Wolverine
Posted in Technology, wordpress, internet, News Media, Film, Law, Hol_ywood, Video, Net Neutrality, telecom, Opinion, Entertainment on April 7th, 2009 by Stanford Matthews 
Illegal file sharing sites is a topic that seems to never go away. The same could be said of malicious hackers and spam. And let’s not forget about those who want to rule the internet or tax it or overcharge for connection to it and use of it. But in terms of the specific story in this post, a writer being fired for illegally accessing a copy of a not yet released movie. What was he thinking?
Writer loses job over Wolverine
(from the BBC)
Here’s an interesting twist to the story.
What always accompanies stories in the main stream media and elsewhere are conflicting reports or widely differing estimates.
‘X-Men’ leak isn’t the real ‘Wolverine’
Tuesday, April 7th 2009
NY Daily News
Aside from the comment that this is ‘not the real movie’ notice the ‘estimated 75,000′ part. It would be fair to assume they mean ‘not the real movie’ to indicate the leaked version is a working copy that will be edited before release.
‘Wolverine’ premiere may be in your town, or on your computer
07:45 AM PT, Apr 5 2009
LA Times
Wow, what is going to happen when “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” hits theaters on May 1?
You gotta love it. The 100,000 download estimate is from an item dated the fifth while the 75,000 estimate is from the seventh.
Wolverine Movie Bootleg: More than 1 Million Downloads
Monday April 6, 2009
AppScout
But even better is the one million estimate offered on the date in between the other two. It may seem like a small thing and in this case it has the diminished value of who cares? Not so much who cares about the varying, correct or incorrect estimates but who cares about the movie? If you have an appreciation for storytelling or the cinematic experience, whatever that is these days, it is understandable you may be interested in this movie if the genre is your ‘thing’. But no matter what your interests or what you watch or how you fulfill the need to satisfy your personal demand for such leisure pursuits it is tough to argue that Hollywood and other sources for movies rarely fail to disappoint. The hype is also rarely justified after viewing the promoted offering.
To counter that conclusion readers are encouraged to submit their candidates for a list of spectacular examples of fine productions from the movie industry.
Stanford Matthews
MoreWhat.com
Of course, those associated with the film explain that it was in development long before Romney announced his run for President. Nice try folks, since 1994 in a run for the Senate, people knew Romney was a likely contender some time in the future. At least political types did. But they would rather have you believe an unknown wrote her first screenplay and a director came out of retirement to make a movie and picked that long shot. Not to mention the movie is being panned. But then, a nice payday for an unknown and who cares if a political stunt makes money or not?
Sometimes you could wonder if everyone involved in an investigation, scandal or other embarrassing moment is guilty of something. As far as Joe Wilson and Valerie (Plame) Wilson are concerned, they may only be guilty of bad taste. On the one hand it is hard to argue with someone taking offense at being exposed as working for the CIA. But then to have a major book deal and a movie in the works sure could ease a lot of pain and suffering. So what came first, an exposure of personnel matters or the self-promotion exposure? And since dear Valerie testified that the job she so loved involved investigating WMD, why has no one connected the dots on that part of the story? Hmm?
NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Tuesday introduced a test version of its new video download service, making it the first major retailer to offer such a service with the backing of all of Hollywood’s big studios.
Senate Democrats pressed the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission yesterday to slap tighter controls on media ownership, public-interest broadcasting and television violence.
FEDERAL WAY, Wash., Jan. 24 — Frosty E. Hardison is neither impressed nor surprised that “An Inconvenient Truth,” the global-warming movie narrated by former vice president Al Gore, received an Oscar nomination this week for best documentary.
LCD tv’s and of all things, content, plus the misplaced babble from Bill Gates underscore the top news from the Consumer Electronics Show. Substantially no better than the auto show, the electronics industry has made some notable blunders over the years. Without going back to the days of vacuum tubes, one such notable blunder involves the battle over VHS or Beta as the industry standard. The story attributes the VHS win to market forces and consumer preference over the superior quality of Beta. CD’s were touted as a media that was nearly indestructable upon entry to the market. There are just a couple of blunders. A top news item for this year is content. With a long and sordid history from the likes of the cable television industry, content is purely marketing strategy and hype, aka, BS. Cable television’s notable atttribute of 57 channels and nothing on was inspired by their habit of spawning a new channel based on greed every time content had a success. For a long time all you get at best is 6 hours of content repeated four times a day. And most of that is reruns. Not to mention the original appeal of cable was to pay upfront to eliminate annoying advertisements. Ya, that lasted a long time didn’t it?
Dole out new technology after you have bled the consumer dry with dribbling out tiny increments in advancements so the greedy corporate fiends can gouge the consumer for every buck they are dumb enough to contribute. Send all the jobs overseas or import cheap labor, keep voting for party politics and allow multi-million dollar golden parachutes for any clown smart enough to get a sleazy board of directors to go along with it. Force unnecessary digital TV on an unsuspecting public and have an annual electronics show to promote the continuation of this nonsense.
