It seems every year, the studios claim to rake in more and more revenue from ticket sales, what gives? Oh that's right... price of the tickets have gone up ridiculously quickly. Has it occurred to them that perhaps its the price of the tickets that's keeping people away? Allow me to illustrate.
6 or 7 years ago, I'd take my girlfriend to the local 3-screen theatre and we'd watch a first-run movie for about $5 a head, plus a shared $8 combo. Total cost, after taxes, $18. Now, the ticket price at my local 12-screen megaplex is $13 per ticket, and the cheapest popcorn+soda combo runs $9 plus tax. Total cost, after taxes, $38.
Now, at $18 for a night out, it was worth it. But once the cost of the experience exceeds the price of owning the movie on DVD, I get a little hesitant about running out to the theatre every weekend. So now, unless it's a movie that will truly benefit from the big-screen experience (i.e., Clones), I simply wait and buy the DVD. That's right, I buy the DVD, even if I'm not sure I'll like the movie. Know why? Because it's still cheaper than seeing it in the theatre, and plus, I get to keep the movie. So even if the movie sucked, hey, at least I still have something to show for it. If it had sucked on the big screen, all I'd walk out with would be some butter on my fingers.
What I'd like to see happen is for studios to make less use of expensive, superfluous special effects and quit pandering to the silver-spoon prima donna crybaby megastars like Julia Roberts, and start hiring equally-capable, but far lesser-known (and thus, far cheaper) actors, like Guy Pearce. Of course, now that he's becoming popular, you'd have to opt for someone else, unless he's willing to continue working at his "Memento" salary levels. This way, we'd get more diversity on screen, and the movies would be far cheaper to produce (and dare I dream, far cheaper to watch?).
Am I the only one who, when I see a Tom Hanks movie (and don't get me wrong, Tom is an amazing actor), I have a lot of trouble accepting him in whatever role he's supposed to be? I keep seeing Forrest Gump. Of course, he was great, but he's still got that recognition, and sometimes, that can hurt a movie. I mean, come on, George Clooney as Batman? Sure, he did a great job, but I kept seeing the doctor from "E.R." I think this was one of the reasons I liked "Memento" so much - I'd never seen Guy Pearce before.
By the way, there's no way that the industry will die in a mere 3 years. That's insanely fast. They couldn't die that fast if they tried. It would take nothing short of some extreme economics and a perfect sequence of disastrous coincidences and events to eliminate such a massive industry so quickly.
No it doesn't, it costs consumers (i.e., us) big money. In case you hadn't noticed, the insurance companies are making some quite nice profits, despite having to pay out now and then.
What the whole "insurance" argument comes down to is, we need to ask ourself if the current private-sector insurance "lottery" is the way we want to keep the industry running. That is, right now, they're insuring us based on the estimate that some of us will get heart disease, but there's no way to tell who, so they spread the cost around over everyone insured. Those who live healthy are really paying for those who know they're a big risk, and only signed up for insurance for free money.
Now personally, I'm Canadian, so I believe that it should be the job of the government to take care of those citizens who, through no fault of their own, inherited the Cystic Fibrosis gene or whatever. But under the current model, people basically expect free money from the insurance companies. Well, sorry, but there's no such thing as "free money." That money is coming out of the pockets of all the healthy people who will pay far more in than they'll ever get out.
Interesting. Do you also prefer to take your groceries without paying? Do you prefer taking new books from the local bookstore without paying, rather than waiting for them to come to they library? Do you prefer driving a nice car without paying?
Why won't you people just admit that you're thieves?
You're wrong. I know plenty of people with UNIVERSITY degrees (not just college degrees) who have all been laid off (well, all but one, but he's been told his department is being shut down in March of 2003), and have all taken AT LEAST 6 months to find a new job.
You're obviously not a parent. Policing your children? Duh! Hello! McFly!?! That's what parenting is. What, you think kids are born knowing right from wrong, and parents are just supposed to stay out of the way and occassionally put food on the table? What friggin' world are you living in???
