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951

Living Room / Re: Sex Doesn't Sell

« Last post by Paul Keith on January 05, 2010, 01:23 AM »

This approach has been mentioned a couple of times, but surely implying things are happening is defeating the point of the medium. I mean you could fade out the action scenes, the emotional scenes, the establishing shots? Where do you stop? The medium is there to tell and portray a story, otherwise we could all just read the synopsis.

-Eóin (January 04, 2010, 07:39 PM)

I have to disagree. In terms of limited time visual medium like movies, implication is one of it's prime quality.

In fact, it is a common argument by some classic horror movie fans that some of the scariest films are those that show an invisible horror that leaves itself to the viewer's imagination.

The line is drawn where the director and the producers want it to.

This may even explain why many movies based on factual events are distorted even if the original events would have made for a better movie. Instead of fade to black, think of any other transition directors use to transition to another scene to make a poorer plot seem better through visual editing.

Some notable examples are Nolan's reverse clues in Memento and Prestige, Documentary films like the Blair Witch Project, Shaky cams in Cloverfield, even such things like the quick flash of Eli's pubes caused many viewers to switch perspectives and assume an underage female was shown naked in the film "Let The Right One In" instead of the plot of the novel where it was meant to imply a castrated boy. (note that this is a minor spoiler plot-wise though it may seem like a major one)

I'm not for fade to black either and I think it is a cop-out excuse but it is one of the tools a director has of telling the story of the movie and it's not really censorship unless there was an intent of censorship. (No different from the Japanese cultural idea that if you show a censored vagina/penis, it is somehow less sexualized and more okay to show the actual act. The effect is intended to censor but often times it is just something in-grained in the cultural expectations of what's right or wrong to show.)

I just glanced through some of these responses so forgive me if this point has already been made.

I am an American so I will only comment on American culture. Once upon a time we lived in a gentler, more innocent environment when it came to the movies (I'll restrict my remarks to movies as that seems to be what most people in the thread are focusing on). There was sex & sex scenes, but there is today. Some guy at a movie studio got the bright idea that if he threw in something more explicit than what was norm for the time his movie would cause a splash & see increased ticket sales.

He was right...bam! Sex sells. Ticket sales shoot up and money is made by everybody involved with the movie. Of course, this doesn't go unnoticed by the other movie guys & they each take steps to go farther to out-do the last guy with the sexual aspect of their movies & bring in the money.

That worked great...until now. Even though current movie makers dance the line between what keeps a movie Rated R and what would make it Rated X we've reached a plateau as a culture. We've seen it all. There are no new tricks. There are no more plot twists to wow us with. It's all old hat & culturally we've become very jaded movie watchers.

One only needs to view the 1972 Marlon Brando/Maria Schneider movie 'Last Tango In Paris' to see my point painfully illustrated. Upon its release it was Rated X & caused quite a scandalous stir as to how outrageous it was. Viewing it today it's quite frankly ho-hum & could be classified as a 'mild' R-rated movie by today's standards.

Sex sold & it sold well, but it's become a commodity item and one cannot demand a premium price on something that is over-stocked in abundance everywhere.

-Innuendo (January 04, 2010, 04:00 PM)

I disagree. If anything modern American culture has seen less new tricks that something like the Da Vinci Code could cause a controversy.

Could you imagine the uproar if people saw the 1974 nunsploitation film School of the Holy Beast or more people witness a full uncensored version of Ken Russell's movie The Devils? (like the scene with the nun masturbating on a cross?)

I don't even think people have seen a live guro film before and yet such things like Saw became the modern face of a horror franchise and such thing like Ledger's Joker become the modern face of a dark character even though these are commodity item characters too.

In fact, many of the recent box-office successes are commodity items wrapped up in style. Commodity concepts IMO are some of the best selling concepts because the mainstream feels comfortable watching them especially if you make it bigger, better and prettier.

P.S. I'm not denying that porn has become a commodity item.

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Living Room / Re: Has SEO ruined the web?

« Last post by Paul Keith on January 04, 2010, 01:17 PM »

On the contrary, word of mouth is just as unreliable.

Just ask here how many use argument mappers for example or how many people mention Compendium, Pigeonhole, Notezilla, Ubernote, Zoho, etc. etc. etc. and you're bound to get different results based on different forums.

Hardly anyone here talks about GrandView but it seems like the current hot topic in OutlinerSoftware.com right now.

Similarly, if you were merely looking up entries in Lifehacker, you might get the skewed impression that the Iphone is the ultimate app.

Go to DIYPlanner and the stuff they talk about regarding paper planners makes it seem like paper does a Superman on software productivity software in every aspect.

It's not a sure-fire advice but you might want to consider creating a Twitter account and linking it to your website if beating SEO is that important.

I know it seems like the cliche blogosphere advice/recent social media fad to give but I'm saying it less because it's the "in" thing but more because IMO SEO is being supplemented by Twitter results more and more these days and if your content is really up there, you're bound to be noticed more from your Twitter results regardless if you have a good or bad search ranking.

Edit: This service was recently posted in makeuseof.com although I haven't tried it: http://www.makeuseof...e-articles-you-want/

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Living Room / Re: Sex Doesn't Sell

« Last post by Paul Keith on January 04, 2010, 12:03 PM »

Surely subtle interpertations and messages shouldn't affect box-office performance, rather just the overall tone of a movie.

-Eóin (January 04, 2010, 09:57 AM)

I think if these were true then marketing wouldn't be as effective as it is in adding interest to a movie.

Then again, it could just be that marketing is underrated in an over-marketed Hollywood that makes it seem like everything is over-marketed as it is already.

I don't claim to know anything about Hollywood especially since I don't live in America but based on anecdotes I've heard (stuff like things talked about in Dinner for Five or in the Actor's Studio) but box-office performances is vastly about first impressions and talking hype. (Pre-P2P explosion, critical response may even be more valued than it is.)

They're not guaranteed success formulas (since everyone in high budget films tend to apply the same fundamental tactics) but if the media cannot pick up on a "sound bite" to hype the movie or it's the wrong soundbyte, it will vastly change the results of the box-office success.

