The Pecman
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And I believe this was covered in a previous February 12th thread started by Cynus:
http://forums.awesomedude.com/index.php?showtopic=8225&hl=frozen
And I echoed that I thought the Oscar-nominated song "Let It Go" clearly had gay-coded lyrics and would probably win the Oscar (which it did!):
http://forums.awesomedude.com/index.php?showtopic=7998&hl=frozen
No doubt, the right-wing fundamentalists see a gay agenda whenever a pop culture film, novel, TV show, or song references the concept that everyone should have a tolerance for people who are different. It's not always about being gay, but I think the message is real even though the bias against it is unreasonable.
Here's a nice story on the Huffington Posti covering the gay angle and what's going on there:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/11/frozen-disney-kevin-swanson-gay-_n_4937192.html
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Very true.
I just got off the phone with a former IT colleague of mine, and he reminded me:
Microsoft has about 10,000 patents.
But... Google owns over 30,000 patents, mainly because they bought Motorola's cellphone division.
Food for thought.
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BTW, last week on the news, they kept saying it is Daylight Saving Time and not Daylight Savings Time. We're supposedly saving time.
I believe they should call it Daylight Losing Sleep, because that's what really happens to us.
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I always ask the messy questions...
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There are already some Christian fundamentalists objecting to certain things in the Noah movie, like the title character being drunk, prone to anger, and having bouts of self-doubt. Never mind that all of this is in the Old Testament, that it's actually part of the Jewish Torah, and is not a Christian story at all -- all many years before the historical Jesus.
And... it's all a fictional parable meant to tell a story, not to describe events that actually happened. Heck, if all of us descended solely from Noah's own family, and no other humans survived the flood, wouldn't that mean we're all the offspring of hundreds of generations of incest?
This explains a lot...
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Doh, I hate Daylight Savings Time!
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And here's that link:
http://www.dabeagle.com/stories/davidhongkong/hofdl/hofdl1.htm
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My granddad worked for Xerox. The payment Apple made to Xerox was minimal, primarily because the accountants and lawyers in Connecticut who ran the company took Apple's offer.
Apple paid a lot more than Microsoft paid... which was nothing. Who do you think was the bigger thief here?
Note that Apple produced documents that verified that Bill Gates had said (as far back as 1983), "I want the Mac user interface on top of DOS." But the only reason Apple didn't win that case was because the judge basically said, "well, Apple, Microsoft, and Xerox all borrowed from prior work." I think they got a shitty judge -- which is an enormous problem in patent law, particularly as the creativity becomes more and more technical.
Xerox still sued Apple later, but Apple settled. I think Xerox's excuse was, "well, sure... you said you were going to use this for consumer products, but you didn't tell us that professionals might buy your computers!" It was a lame argument.
Have you read the Jobs book? It's more interesting than you might think, and -- as I've told many of my anti-Apple friends -- it has more horrible, negative stories about Steve Jobs than any book ever printed. And I'm convinced they're all true.
I always did like one thing about Steve Jobs, which is his observation that the single biggest flaw with Windows is "Bill Gates has no taste." And despite the fact that I run Windows several times a week, the flaws with various flavors of Windows remind me that it's the minutiae that define artistry and whether something is well-done or crappy. I tolerate Windows, but no way does it provide the same user experience as the Mac.
BTW, I don't think either Microsoft or Apple are patent trolls, and I think both have been treated badly by many foreign companies. Samsung is very high on that list. I've walked through Samsung's headquarters in the "Samsung Town" part of Seoul, and those are weird-ass people. Trust me on this.
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Gestures existed on models of the Xerox D-Machine as well as features like the mouse, a windowed user interface, multiple programs running simultaneously, and more. Xerox failed to patent these inventions; the corporate headquarters didn't understand what they had at PARC, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.
The difference there is that Apple paid PARC for the right to visit their center and use the inventions in consumer products. This is detailed in Walter Isaacson's best-selling biography on Steve Jobs. And most of the inventions, including the mouse and the GUI, had already been started on as R&D at Apple:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/10/steve-jobs-xerox-parc.html
That actually wasn't a trademark issue; Warner's claim was filed with the Title Registration Bureau of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America). It's a voluntary trade organization, though as signatories, both Warner and Weinstein are bound by its rules and the decisions of its arbitrator.
That's true, but I think you can look upon a registered movie title as a de facto Trademark. There are also movie & TV show titles that have been trademarked after the fact; famous, Star Trek's first 40 episodes slipped into the public domain because of a paperwork screw-up, but because the music was still copyrighted and the title of the show was a trademark, they were able to prevent other companies from releasing the shows on home video.