When will people realise that the way to help your child grow up safely is not to forbid things Gee, maybe the same time they realise that if a pair of minors wants to have unprotected sex, then that's their business. I.e., NEVER, HOPEFULLY, BECAUSE YOU'RE TALKING FUCKING STUPID.
Hey Genius, we're talking about minors here, doing illegal things. It's one thing if you want to try and make a point about the futility of the war on drugs among adults, and the government's assault on civil liberties by trying to regulate activites exclusive to one or more consenting grown ups, but geez, kid, get your head out of your ass and use some common sense. We're talking about kids here. I know in your little fantasy world it's the 10-year-olds who are hacking out the planet-saving patches keeping this fragile society together, while the Ph.d educated engineers at Microsoft scratch their heads in awe, so this may surprise you: kids DON'T know it all. Kids need guidance. They need discipline. And, to borrow a phrase from my father, as long as you're living under my roof, eating my food, and using my phone, you're going to follow MY RULES
Good Lord man, you take this all kids are good and can be trusted thing too far.
I strongly disagree. It may have been true in the past, but you have to consider that languages, compilers and tools have evolved considerably since the idea of "code reviews" was first introduced.
Designers should rely on their tools. We're a Java shop here, and we employ everything from JUnit testcases for whitebox testing to JProbe for memory leak testing. We also use JTest for lint-like output. This, combined with selective code reviews of trouble spots gives you the most bang for the buck.
You must remember that code reviews will NOT catch the most insidious and costly mistakes, such as general architecture design flaws, race conditions, and memory leaks. You may catch a few, but peoples' eyes glaze over pretty quickly, and these are tricky bugs to catch.
In short: USE THE TOOLS! That's what they're there for. They've come a long way. They're very good at what they do. And there's no substitute for firing the product up and just plain using it for a while.
My opinion is that in software fields where the monetary gap between market-leader and second-place is large, we should expect bad software.
I disagree; take a look at other industries. Some of the highest-quality products are produced by the tiny, niche-market manufacturers. The best cigars in the world are not from Phillip-Morris. The finest cuisine on your block is not the mega-corporation with the giant yellow 'M'. The most accurate watches don't come from time-giant Timex. The finest literature on the bookshelf isn't necessarily from the biggest publisher.
Software is hard to compare to other products. It's intangible. It's complex. There are a million different ways to get "Hello World" onto your screen. Maybe that's the problem?
Software is also relatively young. Not just in the sense that it has only been around for 40/50 years, but in the sense that the tools evolve so quickly, that it almost seems like every few years, you're working in a completely different manner than before. And it takes time to become familiar and comfortable with the paradigms associated with your environment. Just when you've got a system worked out, everything changes again.
Before, the customer wanted a library of CGI scripts to run their e-commerce website. Now that've got a handle on scripting design patterns, the customer wants EJBs. By the time you learn what to expect to go wrong with EJBs, the customer will want a cell-phone interface to their inventory.
"Music creators have the right to protect their property from theft, just like owners of any other property," [RIAA president Cary] Sherman said. "Motion picture studios and software and video game publishers have protected their works for years, and no one has even (thought) to claim that doing so was inappropriate, let alone unlawful."
I'm curious to hear the Slashdot community's response to Sherman's point. We cannot copy movies, even under "fair use" provisions, thanks to Macrovision (VHS) and CSS + Macrovision (DVD). While we can make backups of our software, it is harder to pirate them due to the use of software keys. This is a relatively effective, and unobtrusive protection mechanism.
But when it comes to music, it's no-holds-barred. There is absolutely zero protection on a CD to prevent unauthorized copying. Don't you agree that it is hypocritical to cry foul regarding CD copy-protection, but not the guards built into VHS and DVD works?