That's where vagueness and subtle interpretations and messages come in.

If a director is a "high profile" director, then he could take more risks. Maybe survive in his reputation as an "artist".

...but in general, subtle interpretations and messages at best is delegated to DVD sales or "cult" status.

Of course as the rabbit hole becomes more generic and tries to fill more items, it's more apparent that not all, maybe even more than half of "cult movie" fans may have poor tastes even in their own niche genres.

Still... if initial reactions weren't at least half of what determines box-office quality, the industry won't rely so much on short story movie adaptations, popular licensed materials and remakes PLUS marketing.

Another thing to factor is that 90% of popular movies' overall tone may not be the premise or the concept of a movie but in the posters, the communal reinforecement, the ratio of critics praising/hating it and the hook. (but in our attempt to rationalize the irrational, we miss this and do as the critics/internet fans do and become meta-info judges where we undervalue such subjectivity)

I don't know if there's a double blind test done on this but I'd really like to see a more scientific application of Be Kind Rewind's concept:

A small VHS only video store faces foreclosure in a poor community. While watching the store for the owner, a blundering employee's friend accidentally erases all of the tapes. In order to keep their blunder from becoming apparent, the duo of Mike and Jerry begin remaking the films themselves using homemade special effects and outdated filming techniques.

...except on a general populace.

One movie would be more advertised, better marketed (as a serious movie) and containing lower quality scenes (but good enough that people won't suspect it's a test) and popular actors intentionally acting "lifeless" and plot intentionally made poorer (think Nicholas Cage Wicker Man poor)

Same movie would be released 2 weeks after. Same location. Less advertised. Even better and more proper marketing (minus the name of the director replaced with a pseudonym). Higher quality scenes. Less known but better acting people. Plot differences intentionally made better. Sell it and see who creates the bigger box office splash and then compare the DVD sales and compare the P2P download numbers and ultimately the return.

The big problem though is creating this right element of two similar but different enough movies while convincing a successful director and successful marketers to tackle it.

Then again if we were to use the issue with Rec and Quarantine or Prestige and The Illusionist or even Batman TAS: Subzero vs. Batman and Robin then it seems it's statistically very likely to do such an experiment if the experts were careful enough with all the details.

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Living Room / Re: Sex Doesn't Sell

« Last post by Paul Keith on January 04, 2010, 12:52 AM »

Where does Avatar come into this?  Is there some controversy that I'm not aware of regarding it?

-wraith808 (January 03, 2010, 10:53 PM)

No there's none as far as I know.

I guess I shouldn't have been vague and used a more specific word as "Raptio Sells" but that isn't clear cut either.

Neither is the word rapture and ravish in the context of movies where it can just as much relate to action movies and other genres.

I also didn't want it to exclude such things like The Dark Knight where although it wasn't explicit, I interpret some of it's theme as a form of subtle sexual violation. Although sex here is more mental rape of the cultural perspective of masculinity than spelled out rape (excluding the scene where Joker was in the interrogating room and revealled something to Bats that pissed him off and beat him up...although again there it is more a violation of privacy dealing with something relationship related)  

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Living Room / Re: Sex Doesn't Sell

« Last post by Paul Keith on January 03, 2010, 10:07 PM »

Is it sex and power though or just rape and power?

-Paul Keith (January 03, 2010, 12:08 PM)

Absolutely not, rape puts force in the entirely wrong direction. The power which I refer to is about a draw or attraction. Some one that has has presence, that can walk into the room and command attention without saying a word. They carry themselves (e.g. their posture is perfect but not exaggerated) "well", which implies confidence, and tends to make one look better (gender is irrelevant).

It's the subtle sensuality and grace that disarms without force...(yet are powered/driven by baser instincts)...and makes one alluring or, sexy (hence the "pursued" is very much in control).

-Stoic Joker (January 03, 2010, 01:34 PM)

Oh ok. I just thought maybe it was never "Sex Sells" but "Rape Sells" seeing the recent success of Avatar (except the phrase is non-PC so that the former phrase got meme'd)

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Living Room / Re: Sex Doesn't Sell

« Last post by Paul Keith on January 03, 2010, 12:08 PM »

   (Never thought of it that way)

Is it sex and power though or just rape and power? 

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Living Room / Re: Sex Doesn't Sell

« Last post by Paul Keith on January 03, 2010, 11:29 AM »

I didn't do any research on this but if you just want my personal opinion:

One really needs to wonder though, why does sex sell?  Have we, the ones who feed at the teat of the mainstream media whore, become so dumbed down that we allow it to sell?

No.

It's the opposite actually.

Short Answer:

Sex sells works by selling the sizzle not the steak.

Long Answer:

The idea of sex selling increase with one's intelligence and imagination.

It's the classic trick of being a tease. Of unwrapping the mystery.

Personally, I prefer movies without a lot of sex.  The implied intimacy is much more effective than just throwing it all out there for the world to see.  If I wanted to see two people having sex in a movie I would rent a porn flick.  Seeing simulated or even partially real sex in a movie is just desperation to me.  I prefer to have the real thing rather than fantasize about having sex, porn or even soft core never made any sense to me.

Same thing with the idea of "Sex sells."

It's not about targeting those people who fantasize about sex, porn or even soft porn.

It's about targetting people who are "on the fence" because these people are the ones who will likely have lower standards of:

"Well...as long as it has sex in it". (Over-simplification)

It's the same deal with a "family movie". Sex selling may seem like the farthest from being applied in this genre but...

Artistic quality and hype aside, from a marketing perspective, you don't try to market it to people with high family standards because these are people who are bound to be most in-tune when something seems off.

Instead you target it to people who are "on the fence" about watching a movie without sex or have lower "family" standards because lower standards = more general standards = you can get away with more vague stuff.

Either way, sex sells is still applied only this time it's a variation: sell the fact that there isn't any sex or the only possible scenes there will be would be intimate and implied.

This effect sounds like the opposite of each other but it really translates more into adding burger instead of rice along with the dish.

