From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V9 #350 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Thursday, November 30 2000 Volume 09 : Number 350 Today's Subjects: ----------------- usability of mailing lists ["Andrew D. Simchik" ] Seeing Red Planet (and other fun gerunds) [BLATZMAN@aol.com] Roofies [Eb ] Re: Roofies [hbrandt ] Oh...one other Rufus tidbit which is kinda interesting [Eb ] Re: Annie uz hottre en a tooo dollur pizdul [GSS ] Re: lennon tributes ["mats" ] Mini, mini, mini [steve ] Re: A fork next to your spoon Plus question [steve ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 13:25:10 -0800 (PST) From: "Andrew D. Simchik" Subject: usability of mailing lists > From: drop the holupki > > when we last left our heroes, Andrew D. Simchik exclaimed: > > the usability problem is not with the mailing list software, it's with > the > mail reader. there are three kinds of replies: reply-to-author, > reply-to-all and reply-to-list. that last one is the one that almost all > mailers lack and need. That would certainly be one way to fix it. I don't think it's a bad idea to have the list set a preference as to how it's handled, either. > the only mailer i know of which has it is > mutt...and, even then, you have to teach it which lists you are > subscribed > to. This would be a plus in my book. I like the idea of telling the mailer how to handle different lists differently. I wouldn't recommend that to a company I consulted for, though. What I want as a fairly advanced user is not necessarily what I want as a designer. > >2) If you are sending a sensitive message to someone personally, that's > >the time to take special attention to make sure you do it right. > > no, you should make sure you address each message correctly *every* > time, > regardless of whether you are sending it to a mailing list or an > individual. That's silly. The software is there to help you make sure. It should be smart enough to make it easy to do what you commonly do and possible to do what you rarely do. Sure, of course it's smart to glance at your headers to make sure neither you nor the software fucked it up. But my point is that the heads case simply will not and should not receive the special attention that the tails case deserves. Optimizing for the cases when you're doing something special is bad design, pure and simple. > >This follows on from the heads/tails problem. Granted, the mistake in > the > >tails case is more damaging, but it _is_ a tails case. > > heads? tails? 50/50 split. someone's gotta suffer. Yeah, those terms are not so good. I hear engineers say "edge case" instead of "tails case." Let me rephrase it. I would say that 19 times out of 20 -- at _least_ -- when I reply to a feg digest I'm replying to the list. I reply to an individual feg in private email at _most_ 1 time out of 20. I suspect that for different people these numbers vary, but I'd be very surprised if the majority of fegs replied publicly less than 10 times out of 20. Optimizing for the private email case would cause the majority to "suffer" most of the time, which is a poor tradeoff for some illusion of greater control (and it is an illusion). > >This is why > >it's better to Undo than to ask "Are you SURE you want to delete this > >file?" every time. It's very damaging in the case where you delete > >an important file by accident, but users get so used to clicking > through > >that message that it won't help in the case where it needs to (crying > >wolf). Similarly, a user accustomed to hitting that Reply All button > >might do it by habit and post that gossip to the list by mistake > anyway. > > then it's their own damn fault and i can't help that. So you also disagree with the rationale that not setting Reply-To protects users who erroneously send their mash notes to the mailing list? > usability is > important, but so is knowing enough about what you are doing. Everyone makes mistakes. Usability is all about minimizing the frequency and impact of those mistakes. It's not a question of "knowing enough about what you are doing." To me this discussion is largely academic. I get the digest, which means that a simple reply always goes to fegmaniax@smoe.org, just the way I like it. Perhaps it's more annoying for those who get loose mail, but if no one minds, I certainly wouldn't advocate that you change it. I'm just saying that those arguments against setting Reply-To on mailing lists are fallacious. The only sound arguments against that I can think of off the top of my head are: 1) User expectations. If some mailing lists have Reply-To set and others don't, as is inevitably the case, then the inconsistent behaviors will be confusing. This isn't so much an argument against Reply-To as an argument in favor of total fascism one way or the other (i.e., all lists should ideally work the same way). 2) Mental model diversity. I think of a mailing list as a central depot that receives messages from its members and sends them out again; thus the mailing list is effectively the "sender." Other people think of the author as the sender regardless of what forum is handling the messages. Still others regard mailing lists as distribution lists, no different than entering a string of addresses on the To: line. All of these models are perfectly reasonable, if not correct, but only one would logically entail the Reply-To setting. Those are fairly compelling. This one is also pretty good: 3) You own the list, and you don't like the Reply-To setting. Drew ===== Andrew D. Simchik: drew at stormgreen dot com http://www.stormgreen.com/ Yahoo! Shopping - Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. http://shopping.