The other advantage of this model suggested in the article is that it opens up the demographic again.

Currently, there's generally pretty much only two types of movies being made: 1. big studio movies that get general release and are deliberately targeted at the average under 25's (big, loud, dumb, and 3d where possible) -- this being the only significant viable cinema-going audience, and 2. niche art house movies that are only designed to appeal to movie students, critics, film buffs, and the clinically depressed.

These are the only two viable production models under the current distribution system. If you are over 25 and don't really want to watch some angst-ridden, slow, dreary, politically-correct, mirror on society, nobody is making movies you want to see right now.

Say, for example, a movie like the Sand Pebbles. That movie would be impossible to make in the current market. Unless you either, slashed the budget so it took place in a few rooms, or if you cast Shia LeDouche, Mila Kunis and had lots of car chases in 3d in it. There's no way a movie will make any money at all unless it's either mass appeal, or funded by some European government socialist film fund. We will never see another Sand Pebbles, nor 2001 A Space Oddysey, nor anything by Robert Altman, nor any similar movie, under the current system.

However, if you broadened the distribution system away from cinemas and DVDs, it is possible to target adults again, and release an whole range of genres. It would be like the late 60's and 70's where big-name directors and big stars could experiment, and produce art that was also extremely entertaining (rather than dreary and narcissistic, like the current art house crap).

I think you are right that they won't beat out Android or iPhone -- however, all RIM's users will belong to MS, very, very soon.

it's one of the few actively maintained sites that doesn't have advertising.

Not quite. It's the BBC, so they are not allowed to advertise. But... they do, all the time. They are just more devious about it. Sure, yes, there's no banners or sidebars with ads. But they will make sure they get team's sponsor's logos in their pics, they'll mention sponsors names where possible, etc. As well as the fact that sport is a big-business commercial product all by itself. You can absolutely guarantee a lot of corporate branding on that website, by stealth, all through the Olympics.

Their sport pages admittedly seem to have less ads than their other webpages and TV and radio channels -- which are absolutely stacked full of viral marketing, press releases and "accidental" product shots.

There's nothing that some of the BBC's employed and sub-contracted producers, journalists, DJ's, and presenters like more, than to be paid twice for their job. Even if it is illegal under their Charter.

Thanks for posting the direct link, it's far more useful than the Godawful summary, and the even worse "full" article, which is full of backlinks and keyword spamming for other blogs.

The Museum's been open since 1994-ish, so why samzenpus thinks this is an article worthy of anything, is far beyond my understanding.

This article comes via the Guardian. This is a UK dead tree press company, which has survived mainly due to being funded by a network of hedge funds.

It's wise to look deeper into what those funds are invested in. It wouldn't be too difficult to trace those funds to companies who also have a Chinese manufacturing base, and who will thus inevitably have workers that are considered exploited by most western consumer standards.

Thus, boycotting Apple, makes as much sense as boycotting the Guardian. At least Apple aren't being hypocritical about it.

So...can we put this cliche to bed now?

No. Let's not.

Simply because Firefox devs are some of the most complacent, or downright willfully arrogant folks out there. It took years, literally years, for them to even admit there were massive memory leaks in Firefox. Anyone who suggested it here was branded a troll by them -- but that was back in the day when people liked, believed, and trusted in Firefox, back in the days when it was on its ascendancy. Those days are well and truly over.

So while they may have fixed most of the memory leaks (it still runs like shit on a Mac), let us not allow them to get complacent again. They are already vain and arrogant about their lunatic version number race, so let's not go back to the days of them being in complete denial about other problems too. By not frequently reminding them about memory leaks, you are opening the door to yet more bloat going forward.

It's important they understand we have not forgotten how many years it took them to deal with the memory leaks they pretended did not even exist.

Indeed, well actually.... it shouldn't even be in Idle.

I was expecting to see samzenpus's name as editor on this, but to be fair to him, this is way below some of the crap that he posts in Idle.

