an mp3/mp4 container do not pass that test, our grandmothers lack of ability notwithstanding. If I send you a PDF file and the last page is short disclaimer saying it belongs to so and so and was sold to so and so, it is indeed 'marked' or 'tagged', but not 'watermarked'. The disclaimer is not tamper resistant, and is utterly trivial to remove or alter for anyone knows anything about pdfs.
That does not imply a unique value per file the way the term "Watermarking" does automatically.
Watermarking means no such thing.
Watermarks were used in drafts, demos, and other such things, partly to identify them as such and partly to prevent someone from stealing it. e.g. if you hired a design firm to create a poster for you they might send you a watermarked draft so that you could see the finished result, but if you decided not to pay for it, the poster was still useless because it had a giant watermark through the middle that said 'draft copy - property of design company'. Once you'd approved and paid, they'd send you an un-watermarked version for you to reproduce.
Watermwarks were also used in coporate letterhead, cheques, and other docuements to help prevent forgery and authenticate that they were genuine. For the most part this was just used to help foil attacks. The same way most banks.
Never to uniquely identify individual documents.
but I would still argue in the shift to the digital domain the meaning is more of uniqueness than ability to remove
Again not true. With the digital transition, the primary motivation for watermarks was, as before, to 'damage' files so that people could see images but not steal them due to the watermark. (or more precisely, they could steal the watermarked image, but because the mark was hard to remove it wasn't worth it, and you couldn't leave the mark on for obvious reasons.)
Watermarks have been used for a long time on sites hosting high res photos or other digital art to prevent people from just downloading the image and using it. In order to get an image with the WATERMARK removed, you had to pay for the picture. Because the watermarks were translucent and applied over of the picture they are relatively difficult to simply remove.
Only very recently has watermarking technology been applied like a serial number, to uniquely identifying documents or files.
** Quite Simply there is no 'automatic' association with unique identifiers and watermarks. **
Aha, but that is external to the device, visible and alterable (potentially) by the user. The iTunes mark is not.
The itunes meta tag is not part of the song data, although it is in the same file.
It is visible in the sense that *any* program that can view the meta tags can see it -- and iTunes software itself will show you this information if you tell it to show info about the song. And the itunes tag is EASILY removed and or altered which is the antithesis of a watermark.
The iTunes tag is as much a 'watermark', as putting your email address in the filename.
And a watermark is just as identifiable if a record of which marks were sent to who is kept.
This whole 'invisible digital watermark serial number thats hard to remove' thing is pretty new, and really isn't entirely in keeping with the historical meaning or use of watermarks. Moreover, the apple meta tag is really none of those things. Its not invisible, not hard to remove.
If you didn't like the analagy of the laptop serial number because it was visible and alterable. Consider that at least half a dozen parts inside the laptop are also serialized. And that even if you scratch off the laptop serial number, if someone found the laptop they could not only infer what that number was, but potentially also who bought it.
Point is: laptops aren't 'watermarked' despite having serial numbers. And neither are iTunes files.
Its easy to say "I wouldn't give up my phone for a million pounds". It has no meaning. Nobody is offering them a million pounds, and people utter hyperboles all the time. I say, "Put the money in a suitcase, and then ask." No way 1 in 3 people would turn it down if the offer was actually REAL.
For those who haven't watched it just go watch it, don't read this post as spoilers follow...
For crying out loud, she was shot in the stomach.
If she'd been shot in the head, death would (at least according to the rules of guns in movies) have been instantaneous which wouldn't have worked as well for the scenes that followed.
The bleeding was crucial to the plot element requiring an innocent blood sacrifice to open the portal to the other world so she could return home. Captain Vidal, by killing her, ultimately frees her from a world she didn't belong in.
If you believe the fairy tale was real, then she didn't really die, her spirit is returned to the fairy world where she was a princess reunited with her parents. And even if you are in the camp who feels that the fairy world was her own invention, and that she simply died a tragic death you still have to accept that she believed herself to have been freed.
As she dies she smiles, showing that she was happy and at peace.
By refusing to sacrifice her infant step-brother she gave up her chance to go home, and demonstrated her ability to think for herself, to refuse to obey the Faun. Thereby demonstrating she was worthy to be a princess of the fairy world. The Faun was very much a parallel to Captain Vidal. And her test to refuse to obey the Faun mirrors the Doctor's refusal to obey the Captain.
There is *so* much more depth to this movie than you seem to have gotten out of it.
At current launch costs, a "colony" (read: independent, unlike a base) is so far beyond the realm of possibility that it's laughable to even consider.
I would have thought the US spending a thousand billion dollars every two years on the military would be laughable too. Yet... there you are.
Someone said a couple posts up that would costs 10s of thousands per kilo of payload to get to Mars, and many times that to get back... so lets run with that... say... oh... how about a million dollars a kilo. That should MORE than comfortably cover 'many times 10's of thousands' right?