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That's one reason I get such a kick out of religious people pontificating: if we didn't have religion, where would our morals come from?
That's why they hate the idea of Secular Humanism: just living your life as best you can, adhering to basic human decency, obeying the law, being kind to other people, being honest, and yet not observing any religion at all. Rightwing fundamentalists hate the idea that maybe it's possible for people to live a life that's decent and reasonable, yet completely ignore religion. To me, Secular Humanism makes total sense, and (as flawed as I am) I've tried to stick with that for most of my life, even before I knew what this philosophy was called.
I'm a little bit religious, but only in the most distant way. As I think you and I have discussed before, the one religious belief I lean towards is that of being a Deist: that there is a god, but only a god who created the universe and then walked away, basically waiting to see what would happen, and that almost all organized religions are completely screwed up. I think all of life is simply a grand experiment, like a scientist throwing a bunch of random chemicals together in a giant test-tube to see what would happen. I do think there are real miracles in life, and I also look at stuff like the design of the human body, or the way a tree grows, or the similarities between animals, and I can't help but think there's some intelligent design going on. But I also lean towards the 2001 idea (echoed in Prometheus) that maybe some aliens came along and gave us a kick in the ass that really started things going; it wasn't all random, and it wasn't all god. I think we had a few different cooks in the oven.
But the fundies just make me puke. 6000 years? Don't make me laugh.
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Copyrights and Trademarks have scope. For example, a story can be copyrighted, but the title of the story cannot be copyrighted. The scope of the copyright is the story itself, not the title or the color of the cover or the way it's packaged. The same is true of a song, or a film, or a work of art. Items which cannot be copyrighted include titles, names, common facts, and ideas.
You'd be surprised. For example, about 8 months ago, Warner Bros. tried very hard to stop Weinstein Films from releasing the movie The Butler because Warner Bros. had a trademark on a 1916 silent film with the same title:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/butler-battle-escalates-weinstein-hints-579841
So a lot depends on how much money you want to spend and how powerful your lawyers are. In Weinstein's case, they solved the problem by officially titling the movie Lee Daniels' The Butler, which the MPAA agreed was enough to draw a distinction. And yet the truth is that there are many, many movies with identical titles made in different years. Most of the time, the companies just let it go. God help you if you were to release another movie titled (say) Frozen. Disney also hates it when people take public domain characters like Snow White or Pinocchio and make new animated films out of them... because they don't technically own those words.
I've been peripherally involved in copyright lawsuits before, including having to testify three times in the famous Sony vs. Universal Studios Betamax case, so I've had to sit down and read U.S. Title 17 to get a sense of what copyright law is all about. I can say it's a very, very complicated area, and a lot of it (and also patent and trademark law) boils down to case law, meaning it's however the judge interprets the law. If you get an asshole judge, chances are the verdict may not be predictable.
I'm apoplectic about the imitation iPhones on the market, and how difficult it's been for Apple to win all the lawsuits against the companies who make them. It's interesting how many companies sneered at Apple in June of 2007 when the first iPhone was released, which had some fairly significant features like the gesture UI, the virtual unlock switch, and a lot of other really, really innovative ideas. Now, we take all this stuff for granted, and everybody has very similar smartphones now. I'm glad that Apple has at least one most of the cases against Samsung in America, but it's bewildering to notice how different patent law is in different countries.
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What is interesting is that the U.S. Trademark office does also control patents and copyrights, and when you hire a trademark attorney, they usually know patents and copyrights as well. So it all does overlap.
My partner and I owned a trademark for a magazine back in the 1980s, and we were initially overjoyed when we discovered a Japanese company infringed on the trademark on a fax machine. I actually wore our magazine's T-short to their booth at an electronics show, which took them aback. Since we had been doing the magazine for 3 or 4 years, they acknowledged that we pretty much had them dead to rights, but when we tried to settle with them later they proved evasive. We were hoping for a quick $50,000 buyout or something, but they basically dodged us for a couple of years and then just killed the product.
Now, if only I had trademarked the word "iPhone" back in, say, 1990...
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Tears of laughter started coming out of my eyes the moment I read "snorting Drano." This is F'in' funny.
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The classic example is Time Magazine. You can't trademark the word "time," and you can't trademark "magazine," but you can sure believe "Time Magazine" is a registered trademark. Compound words are generally easy to trademark when they're invented, and especially when they're misspelled. I once made the mistake of using the word "Xerox" as a generic in a published article, and believe me, we got a nasty letter from the Xerox Corporation within 2 days admonishing me to instead use the phrase "Xerox Copy" and never "Xerox" by itself. Words like Aspirin and Thermos have slipped into the public domain all because corporations didn't police how they were being used.
