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Slashback Businesses Hardware

Slashback: Indy, Kaneko, Swindling 130

Posted by timothy from the leaving-on-a-jet-plane-again dept.
Slashback brings you another round of updates and clarifications to previous Slashdot stories. Tonight, more on L.L. Bean vs. Nordstrom-via-Claria, Raiders of the Lost Ark re-shot for a fan film, good news for publically available laws on the Internet, the SBC strike, and more -- read on for the details.

Can good money drive out bad at least sometimes? News for nerds writes "Following the earlier news about the arrest of the Winny P2P app creator, KANEKO Isamu, researcher at the U-Tokyo and well-known hacker in the 3-D physics simulation scene in Japan (His first public Winny demo by his anonymous alias '47' was the graphic simulation of the network topology), the group of software technicians separate from Kaneko's lawyers has raised over 10 million yen ($88,347) in 10 days for the lawyers. It claims "The situation of the activities that technicians usually carry out being deemed a crime all of a sudden and arrests being made is seriously shrinking software research and development.""

A minor setback to the oligarchy of lawyers. Ellis D. Tripp writes "The SCOTUS has refused to hear an appeal of a 5th circuit court decision declaring that building codes such as the National Electrical Code lose all copyright protection once they are adopted into municipal law. Under this ruling, such codes can be freely posted on the internet or otherwise distributed for free, rather than requiring contractors or other interested parties to purchase them at often exorbitant prices each time they are revised. The original defendant, Peter Veeck, was sued by Southern Building Code Congress International for making their "Intellectual Property" available on his website."

Why does it have to be snakes? ChrisHanel writes "A follow-up to a story ran on Slashdot last year: The legendary shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark is screening next month at the first ever large scale Fan Film convention in Worcester, Mass. Tons of fanfilms and filmmaking workshops, and to get past the legal snafus, the fanfilms themselves are free to the public. A rare chance to check out this gem of a film."

Speaking of unconventional media origins, koa writes "This may be an Internet first: a mainstream television show spawned from a genuine internet phenomenon. Odd Todd will be piloting his own animated series on Comedy Central sometime early 2005 based off of his hit website. Press release here. Are we noticing an emergence of a new trend of media to look for original plot ideas from wilds the 'net?"

There is power in a union, evidently. XopherMV writes with the upshot (via Yahoo! News) of last weekend's strike at SBC: "The union wanted access to positions in SBC's emerging sectors, including Internet support and wireless data service. That work is now handled largely by lesser-paid contract workers, many of them in India and the Philippines. The tentative contract calls for SBC and the union to work together to bring the technical support jobs back to the United States when the current contract expires in two years.""

Trust me, ma'am, I was hired to fool you. Cold Drink writes "Part two of a previously Slashdotted story tells the tale of how social engineer Isreal was thwarted. When employees follow proper procedures, social engineers can be stopped dead in their tracks. Read on to find out how one person protected tens of thousands of dollars."

IWILL try to get one of these. We mentioned a few days ago a small dual-Opteron system promised from IWILL; many readers expressed skepticism about its internal configuration, memory slot allocation, power requirements, etc. An anonymous reader writes "it appears a lot of the questions have been answered in regards to the board and cooling configuration over at Hexus. They appear to have snapped some pics of this little beast."

That's awfully enterprising of Claria. gbulmash writes "Nordstrom Corporate Communications has composed an official response to complaints about L.L. Bean's allegations and is e-mailing it to customers.

I received the following letter:

'Thank you for taking the time to email Nordstrom with your concerns. We were disappointed that L.L. Bean did not contact us and allow us the opportunity to investigate this matter before they filed a lawsuit against us.

I would like to address your inquiry about Claria specifically. Nordstrom currently has no relationship with Claria and hasn't had a relationship with them since late 2001 when we tested their services for a 4-month period and concluded we and Claria were not an acceptable fit. To our knowledge, Nordstrom does not engage in the form of advertising described by L.L. Bean in the press. We have worked very hard to earn our customers' trust. We understand how important privacy is to our customers and we do not look to partner with advertisers that violate their privacy in any way.

