Redbone

Where the hate is directed and where it is INTENDED tend to vary from "hated thing" to "hated thing."

To use the examples from this thred (and htis is by no means universally true, just generally true).

Cars 2 gets a lot of hate for being a money grab. The hate is directed at the movie for not being up to Pixar's usually high standards, but it's intended for the those inside the company who decided "let's make a toy-tastic film and damn the story."

Twilight gets a lot of hate for being just horribly written, horribly acted, horribly anti-woman and 9in some circles) badly translated mormon theology. The movies (and books) richly deserve the hate they get, but that is mild compared to the hate the Twi-hards get. People hate that a bunch of people lapped up worthless pablum and made it a money making sensation of epic proportions. That hate is intended for exactly where it was directed.

Bay-Formers gets hate for not being transformers (for the most part). It's action movie pap instead of what the fan base expected, a movie about cars and aircraft turning into robots and having out a small scale war that's now gotten to our planet. The focus on the human characters so you don't realy know any of the Autobots or Deceptacons and don't really care about them as a consequence, the confusing robot designs, the "in the fight" filming where you have no idea what's going on all come together into a steaming pile of somehtign to hate. The hate is intended for all the revisionist writers and directors who make it possible for this sort of thing to happen and the moronic "average movie goer" who gives them the money to make four of them.

I admit, it was somewhat disappointing to see a company like Pixar, which got where it got because of artistic integrity, go down the "fleece the kiddies" route, especially turning out what it considered an inferior product to do it. However, it was bound to happen sooner or later. At least they were blatantly honest about it and said pretty much up front this is a film to sell toys, don't expect too much.

Cars 2 catches a lot of flak because it was Pixar's first blatant money grab movie. Even Pixar came right out and basically said "unlike our other films, we made this movie first and foremost with the express intent to make money on toys." What was offensive to some viewers was just how transparent they were with it.

The reality is, the bus companies in Paragon lost their insurance and had to go out of business. After all, heroes and villains get into fights in the streets and inevitably someone throws a bus. The insurance companies finally had enough of that mess and refused to insure the bus companies.

The bus stands, however, were built by the city under contract with the bus companies and to keep from defaulting on that contract, the city is required to keep rebuilding them, at great tax payer expense, when one is destroyed in a super powered squabble even though a bus will never show up.

The technology is currently convincing, but JUST barely convincing and there are times where is is a glaring effect. The problem isn't the tech though, the tech is there, the problem is the cost of that tech. In a decade, maybe, they could pull it off cheaply enough for a TV show, but as it stands now, it would cost a season or two's entire budget just for the age effects.

The use of Tron: Legacy class character alteration effects for the actors would be pretty much required to pull it off. The old docs (from the "old series") are all very obviously much older and something like done with Flynn/Clu in Tron: Legacy woudl be pretty much required to pull it off with anything short of giggle inducing badness and even then a lot of the "age reduction" on Bridges was noticable.

I know they wont do it, especially for just a year, but it would be amusing if some of the random street civillian dialogue tied all this into the 2012 thing.

As it turns out, one does. The next incarnate trial will have a morality choice (and technicaly be 2 trials because of it) where we have to go out and collect evidence for one side or the other of patent, trademark and copyright infringement by the other side. The final mission is in a court in Paragon where we have to, as a group, all answer questions from the lawyers. On the up side, this trial leads to three more future trials where the case is appealed by the losing side to the state supreme court, then the federal district court and finally, the US Supreme Court. Trust me, some people will complain about the costume art on Sonya Sotomayor's judicial "robes."

Is it wrong that:
A) That was the thing on the overview that got a "oh my god" from me, despite how cool everything else looks.

B) I am already mentally revamping my SG bases to accomidate having far fewer teleporters?

Well, really, comparing it to House is pretty expected since House is Medical Sherlock Holmes right down to his apartment address, drug use, the name of his closest "friend" starting with the same letter and having the same number of letters in the friend's last name, Holmes and House both playing a musical instrument to think, the depresion when not embroiled in a case and even the pun of a name (Holmes = Homes and House being, well, House).

I don't think it was the Gatiss Plot Gallop that did it this time. This ep seems to show something a friend and I discussed last week and I was finally convinced of this week.

The actual plotting and writing of Sherlock is pretty bog-standard with little above and beyond standard TV fare. However, where Sherlock shines is in the character interaction of Watson and Holmes and to a lesser degree Holmes, Watson and their "usual associates." This ep had less of all of the above and dragged because of it. While the inclusion of a lot of interaction with the client was needed for this story, it took up a lot of the time that in other eps is dedicated to the Watson Holmes and Watson, Holmes, associates interactions that the show is so great with.