Why the double-standard? Why do we just accept that any VHS tape we buy will be uncopyable thanks to Macrovision (barring any specialized hardware to bypass it that's beyond the reach of the lay consumer), but we so vigorously oppose those similar protections on CDs? I can't copy my VHS tapes, even if I own them and want to make a copy to take on the road in my van, or to preserve the slowly-degrading quality inherent in repeated playing of such media. But we don't cry about it - we just accept it. Why?
LOL! Sorry dude, but golf is not a sport. It's a game. It takes talent, ability, and a lot of practice, but so does playing the clarinet. That doesn't make it a sport.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying golf isn't hard. It's very difficult to do well. But it's difficult in the same way that chess is difficult.
Playing golf will not get you fit.
From the article, one kid claims to have lost 15 pounds in two weeks. I'd just like to point out that that is impossible to do healthily. The human body is only capable of dropping 1.5 to 2 pounds of fat per week. If a person is losing more than that, then they're losing muscle mass, bone density, and plain old water - none of which are healthy things to purge that rapidly.
Not. It looked pretty cool, but certainly not believable. It's not as if I were sitting there asking myself, "I wonder if they CG'd this scene, or if they somehow guided a camera down the street, just above the road?" It was very obviously CG'd. And the last bit, where he swings up to the flagpole? The momentum doesn't even look believable in that one. I mean, one second, he's screaming along at what looks like 600 mph, then as he approaches the flagpole, he appears to slow exponentially, for no reason at all, and gracefully land sideways on the pole. Last time I checked, gravity will slow you down vertically, but not when you're travelling horizontally.
Terrible, terrible tripe. I for one and very glad that the Wachowskis still value substance (realistic effects) over style (the trendiness of CG effects nowadays, even if they look like garbage).
Legally (in Toronto anyway) the pilot must fly at a minimum of 1000ft
That's not entirely correct. First of all, it's a Canadian law, not a Toronto one. Second of all, it applies to all aircraft, not just helicopters. And finally, you must fly a minimum of 1000' above the highest object, not just AGL or ASL (ground/sea level). In Toronto, obviously, that's the CN tower. So you'd have to be pretty high up.
The right of someone else to spend my money without my permission is exactly nil.
Two things.
1. Unless you're paying for your dialup "by-the-byte" (does anyone still operate that way anymore?), they're not spending your money. You've already spent it. Internet is flat-fee in the vast majority of areas.
2. Even your strong statement is not without precendent. See cell phones. If you're out of town, and I call you, YOU pay a long distance charge, just for answering your phone. Isn't this exactly analogous to checking your email? So yes, people can spend your money - it's not unheard of.
I've tried chasing down spammers, even going so far as to contact Canada's Competition Bureau. The information I received back indicated that there are no laws in Canada prohibitating any kind of unsolicited commercial email. That means, they are not obligated to use a valid return email address, they're not obligated to inform you of how they got your email address, and they're not obligated to provide a valid phone number. This is in contrast to the relatively strict rules governing telemarketers.
I wish our wishy-washy Liberal government had the guts to extend the telemarketing rules to spam emails. I say "good show" to the EU for setting a precedent.
I find it very ironic that you would close off with the above statement, after admitting that you used a digital camera during a "professional" photoshoot. Real professional photographers still use slide (a.k.a., "colour reversal") film.
Digital pictures look just fine, as long as you don't blow up to anything bigger than a 5 x 7. At 8 x 10, you start to detect pixelation with the naked eye (you'd need a loupe to see the grain in the 5 x 7). Anything bigger than an 8 x 10 is goign to be very obviously of lower quality, when compared side-by-side with a professionally done print from a slide.
Slide film images are roughly equivalent to about 50 megabytes of high-resolution data. Obviously, a 3+ megapixel digital can't compete.
not a single person can speak with me about the story of the film
It's sad that you and your friends' attention spans have been so wildly eroded by the instant-gratification of the Internet that none of you were capable of grasping the plot of such a simple piece of science fiction escapism.
