Comment No way is this a Sony PR stunt (Score 2) 236
The top leadership at Sony Pictures is about to be booted out of their jobs and are so tainted that no other studio will hire them. I don't think this was their idea of a way to promote a film.
Your reasoning for pulling The Interview applies equally to showing Team America, if you think about it.
The difference here is that The Interview was dumped national theater chains. In the case of Team America, a few independent chains were trying to screen the film and Paramount refused. In the case of the independent theaters, Paramount was not afraid that screening Team America would impact their profits for other films opening this weekend.
....then Sony would be liable to the victim and victims family because Sony either knew or should have known that the controversy caused by the movie would excite DPRK loyalists into committing such an act of violence.
And that lawsuit would be gently brushed aside by Sony's legal team. Heck, they'd probably send in their youngest intern to handle the distraction.
In 1952: "The Court reverses its position on movies in Burstyn v. Wilson, asserting that "liberty of expression by means of motion pictures is guaranteed by the 1st and 14th Amendments."(citation)
The reason the Interview was pulled out of theaters is because the distributors didn't want to see the lucrative Christmas boxoffice affected by people avoiding theaters due to these threats. Annie and Night at the Museum are expected to sell far more tickets than the Interview and the theater chains didn't want to see those profits reduced. As for why Paramount prohibited these screenings of Team America, well, they're probably worried they'll fall into North Korea's crosshairs and get hacked, etc. Damn cowards.
Say requiring licenses and apprenticeships, which is the #1 reason plumbers make so much money.
Those chaufer's licenses and medallions didn't work out so well for protecting cab drivers' revenue stream from the Uber hordes....
When those jobs are eliminated because of robots, those desperate enough to take a picker job will have no where else to go.
Many will slide to a lower rung in the employment ladder. Some will ascend to the next rung up. For those jobs, wages will decrease.
We are already seeing this with pseudo-jobs like Uber and taskrabbit.
My mother has frequently said plumbers will always make a good living. When unskilled jobs disappear due to automation, many of those workers will be motivated to study a trade. The surge of new workers in the industry will reduce the 'good living' that plumbers make.
Society needs plumbers, welders, architects, accountants, doctors, physicists, line workers, and every other job there is.
You and everyone else who thinks being a plumber is a lucrative job now and tomorrow needs to understand that automation is going to change the employment landscape dramatically in the coming years. The undereducated people who have been automated out of their warehouse work, call center jobs, etc. will dogpile on those jobs that pay well and don't require a diploma. Then those jobs won't pay so well.
These wealthy tech billionaires see the writing on the wall and are trying to help equip the masses to be more relevant in tomorrow's job market. I appreciate your reference to Socrates and think it's an astute observation. While I think on the higher-end of the tech jobforce, companies like facebook and Microsoft are abusing the H1B visa program, I do think their support of STEM is in the interest of growing the domestic workforce towards the needs of industry.
.....and ban this right away, it will not matter if the fatality rate is even lower than manually driven cars.
You ignore the gargantuan influence insurance companies wield over politicians.
Who do you think got these types of laws passed?
Those were the doing of an entity who could see that modifying these behaviors would reduce the payouts they make each year. This entity lives and breaths statistics and charges its customers based on anticipated payouts and profits off the difference. By modifying the behaviors while keeping the premiums at the same level, the insurance companies are able to expand their profits. Insurance companies use these profits to control politicians.
Self-driving cars are hugely attractive to insurance companies. If they can overall reduce payouts by some small number, they'll happily pay for the fewer claims made against their customers' self-driving cars. Should cases go to court, they'll have plenty of telemetric data to throw in front of a jury to bolster their defense.
An NSL can be sent to Apple telling it to give the FBI all information it has.
Brune,
Pump the brakes, son. The words you have written here strongly indicate an irresponsible underestimation of the power wielded by National Security Letters. Go ask the ex-owner of Lavabit if he agrees with you that there are limitations on how National Security Letters may be applied to corporations.
BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of `Scientific Creationism'.