There is a constant battle between content producers and pirates. The cinema industry is implimenting technology to stop the Handycappers. (Handy camera capturers) But all this technology is in vain. As they are fighting against the most powerful force on the planet. The people.
People want to stay at home. Cinemas are too big. Cinemas try to cater for the masses, the new releases. They try to get as many people as they can into a theatre to make the most money per showing. They have a schedule and limited product availability. People are becoming more accustomed to watching what they want, when they want. Their personal entertainment systems are begining to rival the cinemas. Technologies that were once solely the domain of the cinema are now in the home. There is less incentive to go to the cinema. People like to stay at home.
I went to the cinema the other night, with my wife and father in-law. We stood in the queue for about 3 minutes looking at the board of available movies. We got to the front of the queue and decided that there was nothing worth seeing and left.
There once was a cinema, called the Valhalla, they would run all the cult films. They would run double features. They would show obscure and non mainstream new releases. They would run a night called 24 hours of Sci Fi. Where they would show some recent (6 months old) titles, some classic titles and during the early hours of the morning some absolute B-Grades. It was quite a fun night out, with a group of friends and a whole cinema of people screaming out "Let's rock" when Vasquez opens fire on the Aliens with her smart gun.
So what does the cinema represent to people? New releases (only). High prices. Fixed schedule. Limited titles.
The model that creative products are moving towards is a service based model. To make money from open source, sell skills as a developer or support team not an end software product. This service model is the way of the future. If cinema's were to follow this, they should no longer provide movies as a product but provide a screening system as a service. Would this model work?
Imagine booking a cinema to run what film you like. They have a large selection, like a video store. You contact them and make a booking, like a restaurant. You turn up and watch the film.
Why not represent the true running cost of a cinema. Say rent out the cinema for $60 per hour and maybe with a surcharge for new release movies. This is not something that I would pay for by myself but with a large group of friends to watch an old classic or something that we missed on new release or want to see again. The cost could become quite comparitive to current cinema pricing but with more flexibility. So I don't know the true cost of running a cinema but a model of cost to cinema being passed onto the end user is fairer and more understandable to the consumer.
This won't work with the current large cinema format, that seats hundreds, but more like the "gold class" cinemas that are being built. The tickets are more expensive, the cinemas seat maybe 40 people. They serve you food and cocktails (for a premium) There have been times where myself and a group of friends have booked out one of these cinemas to watch a new release (from memory we did this 3 years in a row with the release of Lord of the Rings)
People are becoming more individual, wanting things when it suits them, Perhaps this model can compromise between the big structured model of the cinema and the desires and demans of the individual.
Would this be enough to get you out of your home and into a cinema?
So this is supposed to be good for business, right? I've heard that before, Windows is good for business because everyone else is using it. Why would you bother running an incompatible operating system? Choice. I choose not to run what the masses run. I want to be different. I like the fact that I am. I like the fact that I can do with my OS what I want because I know how to use it. I'm not spoon fed how to click.
CPU architecture is also a choice. This is a sad day indeed for choice. The x86 architecture has been slowly irradicating all choice. PA-RISC, Alpha and now the PPC. If I want a "personal computer" that runs on something other than x86, I no longer can do so. Why is lack of choice bad?
Monopolies are bad. Now that there is no choice (there are only 2 x86 cpu manufacturers) we can see CPU prices slowly being raised. Consumers slowly being squeezed. Why? Any other CPU manufacturer has been removed from the game.
So now I can run my windows dll codecs in mplayer for OSX? How long will it be before we see OSX on generic x86 hardware? How long will the PPC architecture of my current investments be supported?
Pity that no one else can see that diversity and choice is good
I'm going to buy a sun workstation
If it were as easy as `Just say no' why do so many not say no?
Do the lawmakers think that people lack so much control that all they need to do is tell them, don't start in the first place, this is true to an extent, same as not playing a dangerous sport should not lead to an injury resulting from that sport.
Remove the temptation and the weak won't fall? But is the temptation really removed? Are you solving your fear of people by locking yourself in your house? You no longer experience that fear but have you really solved it?
Trying to fight the problem the way they are is hurting more than it is doing good. They spend billions a year trying to fight it, where does the money come from? The fight becomes a self sustaining entity it's ultimate goal is to elimiate the need for it's own existance. Once all the drugs are gone, why need the agency that fights it. So it looks for new things to fight, to create a need for it's existance.
Who wins in this fight? Not the people with the addictions. Only the two entities that are fighting, the DEA who will get more funding to fight, and the suppliers, with each bust, their product raises in value. If drugs were legal drug dealers would be out of business and so would the agency that fights them. It is in both their best interest that the problem remains.
It only harms the people. It harms the addicts who are not taught how to understand their needs. They have an overwhelming desire for that release. Yet they are told that drugs are bad. They are now in additional conflict trying to balance their needs with the perception of society. They get labelled junkies. They become criminals in their desperation to fulfil their need from the over inflated prices caused by the fight.
If society understood the problem, then it could really be addressed. If you think the problem can be solved by just saying no, by making it illegal and by throwing money at stopping the supply, how little you understand about yourself. Who do you blame when something bad happens to you? Yourself? Of course not, you're just the victim here.
When we are growing up we take on a belief system that is not the true us. By the time our minds are old enough to begin to understand ourselves we begin to rebel against the beliefs we were told. We go into anger and frustration at what we have been told. This behaviour is usually suppressed and as teenagers we do not express that anger that it needed to find our true selves.
In the 1960's there was a mass rebellion against society. Two major influences acted on this. One was the vietnam war, society imposed the war and so they rebelled against society. At this time LSD was not illegal. The drug brought about a shift in ideas and attitude. The adolescent was waking to his own ideas. Then they began to rebel. Like any unenlightened parent, society reacted punishing the teenager, taking away that which gave the teenager their new ideas. Like a scared parent that doesn't know what to do when their child has cut themselves and is bleeding, they ran to their doctor, they ran to the lawmakers and said "you must fix it" So laws were passed but nothing was fixed.
The rebellion was suppressed but the teenager had only begun to understand their true self. Society could be happy again knowing that no one was going to ruffle the feathers and that everything was perfect. We did not learn that societies ideals are not inline with people's true self. Issues occur when what we truely want is not what is accepted.
People's teaching is not inline with what they truely want, so internal conflicts and problems arise, people deal with it in anyway they know how, one of those ways is a drug induced reality.
This is highlighted by the so called drug problem. There is no system of teaching that enables these people to find and confront the false teachings of society. They feel the conflict but do not have the tools to confront it. They escape the pain in some way. Some drugs can even give us the ability to attempt to face what we are really feeling and inspire us to move forward.
Just saying no does not solve the inner conflicts that these people face the drug gives them the release they feel they need, they feel that they cannot cope that society and the world is against them, and they turn to the only thing that can bring them peace.
And we would do anything to find our inner peace. Ask why, don't just say no.