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 18:04:35 EST From: BLATZMAN@aol.com Subject: Seeing Red Planet (and other fun gerunds) In a message dated 11/30/00 12:53:35 PM Pacific Standard Time, owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org writes: << Yeah, a few films go from the festival circuit to the mainstream consciousness. I don't think anybody denies this and I don't see where it gets your point. >> Simple. Not that many films are good. Do you understand how hard it is to make a good film? If a film want to be up for an Academy Award, it should be seen in a theater first. That's what the Academy is all about. Why do you think it shouldn't be up for an Emmy, anyway? <> Sorry, you are wrong. Listen to what you are saying. A production company doesn't give away a bigger piece of the pie for opening weekend then it does for week 6. You are wrong. The percentage or "rentals" that an exhibitor collects increases over time. I'm not talking dollars, I'm talking percentages. Let's stay away from the word "profit". The revenue generated by the film is shared in a contractual manner. Opening weekend, the studio will and should collect 90% of the rentals. Second week in release, it might drop to 80%. And it could be structured anyway, but the Exhibitor's percentage increases to a ceiling. I am perfectly aware of Lucas' bully tactics with Phantom Menace. It was also unprecedented, what he did. You call it common studio tactics, but this had never been to this extent. But you misjudge when you say things like it's guaranteed it's money back. You can keep Red Planet on the big screen all through the Holiday season, people won't go. And expensive films rely on repeat business. Do you think Titanic became #1 by first time viewers? I saw it in the theater 5 times just to watch the boat sink(ohhhh God, how incredible). Titanic made money on repeat viewers. <> I think we can both learn something here. I understand that gross participation kicks in immediately. If Tom Cruise takes a low salary in exchange for 1 gross point, he doesn't wait for the film to break even before he collects. His money comes off the gross, before the revenue is put against the negative cost. That means if a film grosses a 100 Mil, he sees a Mil. I'm almost positive this is how gross participation works. It's the only reason to do it. Otherwise you're up against the creative accounting of studios. But you can't dick around with the Gross, so Actors & directors work for less and pin their salaries on the success of a film. <> You're making this more complicated than it needs to be. Forget discounts the theater gives. Just say 8 bucks a ticket, Opening weekend gross of 50 Million. What I mean is that the reported ticket sales are 50 million. The Exhibitors (in a world of no coupons and Sr citizens discounts), are entitled to 5 million(I'm estimating). We now have 45 million that will be first applied to the "negative cost" of the film, for accounting purposes. You can get into the details of specific theaters and such, but I'm talking in general for multiplexes. Your Red Planet Words: <> The way I understand it, the successful films help pay for the failures. Not everything turns a profit. It's just not possible. I'm sorry, but you can't pull money out of your butt. Believe me, I have tried ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 15:42:35 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Roofies Excellent Rufus Wainwright show, last night. At least five of the new songs had the same magic as the first album's material -- that's good enough for me! Look forward to songs called "The Consort," "Grey Gardens" and "Poses." Yowsa. The latter is just *achingly* beautiful. "California" and "Cigarettes & Chocolate Milk" were almost as good. Some of the others lean more toward European torch-song values than I would like -- I think his upcoming album may be more oriented that way. I may miss the debut's rippling, post-Randy/Van Dyke Americana. Sister Martha Wainwright opened with three folksy anthems, and did very little for me. She also does that overbearing, beaming-triumphant-grin thing which always grates on me so much with those self-involved Lilith Fair goddesses. And jeebus, girl, fasten a couple more buttons on your shirt! I grew weary of those oppressive udders. Curiously, her band seemed to be composed of near-strangers -- she said she had met them only a few days before, and when she introduced them, she had to sheepishly nudge two musicians for their names. Rufus had as many as six people onstage, but almost every song had a different permutation. He played guitar as much as piano -- on one song, he even played steel guitar. Butch of the Eels played drums, Martha sang backup and played guitar. I didn't recognize the others, though Ethan Johns seems like a familiar name (or maybe I'm thinking of Ethan *James*). E. of the Eels was sitting in the crowd, by the way. The last encore had a nostalgic, gospelly feel (the title might be "One-Man Guy"?), and was beautifully sung by five performers including Rufus, Martha *and* daddy Loudon III. Rufus only sang a few songs from his first album -- new material was the focus. He did "In Your Arms," "Millbrook" and "Beauty Mark," though. Maybe I'm forgetting another one. I think he should work on toning down that nervous, effeminate babble thing he does between songs...it