Sasquatch is not even a native name - it is a really bad mismash translation of about 4 names from canadian area pacific native people mostly ....

I didn't know that - and http://www.rfthomas.clara.net/papers/rigsby.html has a good explanation of the naming .

(I had to look it up)

I'm very familiar with what the FBI does and how they operate. Don't need any hints on that. I thought my post was pretty clear in stating it appeared the topic was moving into the civil realm as "damages" were being discussed. It is logical to think the copyright holders will go after these folks in civil court to recover damages once the criminal investigation has identified them.

Ease up....you stress way too much.

Westwood in Los Angeles used to be the hottest place in town for movies. Then they got greedy and started charging outrageously for parking.

The moviegoers just said WTF and stopped coming. After half of Westwood's stores went out of business (I think it was way more than that even), they started offering very inexpensive parking $1-$2, but it was too late. Westwood never recovered and is still full of empty hulks that used to be thriving. Other parts of town took over, the Arclight in Hollywood (best movie theater in town for seats, sound, picture and popcorn), the Bridge Cinema Delux in West L.A. (fabulous Director's Hall reserved seats and lots of comfort and film industry-inspected quality gear), the Grove (sucky multiplex theater but pulling shoppers), and a few others.

Westwood is less than 3 miles from my home, but it can take 45 minutes to drive there during rush hour.

The Arclight is about 7 miles away, but it can take more than 2 hours to get there.

At least The Bridge is across the street from my office, so that's acceptable... :O)

I also don't care much for paying nearly $10 for a bucket of genetically modified popcorn with fake butter flavor and a bucket of artificially flavored and carbonated barely filtered tap water.

I just bring my own water bottle and eat before or after. This also avoids phthalates, which have been found in several studies to reduce weenie size, see for example Study Finds [...] Abnormalities in Boys.

Once my wife and I brought in a whole candlelight dinner with appetizer, main course, dessert and wine, and just ate it in the theater. We made sure to get first row balcony at a particularly dark theater where the front of the balcony had a wide top, suitable for fine dining. Naturally we ate quietly so as to not bother the other moviegoers... :O)

I have a 110" screen at home that I just roll down from the ceiling when needed, it is unseen otherwise. This makes good DVDs more enjoyable than fighting L.A. traffic in most cases, especially if they start releasing DVDs at the same time as the theatrical release.

ALL corn is genetically modified -- starting about 4000 years ago ..

The ancestral plant of corn, teosinte, was first domesticated some 6,000 to 9,000 years ago in the Balsas River Valley of southern Mexico.

At first, teosinte was a grassy-like plant with many stems bearing small cobs with kernels sheathed in hard shells.

By cultivating plants with desirable characteristics, farmers caused teosinte to create an increasingly useful crop. The researchers said by 5,500 years ago the size of the kernels was larger. By 4,400 years ago, all of the gene variants found in modern corn were present in crops grown in Mexico.

The plant and its grain were so changed by the directed cultivation that it evolved into a form that could not grow in the wild and was dependent on farmers to survive from generation to generation. There is no longer anything that is truly "wild corn".

Civilization has been built on genetically modified plants - worldwide ..

BJ,

This is certainly true, but common usage of the term "genetically modified" today excludes traditional breeding methods.

Those traditional methods have nothing in common with gene splicing where foreign genes from other species are added in combinations that are not possible in nature.

When you bite into that beautiful-looking tomato, do you ever wonder about the possibility of problems from spliced-in fish genes, pig genes, bacterial genes or virus genes?

Scientists are proud of having a complete sequence of the human genome. Does this mean that they now understand everything in our DNA?

No, it means that they have a complete dictionary, but without the meaning of more than a handful of words.

The current test for safety is to see if the vegetable in question (and soon animal food too) looks the same as the unmodified version.

GMOs have been called "a revolution in farming that will save the world's starving people."

Hmmm, that sounds familiar.... When was the last time I heard this exact sentence...? Oh, yes, I remember now, it was said about DDT.

DDT was also "guaranteed to be absolutely 100% safe."

I even saw old 16mm school films where children were being showered with massive amounts of DDT powder, just to show how completely safe it was....

Without a real understanding of how the modified genes affect the final product systemwide, I think all safety guarantees are 100% worthless and based only on wishful thinking and "but they LOOK fine..."

:O(

Edit:
... and they can't figure out how come the human genome is nearly identical to the roundworm genome... but the Frankenfood must be safe because it looks the same as regular food...

Looks like a future winner in the Darwin Awards...