It's less about making a 90 degrees turn on a message as much as it is changing the wallpaper to suit the person.

Yes, the image of the wallpaper can have a strong effect but at the end of the day, you're not switching the motive or the content of the application, you're just wrapping it up in a different box that the target audience would like to open.

It could even be as simple as creating an entire porn movie and just removing the sex scene and the language and dressing them up in different outfits. It's still based on the same concept because sex didn't disappear or become more intimate. Instead, the idea is that you use the target audience's expectation that the movie isn't about sex to make the movie seem intimate. 

For a more specific example,

I don't know what your opinion of Wall-E is but it's generally regarded as a movie without sex and a movie that defines intimate love that elevates beyond the human need for lust or even love made stronger by love making. (As portrayed by two machines as opposed to two humans getting together)

Yet you could just as conclude, as one IMDB poster wrote, that:

This movie was ruined for me when I heard EVE resembles a certain female oriented electronic device. There, now you too can live with the pain.

http://www.imdb.com/...board/flat/153424454

When I go to a movie I go for entertainment, not to wank in the back row.  Commercials that feature sex or sex appeal just make me change the channel.  You want to sell me a product?  Show me facts, demonstrations, show me it works.  Don't give me smoke and mirrors or try to assume I am some lowbrow wanker that will buy it because of a 'hot chick'.  Look at al the idiots running around using Axe body spray because they assume the smell of musky animal urine combined with laundry soap is somehow going to make them smell good and be attractive, because they fell into the Lemming style trap of the commercials that caused a fad.  Seems that the highly underrated movie "Idiocracy" is more than just a mere sarcastic statement on society?

Sure, but look at it this way.

Isn't the Axe commercial demonstrating that it works? ...and in the most un-sexual way possible?

After all, for a commercial with the implication that it will make women want to have sex with you, how many of the guys were actually good looking to begin with and instead of bagging a girl, merely got groped by several strangers they walked passed by? (Thus empirically highlighting how Axe actually keeps the handsome guys from having enjoyable sex.)

Compare this to a shampoo commercial where the empirical implication is that you should give a beautiful girl that brand of shampoo as a birthday present because not only does she look like she's having an orgasm using it but sometimes it's even accompanied by her looking like her best and being happy right after she got out of the shower. (Thus empirically implying that she's more likely to "get it on" with you after her shower using said shampoo.)

Yet compare the two stereotypes for both ads and the Axe commercial oozes more sexuality while the shampoo commercial may even come off as sexually unrelated.

Why?

Because in the Axe commercial, the mystery is: "I wonder what girl will grope me AFTER I use the product."

Meanwhile, while the shampoo commercial has it's own mystery, in terms of sex there isn't as much mystery.

Once the female uses the shampoo, you're already being told that she is more beautiful, that she has got it on with her man and they are both happy AND that she is going to be more in the mood to do something "fun" with you.

It's not a universal rule because quality and expectations still has to be factored as well as other aspects of attraction but the one thing definite about the rule sex sells is the paradox that less, not more sex is what makes it work best.

958

General Software Discussion / On the Aesthetics of Outliners, Pims, and Personal Knowledge Applications

« Last post by Paul Keith on January 03, 2010, 06:35 AM »

Source: http://www.outliners...m/topics/viewt/1284/

Posted by Manfred
Oct 20, 2009 at 05:37 PM

Peter made an offhand comment in another thread: “Meanwhile, ConnectedText?s Win98-like interface, like so much of the PC stuff, doesn?t really cut it aesthetically.” This made me think about the relevance of aesthetic considerations in personal knowledge applications. Are they really relevant?

My first thought was that they are not. To say that such an application doesn’t cut it aesthetically seems to me equivalent to saying that a blank canvas or a blank sheet of paper doesn’t cut it aesthetically.

Neither is really meant to do so. The finished painting or the finished text is meant to do so, and the canvas or the application is supposed to allow you you to accomplish something that is aesthetically (or otherwise) pleasing. the application should not get into the way and serve as an affordance for your own achievement.

I still think that this is right. This is why I also think that a minimalist approach to aesthetic feature is preferable and that form should follow function.

But perhaps someone can show me that this is wrong.
Manfred

P.S.: Since I have repeatedly extolled the virtues of ConnectedText I should perhaps use this post to point out that I have commercial interest in ConnectedText. I am just a very satisfied user of the product from the very beginning. In other words, I must be one of the first people who bought it.

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Living Room / Re: Sex Doesn't Sell

« Last post by Paul Keith on January 03, 2010, 06:04 AM »

Those are both valid points and normally I would agree but I've been watching alot of Cronenberg lately and even though his movie receptions are old, this article reminded me of one IMDB poster's account of someone he knew.

.....and lot's more.....

-Paul Keith (January 03, 2010, 12:12 AM)

Wow, I was just querying the methodology behind the report without even getting into the philosophy behind it all.

-4wd (January 03, 2010, 04:14 AM)

I was doing the reverse. I guess I just didn't respect the article enough. I thought the content was lite from the get go that only the conclusion mattered.

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Living Room / Re: What would it take to create and then sell a very successful website?

« Last post by Paul Keith on January 03, 2010, 05:58 AM »

Not sure this would help but I recently found this on WordNik's News Page:

How 20 Business Ideas Were Hatched

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Living Room / Re: Sex Doesn't Sell

« Last post by Paul Keith on January 03, 2010, 12:12 AM »

Those are both valid points and normally I would agree but I've been watching alot of Cronenberg lately and even though his movie receptions are old, this article reminded me of one IMDB poster's account of someone he knew.

I didn't save it but based on memory it went something like:

It's interesting how a guy like Cronenberg went from making crap and then went on to create a great movie like A History of Violence.

Now, while it's true that the fanbase of Cronenberg tend to have people who are most endeared by him based on the shock factor of nudity and gore, what I find interesting is that you could almost find patterns where people might excuse his movies as quality if it weren't as shocking.