Marketing on the Internet is a complex process and if our ads are in fact appearing on L.L. Bean's website, it is without our knowledge or consent. Please know that we are looking into this and will take appropriate action if we find the practice is in fact occurring.

Please know that we appreciate you as a customer and hope we will have the opportunity to serve you and your wife in the future.

Thank you again for your feedback.

Sincerely,

Deniz Anders
Corporate Communications
Nordstrom, Inc.'"
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Slashback: Indy, Kaneko, Swindling More

Slashback: Indy, Kaneko, Swindling

Comments Filter:

  • Nordstrom... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kid Zero ( 4866 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @07:02PM (#9272973) Homepage Journal
    Meaning: Didn't do it, can't prove a thing, and it was all his fault anyway.

  • "Winny" (Score:2, Informative)

    by dancingmad ( 128588 )
    It's WinNY (based off WinMX), not Winny.

    • Re:"Winny" (Score:4, Informative)

      by Mandoric ( 55703 ) <mandoric@sover.net> on Thursday May 27, 2004 @09:11PM (#9273822) Homepage
      As someone who -uses- it, I'll note that it refers to itself as "Winny" and not "WinNY".

    • Re:"Winny" (Score:5, Informative)

      by mistered ( 28404 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @09:14PM (#9273841)
      Actually, no, it's Winny. Have a look at the wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] or winny.info [winny.info]. The name is derived from WinMX, but the application itself isn't really.

    • I think thats just an argument with the semantics. Yes, its based from WinMX, but I think the name is in fact, "Winny" as is shown from the titlebars of the screenshot.
    • Chigau! Zettai ni onna no hou ga tsurai!

      (To translate that for the non Japanese speakers out there... In dancingmad's .sig it says "Men are cruel/unkind." My message above says "Wrong! There is absolutely no doubt that women are much crueler/more unkind than men!")
      • Otoko in this context is not men but manhood. Which isn't your fault, there's no context to a sig.

        It's actually the title of a very long running Japanese movie series about the hardships of being a man.

        • Re:"Winny" (Score:2, Informative)

          by B4RSK ( 626870 )
          Oops, better remember to put brain in gear in the future... ;)

          I haven't seen any of the movies, but I do know of the series. There were a lot of sad fans in Japan when Tora-san died a few years ago.

          I'd actually translate the title as "It's tough to be a man." but I am not sure how (or even if) it has been translated "officially".

          Are you currently in Japan?
  • As it has passed the legal mess to get shown at this film convention, then I hope that bodes well for some sort of wider release (perhaps in some non-profit form?) Otherwise I don't think I'll ever get a chance to see it, being over in the UK.

  • Lawyers and IP (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PotatoMan ( 130809 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @07:18PM (#9273088)
    I notice the lawyers have no trouble understanding that a law cannot be anyone's property. Now if they'd just apply that logic to patents on software ideas, mathematical methods and aggregations of facts.

    • But the Citations are... (Score:4, Informative)

      by jayrtfm ( 148260 ) <jslash.sophont@com> on Thursday May 27, 2004 @07:48PM (#9273296) Homepage Journal
      http://www.legalbits.com/thornton-CITATION-comment s.htm
      • From the linked text:
        In many jurisdictions, law practice is now being carried out with at least a half dozen competing versions of appellate decisions including print, online, and CD-ROM. Because of these changes, there has been growing pressure on those ultimately responsible for citation norms, namely the courts, to establish new rules that no longer presuppose that some one publisher's print volume (created over a year after a decision is handed down) is the key reference.

        Very interesting paragraph! T
    • As an IP attorney in the US, I share your beefs about the extent of patent protection in the US. Patent law is being influenced too much by big companies in the US. Copyright is a little different.