Let me boil it down for you: [SPOILERS] Senator Palpatine orchestrated an interstellar war in order to assume complete control of the republic under martial law. Using this power, he assembled a massive army of clones which he intends to use to conquer the universe. The trade federation, in association with several thousand other disgruntled star systems, wants out of the republic, and has assembled a droid army of their own.
Meanwhile, Anakin grew up and fell in love with Amidala. They've wed secretly. He's got the dark side in him.
Does that help? Feel free to print this out and show it to your equally-slow friends. But don't bash a movie because the plot was too complicated for you to understand. By your logic, "The Usual Suspects" would be a piece of cimematic crap.
[Star Wars: A New Hope] was not about the special effects. They were there to serve the movie, not vice-versa
I'll grant you that in the first three Star Wars, the special effects served the story as a means to an end, and not an end in and of themselves. I'll also grant you that in Episode I, the emphasis was unnecessarily on the effects. However, in AotC, I felt that the effects were back to their rightful role of simply supporting the story, rather than drawing attention away from the story. There were a couple exceptions where I felt the effects needlessly grabbed my attention, but surprisingly, it occurred less than they did in Spiderman.
That is, in Spiderman, the effects were terrible. When he had just discovered his powers, and was running across the rooftops, it looked horrible, cheap, tacky, and worst of all, fake. The web-swinging scenes were spectacular, but they were spectacular in the same way that the intro cinematics to a Final Fantasy game are spectacular. A great achievement of computing, but obviously a computing achievement.
In AotC, most of the time, I didn't even notice the effects, although of course I knew they were there. For example, the Jedi/droid battle in the arena. That was an amazing scene, and looked incredibly real. Also, the battle outside the city between the clones and the droids - also exceptionally well done. The Yoda fight scene was a little obvious, but overall, I think AotC is much more fluid between effects/reality than Episode I, and I don't think your statement is fair.
This is a fact: Spiderman opened on around 1600 screens in North America, while Clones opened on around 1500 screens.
Uh, sorry, try again. Spiderman opened on far more screens than Clones, and you have both your numbers way, way wrong. Spiderman opened on around 7500 screens, and Clones opened on around 6000. And that is enough of a difference to explain away the revenues.
Bad technology sometimes beats out good. Consider the triumph of VHS over Beta, of CDs over vinyl, of the Microsoft operating system over the Mac. In each case, inferior technology triumphed
What is this washout smoking? Who in their right mind considers CDs an "inferior technology" to vinyl records? I know of a few passionate nostalgics who subjectively prefer the sound of vinyl over CDs, but even they aren't stupid enough to claim that the technology is superior. You can't put data on vinyl. You can't play vinyl in your car, or while you're jogging. With this one, ridiculous comment, the author has lost all credibility with me, and has exposed himself as just another angry outsider who is upset that the Big Boys won't let him play with them.
With the onset of digital cable and satellite, along with pay-per-view, I think a more sustainable model for the future is "micropayment pay-per-view"
Careful - this may not fly. Consider Canada. We're legally not allowed to pick and choose whatever channels we want, because of the CRTC's (Canada's FCC) Canadian content regulations. Cable providers are legally prohibited from delivering us a package of channels that contains less than n% Canadian content. So while I'm allowed to say "I want CBS, NBC, and ABC", I'll also be forced to pay for CBC, ATV, and MuchMusic.
That's ok. I'm sure they can make an ad free version of National Geographic for you at ~$50US an issue. And no, I'm not kidding about that price one bit.
So I guess you've never heard of Mad Magazine then.
For it's entire life, they never carried one single advertisement. Cover price and subscriptions covered the entire cost of the magazine. And guess what - issues didn't cost $50. They were about $5, IIRC.
Only recently have they started accepting ads. And it made big news, because they have always been held up as an example of ad-free content that can be totally subscription-driven.
Paying the cable company is paying for the lines to your house and the infrastructure of the network.