The one comment that jumped at me is this person's comment of his movie Crash:

This film does however prove a very interesting point, something of which every young filmmaker should take careful note: It is possible to turn a quasi-pornographic movie with twisted sexual scenarios and "controversial" material galore into something profoundly boring. Twisted freaks get turned on by car crashes, and... well, that's about it, actually. For an hour and a half. If the viewer isn't turned on by the (apparently deliberately) unerotic sex, what does this have to offer? I've read the theory that this is about the deep connection between sex and death, but surely that topic has been explored in far more interesting and illuminating ways. Really, this is a rather sad one-trick pony of a movie: It all depends on the viewer's being *shocked* by the "controversial" subject-matter, but if the viewer isn't shocked (as I wasn't. Perhaps I'm just really, really jaded...) this is incredibly shallow and, I repeat once more for emphasis, excruciatingly dull.

...it almost seems as if the expectation is both a hypocrisy that if it has sex, it needs to be at the minimum tantalizing and borderline make you interested but if it has that factor, it is porn so it's low quality porn as highlighted by a review of another movie A Sleeping Dictionary:

Ridiculous Teeny-Bop Soft-Porn Noble Savage Tripe

Utterly unbelievable that colonial Brits and natives of Sarawak in the first third of the last century had perfect teeth, perfect complexions (in spite of mixed ancestry), and that women groomed themselves with shaved legs and shaved arm pits! What a typically absurd Hollywood distortion of reality! It was like watching the old black & white `historicals' from the 30's or 40's with all the stars having their then current hair-dos and facial hair (e.g., pencil thin mustaches on the men, etc.) none of which had any historical accuracy whatsoever and look totally absurd in retrospect. It was silly.

This is an expensive `passion pit' movie designed to get the teeny boys and girls hot 'n bothered on their night out. A totally vapid and worthless romance. A shame to the genre.

I'm not saying this movie deserves an award or that people should praise these movies as high quality unanimously but I find it interesting that "sex" as the main theme is one of those elements that many people can put into a category of "Look, if you're going do a sex scene make it look accurate but make it so it seems attractive to me on screen and not just dull and boring."

Where as if you put any of these other "pretty" elements in other genres, the flaws tend to levitate more into the category of "It's a Hollywood movie, what did you expect?" rather than "Hollywood absurdity". (or if it gets criticized as a Hollywood absurdity, it never expands into an additional demeaning term equivalent to accusing a movie as porn)

Then there's such culture views as these: (comment made on The Bounty IMDB forum)

Any and all frontal or female topless nudity should be at least rated "R". Obviously alot of under aged children and teens will be watching and especially with the popularity of pirate movies. Im amazed that this was only rated "PG". The double standard is a slap in the face for all non-white cultures. They're basically saying these women arent equal to white women so they shouldnt be seen as enticing or sexual. There's enough blood in this movie to earn it at least an upgrade to a PG-13 and topless nudity should be an "R".

...thus requiring another poster to clarify it in these words:

First of all I can't imagine many men, regardless of their colour, not finding the women enticing or sexual. In wanting to equate the treatment of white and non-white women you are making a statement about something that was natural to the women of Tahiti, imposing the "white" view of what is acceptable on a non-white culture. It is you who is giving a non-white culture a slap in the face.
When white women are shown topless in films it is usually in a sexual context and justifies a different treatment.

That aside the story line revolves around the love affair between Fletcher Christian and Mauatau.

...but then you have an issue such as this:

You misread my statement. Pay attention now. I said by making the movie PG rather than R-rated, they're saying these women, though in their natural habitat, aren't to be seen as sexual whereas white women would be covered up. Sure white women in civilized countries don't run around with their breasts swinging in the breeze but this is a movie playing in the US not in Tahiti so the U.S. viewers who are the intended audience, aren't just looking at some native women in their own environment. These women are also being looked at and lusted after as sex objects by the crew on the Bounty. The natural habitat part is just a loophole. I have no problem with how the women appear in the movie but how the movie is rated.

Ultimately though, I'm not saying this article is right or wrong but I think we shouldn't dismiss this as black and white inaccurate quite so fast.

I know I made generalizing statements and there are enough movies with sex and nudity that break this mold to prove this article but I guess to me, I just don't read this as Sex Doesn't Sell because Sex Sells but rather, Sex Sells but it won't sell as much as a movie without Sex.

Examples that come to my mind are Cameron's Titanic nude scene where the lack of sex is what made the plot more memorable despite it still containing nudity and being more soft-porn plot than most soft-porn plot, Total Recall where Arnie goes to lengths for literally his dream girl, The Matrix where it could just as be an analogy for being seduced by an Ice Queen (plus let's not forget the machine lesbian scene), A Clockwork Orange where the rape scene is respected as artistic because of the director's reputation (although Kubrick didn't get away with it in Eyes Wide Shut)

Ultimately though, I'm not singling these movies out nor am I saying no one ever criticized them as such but I find it interesting that there seems to be an interesting standard in highly respected movies where there's an unspoken stereotypical rule that Sex and Nudity can only sell if you turn it into a one-shot "almost unrelated" nude scene thus satisfying both those who are looking for that particular nude scene and also satisfying thoe who normally might be appalled by it in an almost disassociative effect where the porn lovers get their pie and the other movie goers feel like they got their plot and that the director added the scene because it added to the story. (even though many times, these scenes are often the least related to the plot compared with movies with more "in your face" nudity) Similarly sex scenes it seems must never imply full sexuality (in a seemingly similar reason to Robert Downey Jr.'s statement that "one must never go full retard when playing a retard" in Tropic Thunder) or else it's porn or it's bad or it's detracting.

But if a director focuses on the pre- and post- implications of a sex scene, then they can get away with a porn equivalent plot and even a violent sex scene and be perceived as being of a higher quality. Of course, it can be also said that this technique is often used by directors who can make better movies and thus it's not so much that the movie uses this technique as much as it is indeed a higher quality film.

Still... I look at some of the positive statements to Eyes Wide Shut and I find it interesting where many can excuse the scenes and interpret it as being "above porn" because it holds these qualities even though the movie didn't sell as much compared to say Flesh+Blood's portrayal of a sex scene.