      According to the Copyright Act of 1976 [copyright.gov], the United States cannot copyright works created by the U.S. government. Individuals may freely copy from almost any federal government publication, with some exceptions including materials from the Postal Service and reference data provided by the Secretary of Commerce.

      • .. patents created on the governments nickle, both in house and via sub contractors? Who actually owns them, and who can use them, and when?

        • Uncle Sam's choice (Score:2, Informative)

          by lothar97 ( 768215 ) *
          Depends. Uncle Sam can keep the rights (doesn't happen that often), or give it to who makes it- but Uncle Sam gets a free license to use it. Verbage needs to be included in the patent application: "This invention was made with government support under (grant/contract number) awarded by (institute, agency). The Government has certain rights in the invention." Uncle Sam would be able to retain worldwide patent rights as well. Could this perhaps be a nice way to generate some revenue to cover our deficit?
          • you would think so, that they would license it, dual license perhaps. Yes, it could be sold to cover some bills. Maybe fund the patent office, get more examiners and hand each a bucket of clues. That would sure help! I guess it would depend on the patent how I would feel about it. I think if it had the possibility to be of serious major public good they should just release it to qualified entrepeneurs inside the US for the patent period, see what new jobs could come out of it. It IS tax payer funded after a
            • The USPTO charges decent size fees for filings, responding, etc. They money goes into the general Treasury fund, and then Congress reallocates it back to the USPTO. Most often, the USPTO gets back a lot less money than they actually take in- a real source of contention.

    • Laws != Property? This Lawyer Doesn't Know! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cmholm ( 69081 ) <cmholm&mauiholm,org> on Thursday May 27, 2004 @08:27PM (#9273524) Homepage Journal
      I notice the lawyers have no trouble understanding that a law cannot be anyone's property.

      Unfortunately, at least one attorney at Thelen Reid & Priest hasn't completely figured this out, yet. Mr. Patry lays out both sides of the argument, but IMO fails to draw the logical conclusion. As Patry sees it, the facts are these:

      Governments are outsourcing to cut costs.

      Rather than charge government huge flat fee to write boilerplate regs, private authors are opting to charge citizens for copies, asserting their copyright.

      If government asserts the power to punish those who do not obey the law, ready and free access to that law is essential.

      Governments can't seize copyright except in bankruptcy (ed: or national security).

      Mr. Patry concludes copyright holders shouldn't get screwed by the quaint 19th century notion that "the law is free", and should be allowed compesation, thereby making the crafting of laws cheaper for the tax payer.

      My conclusion would be that public access to it's own laws trumps other interests, and the consequenses should flow from there. If it's expensive to write a boat load of regs, then either 1) a government should pay the going rate to rate 'em, 2) governments can go in together to buy rights to the regs they need, or 3) if it's that fscking expensive, maybe they're introducing too many regs... do without!

      • 3) if it's that fscking expensive, maybe they're introducing too many regs... do without!

        Supply and demand. Lawers are expensive because they're needed. If you stop writing laws because it's too expensive, someone will see an opening and offer to write laws for cheaper (since it's better than 0). In order to compete, the rest of the lawyers drop prices accordingly. Eventually, some start to bump them up as they get busier.. rinse and repeat.
      • To play devil's advocate:

        The public is not being denied access to the law, there is simply a fee for obtaining a copy of it. There is a very important difference. The law IS free (as in speech), just not gratis. If it was gratis, as Patry points out, the overall cost would likely be much higher for everyone.

        Of course, John Q Homeowner can't do squat with building codes anyway. At least in NY, you need to have a state license (PE, RA, licensed contractor/installer, etc) to get any kind of valid constructio

        • No, godammit (Score:5, Insightful)

          by A nonymous Coward ( 7548 ) * on Thursday May 27, 2004 @09:46PM (#9273997)
          It is fscking incredible that anyone would think it reasonable to be governed by laws that you have to pay to see. It's bad enough to have that idiotic phrase floating around, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse" when there are so many convoluted twisted laws added every day that you have little hope of understanding without a paying a lawyer, and even then it's a crapshoot who wins, but to add to that the idea that you have to pay even to see the law at all, that is just beyond belief.