Unknown Lamer: hang your head in shame. What will you post tomorrow? What sign of the zodiac is best for getting a job at Google?

Congratulations though, you may have just posted the single worst article in the history of /. to the front page. I hope you are proud of yourself.

Why not wait until 1.0 is ready before announcing it?

I'd guess the announcement has to be now, because even with the fastest of viral marketing, the word will take longer to get out there than it takes for Mozilla to get from 0.1 to 1.0 -- which should probably be next Tuesday at the latest, knowing their preposterous update frequency.

Mozilla: moving sideways and treading water since 2005.

All these voices coming out against these Bills, yet the Congress and Senate still push as if they really have a shot.

Perhaps it will become more subtle, but it will not stop so long as those "voices" are targeting the puppets -- and not the puppet-masters.

And that's why the logical next step for anti-sopa action is to hit the puppet-masters. A day of global boycott of media companies would send them a clear message.

It is possible to completely end sopa once and for all -- all we have to do is stop buying media products until it completely goes away. Targeting government is irrelevant*, it's the pockets of the CEO's of media companies who own them and control them, that need to be targeted.

(*assuming that we cannot get lobbying recognized for what it really is -- sedition. And acting on lobbying, treason. If lobbying was the serious criminal offense that it should be, then targeting Government could work, of itself.)

Apples and oranges. The bottled water companies didn't invent water. The media companies did make the media you're pirating.

No. The media companies did not make the media. They distribute it. This is not the same thing. Continuing the water analogy, they are not the cloud, nor the rain, just merely the plumbing to the fawcet.

Taking something without paying just because you can is selfish and wrong.

Tell that to the music industry. Like many, many people, I've done subcontracted work for the music industry. I've never been paid for any of it. I now know better to ever accept any contract from them. And I would urge everyone to do the same. They are thieving scumbags who promise a great deal, and rarely, if ever, pay out. This, is in addition to the many 1000s of artists who have been screwed over in contracts over the decades.

However much the public out there may "steal" from them, it's peanuts to what they steal from people every single day.

Oh, so that's what the "C" in CES stands for... here's me thinking it was for "Crapware".

Based on most articles on products there over the years, it seemed like the only logical conclusion.

I think the article must mean Intranet. I'd guess the Chinese Internet population is roughly about 1,000, and are all intelligence agents.

Robots get all the shitty jobs!

Absolutely correct. However, I wonder why Mozilla is trying to prevent the ESR version from having widespread access.

There's no commercial gain in so doing, it's built anyway -- so people may as well use it, it won't affect support particularly -- just move questions perhaps. So where is the harm in giving people freedom of choice? Is freedom of choice not intrinsic in the philosophy of open source software?

I suspect the only reason for limiting the ESR version is vanity and arrogance. FF's arrogant developers know fine well that the ESR version would quickly become the default version of FF out there. It is exactly what everyone wants, a stable version of the software without new, worthless, feature-bloat ever two weeks.

FF developers, why not just have balls to admit you fucked up? Give people a free choice between ESR or the rapid-deployment constant-flux FF versions. See which people prefer -- and then run with that, and concentrate more on that version.

Really, what is the fucking point on forcing your idiotic ideas on users who really want something else? That's why you are too cowardly to make ESR freely available. And we know it.

It will be interesting to see if people find any value in this.

People will. But... those people are advertisers, not users.

This will likely result in more successful targeting of ads: the fact that it probably skews your search results and means you don't find what you are looking for easily, is of little consequence to Google -- at least not until there's some sort of backlash. They can happily ride the extra carriage on the Gravy Train until then.

Search, despite being Google's core business, has been getting worse and worse for a decade now. That Google added it's own "Places" spam, was a significant drop in quality -- this seems like the same kind of drop again, and in addition.

The sad truth, is that in 1997 the difference between using Google and Altavista was profound in their differing search results. But in 2012, using Google is exactly the same as was using Altavista in 1997. That's how bad search is now, and for exactly the same reasons -- profiting from ads.