(Although both are entirely unrelated movies with different timespans and a more accurate picture can be had by using Basic Instinct as a comparison but I did it this way anyway because it's still a stretched out comparison anyways and I don't really have an extensive knowledge of movies)

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Scribbly - Adobe Air E-mail Notetaker

« Last post by Paul Keith on January 02, 2010, 04:06 PM »

I don't really understand how one can be more productive by self-e-mailing lists but like Klok this seems "one of a kind" enough to mention:

Adobe Link: http://www.adobe.com...amp;offeringid=15420

Demogirl Video Tour: http://demogirl.com/...again-with-scribbly/

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Living Room / Sex Doesn't Sell

« Last post by Paul Keith on January 02, 2010, 01:55 PM »

Sex and nudity in movies have failed to generate ticket sales in Hollywood, says a report.

The report titled Sex Doesn't Sell -- Nor Impress! is authored by Dean Keith Simonton and Anemone Cerridwen. The authors, who examined more than 900 films released between 2001 and 2005, indicated that virtually all the top-grossing films that came out during that period had little or no sex or nudity, reports imdb.com.

"Sex did not sell, whether in the domestic or international box office, and even after controlling for MPAA [Motion Picture Association of America] rating," said Simonton, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis.

Added Cerridwen: "In other words, even among R [rated] movies, less graphic sex is better."

Cerridwen also said that the study evolved from a personal experience while she was taking an acting class and became concerned about the sexual content of the scripts she was viewing.

"I assumed sex sold and wanted to know by how much. I braced myself for the worst, and got quite the surprise."

She is also hoping that the study will influence Hollywood producers.

"I do believe that there are a fair number of people in the film industry who want to make better films, and this study may give them some ammunition," said Cerridwen.

http://sify.com/movi...tory.php?id=14925606

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General Software Discussion / (Semi-NSFW) How Fanboys View Operating Systems

« Last post by Paul Keith on January 02, 2010, 12:55 PM »

Source: http://www.joeydevil...e-operating-systems/

965

Living Room / Re: Has SEO ruined the web?

« Last post by Paul Keith on January 02, 2010, 11:17 AM »

I'm not saying Wikipedia is perfect.  But overall, it is amazingly successful at providing the information you need to war.  If I am looking for something on Wikipedia, 9 times out of 10, I find exactly what I want.  It's the other way around for google.

-superboyac (January 01, 2010, 07:03 PM)

Nor was I.

To quote Innuendo's post:

People asked the same thing before Google. Search engines were crap and everyone was up in arms as to whether it was possible to fix. Google came in with an optimized search algorithm that tamed the offending parties.

There have been attempts to do this to Google before, but they were always quick to counter with a new search engine algorithm that would further filter out the poo. Now they are either having trouble countering this new wave of attacks or they don't care. It is just a matter of time before someone finds a way to beat this new breed of search engine spam. I don't know if it will be Google or someone new, but whoever pulls it off will be the search engine king for some time to come.

In terms of youth, Wikipedia is alot younger than Google and has a lot less responsibility.

It's the same for Google.

I'm oversimplifying, both because I don't really know the actual history and because it's more convenient to use an analogy, but before the explosion of blogs and other walled garden repositories, Google got away with SEO's model because it had less responsibility.

Search engines had to still provide relevant results but it didn't need to have wikipedia, it didn't need to be a dedicated people profile searcher, it didn't need to have separate sections for separate media.

Not because it shouldn't and it didn't want to but in terms of expectations, it didn't have to be THAT good. Even today, no one wants search engines to be the cause of having their life humilating net experiences be discovered because a search engine was too intrusive in indexing (...and yet they don't want a bad custom search engine because it provides less results)

That sort of expectations is what bred SEO.

...and for a while, it was a mutual benefit until more people were dissatisfied by the effect.

I can't predict nor describe the day Wikipedia becomes the same to you but I think there's some truth in saying that you're giving Wikipedia a pass right now because you have less expectations from it because you're still getting what you desire from it.

Maybe I'm wrong but it's common enough for most people to have confirmation bias.

In most cases, Wikipedia gets a pass because it hides behind the label of an encyclopedia instead of a general repository and so it seems like an example of a better encyclopedia. (as opposed to Encarta and others being a more flawed encyclopedia)

Eventually that will change as expectations for Wikipedia become much higher and you see people get even better at gaming at it and admin corruption becomes more exposed. (i.e. the old EssJay issue for example)

It might seem like I'm adding all these "too long; didn't read" reasons to weasel word you as a naive person who thinks Wikipedia is perfect but that's really the opposite of my opinion. I just don't know how to better communicate my point.

My intention is not so much listing some examples of Wikipedia's flaw to show you that it's not perfect but more in the sense of showing you that: just as Pre-Google Yahoo had flaws and current Google has flaws, Wikipedia has flaws and even though it works now, if you don't put the pros and cons in context, you'll end up mispredicting/misperceiving the solution on how to improve Google. (Again, I apologize if this comes off like I'm thinking you're stupid by stating a point that could be interpreted as being Capt. Obvious but this is not really my intention. I'm not saying you're wrong either or you didn't know of these issues before. I just think these things need to be brought up so that the idea of Wikipedia being a possible solution to Google can be much better represented and the answer to your topic, much better defined.)

966

Living Room / Re: Has SEO ruined the web?

« Last post by Paul Keith on December 31, 2009, 04:43 PM »

How is it that Wikipedia doesn't get cluttered with crap and nonsense, even though all the pages are open to anyone?  It's regulated by the users, and there are no ads.  It's amazing that it works, but it does.  Can that philosophy be applied to a search engine?

-superboyac (December 31, 2009, 04:18 PM)

Wikipedia is cluttered with crap and nonsense. It's called edit wars.

Look up DMOZ.

Example URL taken from dmozsucks forum:

http://www.dmozsucks...s/viewtopic.php?t=27

http://www.dmozsucks.../viewtopic.php?t=700

967

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Discrepancy Trainer

« Last post by Paul Keith on December 31, 2009, 09:21 AM »

Yep, I also had a recent idea like this but I dropped it because I don't think it would work.