          • Re:No, godammit (Score:3, Interesting)

            by WoodstockJeff ( 568111 )
            ... there are so many convoluted twisted laws added every day that you have little hope of understanding without a paying a lawyer, and even then it's a crapshoot who wins ...

            Just today, I was re-reading a commentary on a 2001 case involving work place law. The case involved a claim that a company's work place rule prohibited employees from using abusive or sexually suggestive language (put in place in order to comply with regulations holding employers for the actions of employees that might cause a "hos

          • Re:No, godammit (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward
            "It is fscking incredible that anyone would think it reasonable to be governed by laws that you have to pay to see."

            Consider this: in Australia we have internet censorship. Not only are you not allowed to host pr0n in .au, but there are certain web sites you aren't allowed to visit which are on a prohibited list.

            Of course, the government won't let anyone know what those web sites are because they think everyone will go and look at them (or, more likely, their information is so out of date that releasing t
          • Did I saw it was okay to do stuff illegally because you didn't know better? No. I don't think I did...

            What I did say is that John Q Homeowner, should he decide to do something himself, likely understands that there are building codes - but he simply doesn't care about complying with them. This does not make it okay, but that is what happens.

            The codes are not even prohibitively expensive, either. They are actually rather cheap for a book of their size and detailed content. A softcover copy of the 2005 NEC
          • It is fscking incredible that anyone would think it reasonable to be governed by laws that you have to pay to see.

            On the flip side, wouldn't this make it a lot easier to claim ignorance? Right now if you go to court and say "Sorry, your honor - I didn't know that the thing I did was not allowed", your honor is going to put your butt in jail where you will have plenty of time to study that law. On the other hand, if you say "Sorry, your honor, but I do not have the funds to buy access to all laws that may
        • Well, here in MN, as a homeowner, I can and do my own construction/remodeling projects (many of them), even right in the capital city where I live. I can do my own gas fittings, my own plumbing, and (within reason) my own electrical work. All of them need to be inspected and must meet the building codes, but even on those important systems, I'm allowed to do it myself.

          As I've said so many times before, there's a whole lot more to this country than NY and CA and in many ways, those 2 states operate in reall
    • Forgive my ignorance, but are you for real when you say that MATHEMATICAL METHODS can be patented? That seems to outrageous to be true...

  • Real gems are just too hot for tv (Score:4, Interesting)

    by t_allardyce ( 48447 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @07:19PM (#9273098) Journal
    Are we noticing an emergence of a new trend of media to look for original plot ideas from wilds the 'net?"

    Yeah but the really good stuff just wont get shown by the pussy US networks. Can you imagine Trey Parker and Matt Stones "Princess" cartoon even being looked at by the tv execs? When macromedia saw it they were pretty pissed off (they had made a deal for a new cartoon). do a google for it its brilliant!

  • Internet = TV (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Chris Pimlott ( 16212 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @07:19PM (#9273100)
    Some might argue South Park beat them to it. Sure, it wasn't originally made for the Internet, but its popularity once it hit the net surely was a big part of them getting a show.

    But if you don't think that counts, Tripping the Rift [scifi.com] definately should.

  • Anti-Social engineering (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FS1 ( 636716 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @07:20PM (#9273103)
    First off, if the first theft of merchandise had been an actual theft, and not a test. They would have not known about for at least a couple of hours, if ever. Leaving plenty of time for him to complete a second or third attempt.

    The thing to look at here is that without that phonecall (which in all likelyhood would not have occured if this wasn't a test) the second attempt would have likely succeed. Also another point to know is not all stores have loss prevention people working at them all the time. In fact i could name several stores in my area that do not have them present at all.

    Anybody with enough brain power and the ability to think on their feet can accomplish feats like this. In most stores the incompentence of the employees makes me laugh. There have been many instances where i have stopped attempts like this in my previous jobs, and unfortunately some where procedure prevented me from doing so.
    • On the other hand, without him knowing about the phone call, he would have tried the same thing as the previous store and been caught because of the phone call.