I was in the neighborhood, so I spoke with the fellow that handles the stuff at the local hobby store. If it's cured, you're going to have trouble (the stuff takes about 72 hours to completely cure). Heat will work, but the longer it's cured the more heat it takes and eventually the heat will damage whatever it's on before you have enough to get it to break up.

He has heard that a long soak in 99% rubbing alcohol will work if you're worried about damaging paint and plastics with the usual removers but hasn't tried it himself and cannot say if it will really work.

His final word on the matter was basically, "good luck, you'll need it with this stuff."

Just out of curiosity, which of the Goops did you use?

Rumor is the Devs are goign to rename the STF some strange looking symbol with no way to pronounce or type it and we'll end up calling it TTFFKATSTF.

Watson typically gets the short end of the stick in mass media as the "smart dunce." Watson exists to Holmes can tell the audience things and to show just how brilliant and odd Holmes is. In mass media he tends to be said to be smart but shown to be not quite as bright as the average audience member except in some obscure field (medicine or social activities of the period) to make both characters relatable. "Watson, a smart guy is not as bright as the audience, therefore the audience must be smart" is the prevailing reasoning by the makers.

This Watson is particularly put-upon in that way. He misses very obvious things and acts more as a foil to Holmes (given the first episode it's wose this season) and a place to insert the humor, from "ain't Holmes just a weirdo" laughs to "we're two men living together" laughs.

Course, that might be why he has to die. He may come back and the hero folks have to put him down for going WAY over-the-top out of control with the beating to death of every criminal he sees.

So it is "hair splitting" to point out we had not said much about the actual topic. It is "hair splitting' to point out that legal is not the same as moral?

So you believe it was moral prior to the mid-1860s in the US to own another person and is still moral in some parts of the world today? You believe it was immoral to assist those same people if they escaped? You believe it was moral prior to the Civil Rights Act to deny some rights to people who happened not to have white skin? Is it moral to marry a 13 year old like you can in some part of the world?

It's not "hair splitting." It's ethics 101. As for "dangerous and confusing," no, it's not. A person who comprehends that legal is not necessarily moral doesn't have to worry when a law changes about altering their view of morality and, when the government does pass a law that is immoral, they can fight to change it. For example, and on topic, under your stance, if tomorrow a law was passed saying that IP had no legal protections, you'll suddenly have to reverse yourself and be all for "pirating" since it's now legal and, according to you, legal is moral. Someone who believes that pirating is already a moral act like some of the "free art" movements or someone who believes that "content creators" have rights to their work won't have such a switch to make.

Morality is a constantly shifting social convention. Legality is a second social convention that shifts much slower than prevailing morality. Ideally, they will line up and change together. It is very rarely ideal.

More directly to the topic, IP rights are a moral and legal issue. I am one of those "content creators," though not a highly successful one. I have sold about two dozen of my creations in the last twenty years, including one theatrical script and one television script (the former I sold the rights to for $1 and the second was sold for a whopping $500 and never produced) two poems, one short story and a lot of articles. In the 90s, my roommate and I were beaten out by a matter of days on a near identical motion picture script prospectus we submitted that did eventually get made (and we were glad it wasn't ours). My agent is currently shopping a pair of scripts around to any production house that will even think of looking at them and a fiction novel to any publisher that will give him the time of day. I have a small vested interest in the IP issue.

That said, piracy is one of those acts that, even from an industry and business standpoint, rides the line of morality. There are some forms of piracy that just about all media producers would love to encourage, namely try-before-you-buy piracy. It harkens back to recording songs off the radio, movies off HBO and the days of shareware and freeware disks for games and software. Those forms of piracy help the industry since it does boost sales in quantifiable ways. It also forces producers to put out quality products to ensure people will buy after getting a pirated copy (but "quality" is defined as "something people will pay for" rather than something that is classically good).

And then there's the piracy the industry wants to fight. The ones who take a piece of media and do not now nor never will intend to purchase the actual product.

Lastly is the real grey area, piracy that is legal one way and illegal another. That's where the real sticking points come in. If you download an episode of a TV Show from a friend you're pirating. If you record it yourself, you're not. The end result is the same, but the method of attaining the data is different. If you get a copy of a TV show from a friend who is giving you his copy, you're not pirating, but if you get a copy of his show on a disk and THEN he deletes his copy, you are pirating. Again, the end result is the same, but the method is different. If you record a football game and watch it in a bar you own with your wife and 4 kids, you're not pirating, but if you do the same on a night when you're open and have two customers you are pirating.

In the end, it comes down to one simple fact. The industry doesn’t care about my rights as an artist or your rights as a consumer. They care about the impact on their bottom line. if it hurts their bottom line, they call it piracy or stealing. If it's something they can turn to their favor and make money on, they will throw lobbying dollars behind it and get it legalized. Just look at Napster. Same set up as before, but when it went from "costing" to "making" the industry got very quiet about it. VCRs were the same way. When it went from "oh no, this will mean people will record movies and never leave their houses" to "we can use endorsements, product placement and pre-recorded tapes to make cash" VCRs (and later DVRs) became just fine with the TV and movie industry.