...or at least not any different than any other generic Project Manager.

Sorry if I put a damper on the topic. As others also said, there are kinda clones of the concept out there.

Anyway, this isn't really a contribution but maybe someone can get something out of the concept.

My idea is the same as mouser's except before you do this, you create a "value for your life" rating which involves putting in your birth date and your age expectancy (what age do you expect to die) and your current age.

The program then chucks out a generic value based on some pre-configured statistics; maybe the total value being the overall amount of seconds in your life.

I didn't really had a number in mind but I remember playing a pirated version of Real Life back then (sorry I couldn't find the official website) and it was a game where you could for example play as a poverty class Ethopian and the game will give you a list of things happening in your life from childbirth to death based on a series of scenarios.

The thing was repetitive in that you can often find yourself getting the same disease but I thought it showed how life statistic is possible to an extent.

I thought without all these additional data like your nationality and your class, the childbirth and life expectancy data could be minimized to the point of being a compact program no different than a timer. (as an additional feature, you can tweak this value by adding in your expected "necessity time" which reduces the total value of your life)

Now where this concept differs with mouser's idea is that instead of a predictor rating you as bad or good, you put in tasks and once you finish them, it deduces your "life value" based on the value of the action.

The idea is that it's supposed to represent how much that task is taking away from your life.

It's similar though in that the input method is nearly the exact way you would input a task in mouser's idea.

The difference is that there's no good or bad rating.

Instead what you have is an optional enjoyment value or a "how much did this finished task add value to my life".

This would be set by a predefined value in relation to your life value via asking a series of Barnum statements regarding your perception life based on hrs./min./sec. (depending on what you want to input) and it would divide these numbers from your total life value.

The end result being a generic value for how much your "max enjoyment is".

This value in turn impacts how much a finished task will add to your life.

Ex.

Let's say your enjoyment value is 256 min.

Now you finished a task that is worth... 120 min.

It will reduce the life value by 120 min. It doesn't impact the enjoyment value. (...or if you really want, you can optionally star the entry so that instead of the total min. reducing your life value, you get 256 - <task value> = only the value of the sum is reduced from the life value.)

However let's say the value of your task exceeds 256. Let's say it's 259. Then 259 - 256 = it adds 3 min. to your life value.

Again like mouser, min. here is just an arbitrary value. The concept isn't so much to track your life but to record the truly positive and the truly negative anchors of your life so that you can use these as an indicator to self-simulate this:

An unusual use of anchoring was studied by Ellen Langer in her study of two groups of 75-80 year old men at Harvard University. For 5 days, both groups were isolated at a retreat, with one group engaged in a series of tasks encouraging them to think about the past in general (to write an autobiography, to discuss the past etc), and the other group engaged in a series of tasks which anchored them back into a specific past time - they wrote an autobiography up to 1959, describing that time as "now", watched 1959 movies, had 1959 music playing on the "radios", and lived with only 1959 artefacts. Before and after the 5 days, both groups were studied on a number of criteria associated with aging. While the first group stayed constant or actually deteriorated on these criteria, the second group dramatically improved on physical health measures such as joint flexibility, vision, and muscle breadth, as well as on IQ tests. They were anchored back physically to being 50 years old, by the sights and sounds of 1959. (Langer, "Mindfulness", Addison Wesley 1989)

http://en.wikipedia..../wiki/Anchoring_(NLP)

968

Living Room / Has SEO ruined the web for you because you relied on it?

« Last post by Paul Keith on December 31, 2009, 08:04 AM »

It's not a double blind test but I did a delicious search typing "weather freeware" and Weather Watcher is third with the 1st 2 options being Netvibes and NASA World Wind: http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/java/

Hardly fluff compared to Google's results.

The internet is always self-correcting. Every seemingly miracle pill is at the same time it's bane.

SEO changed the game and people took advantage, now there's more semantic web-based concepts and once again people are taking advantage. Thus we have newer casual discovery styles in social network discovery as opposed to crowd sourcing which was supposed to solve the problems with SEO which was supposed to solve the problems with Yahoo's search engine methodology.

Taking this into mind, the pattern is always that society ruins the Web but society doesn't feel like it has a responsibility to fix it so the newer technology comes and is then again ruined by society.

(By society, I don't mean just the mass influx of people online or the white hat/grey hat/black hat hacker community + game theorist scammers but ultimately human behaviour interacting with human behaviour at the speed and size we have with the internet.)

That's why I think the question should be changed into:

"Has SEO ruined the web for you because you relied on it?"

It is rude...even disinformative to redirect one's phrasing of the question but the sad reality is that this isn't a new phenomenon.

For so long the cliche of technology changing humanity and humanity changing along with technology is so ingrained that when it corrupts and no longer fits our idealistic perception we used to have, it always make sensationalists out of everyone.

Maybe it sounds over-reaching coming from a tech newbie like me to expand a basic premise as "Are Initial Search Engine Results still useful nowadays?" into a grand salt doll but ultimately I also think there's a low chance someone will post a reply with this perspective (or at least this is my assumption) so why not say this?

After all, it seems over-reaching but as important it is to reply with the quality of SEO impacting modern search results in mind, it is just as important to state the obvious: asking cold (most of the time) won't get you anywhere either.

If it was really good enough, there wouldn't have been enough need for a search engine and Forum Software would have beaten out Search Engine in the grand scheme of things.

That's why IMO the impact of technology on us people is always important even if no one wants to hear it. (especially from a newbie such as me on the topic.)

It's not just the obviousness that every technology will be degraded by society. It's not just the obviousness that technology (especially social related technology) becomes more gameable and is eventually superseded by a new technological concept ... or at least a new adaptation of the old concept... it is most important to bring up the issue of expecting help in the internet.

Selective thinking will always make us say, it's easier to say this technology seems crappier after another form of technology (no matter how old) helped us but what if it doesn't for another person? What then? Has forums ruined the web?; Has Yahoo Answers ruined the web?; Have Wikis ruined the web?

...and if the answer is yes: What then?