Not that this has anything to do with Vegas (nothing much grows there) but the whole idea that if it's natural it's OK, if man made it it might be harmful arguement is seriously flawed.
Many perfectly natural variants of the things we eat are very bad for us, the humble potatoe and mushroom are two that come to mind. Even the normally safe varieties of potatoe can harbour bugs that cause deformities in the unborn. Being eaten isn't usually a desirable outcome for many plants, tends to lead to an evolutionary dead end, so of cause nature will favour plants that kill animals that eat them. There's nothing benign about nature.
That's not to say GMOs are such a good thing either, when big dollars and good science get mixed up the science always seems to be the loser. But not all genetic modification is being done by big business, many third world countries have pretty active research programs that do bring benefits to their populations so we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Instead we all should be watching and learning just what the boffins are up to.
Like all advances, GM offers great potential for good and harm, just accepting or rejecting it out of apathy or ignorance isn't the answer.
Bob.

>>> the SW film was not hosted on a web site, no files are hosted there <<<

Wrong - I said I found a site and got the film doing a quick search. Now sure the film might be out there on P2P as well but I found the film on an actual site with a real IP Addy.

B_JM wrote: you are adjusting for inflation twice -- it says on http://www.natoonline.org/statisticstickets.htm that the prices before 1989 are already adjust by the CPI-W index ...
----

No, that's just how they arrived at the figures-- it doesn't say anything was adjusted, it says "based on." It's still not in today's dollars. Adjusting for inflation like I did is correct. You don't really think they mean that it cost *our* 36 cents to go to the movies in 1948, do you? Because then you have to "uninflate," which means they paid 4 cents, and I know that's not the case.

By the way, you can't use other currencies as "dollars." Costing $20 to park in Canada is a lot but not outrageous when calculated in US dollars, which is what I'm talking about.

As for snacks costing a lot at theaters, you can't blame that on Hollywood. Complaining about Hollywood because ticket prices is high is one thing, but food is irrelevant to that. It's like saying "I spent a fortune to go to the movies the other day-- first there was the $8 ticket, then I bought a diamond necklace."

And again, if it's too expensive, too bad. I'd love to collect Porche's but I can't afford that. You don't see me whining about it or stealing them.

Bob,

Poison cures and poison kills.

Many different mushrooms are used for medicine, others just kill :O)

Ricin (oil) is medicine as well as poison. My mother got arsenic for anemia when she was a kid, this used to be a pretty common prescription.

The good news is that at this point it's fairly well known what's safe and what isn't in nature.

Not so with GMOs.

Individual genes are tested in various ways and their function guessed, but it will be a long time before interaction between different genes is understood.

Bob, your genome looks so much like a roundworm genome! :O)

I haven't seen systematic benefits for GMOs vs. regular crops in 3rd world countries.

I have only seen isolated statements such as "hey, look at this, with this gene modified we can quadruple the pesticide spraying without killing the plant" (RoundUp Ready (TM) crops), and "we got more potatoes when it wasn't raining too much."

I have also seen Monsanto sell seeds with terminator genes (that's the technical term) to third world countries. Great for Monsanto, because the seeds can't produce offspring, so farmers have to buy enough seeds for a full harvest every year. They won't get any fertile seeds from their own land. A steady income stream for Monsanto's shareholders, and a source of increased poverty for third world farmers.

The only good news is that GMO technical mistakes may prevent overpopulation, especially together with female hormones in the water (80% of "the pill" goes out through the urine into rivers and streams, untreated because currently nobody knows how to get rid of it), antibiotics (90%+ excreted through the urine per their data sheets) and a few other goodies that will end up biting us in the ass.

Hospital staph infections from antibiotic-resistant bacteria are up 400% in the U.S. just in the last few years. CDC in the U.S. is just getting warmed up to stop this at the source.

The new Jan. 1, 2006 European standards for toxic substances in cosmetics and household products is already helping U.S. consumers (because large manufacturers prefer to have the same products worldwide).

Many thanks for this!

I am talking about the torrent site that was closed down -- none others ...

i didnt think anyone but little kids downloaded software etc from http sites ... . specially full length movies ... : )

Coursedesign - you have some facts which are correct - but not complete in context.. and some of your facts are not correct at all but just Internet gossip, repeated ad nauseum from many websites -- For certain reasons I can go into great depth on this -- and in some ways I am in agreement w/ you, but not completely ...

but I as this is not the forum - nor do i wish to start an argument ... I 'll just let it lie as is .... The point you raise that we should question everything is certainly valid ..

$20 US is 16$ CND - still a lot , but anyway I was rounding down and the actually amount can be much higher (over 20$ US if you start parking before 5 and leave after 10pm as an example) ...still outrageous, considering it has more than doubled in the last 5 years ..