So... whats 2 years of military spending worth in in kilos to mars and back? A thousand billion divided by a million??? What that's a million.
A million kilos to mars and back? I dunno... seems like something useful could be done with that much weight. Not a 'colony' not by a long shot, but surely a manned mission would be more than doable.
Of course, with a thousand billion available, I suspect we'd be able to afford some decent R&D into bringing that cost down...
Granted the US can't and shouldn't cancel its military... but really a country that makes up less than 5% of the worlds population doesn't really need to be responsible for 50% of the worlds military spending. I dunno... maybe tone it down to the same level as the number 2 spot... they'd still save up that thousand billion in under 3 years, and have enough money left over to catch up on literacy & education.
You have to call it something,
...to my mind watermark is an acceptable term even if it's a variant of the core meaning.
How about a 'metadata tag' or even just 'tag'?
Maybe, if you interpret the core meaning of a "watermark" as simply a "mark". But then why have this separate word 'watermark'?
This iTunes thing is the same as the serial number on the bottom of your laptop, or the service tag stored in bios (if you have a dell or whatever). Actually, the iTunes thing is even MORE transparent -- its your bloody email address so you KNOW its "personally identifying" when you see it. And its stuck right there with all the other meta-tags on the song.
Meanwhile the serial number on the bottom of your laptop is far more insidious... it appears 'anonymous' and its on the bottom where you won't likely see it... sometimes its even inside where the battery goes. the laptop manufacture can lookup what store they sold it too, and then store can probably look up who they sold it too.
Oh NOES!! Gotcha!
This whole issue is overblown.
Manhunt 2 got an AO rating, and bottom line is that Manhunt 2 wasn't intended to be an "AO" game. And its probably NOT really an AO game in its entirety. I suspect it 'crossed the line' in a couple places. AO is a designation generally reserved for porn or sex. Manhunt 2 isn't a porn game, so it shouldn't be an issue.
So why EXACTLY did MH2 get rated AO? Is there something that crossed the line? Implied rape? Implied or on-screen S&M or bondage with sexual overtones? Does any body KNOW what the ESRB objected to?
I suspect its a relatively minor part of the game, that they'll work with the ESRB to remove that bit of over the top content and then it will be M, which is what was intended.
Movies have the same kiss-of-death when they get rated X. And they invariably cut, edit, or re-shoot a scene or two and it heads to theatres with R or NC-17 or whatever they are using in your area. The odds of the game isn't getting cancelled.
And the whole console makers doing the whole 'morality police' thing is really blowing it out of proportion.
The local big theatres don't show x-rated films. The vast majority of mainstream studios won't make X-rated film at all. I can't buy X rated movies at Walmart or any where else in the local Mall for that matter. Where is the big outcry about all these people conspiring to be my 'morality police'?
There's nothing stopping people from making AO games or X movies, but yeah, your distribution channels are going to be more limited, in large part because that's how the overall market WANTS it.
Going to have to agree here. Pan's Labyrinth blew big time. And as an American I will say a large part of that was because it didn't have an English sound track. I'm sitting here trying to follow the subtitles but I'm missing most of the video because I'm halving to concentrate on them not to miss anything. And when I do miss something I have to go back and rewind to see what it was.
If there had been an English over-dub I still would have watched it in Spanish with subtitles. I have never seen a movie that was better with an over-dub. I suppose if you are a poor/slow reader subtitles are a problem, but really that's not the movies fault.
Sorry, I hate movies where kids are harmed for no reason. The ending was a kick in the balls for me. If I had known that it would have ended like that I would have passed on it. Fuck That, That Sucked.
You think she was harmed for no reason? Get fucking real. There was a hell of a good reason. And its not even certain she was even really harmed. You managed to miss the entire point of the movie.
No seriously, NASA is an acronym not a proper name. National Aviation and Space Administration.
... AIDS, SARS, NASDAQ, SETI, NAFTA and NATO spring to mind as likely candidates, I've seen them written out as Aids, Sars, Nasdaq, Seti, Nafta, and Nato, respectively.
Kindly get it right. Oh yeah, this is slashdot...
Nobody enunciates 'en ay ess ay' its just 'nasa'. Its may be an acronym, but its become a word in its own right too, like radar, sonar, laser, scuba, snafu, dos, bios, ram, flak, gestapo, etc...
Or perhaps if you want an examples of 'proper names'? How about:
Fiat - Fabbrica Italianna Automobili Torino
Gulag - Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-trudovykh LAGerey
Gestapo - GEheime STAatsPolizei
Its really only a matter of time before some of the others become 'words'
The question of how closely one identifies with a movie character vs. a 'controlled' character in a game isn't that simple to define, nor can it be answered without exceptions.