With low expectations (due to knowing this premise) we could at least be indifferent enough to not be emotionally scarred by the situation.

...but as the more the internet becomes an everyday part of our lives, the more difficult it is to have low expectations especially with long-time internet users, tech experts and people in the know pumping up the value of JFGI (NSFW) and RTFM and politically correct ways to deny help ...redefining technology won't ever speed the solution enough as to avoid this future scenario from looping itself unless we also prepare ourselves for the way the internet likes to help us (but not help us enough) ...but there's rarely enough social demand to raise this awareness, at least not compared to the next new and improved technology in the cloud and how it will help us improve our lives.

969

General Software Discussion / Re: Evernote alternative that has an online interface?

« Last post by Paul Keith on December 31, 2009, 03:31 AM »

Haven't tried this but someone posted this link in FriendFeed:

http://www.memonic.com/

970

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Productivity Speed is NOT an Indication of Getting Organized (Anecdote) (Old)

« Last post by Paul Keith on December 30, 2009, 04:10 AM »

This is common knowledge/old news for people who keep up with productivity articles so I apologize if this initial message is insulting.

It's just that I don't keep up with productivity blogs and even I have heard of this "slow" concept so I'm trying to downplay it here.

For some "catch up" reference, check out The Slow Movement and blogs like Zen Habits.

Instead I'm posting this because I just happened to watched "Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" via HBO just now and I absolutely had zero idea what VeggieTales was unitl I finished watching it, loved it and looked it up in IMDB and ended up finding this article.

We Americans love to be ranked.   People magazine keeps track of our “50 Most Beautiful People.”   Forbes tracks the “400 Wealthiest Americans” and the “200 Highest-Paid Entertainers.”   Not to be outdone, every year Inc. magazine puts out a list of the 500 fastest growing private companies in America.   These companies tend to be on the small side, but for whatever reason, they're growing like gangbusters.   Inc. tracks and ranks them all, and then the entrepreneurs behind each company can hang the magazine cover in their conference room and beam like proud parents when their friends notice their amazing fast-growing-ness.

If I had put a lot of value on such lists or if Inc. magazine had noticed us, it's fairly likely Big Idea would have made the list a year or two.   Between 1996 and 1999 our revenue grew by 3300%, from $1.3 million to $44 million.  Pretty impressive by anyone's standards.  But by early 2000, just as Jonah was headed into production, the company was in serious financial trouble. How could that be, you ask?  Let me tell you.

It's interesting to note that only one-out-of-three companies that make the Inc. list repeat their appearance the following year.   What happens to the rest?   Many see their growth stall, never to fully recover.   Others simply cease to exist.   Vanish.   You see, when a small company experiences extremely rapid growth, it soon ceases to be a “small company.”   Yet just because it no longer qualifies as “small” doesn't necessarily mean it is now “big.”   In other words, just because you're no longer “Tim's Software Hut” doesn't necessarily mean you're “Microsoft.”   And somewhere in the middle, many, many companies fail.

Inc. magazine noticed this dynamic and had several business researchers look into it.   What emerged was a picture of a treacherous period in any business's growth when a company finds itself “too big to be small yet too small to be big.”   The researchers dubbed it “No Man's Land.”

Big Hairy and Audacious

The year was 1997.   VeggieTales was booming in a big way, and I was taken off guard by the success.   Frankly, I thought 1996 was amazing, yet here was 1997 making 1996 look like… well, 1995!   Every year since 1993 every VeggieTales video had sold more than the year before, and the trend seemed to be continuing.   I could remember the days when Christian publishers wouldn't return my calls, and now the Wall Street Journal was calling for an interview!

In the midst of this mayhem, I read the book Built to Last, a classic business study of what makes great companies great.   The analysis of the Walt Disney Company struck me as particularly relevant, and I found myself asking the question, “Do I just want to make a few films to leave behind when I'm gone, or do I want to build a company that can keep making great films for the next 100 years?”   The answer seemed obvious.   I wanted to build the next Disney.

By the time I finished the book I had a new vision for Big Idea.   We would attract top artists from all over the country. We would build a culture of biblical values and great storytelling.   And then, the big one: The book said you needed to pick a “Big, Hairy Audacious Goal,” or a “BHAG” in Built to Lastparlance. Golly gosh… what was my “BHAG?”   Hmm. I wasn't sure.  I had always felt that God wanted me to tell the stories and teach the lessons he laid on my heart, but he hadn't given me any particular big, hairy audacious goal.  But the book said I needed one to inspire and focus my employees. Okay… deep breath… “We will build a top-four family media brand within 20 years!”   Huh? Where did that come from?   I had no idea.   All I knew was that now I had my “BHAG.” And if it was going to come true, we were going to have to get a lot bigger. What I didn't know was that my new path would take us right smack through “No Man's Land.”   (Cue sinister score here.)

Needs

BHAG in hand, I entered 1998 on a mission.  No longer would Big Idea be simply Phil's film company making Phil's films.   I would proactively grow it to the point where it could encompass the work of multiple storytellers working in film, TV, publishing, and whatever else we could think of.  I was particularly driven by the impact I saw the Disney Company and Nickelodeon having on kids across America.  Coming out of nowhere in the early 1990's, Nickelodeon had grown so large by the end of the decade that half of all kids watching commercial television at any given time were watching Nickelodeon.  Since the average American kid was watching more than three hours of television per day, the impact Nickelodeon's programming and intentionally subversive attitude (Nick marketers freely admitted that their strategy was to position themselves as a kids “true ally” and to exclude parents from the conversation) drove me to do as much as I could, as quickly as I could.  In my mind, Big Idea couldn't be built fast enough.   America's kids needed it that badly.

Lack of Experience; Lack of Help

I was aware, however, that I was a bit skinny on business experience.  If Big Idea was to have the impact I hoped for, I needed serious help.  So over the course of 1998, I assembled a group of experienced business folks to help.  I didn't have the industry connections or the money or prestige to pull people from Hollywood to suburban Chicago, so most of our executives were from the Chicago region and came primarily from large financial services and packaged goods companies like Kraft, Coca-Cola, Motorola, GE Capital and Price Waterhouse.  It really was a pretty impressive group with tons of business experience.  While they lacked traditional entertainment experience, the fact that VeggieTales was a product sold from store shelves made us all believe packaged goods experience would be just as valuable.  (In fact, the growth in importance of Wal-Mart at that time had inspired even giant studios like Disney and Warner Brothers to hire packaged goods experts from places like Proctor & Gamble and Kraft to help shape their strategies.)