You're wrong. "In the beginning..." (think 1950's), TV had a little chicken-and-egg problem going on. They couldn't pay for programs because no one was buying cable yet, and no one was buying cable, because there were no programs. So they turned to advertisers. They then signed up subscribers, telling them "as TV takes off, eventually the ads will pay for it in its entirety. This subscription fee is only temporary." Yeah, right. And income tax was introduced as a temporary war-time measure. Maybe that's why the government is so determined to always be at war with someone.
Anyway, my point is you're wrong. Ads were supposed to pay for the content, the infrastructure, everything.
There must come a point when Pepsi realizes it's not worth $10 million to have Britney sing about pepsi on a beach.
Consider the possibility that maybe there is more to these ploys than meets the eye. Sure, paying $10 million for a 30-second Superbowl spot may seem exorbitant, but maybe that was the point. You heard about it, didn't you? Look at the "free" media coverage that's been given to that ad. Even before it aired, people knew it was coming, and people were watching for it. Maybe that is what Pepsi considered was worth $10 million?
Slashdot Mirror
6 or 7 years ago, I'd take my girlfriend to the local 3-screen theatre and we'd watch a first-run movie for about $5 a head, plus a shared $8 combo. Total cost, after taxes, $18. Now, the ticket price at my local 12-screen megaplex is $13 per ticket, and the cheapest popcorn+soda combo runs $9 plus tax. Total cost, after taxes, $38.
Now, at $18 for a night out, it was worth it. But once the cost of the experience exceeds the price of owning the movie on DVD, I get a little hesitant about running out to the theatre every weekend. So now, unless it's a movie that will truly benefit from the big-screen experience (i.e., Clones), I simply wait and buy the DVD. That's right, I buy the DVD, even if I'm not sure I'll like the movie. Know why? Because it's still cheaper than seeing it in the theatre, and plus, I get to keep the movie. So even if the movie sucked, hey, at least I still have something to show for it. If it had sucked on the big screen, all I'd walk out with would be some butter on my fingers.
What I'd like to see happen is for studios to make less use of expensive, superfluous special effects and quit pandering to the silver-spoon prima donna crybaby megastars like Julia Roberts, and start hiring equally-capable, but far lesser-known (and thus, far cheaper) actors, like Guy Pearce. Of course, now that he's becoming popular, you'd have to opt for someone else, unless he's willing to continue working at his "Memento" salary levels. This way, we'd get more diversity on screen, and the movies would be far cheaper to produce (and dare I dream, far cheaper to watch?).
Am I the only one who, when I see a Tom Hanks movie (and don't get me wrong, Tom is an amazing actor), I have a lot of trouble accepting him in whatever role he's supposed to be? I keep seeing Forrest Gump. Of course, he was great, but he's still got that recognition, and sometimes, that can hurt a movie. I mean, come on, George Clooney as Batman? Sure, he did a great job, but I kept seeing the doctor from "E.R." I think this was one of the reasons I liked "Memento" so much - I'd never seen Guy Pearce before.
By the way, there's no way that the industry will die in a mere 3 years. That's insanely fast. They couldn't die that fast if they tried. It would take nothing short of some extreme economics and a perfect sequence of disastrous coincidences and events to eliminate such a massive industry so quickly.
No it doesn't, it costs consumers (i.e., us) big money. In case you hadn't noticed, the insurance companies are making some quite nice profits, despite having to pay out now and then.
What the whole "insurance" argument comes down to is, we need to ask ourself if the current private-sector insurance "lottery" is the way we want to keep the industry running. That is, right now, they're insuring us based on the estimate that some of us will get heart disease, but there's no way to tell who, so they spread the cost around over everyone insured. Those who live healthy are really paying for those who know they're a big risk, and only signed up for insurance for free money.
Now personally, I'm Canadian, so I believe that it should be the job of the government to take care of those citizens who, through no fault of their own, inherited the Cystic Fibrosis gene or whatever. But under the current model, people basically expect free money from the insurance companies. Well, sorry, but there's no such thing as "free money." That money is coming out of the pockets of all the healthy people who will pay far more in than they'll ever get out.