By and large, in games, you step into the character, and take possession of the action. "I killed him" not "He killed him." I don't think there is a lot of dispute on that.
What if a game only had your character do "Hostel"-level gruesome things to others in cutscenes, when not under your control? Would you expect "film standards" to be applied in that case?
Good question. I don't know. I think it depends. What if the cutscenes are rendered realtime instead of pre-recorded, what if they put your face on the character? (a la some descendant of the Wii Mii's). I think that's sort of the issue -- there is a degree to which you take ownership of a characters actions in a games -- doing them yourself is certainly more direct than watching them in a cutscene. But if the cutscene features your character with your name and face its more powerful than if your is say a "BloodRayne".
Perhaps two games, one where the character is 'you', and the other where the character is 'NOT you' would be rated differently. Perhaps they SHOULD be.
I think it's easier to reason that the levels of violence setting a PG-13 film from an R-rated film should be expected to be about the same as those setting a T game from an M game.
The 'difference' should probably be about the same, but the threshold is moved.
In the end, the ratings are all quite arbitrary. I can find R-rated films with less violence, language, sexual content, etc. than some PG-13 movies, for instance.
Absolutely, and its to be expected. The range of violence to be judged is a continuum - there is no hard line between PG and R. And context, and director intent, etc are all factors. And then the whole thing is subjective too. Ratings are a pretty rough yardstick.
For a title like manhunt to get slapped with an AO, when everyone knows what the retail situation for AO is, tells me that manhunt is going to push a lot of people buttons. It may not be the video game equivalent of Caligula in terms of what is going on on the screen, but that's how people are probably going to react to it.
If I'm not watching the show at all. I'm *certainly* not watching the ads.
DVRs, by enabling me to watch a show, give advertisers the 'opportunity' to see ads I wouldn't otherwise see.
Well, enacting such violence is QUITE a step beyond playing a game that features it. That's a very important distinction to make!
The original point was that 'violence' isn't 'mature' in the first place, as young kids roleplay violence in the form of cops and robbers and what not from shortly after they can walk/talk.
My point is that 'violence' a la cops & robbers is a completely different animal from what you see in an R movie or M/AO game. Children don't 'play' that kind of violence. 'Graphic violence' is not 'natural' in the sense that kids always have been playing 'violent games' since before hoop-and-stick.
As for the double standard, of course there are two standards. They are 2 different things.
Reading the screenplay isn't the same as watching the movie.
Passively watching the movie about a guy gruesomely killing people isn't the same as playing a game, taking on the role of the violent character and actively causing him to gruesomely kill people. And of course, playing the game isn't the same as picking up a lead pipe and heading out into the alley.
That we have different ratings standards for each of these actities is perfectly rational.
They rely on advertising to make money and aren't going to freely help people with a device that most people are going to use to skip advertising.
They seem to forget that a substantial chunk of those viewers wouldn't be watching at ALL, if it weren't for DVRs. I like a show that's on when I'm usually playing with my kids. If I didn't have a DVR, I wouldn't watch that show period. Yes, I skip through many of the commericials during playback, but not all of them, and not if the commercial catches my eye, or is for a product I'm interested in. I even rewind to watch a commercial from the start (like if I skip into the middle of a Mac/PC ad I haven't already seen) etc.
Before I had a DVR I hit mute and/or pipped the commercials while I browsed the channel guide, or checked on the hockey game, or something. Its not like I was sitting there 'attentively watching' all the ads before.
I expect advertisers are probably losing eyeballs overall as people adopt DVRs, but its probably not nearly the issue they think it is.
Unless I chuck a Manhunt 2 box at someone's face, it's probably not going to hurt you a whole lot more than chase and tag
Right but these games depict and to an extent glorifies the . When you read a review of these games I've seen them relate with glee how 'when you shoot a guy in the face it will slide off the skull', or that the "head explodes in a satisfying fountain of gore, painting the wall with its spray..."
That stuff just isn't part of the 'violence' young kids enact through play that is depicted in these M/AO games and R movies.
Kids play violent games WITH EACH OTHER from early childhood. Cowboys and Indians? Cops and robbers? People aren't naturally pacifist, nor are tendencies towards violence somehow developed after puberty.
Except those games aren't really violent in any real sense. They are little more than games of chase and tag. The Indian makes a hit with his tomahawk and your 'leg is off', so now you have to hop. The game focusses on the activity... nobody ever just sits there hacking the other player into pieces visualizing how it would really look or feel. If you take a leg hit, your 'leg is off' and you play on.
They aren't roleplaying the leg hanging by a tendon in an unnatural position while the floor becomes slick with blood as they lie there screaming in agony and then go into shock.
Children's violence doesn't really hurt.
For children to be interested in violence is FAR more natural than for them to be interested in watching people have sex.
Until they're about 11 and their sex drives start switching on.