always produces winces. But that's our Rufus, I guess. And yes, I stood in the back, unburdened by table service. No primadonna waiters were encountered. ;) Both shows were sell-outs, I presume. When I got there at 8:05 pm, there was already a long line outside, hopefully waiting for the *11 pm* show. Tonight, I'm seeing Blonde Redhead at the Roxy. The band's new album, Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons, is still my favorite Touch & Go release in *years*.... Eb ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 16:55:15 -0700 From: hbrandt Subject: Re: Roofies > I think he should work on toning down that nervous, effeminate babble thing > he does between songs...it always produces winces. But that's our Rufus, I > guess. When I saw him live, I liked Rufus' humorous between song chat the best. The songs themselves sounded more like effeminate babble. /hal ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 16:09:59 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Oh...one other Rufus tidbit which is kinda interesting He said he's playing at a major AIDS benefit on Friday, at Carnegie Hall. (Do you New Yorkers know who else is on the bill?) He'll be performing four songs with an orchestra...he babbled nervously about this daunting, new experience. In fact, he said something about his "Cute Roofsie" routine not fitting the tone of the evening's ceremony. Hm. Eb ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 17:01:22 -0800 (PST) From: Capuchin Subject: Blah Blah Blatzman. On Thu, 30 Nov 2000 BLATZMAN@aol.com wrote: > Simple. Not that many films are good. Do you understand how hard it > is to make a good film? Making a good film is tough... and being good has nothing to do with the Academy. > If a film want to be up for an Academy Award, it should be seen in a > theater first. That's what the Academy is all about. Nearly every film from a major studio is seen first on video. They tape as they film and they cut the tape online with time cues and preview it on video before the film is ever put together. So should it be that the first showing, because it was video, makes the film inelligible for an Academy Award (TM)? Cheap distribution media is an equalizer. Film as an art is accessable to a wider and wider range of artists. Digital media is being used by the highest and lowest budget pictures. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is neglecting its responsibility to the art of the motion picture by limiting it to the archaic method of film projection in a movie theater. I'm saying that the goal of this limitation is to keep the recognition confined to those creators who play by the rules of the major studios and prevent an equalization. The idea that Oscar (TM) nominated films are somehow better is already falacious and restricting the nomination to films produced in the single most expensive way extends that false implication. > Why do you think it shouldn't be up for an Emmy, anyway? Because the Emmy's are given out by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Internet distribution has nothing to do with television. These films were not produced to promote television as an art or science. They ARE, however, motion pictures designed and made to improve the state of the art and science of motion pictures. I hate to tell you this, sir, but internet distribution doesn't necessarily mean a 180x120 pixel MPEG4 stream. It DOES mean arbitrary quality (decided, of course, by the creator of the work) distributed without the requirement of expensive film, shipping, and multiple prints. I could distribute a film over the internet for viewing in theaters. Titan AE was transmitted across the internet to the location of its first viewing and the quality was higher than that of conventional 35mm prints. > Sorry, you are wrong. Listen to what you are saying. A production > company doesn't give away a bigger piece of the pie for opening > weekend then it does for week 6. You are wrong. The percentage or > "rentals" that an exhibitor collects increases over time. I'm not > talking dollars, I'm talking percentages. Let's stay away from the > word "profit". The revenue generated by the film is shared in a > contractual manner. Opening weekend, the studio will and should > collect 90% of the rentals. Second week in release, it might drop to > 80%. And it could be structured anyway, but the Exhibitor's > percentage increases to a ceiling. This may be in the agreement between the studio and the distributor, but the theaters at the end (at least those whose books I've reviewed directly) have a very different contract with the distributor. There is a fee per seat that is flat. The theater owner is then allowed to charge whatever he likes (thus making his percentage whatever he likes... he can charge $7.25 like many of the theaters around here or $9.75 like many of the theaters in NYC or whatever price he can get away with charging in his town). The distributor doesn't get more money if the theater charges more for their ticket. The price paid per viewer is fixed. Now, it could be that the price per viewer for the theater owner decreases over time. This is a reasonable incentive to keep a movie not performing so well in theaters. But the percentage of the total take that the theater owner receives is carefully controlled by the distributors. > I am perfectly aware of Lucas' bully tactics with Phantom Menace. It > was also unprecedented, what he did. You call it common studio > tactics, but this had never been to this extent. Certainly forcing a movie into theaters for three full months was unprecedented, but six or eight weeks had been done to that date and twelve weeks will, I'm sure, become as common once the distributors realized they could get away with it. You're right that gross points are points on the gross. They don't always represent raw percentages ( 1pt <> 1% ), but the idea is the same. It's not too many folks that get points on gross, though... and believe me they account for that when they estimate the cost of the film and what they have to do to get their money back. > < markup on each ticket and that's all. If it's a low markup because > that's all the market will bear, it's a low/no profit show for the > theater owner.