Going to a theater - you have to include all the expenses . Try telling your kids that popcorn and drinks will not be included ..

if it was 'based' on the consumer price index - it must be used in the calculations or are you saying they are guessing ? Other websites give totally different figures and I recall only paying in (USA) about ~$0.75 in the '60's and I asked someone here how much they paid in the '30's-40's and they said 5-15 cents, jumping a lot after the war ..
Now my memory may be clouded by to many midnight showings in the 70's of the rocky horror picture show (clouded in the 60's and 70's by a lot of things, plus I was overseas for several years in there also), Anyway you might be completely right about the prices - I just don't know for sure and have to take other peoples word for it .. BUT

Up to WW2 , yes the avg. income was very low, but up to that time (and even after) , many many people were living on less than 3rd world type wages in the USA .. which greatly skewed the results .. There is the whole socio-political role of the 2nd job earning member of the family - as well as longer hours and less pleasure time now in respect to 60 -70 years ago .. All of this has to be taken into account ..

As well as my point that the results in the USA are not the results around the world .. Films take most of their earnings internationally and from dvd and rentals, so therefore , results internationly must be counted.
Oddly enough - everything does revolve around the USA in the minds of the majority of people outside of it ..

Dunno - i have never actually downloaded a full length film, let alone a 2 1/2 hour one. Even with this I only tried it to see if it was working, and it was. It was broken into 3 parts so I only went for the first part to see what it looked like. It was a telecine - anamporphoic. Dubbed into German, not subtitled. Very clean print. "Most impressive". It is gone now - I mean from my hard drive. I am not that much of a Star Wars geek than I need a German version, or any version, at the moment. The only full features I have on my system are the ones I am working on.

I checked my posts above, there is absolutely nothing from "web sites."

It's 100% from recognized studies, quoted in recent press reports from leading publications.

I used to be quite picky about sources, and you are certainly 100% correct that there is a lot of fluff on web sites.

My wife reviews the quality of scientific studies for care standards at one of the top hospitals in the U.S., and she has taught me a lot more about how to evaluate the quality of scientific studies than I learned at my university.

She is way pickier than most scientists, and shocked senior staff many times when she pointed out exactly how a particular study they quoted didn't actually have a scientific basis for their conclusion, or when she found that several particular care standards used since 20+ years had no basis in science at all. Just educated people thinking so.

What bothers me the most about GMOs is that there hasn't to my knowledge been even an attempt to do a scientifically valid risk assessment that can withstand normal scrutiny. Just "it should be OK." This is a red flag to me after remembering asbestos, DDT, lindane, VOCs, etc., etc., that were all so for sure safe.

Let me make it clear that I have no professional or hobby interest in GMOs. I am just assuming my personal responsibility for what I use, and the result is that I use way less than the 3,000 chemicals found in the average American household.

Funny thing is that I was going to become a Chemical Engineer.

Then I was on vacation in England and took a lot of pictures with a newly acquired Kodak Instamatic 100. When I showed some other people my prints from the trip, they asked to borrow them, and the next thing I knew my photos were at a public exhibition. Then somebody said I should get an SLR, but I didn't have enough moola for that. My grandma pitched in the missing half of the funds, in return for me quitting smoking. This led to 12 years of annual public photo exhibitions, huge city multimedia projects, record album covers, book and magazine covers, travel brochures, a coffee table book, lots of photo journalism, documentary awards and much more. I got recruited to a small film school and got to learn 16mm shooting for both drama and doco. Loooots of fun!

The only chemistry I learned after that was D-76, D-72, HC-110... :O)

Now that I'm 39 1/2 years old (since a few years :O), I find myself doing more with film again. Sometimes film is really hard to beat (or put differently: I find it's sometimes easier to get the result I want with film).

But enough about Vegas and video editing... :O)

Sorry to have contributed to this lengthy off-topic tome, I just have personal concerns about it.

16mm is a wonderful format, I am going to always hold on to my Bolex and 15-20 years from now , a new breed of kids will "discover" film once again.. I also still shoot 35mm using a Kodak Retina IIIc a lot of the time - what a great camera and lens ..

Just read an article about it, thought everyone wanted to know. For Fred, I'm sure this is going to be a good publicity about it, at least now I'm curious to check it out.

To read the article, you need to register (it's FREE).



BTW, Fred.. care to share a bit more about it? Did you shoot this on film/HD? Was it edited in Vegas? :)

B_JM,

Did you know that the original Retina (1934 model year) was the first camera ever to use the Type 135 cartridge that's now the standard 35mm camera cartridge format?

My dad had a Retina IIa that I used for quite a while, until one winter the shutter froze for no reason (hey, it was only 20 below, it should have been OK!!!). Unfortunately the repair would have cost more than the camera, so I was camera-less for a while...

I still remember the exact feel of the silky-smooth shutter release on that camera, and the not so smooth wired release, and the feel of winding the film until the number lined up in the little window on the back...

The lens was also amazingly good...