Interesting. Do you also prefer to take your groceries without paying? Do you prefer taking new books from the local bookstore without paying, rather than waiting for them to come to they library? Do you prefer driving a nice car without paying?
Why won't you people just admit that you're thieves?
You're wrong. I know plenty of people with
UNIVERSITY degrees (not just college degrees) who have all been laid off (well, all but one, but he's been told his department is being shut down in March of 2003), and have all taken AT LEAST 6 months to find a new job.
When will people realise that the way to help your child grow up safely is not to forbid things Gee, maybe the same time they realise that if a pair of minors wants to have unprotected sex, then that's their business. I.e., NEVER, HOPEFULLY, BECAUSE YOU'RE TALKING FUCKING STUPID.
Hey Genius, we're talking about minors here, doing illegal things. It's one thing if you want to try and make a point about the futility of the war on drugs among adults, and the government's assault on civil liberties by trying to regulate activites exclusive to one or more consenting grown ups, but geez, kid, get your head out of your ass and use some common sense. We're talking about kids here. I know in your little fantasy world it's the 10-year-olds who are hacking out the planet-saving patches keeping this fragile society together, while the Ph.d educated engineers at Microsoft scratch their heads in awe, so this may surprise you: kids DON'T know it all. Kids need guidance. They need discipline. And, to borrow a phrase from my father, as long as you're living under my roof, eating my food, and using my phone, you're going to follow MY RULES
Good Lord man, you take this all kids are good and can be trusted thing too far.
Designers should rely on their tools. We're a Java shop here, and we employ everything from JUnit testcases for whitebox testing to JProbe for memory leak testing. We also use JTest for lint-like output. This, combined with selective code reviews of trouble spots gives you the most bang for the buck.
You must remember that code reviews will NOT catch the most insidious and costly mistakes, such as general architecture design flaws, race conditions, and memory leaks. You may catch a few, but peoples' eyes glaze over pretty quickly, and these are tricky bugs to catch.
In short: USE THE TOOLS! That's what they're there for. They've come a long way. They're very good at what they do. And there's no substitute for firing the product up and just plain using it for a while.
I disagree; take a look at other industries. Some of the highest-quality products are produced by the tiny, niche-market manufacturers. The best cigars in the world are not from Phillip-Morris. The finest cuisine on your block is not the mega-corporation with the giant yellow 'M'. The most accurate watches don't come from time-giant Timex. The finest literature on the bookshelf isn't necessarily from the biggest publisher.
Software is hard to compare to other products. It's intangible. It's complex. There are a million different ways to get "Hello World" onto your screen. Maybe that's the problem?
Software is also relatively young. Not just in the sense that it has only been around for 40/50 years, but in the sense that the tools evolve so quickly, that it almost seems like every few years, you're working in a completely different manner than before. And it takes time to become familiar and comfortable with the paradigms associated with your environment. Just when you've got a system worked out, everything changes again.
Before, the customer wanted a library of CGI scripts to run their e-commerce website. Now that've got a handle on scripting design patterns, the customer wants EJBs. By the time you learn what to expect to go wrong with EJBs, the customer will want a cell-phone interface to their inventory.
Sometimes, I'm amazed software works at all.
I'm curious to hear the Slashdot community's response to Sherman's point. We cannot copy movies, even under "fair use" provisions, thanks to Macrovision (VHS) and CSS + Macrovision (DVD). While we can make backups of our software, it is harder to pirate them due to the use of software keys. This is a relatively effective, and unobtrusive protection mechanism.
But when it comes to music, it's no-holds-barred. There is absolutely zero protection on a CD to prevent unauthorized copying. Don't you agree that it is hypocritical to cry foul regarding CD copy-protection, but not the guards built into VHS and DVD works?