Well, if you want to get really technical, we've not had much to say about the actual topic at all. We've discussed legality, we've discussed impact and mitigation of impact, we've discussed technical aspects, but we've barely touched the morality of it.

Morality and legality are two different issues since what is legal is not always what is moral and what is illegal is not always what is immoral. It's even more complex than that since what is legal may be moral for one person but immoral for another or, more commonly in discussions of ethics and morality, breaking a law may be immoral for one person but a moral imperative for another.

I figured that by the time we got it here in the backwards, deep south, middle-of-nowhere everyone would have it. Maybe we're ahead of the curve for once, but my current "freebies" from the cable company (Charter, the fourth largest in the US behind both the ones you list) can export pretty much at will to just about any storage medium I choose (I can even export wirelessly and copy to this computer from the box in the bedroom or the one in the den). Admitted, both boxes are basically new (put in a little under a year ago), but the same is true of the ones at my parents house and both next-door-neighbours. We might even have similar DVRs since both mine are Motorolas.

EDIT: Just out of curiosity, the neighbour and I ran a little test. If he opens up his wireless network with the DVR attached, I can also access what he has on his DVR. I assume the same is true across the board and this little row of three houses could access each other fairly readily (I can access both their networks, and each can access mine, but not each others).

As long as mid-show commercials show a return, they will continue to exist. I should also add that by "return" we're not just talking about selling products but also selling the brand. Brand recognition is still intensely important as is building brand loyality on top of that. One way to do both is through constant repitition and commercials are a large aspect of that (even going outside television). The fastest and easiest way currently avaliable to introduce a new product or even new class of product is a heavy air campaign on television. That will not change much in the forseeable future. While there has been some success with things like viral marketing, that field is still too hit-and-miss to pump vast sums into and only works when the competition for attention is low. Television commercials don't suffer that problem.

In the near term we'll see a similar reliance on mid-show commercials as a primary medium. Over a few decades that will lessen as the entire TV medium moves into a a new, 21st century era of broadcasting that takes into account a higher and higher penetration of "on demand" and time-shifted style viewing and takes advantage of digital signals to deliver marketing in newer ways.

If you made me make a guess, in 50 years the mid-show commercials we have today will seem as out of place as the in-show, in-universe commercials of the 50s and 60s. Show run times won't actually alter that much as far as how much plot and action are in them, but the run times will alter from the standpoint that more time will be taken up with lingering product placement and endorsement along with product placement and endorsement being folded in as plot points of the shows themselves.

In my opinion, children's cartoons are leading the way. Entire shows dedicated to marketing specific products, a specific company or a narrow set of products will eventualy become the norm. In that era two primary things will control what is on the air and what stays on the air.

The first will be corporate backing. A show that isn't watched much will have a better chance of surviving if it has, say, Coke behind it than a show that gets more viewers but is backed by Dr. Smooth Soda. The Coke show will simply be able to buy its way in and last as long as Coke wants it to so long as its function as a product vehicle remains viable.

The second will be production house ownership. A network that owns the production house making the show will be more likely to leave it on over one made by a production house it doesn't own, even if it's less profitable. The reason is the lower rated show is wholly or majority owned by the network, so it will get more of the pie from syndication, DVD and iStore sales as well as product placement and whatever ad revenue there is than one they do not own.

The second one already heavily influences scheduling and cancellation decisions (Firefly is a great example, one thing that went a long way towards its death was FOX not owning the production house).

We're well on our way to all first run shows on Network X being created and made by a production house owned entirely or in majority by Network X and independent freelance production houses that will work with any network vanishing. That way the networks can collect all the money from product placement and endorsements, making those the life's blood of the industry rather than mid-show ads. The indies will only survive by buying airtime on the networks and paying for the time (rather like infomercials) so the network can recoup the lost ad revenue.

There are two more major diferences between a DVR and VCR.

The first is, VCR tapes degrade fairly quickly. Most prerecorded tapes have a lifespan of 5 years with normal use ("by the book" that is, I have movies that are in good shape after 20 years) and mose recordable ones have a lifespan of 8 to 10 years (again "by the book"). Both degrade in quality over time.

DVRs have no such problems and many now do have the capability to offload via a USB port. They are far more stable and far more long lasting with the quality not dropping with each subsiquent replay.

The second difference is copy speed. There are some dual deck VCRs that can do a rapid copy, but that costs sound and picture quality and still takes a fair chunk of time. The vast majority of tape to tape (or even tape to DVD/Tape to hard drive) conversions require real time recording.

DVRs can do it with little or no loss of quality at much higher speeds. DVR recordings can be transmitted large distances with little or no loss of quality or speed at very rapid rates.