      I suspect that what he tried to do would have failed even without the call. Cash rooms tend to get much better security than warehouses.
      • I suspect that what he tried to do would have failed even without the call. Cash rooms tend to get much better security than warehouses.

        Yeah, but he tried the cash room exactly because he knew that the same thing as before would fail. He had to come up with a new plan quickly and went for the unexpected.

        • Except that the "unexpected" target he went for is actually a fairly normal target, which would tend to be protected better than other places anyway.

          It was a bad choice of target.

  • South Park and "The Spirit of Christmas" (Score:5, Informative)

    by Valdrax ( 32670 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @07:23PM (#9273126)
    This may be an Internet first: a mainstream television show spawned from a genuine internet phenomenon.

    Nope. The popularity of the short film "The Spirit of Christmas" once it spread across the Internet was what led to Comedy Central asking the creators to make South Park. Without the Internet, they'd be languishing in obscurity.

  • Worcester? (Score:5, Funny)

    by pyrrhonist ( 701154 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @07:24PM (#9273135)
    The legendary shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark is screening next month at the first ever large scale Fan Film convention in Worcester, Mass .

    Being a former Worcester resident, I found this odd for three reasons:

    1. Worcester got mentioned on /.
    2. The event is in Worcester instead of Boston.
    3. Something is actually happening in Worcester.

    Oh, and before you ask, it's pronounced "Wuss-tah" not "Whore-sesster".

    That being said, please come! It'll be a hoot if lots of /. readers show up!

  • Raiders remake (Score:5, Informative)

    by jaysones ( 138378 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @07:34PM (#9273192)
    If you get a chance to see the Raiders of the Lost Ark remake, you must do it. I saw it earlier this year at a film festival in Mississippi. Everyone in it is between around 12 and 16. Not just everyone in it, but everyone involved with it! These kids were resourceful in a way only kids can be and dangerously so. They literally set their parents' basement on fire and dragged each other behind a truck, all for love of a movie. The movie itself came out great, but there's this excellent metatheater aspect to it, where you set away and think "how the hell did 13 year olds DO that?!" They also (slightly) visibly age through the movie, which is funny when you notice it. This was one of the most fun movies I've ever seen, don't miss it!
    Also, they revealed that Paramount bought their story and plans to make a movie about the kids making this movie!
    • Why the Hell can't we get this on the net? are they afraid people might ENJOY it or something?

      • Part of the agreement the three made to get their life story made was to keep the remake out of major distribution for legal reasons. They have screenings pretty rarely, but they're out there. Thus why this showing in Mass is such a big deal.
  • So the fellow from Nordstrom says that they are not buying the pop-up ads on the LL Bean site. OK.

    A quick Google search for "nordstrom affiliate" shows that Nordstrom has a 5% affiliate program.

    So perhaps all the "affiliate sites" are the ones buying the pop-up ads?
  • Does anyone know how to see the fanfilms being played at fanzillacon without going to Worcester? They are being played for free...but no recording is allowed. It's unethical and illegal to sell these films...but are electronic copies being given away somewhere? I didn't see any downloads on the fanzillacon website.
  • does this mean we'll also soon get a badger badger badger show?

    with julia roberts as the snake?

  • Dual Opteron Memory Arangement? (Score:4, Informative)

    by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Thursday May 27, 2004 @07:53PM (#9273329) Homepage
    I saw those pictures the other day. The system looks very cool, but I'm a bit worried because it looks like the second processor has NO memory, and that's it's all on processor 0. While the second processor can use that memory (of course because it's an NUMA system), I'm worried about how much of an impact that would have on performance. I would think that having each processor have one channel of memory (if possible) would have much better performance than give one processor two channels and the other none.

    Can anyone shed any light as to how this might perform?

    Either way it's a cool achievement, and the little "fin" on top is a wifi antenna, which is cool.