Why the double-standard? Why do we just accept that any VHS tape we buy will be uncopyable thanks to Macrovision (barring any specialized hardware to bypass it that's beyond the reach of the lay consumer), but we so vigorously oppose those similar protections on CDs? I can't copy my VHS tapes, even if I own them and want to make a copy to take on the road in my van, or to preserve the slowly-degrading quality inherent in repeated playing of such media. But we don't cry about it - we just accept it. Why?
LOL! Sorry dude, but golf is not a sport. It's a game. It takes talent, ability, and a lot of practice, but so does playing the clarinet. That doesn't make it a sport.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying golf isn't hard. It's very difficult to do well. But it's difficult in the same way that chess is difficult.
Playing golf will not get you fit.
From the article, one kid claims to have lost 15 pounds in two weeks. I'd just like to point out that that is impossible to do healthily. The human body is only capable of dropping 1.5 to 2 pounds of fat per week. If a person is losing more than that, then they're losing muscle mass, bone density, and plain old water - none of which are healthy things to purge that rapidly.
Not. It looked pretty cool, but certainly not believable. It's not as if I were sitting there asking myself, "I wonder if they CG'd this scene, or if they somehow guided a camera down the street, just above the road?" It was very obviously CG'd. And the last bit, where he swings up to the flagpole? The momentum doesn't even look believable in that one. I mean, one second, he's screaming along at what looks like 600 mph, then as he approaches the flagpole, he appears to slow exponentially, for no reason at all, and gracefully land sideways on the pole. Last time I checked, gravity will slow you down vertically, but not when you're travelling horizontally.
Terrible, terrible tripe. I for one and very glad that the Wachowskis still value substance (realistic effects) over style (the trendiness of CG effects nowadays, even if they look like garbage).
at a minimum of 1000ft
That's not entirely correct. First of all, it's a Canadian law, not a Toronto one. Second of all, it applies to all aircraft, not just helicopters. And finally, you must fly a minimum of 1000' above the highest object, not just AGL or ASL (ground/sea level). In Toronto, obviously, that's the CN tower. So you'd have to be pretty high up.
Fucking genius.
(For those too lazy to Google, the Confederation bridge is over 13 km long)
Two things.
1. Unless you're paying for your dialup "by-the-byte" (does anyone still operate that way anymore?), they're not spending your money. You've already spent it. Internet is flat-fee in the vast majority of areas.
2. Even your strong statement is not without precendent. See cell phones. If you're out of town, and I call you, YOU pay a long distance charge, just for answering your phone. Isn't this exactly analogous to checking your email? So yes, people can spend your money - it's not unheard of.
I wish our wishy-washy Liberal government had the guts to extend the telemarketing rules to spam emails. I say "good show" to the EU for setting a precedent.
I find it very ironic that you would close off with the above statement, after admitting that you used a digital camera during a "professional" photoshoot. Real professional photographers still use slide (a.k.a., "colour reversal") film.
Digital pictures look just fine, as long as you don't blow up to anything bigger than a 5 x 7. At 8 x 10, you start to detect pixelation with the naked eye (you'd need a loupe to see the grain in the 5 x 7). Anything bigger than an 8 x 10 is goign to be very obviously of lower quality, when compared side-by-side with a professionally done print from a slide.
Slide film images are roughly equivalent to about 50 megabytes of high-resolution data. Obviously, a 3+ megapixel digital can't compete.
It's sad that you and your friends' attention spans have been so wildly eroded by the instant-gratification of the Internet that none of you were capable of grasping the plot of such a simple piece of science fiction escapism.
Let me boil it down for you: [SPOILERS] Senator Palpatine orchestrated an interstellar war in order to assume complete control of the republic under martial law. Using this power, he assembled a massive army of clones which he intends to use to conquer the universe. The trade federation, in association with several thousand other disgruntled star systems, wants out of the republic, and has assembled a droid army of their own.
Meanwhile, Anakin grew up and fell in love with Amidala. They've wed secretly. He's got the dark side in him.