On a different note, the television industry caught on to the threat of VCRs fairly quickly but were cautious in their response. Whern VCRs became a common household appliance, they did take some measures to protect their revenue stream. The first of these was one networks too to protect themelves. They invented "the bug." "Bugs" were already common, but it was a unobtrusive, occasional network and station identifier that popped up on the screen from time to time. They took that same tech and began promoting their shows in the same way, startign with simple text "up next" announcements in the lower right corner of the screen. When people didn't complain much, they started pushing what they could do with them adding logos and graphics. Now, you see some that take up 1/6th of the screen (sometimes more) with full motion images, logos, text and occasionally sound.

The second thing they did was expand their show endorsements. There had always been "this show brought to you by" promotion, but it expanded greatly from a post show announcement to one before, during and after the show. The number of shows doing it also expanded, takign it from a "special presentation" and daytime soap thing to common at al hours of the day and night on just about every kind of show.

The third thing they did was look to the film industry and take a page rom their book. They started accepting far more contracts to feature products inside the shows themselves. This program was a gentle expansion, seeing how far they could go before enough viewers noticed and started talking about it. Once they got it dialed in, they leveled off.

The fourth thing they did was take a page formt he early days of television and internalize commercials. Older folks can remember classic TV shows having commercials right inside the show. Suddenly, right in the middle of a scene, Andy Taylor and Barney Fife would pause for a smoke and discuss their cigarettes or decided they needed a bowl of Grape Nuts right then (and take it out of the desk drawer). The new version of this pretty much culminated with the Friends episode "The One With Potter Barn" where the entire show was basically a commercial for how awesome Potter Barn was. That got a lot of backlash at the time and the networks figured out what line not to cross. They went for a more subtle approach after that. Instead of blatantly promopting a store for the episode, they began endorsing products and stores with casual mentions or very short discussion like, "I got it for a great price at Sears" or filming inside Toys R Us with enough signs and pictures of the mascot to choke a mule.

The last major thing they've done so far is Credits Pushes. They crush the credits off to the side or bottom and run a very short ad (or series of ads) right over the credits followed quickly by the start of the next show before the credits end. This is another expansion of earlier practices where they would mute the credits and talk about upcomming shows or would break into the credits with "this show sponsored by" graphics. Not only does that increase their revenue stream, it also keeps people from changing channels.

In short, thanks to VCRs they were ready for the loss of commercial viewers by the time TiVo and its cousins made it a problem and long before DVRs became common. The advent of cable was already setting them up for it. The networks were already looking into al of this before VCRs had a chance to make it difficult for them because they'd blead millions of viewers to cable channels. Now they have to worry about DVRs and such not because of commercial revenue loss but because of unobserved "Time Shifted" viewing which throws off their ratings and effects what they charge for not just commercial slots, but also the stuff I've listed above.

The current experiments in ad delivery are fairly expected. One plan is for computers, game systems and televisions to be merged into a coherent unit and screen space to be dedicated full time to targets ads like on websites (think of the televisions in Idiocracy but lower key). Devo (the band) got into the act by testing "Intravideo Marketing" with their "What We Do" web video where you could move the camera around a video yourself and click on items to purchase inside the video (yes, I still want a red energy dome). The BBC is also tinkering with commercial possibilities with their Red Button setup, a technology that is being looked at for commercial possibilities outside the UK. Motion controller tech, especially "no remote" tech like the Kinect, is also being look at so you could point to an item in a show and ask about it, pausing the show and being taken to an info and purchase page, but the tech's not quite there yet. The most interesting and intrusive experement is going on right now with cable boxes that scan the room and identify who is in the room watching the television along with what they're watching. It's being used for ratings right now, but the future of the technology is to increase the camera fidelity and observe interest levels to tailor commercials and ad placement inside shows. Beyond that is another boost in fidelity to observe and interpret eye movement and blink rates. Beyond that is another increase in fidelity to alow ad targeting and product access with nothing more than eye movement and iris response.

Basically, DVR technology is less of a problem for the industry and more of a godsend. With VCRs they couldn't intigrate technologies like these. With digital signals, they can imbed the necessary links and software inside the broadcast and your DVR record them along with the show.

At least three guys (accidentally) made a really good attempt at finding out though. During testing for space suits NASA had a few serious suit failures. One guy, who, IIR required CPR to revive, was in the chamber without air for 2 minutes. He passed out after 15 seconds or so. He did survive with no long term ill effects and reported no serious pain during the experience. He reported the strange sensation of his saliva boiling on his tongue as being the last sensation he recalled.

In 1775 one of the richest free blacks in the country was in Charleston, SC. He was a guy by the name of Thomas Jeremiah and was a self-made man. he was hung in 1775 after a kangaroo court convicted him of formenting a slave revolt.