>> > > You're making this more complicated than it needs to be. Forget > discounts the theater gives. Just say 8 bucks a ticket, Opening > weekend gross of 50 Million. What I mean is that the reported ticket > sales are 50 million. The Exhibitors (in a world of no coupons and Sr > citizens discounts), are entitled to 5 million(I'm estimating). We > now have 45 million that will be first applied to the "negative cost" > of the film, for accounting purposes. You can get into the details of > specific theaters and such, but I'm talking in general for > multiplexes. What I'm saying is that the price the theater charges is independent of what they report as the box office totals for a film. Those totals (T) are simply the number of people who saw the film (N) times the price per ass the THEATER had to pay for each seat they sold (P) [ NP = T ]. The theater's cut on that is a mark-up on top of the price they're being charged by the distributor for each person who sees the movie minus the screening fee for each showing. If a distributor decides that they're going to charge six bucks a head for The Grinch, that's what the theater pays and that's what's reported back as the box office totals for the movie. There is incremental mark-up that doesn't count toward the total (T) that the theater owners slip into their own coffers. > Your Red Planet Words: < picture. Hollywood and Blockbuster will put at LEAST twenty copies in > each of their stores...(BLAH BLAH BLAH EDIT)..........So let's say we > have a VERY disappointing theatrical run of about US$60M (with the > number of theaters their forcing this thing into and the weekend of > its release and the number of weeks it's being forced to run, I think > that's a bare minimum)>> This was my mistake and I apologize for the mix-up. I was talking about Pearl Harbor's chances of making its money back, given that it's going to be something on which the studio stakes itself. I meant to write Pearl Harbor and somehow Red Planet came out. I still assure you that Red Planet is going to eventually pull its money back and then quite a bit. They've got a hundred years to do it. Bad Sci-Fi ALWAYS does well on video in perpetuity... as well as television and whatever other cult distributions come about. > I don't trust your video figures. Wouldn't you be suspicious of > anyone who throws out knowledge like that when it is so obviously > wrong? What's so obviously wrong? It's obviously wrong that there are 6600 Blockbuster and Hollywood stores in the US alone? It's wrong that video prices range as I stated? It's wrong that major studio releases sell 10-30 copies to every Blockbuster and Hollywood store? I don't see how you don't trust my video figures. > I guess in the end I don't view the studios as unbreakable as you do. Look at their assets. They own every moving picture created since the 1930s and will continue to own them indefinitely. How could you break somebody that has an asset like their copyrights? > The way I understand it, the successful films help pay for the > failures. Not everything turns a profit. It's just not possible. Not everything turns a profit, that's true. But if the studio needs profit, they can force it. They can limit their distribution to a few films, cut deals with the other studios and ram it down the "exhibitor's" throats and shove it up the public's collective ass and pop it out the video chain store machine and grind it into little pieces for incremental royalties for the rest of time. They occassionally make movies as favors to collaborators to ensure their future cooperation or what have you and let them drift silently by and eat those "losses" for the greater gain of another blockbuster from that treasured collaborator. This is what a vanity project is all about. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. As for Red Planet, well, I'm sure it's not as bad as Mission to Mars or The Phantom Menace (I'm really having trouble imagining worse) and I think at one time they had big plans for it, but people were fired and releases were delayed and things were changed and the studio eventually decided to just huck it out the door with limited publicity and let it run far outside its intended release target. So be it. You must at least acknowledge that the MPAA is a closed cartel that enjoys control of the entire industry from top to bottom as well as a pile of legislation written to their custom standards. They are profitable as long as there is a desire for motion picture entertainment, a broadcast media tied directly to that motion picture industry, and an utterly complacent population that consumes more than it thinks. Nobody's going to disagree when I say that this situation will continue. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 19:27:40 -0500 (CDT) From: GSS Subject: Re: Annie uz hottre en a tooo dollur pizdul On Wed, 29 Nov 2000, Capuchin wrote: >Dilution? You mean you dilute your chemicals? Decreasing the parts per The acetic acid and developer are both mixed then diluted heavily. This mixture is then deposited at a waste treatment center that uses a closed-loop disposal system. >million doesn't do much... for some of those chemicals (the endocrine >disruptors, etc.) parts per billion can cause problems. Disruptors like phytoestrogens or alkylphenols? Dioxins, be they ferons or PCBs are a problem, but B&W chemical photography development processes are very a small contributor. What about bleached paper and pentachlorafenol? I think encouraging digital camera users who print endless copies of resizes and color adjustments, to use unbleached, or chlorine free bleached paper would be much more benificial than bitching at me for averaging less than a dozen enlargements a month. Reduced testical size and sperm counts are in some ways beneficial, aren't they? ;-} >Anyway, it's an incremental thing. There are hundreds of millions of >people doing chemical photography worldwide... that's a big problem, no >matter how little you put out yourself as one man and his darkroom. Sure, but what isn't these days? With so many people, can the system ever regain control? >I currently rotate about twelve NiMH batteries through the charger for all >of my portable devices. They're not perfect, but they're not disposable, >either. The variety I use get about 700 full charges in their >lifetime. I've been using them for about two years and have probably >charged each one five times. At that rate, I've got 278 years left before >I have to start replacing them. Nickle is a heavy metal and neither of us will be around to make sure those NiMH batteries are disposed of properly, if there is actually a proper method of disposal or that the nickel will be reclaimed. Shouldn't the waste and enviromental impact involved in their production also be considered. > >The minuscule amount of chemicals that I have to dispose have little > >to no detrimental effect on the enviroment. >That's a bogus argument. The miniscule amount of CO2 pumped out by one >car doesn't have a detrimental effect on the environment. The miniscule >amount of water I waste while brushing my teeth doesn't have a detrimental >effect on the environment. The miniscule amount of plastic I throw out >doesn't have a detrimental effect on the environment. >It's cumulative and you know it. It's all those people doing it every >day. OK, so stop brushing your teeth, stop using plastics and stop driving a car. Live in the bush and eat berries and grubs. Once you have done all that let me know, I just might follow. Though I will clean my mouth and my ass, and insist that my girl friend does the same. >As I was saying, it shouldn't be disposable. It should be modular for >servicability, upgradability, and standardization. And there are other >methods of determining orientation besides mercury switches... Sure, but you still bought one, and it will still need to be disposed of one day. >Anyway, the point was that even the digital technology we do use isn't >being used properly. >Digital television is a great example. They're still quibbling over what Cable or wireless? We should of course include the negative enviromental impact both of those have and or will have in the future. >This is why the personal computer is probably man's greatest invention >to date. Every time society fucks up and an industry goes in the wrong Contraceptives have been our greatest achievement so far. gss ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 20:43:03 -0800 From: "mats" Subject: Re: lennon tributes you musn't forget Don't Call Me Mark Chapman by Julian Cope... - ----- Original Message ----- From: Russ Reynolds To: fegmaniax Sent: Saturday, November 25, 2000 5:31 PM Subject: lennon tributes > Fegs, > > I'd like to call upon your vast musical knowledge to help me assemble a > collection of Lennon tribute songs. At this point I have a very short list > which includes: > > George Harrison-All Those Years Ago > Paul McCartney-Here Today > Ian Hunter-Old Records Never Die [my personal favorite] > Cranberries-I Just Shot John Lennon > Queen-Life Is Real (Song For Lennon) > The Kinks-Killer's Eyes > Yoko Ono-I Don't Know Why > Paul Simon-The Late Great Johnny Ace [okay, this one's a bit of a > stretch] > Elton John-Empty Garden > > I'm sure there are many other more obscure titles, possibly even a ROBYN > HITCHCOCK tune I'm forgetting about. If you can add to this let me know vie > e-mail or go ahead and try to out-obscure each other on the list as is the > usual custom. ;) > > Thanks. > > -rUss ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 20:28:09 -0600 From: steve Subject: Mini, mini, mini http://www.attrition.org/gallery/other/new/MiniBush.jpg __________ If they know our secrets, why can't we know theirs? - Dana Scully ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 20:27:52 -0600 From: steve Subject: Re: A fork next to your spoon Plus question brian nupp: >Right. Isn't porn and also all sex toys illegal in most parts of Alabama? >Ahh, the good ole south! http://www.latimes.com/living/20001126/t000113672.html - - Steve __________ Well, Jesus ain't no astronaut And Buddah, he's no fool Cathedral bells don't ring in hell 'cos cats down there don't think that's cool. - Bill Nelson ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V9 #350 *******************************