    • Fetching memory from the other processor does add latency, and consumes some bandwidth. But the added latency is on the order of 15ms, which combined with the architectures already low latency (due to the onboard memory controller), still puts it 20ms or so faster than the P4 memory interface. So don't sweat the latency.

      The bandwidth is of somewhat greater concern. This is essentially the same setup as the traditional x86 architecture, where all access to memory occurs over a shared bus (in this case,
    • In the duel opteron review that was posted here a while ago, they ran all tests on motherboards with only one memory bus, as previous tests with Windows XP had demonstrated no benefit to having a separate bus. And the opteron systems still beat the pants of the other systems tested for memory bandwidth hungry processes.
      Obviously two memory channels would be a bonus for 64 bit linux or 64 bit XP (When or if it ever comes out) but until 64 bit XP is out I doubt you'll see too many good reviews of duel memory
      • Perhaps you could actually provide a link to this review you speak of? Or at least explain why a 64-bit OS would make any difference at all in the utilization of memory channels. All the benchmarks of memory-intensive applications that I have seen on opteron and athlon64 vs athlonFX reviews show otherwise.
        • not the OS exactly, though 64 bit processing should be an improvement. It's more to do with XP not knowing how much it costs to read from the memory attached to the other processor.
          heres the link [techreport.com]
          Quote:

          "I committed further crimes when I chose the MSI K8T Master2 motherboard for testing the Opteron processors. The Master2 only has DIMM slots hanging off of one of the two CPU sockets on the board, cutting off the second processor's ability to talk to a pair of DDR400 DIMMs via its built-in memory controller. Tyan's Thunder K8W has the magic combination of an AGP slot and a "full" dual Opteron memory configuration.

          In my defense, there are some good reasons why I committed such heinous acts. The Thunder K8W showed us its eye-popping memory bandwidth potential in our recent Opteron workstation motherboard round-up, but it was only able to realize that potential with the 64-bit beta of Windows XP. Right now, there is no workstation-class version of Windows available, outside of early beta versions, that understands the non-uniform memory access (NUMA) configuration of Opteron systems, so much of the K8W's memory bandwidth goes to waste. This reality, combined with the fact that the K8W doesn't tolerate aggressive memory timings well, caused the Thunder K8W to lose out to the K8T Master2 in many of our performance tests. So I decided to go with the K8T Master2 for our purposes. Of course, future versions of Windows with NUMA awareness and 64-bitness should give dually Opteron systems a big boost over their present incarnations. Had we more time with the Opteron 250 prior to its launch, we might have been able to test with a 64-bit version of Linux on the Thunder K8W. No doubt that could be scary fast."

  • Lawyers && IP (Score:4, Interesting)

    by OYAHHH ( 322809 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @08:04PM (#9273408)
    What,

    The world needs is a DMCA compliant method to copyright something that lawyers/politicians need real bad. Or maybe a patent...

    Access to prescriptions or something similar would work.

    Then they would see the craziness that IP law is evolving into and want to do something about it.

    Hopefully they would do something that would prove to be discriminatory against the general populace and the whole blooming IP mess could be stricken down by the Supreme Court.

    Any ideas?
    • The world needs is a DMCA compliant method to copyright something that lawyers/politicians need real bad.

      Check out WestLaw [westlaw.com]. The base data is public domain, i.e., court records. WestLaw and its competitors charge big bucks, though, for collecting it, cross-referencing it, plugging in who cites what it in their cases, which rulings have been overturned or or narrowed by later case law, etc.

      In the case of the National Electrical Code, the situation is reversed. A private organization [nfpa.org] codifies "best practices

  • Shows what you can do if you play fair, but tough. They are apparently taking a raise that is under inflation rate-good for the econony, inflation must slow down to keep a strong buck. If everyone did that, we could completely beat inflation. They made an issue of outsourcing and won, good. We already have a 50 state common economic market, it's called the "united" states, every buck saved and spent here gets recirculated many times, another plus for the economy as a whole and maintaining a strong middle c
    • I'm pretty sure SBC ran the numbers before they ever outsourced, and though they knew they could stay in business without outsourcing, the lord high mucky mucks knew that if they outsourced they could stuff a lot more money into their already swollen pockets, those greedy fucking assholes.