There are also copyrights, which are different from trademarks and patents. It's all very complicated. And even when you own a unique word, you generally can only own it as it pertains to a particular business. For example, I could create a game called "The Word Game," but not "The Microsoft Word Game." The problem is with words that could pertain to different businesses... like movies, TV shows, comic books, toys, computer software, and so on.
I don't think the University can hold on to these words. The moment a judge sees that they existed for many years prior to the University securing a trademark, he can invalidate them fairly quickly. I'd also alert the law department of the school to maybe have a word with whoever is doing these trademarks and tell them to get a life. Worry about educating students, and stop trying to make money with bullshit.
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It is wrong to assume that religions are anti-gay de facto. That is only generally true of the monotheistic religions of the Middle East and their descendants. In many religions homosexuality is accepted and in some even seen as a sign of favor from the gods, for instance in some Native American traditions and amongst Northern European Shamans. I'm a Pagan but have studied Buddhism extensively and read Buddhist Philosophy and Buddhist Psychology as part of one of my degrees. An important concept in Buddhist teachings is moderation in all things, that means never going to the extreme. Any homophobic behavior is by definition an extreme, therefore, not in accordance with Buddhist teachings.
What if I just do it until I need glasses?
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I was at my desk eating my lunch today and trolling the web when I saw an item posted on Language Log about common phrases like "student life" being patented for any use related to education — by universities.
Note that a phrase cannot be patented... a phrase can be Trademarked or used as a Service Mark, but only an invention can be patented (like a new motor or a new light bulb).
The court can always throw them out when there's evidence of prior use. It's very hard to come up with a unique word or phrase that hasn't slipped into public use in the last 50-60 years.
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I'm a big fan of Buddhism, and read a couple of books on it a few years ago. If I had to identify with any philosophy or belief, that's what I'd side with. 90% of it is just common sense, if you ask me.
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Oh, you can tell they're hitting up the religious right on this one -- note the appeal for "group ticket sales" at the end of the trailer:
As for me, I'd rather listen to the music from Jesus Christ Superstar from 45 years ago and imagine the visuals.
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Someone screwed up! There's a black kid in that picture! Horrors!
But no Jews! Nein!
[Forgive me -- I just saw the WWII film Monuments Men, so Nazis and the war were on my mind. I mean no disrespect to anybody!]
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It never ends.
So now that the American Boy Scouts have been forced to allow gay boys into their organization (though are still resisting having gay men as scout leaders), a right-wing religious organization has started a new "morally straight" conservative scouting organization called Trail Life. Trail Life will not permit any gays to join or attend scout meetings or campouts.
And here's one of the first glimpses at the new organization:
Somehow, this reminds me of something. Sieg heil! Sieg heil!
Full story here:
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Reminds me of that beach scene with Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity....where are the Japanese planes?
From Here to Eternity happened in the months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, so they weren't there yet.
Spoofs of the beach scene have been featured in commercials and billboards before, but I think it'll be some time before gay couples can be interchanged with straight couples for advertising, especially in an (almost) sexual situation.
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That is true. I'm not sure why anybody would deliberately engineer a site not to be archived. What's the point of living on the earth if you haven't made a permanent mark on it somewhere? And the Wayback Machine is totally, 100% a non-profit organization merely recording the history of the internet.
What's Dewey2K's story? Does anybody know him and what his background is? I think I reached out to him in email once maybe 13-14 years ago but never heard back, so I don't know what the deal is there.
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I'm a firm believer that the Internet can be one of the best things that can happen for someone with problems. I didn't accept myself as a gay man until I had access to the Internet. By being able to first observe, and then, when I was ready, participate in gay forums (all while keeping my identity private), I was able to build up enough confidence to come out in real life.
My joke was that I couldn't come out until I saw the 1982 movie Making Love, and realized I could still be myself and yet be happy as a gay man. I didn't wind up as hot as Harry Hamlin, but that was a good role model.
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I think this has always been the key to the whole civil rights movement.
Apple Inc., whose CEO, Tim Cook, is arguably the most powerful gay man in all of business today, has quietly threatened to pull an enormous multi-billion-dollar manufacturing plant out of Arizona unless they change their state laws to be more tolerant of all beliefs, nationalities, races, and sexual orientations. Money does talk, big-time, especially with idiot politicians.
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Let It Go - from Disney's "Frozen"
in Video Views
Posted
Update: and the film got nominated for Best Animated Picture -- but did not win -- and the song did win for Best Song. And the movie just cracked $1 billion at the box office, making it the second-biggest animated film of all time, which is damned impressive. The fact that it upsets the religious right is just icing on the cake.