Does that help? Feel free to print this out and show it to your equally-slow friends. But don't bash a movie because the plot was too complicated for you to understand. By your logic, "The Usual Suspects" would be a piece of cimematic crap.
I'll grant you that in the first three Star Wars, the special effects served the story as a means to an end, and not an end in and of themselves. I'll also grant you that in Episode I, the emphasis was unnecessarily on the effects. However, in AotC, I felt that the effects were back to their rightful role of simply supporting the story, rather than drawing attention away from the story. There were a couple exceptions where I felt the effects needlessly grabbed my attention, but surprisingly, it occurred less than they did in Spiderman.
That is, in Spiderman, the effects were terrible. When he had just discovered his powers, and was running across the rooftops, it looked horrible, cheap, tacky, and worst of all, fake. The web-swinging scenes were spectacular, but they were spectacular in the same way that the intro cinematics to a Final Fantasy game are spectacular. A great achievement of computing, but obviously a computing achievement.
In AotC, most of the time, I didn't even notice the effects, although of course I knew they were there. For example, the Jedi/droid battle in the arena. That was an amazing scene, and looked incredibly real. Also, the battle outside the city between the clones and the droids - also exceptionally well done. The Yoda fight scene was a little obvious, but overall, I think AotC is much more fluid between effects/reality than Episode I, and I don't think your statement is fair.
Uh, sorry, try again. Spiderman opened on far more screens than Clones, and you have both your numbers way, way wrong. Spiderman opened on around 7500 screens, and Clones opened on around 6000. And that is enough of a difference to explain away the revenues.
What is this washout smoking? Who in their right mind considers CDs an "inferior technology" to vinyl records? I know of a few passionate nostalgics who subjectively prefer the sound of vinyl over CDs, but even they aren't stupid enough to claim that the technology is superior. You can't put data on vinyl. You can't play vinyl in your car, or while you're jogging. With this one, ridiculous comment, the author has lost all credibility with me, and has exposed himself as just another angry outsider who is upset that the Big Boys won't let him play with them.
Careful - this may not fly. Consider Canada. We're legally not allowed to pick and choose whatever channels we want, because of the CRTC's (Canada's FCC) Canadian content regulations. Cable providers are legally prohibited from delivering us a package of channels that contains less than n% Canadian content. So while I'm allowed to say "I want CBS, NBC, and ABC", I'll also be forced to pay for CBC, ATV, and MuchMusic.
So I guess you've never heard of Mad Magazine then.
For it's entire life, they never carried one single advertisement. Cover price and subscriptions covered the entire cost of the magazine. And guess what - issues didn't cost $50. They were about $5, IIRC.
Only recently have they started accepting ads. And it made big news, because they have always been held up as an example of ad-free content that can be totally subscription-driven.
You're wrong. "In the beginning..." (think 1950's), TV had a little chicken-and-egg problem going on. They couldn't pay for programs because no one was buying cable yet, and no one was buying cable, because there were no programs. So they turned to advertisers. They then signed up subscribers, telling them "as TV takes off, eventually the ads will pay for it in its entirety. This subscription fee is only temporary." Yeah, right. And income tax was introduced as a temporary war-time measure. Maybe that's why the government is so determined to always be at war with someone.
Anyway, my point is you're wrong. Ads were supposed to pay for the content, the infrastructure, everything.
Consider the possibility that maybe there is more to these ploys than meets the eye. Sure, paying $10 million for a 30-second Superbowl spot may seem exorbitant, but maybe that was the point. You heard about it, didn't you? Look at the "free" media coverage that's been given to that ad. Even before it aired, people knew it was coming, and people were watching for it. Maybe that is what Pepsi considered was worth $10 million?
Yes, but you're still SEEING the commercials - they're just going extremely quickly.
With PVRs, the jump is instantaneous, like skipping to track 6 of a CD. That's the problem, that's what advertisers are complaining about.
Plus, it takes maybe 15 seconds to fast-forward through 3 minutes worth of commercials. It takes 0 seconds to skip over them them a PVR.