      I understand that people are in business to make a profit, but when you get there by firing the people who got you there because you can make more money if you do, you can go to hell and burn, and I mean that from the bo

    • Re:good for the commo workers! (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The funniest part of this for me is the posturing that SBC did before the strike. Every article you read quoted some stiff from SBC saying how there would be absolutely, positively, NO impact to the customer.

      I happen to work for SBC. The part in the article were it says they outsourced to contractors, that is me, though I am not in India or the Phillipines. Aside from how useless my indian counterparts are due to the language barrier (and no matter what a bean-counter tells you, there IS a language barrier

  • Not necessarily the first.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by karmatic ( 776420 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @08:20PM (#9273479)
    "This may be an Internet first: a mainstream television show spawned from a genuine internet phenomenon"

    I don't know how much it takes to be a "phenomenon", but Tripping the Rift [trippingtherift.com] certainly had a large number of people see the "FCC-Unfriendly" first episode (the one with the actual bared breasts, not just all the references to them).

  • Re: Odd Todd (Score:3, Interesting)

    by X-Nc ( 34250 ) <nilrin@NOSPAm.gmail.com> on Thursday May 27, 2004 @10:12PM (#9274146) Homepage Journal
    > Are we noticing an emergence of a new trend of media to look for original plot ideas
    > from wilds the 'net?"

    Show business needs to look somewhere for original plot ideas. They most definitely have none in Hollywood nor with the studio Exec's in NY and FL. There is so very little decent, quality programming on TV. And in movies it's almost not worth owning a VCR/DVD player, or a TV for that matter.

    I have the fortune of having a 7 year old son. It's just him and me picking our own entertaimment. For that reason I tend to watch a number of cartoons on Nick and the Cartoon Network. He loves "Spounge Bob" & "Kids Next Door." I can watch them with him but I don't get the same enjoyment from them as he does. However, there is a block on the Cartoon Network now called "Migusi [cartoonnetwork.com]" which airs from 1700 to 1900. We watch "Totally Spies", "Code Lyoko", "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and "Teen Titans". Code Lyoko is really fun and out there. The Turtles have always been a hoot and the Teen Titans are just plane cool. Not to mention their theme song is by Puffy AmiYumi [sonymusic.co.jp].

    As for moview, we have the majority of the Godzilla collection and the first three Tremmors movies (still need the 4th one). Got a number of Pokemon and assorted cartoons (not to mention the virtually manditory Disney movies). My personal movie collection, i.e. the ones daddy gets to watch, are about half F&SF and half Kurosawa/Mifune/Shimura films and their like (CT/HD & The Last Samuri being the most recently made). We'll just skip over the videos in the box on the top shelf of my bedroom closet for now. ;-)

    What was I talking about?!? Oh, yeah! That the "entertainment industry" is full of brainless idiots who wouldn't know a good story or show if it hit them in the head.

    • Oh, yeah! That the "entertainment industry" is full of brainless idiots who wouldn't know a good story or show if it hit them in the head

      Just one paragraph before this you are willing to admit that you bought tremors 2 and 3 and now you're complaining about the quality of product being produced by hollywood in this day and age?

      Here's a hint, if you keep slurping down what they throw in the trough, the recipe ain't going to change.

      • The only reason I have the first three Tremors movies is because my son loves them. So do my two nieces, for that matter. Burt Gummer is a hero as far as they are concerned. Hey, if it were just me I'd have stopped at the first one. But a 7 year old tends to trump a 41 year old on matters like this.

  • 47 (Score:2)

    by sharph ( 171971 )
    is this the same 47 who made that video with DJ Spooky (that subliminal kid!)

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