By the end of 1998, things looked promising for the “new” Big Idea.  We had a hit product.  We had an experienced, fired-up leadership team.  We had a mission, and a big, hairy, audacious goal.  What we were missing was a plan.

“No Man's Land” threat number one, according to Inc.'s experts:  Small companies, experiencing rapid initial growth, attempt to make the leap to being “big” without having a clear plan for sustaining that growth. What got you to $10 million in sales won't necessarily take you to $100 million.

We sold something like seven million VeggieTales videos in 1998.  Unable to imagine selling more than that, I assumed future growth would need to come from other areas like television and feature films.   Unfortunately, the executive team I put together had no experience in television or feature films.  Rather than wade into unknown waters, they figured future growth would come from selling even more VeggieTales videos using marketing techniques they had learned in the world of packaged goods.  The team quickly discovered through research that even though we had sold seven million videos that year, only one-quarter of American mothers of young children had even heard of VeggieTales  So, they reasoned, growing awareness would result in increased sales.  

 

Enter 1999.  I began the year investigating the TV and feature film businesses, looking for points of entry for Big Idea.  I was working on these efforts more or less alone, though, as my executive team was busy building a large marketing group to launch an even larger VeggieTales awareness campaign.   Between 1998 and 2000 our marketing department grew from 1 person to 30 people.   We gave away 400,000 VeggieTales videos at the grand openings of malls and Target stores and took out two-page ads in People magazine to introduce America to the concept of VeggieTales.   As a result, our marketing expense grew from $3 million in 1998 to $13 million in 2000.   No problem, though, since the team estimated the increased awareness would double our sales within 24 months.

 

Except for one thing:  The projected sales growth never happened.  After 1998's amazing 7 million video mark, sales actually declined in 1999 and 2000.  Our marketing costs exploded, but our sales didn't.  That was a bit of a problem.

 

Meanwhile, I wasn't having much more luck getting us into new businesses.  Intrigued by the strategic possibilities of having a home in television, I began talking with the newly launched family network Pax TV about taking over their entire Saturday morning block.  They seemed genuinely interested, given VeggieTales' huge success.  I spent time crunching numbers and identifying other shows that could fill out a block alongside VeggieTales and be introduced by Bob & Larry.  The pieces were falling into place, when suddenly Pax announced they weren't interested in a Big Idea Saturday morning block, but would much rather we supply them with an hour of programming for prime time.  Since none of the shows I had been considering for Saturday morning would work well in prime time, I was back to square one.

As a hedge against the possibility that a TV strategy might not pan out, I was also trying to chart a course to take our animation studio toward feature film production.  In late 1998 we put Larry-Boy and the Rumor Weed into production, our most cinematic half-hour video yet.  It was my plan, in fact, that it would be our last half-hour video.  With that in mind, I had already put Mike to work on an elaborate 45-minute script based on a classic Bible story that would take us one step closer to the world of feature films.  The story was Jonah and the Whale.

Duke Nukem Forever Redux

So what happened?  How did Jonah wind up on the bigscreen?  That would be my doing.  As Rumor Weed headed into production, Mike and I worked out an outline for a 44-minute Jonah.  It was at this point that we decided to “bookend” the biblical story within a modern-day setup/wrap-up involving Bob, Dad Asparagus and a van full of veggie kids on their way to a Twippo concert.  (Although technically, Mike first had them heading to a “Tweezerman” concert.  Why “Tweezerman?”  Like many of his ideas, Mike could never really articulate where the name came from.   We changed the name during the film's production when someone noticed that “Tweezerman” was the registered trademark of a company that makes – you guessed it – tweezers.  Mike then proposed “Twippo.”  Where'd that one come from?   Again, he had no idea.)  So Mike started writing the setup as I was directing Rumor Weed.  As brilliantly funny as he is, Mike isn't always the most disciplined of writers, and seventeen pages into his script he was still in the modern-day setup.  He was just having too much fun with a van fulla veggies and a weird old seafood restaurant.  My first thought was, “Well, he'll just have to throw it away and start over again.”  But when I read it, I really liked it.  It was fun stuff.  So here's where I made a large mistake:  I let my fondness of Mike's pages overrule my business conviction that we were NOT ready to make a movie. Instead, a little voice in my head was whispering, “Well, maybe just a little movie…”

I ran some numbers.   The recently released Christian film “The Omega Code” had surprised everyone by grossing $13 million at the US box office with a tiny marketing budget of less than $2 million.   Using “The Omega Code” as a model, I estimated a small VeggieTales film with a $7 million production budget and a $7 million marketing budget needed to do $18.5 million at the box office and sell 3 million videos and DVDs.   I figured the 3 million video mark was achievable since our relatively low-budget half-hour VeggieTales Christmas video had already passed the 2 million unit mark.   As for the $18.5 million figure, it was only 40% more than The Omega Code and our film had a larger built-in audience and would launch with a much larger marketing budget.   The great thing was that if we hit these numbers, not only would our investment be returned, we'd also make about half the money needed to fund our second movie.   Looking at the numbers, it seemed like a no-brainer.   Write on, Mike!   Write on!   We're gonna make a movie!

Management

As small companies grow, the experts at Inc. magazine observed, their need for top-notch management often arrives years before their ability to attract or even afford top-notch management. Many small companies fail to survive “No Man's Land” because they either never find the management talent they need to make the leap from “small” to “big,” or even worse, they bring in the wrong management.

In 1999, as I pointed the company towards our first feature film, no one was running the animation studio. The last head of the studio had departed in 1998, and as Jonah rolled into development, we were in the midst of a search for his replacement.  The world in 1998 was not awash with seasoned CGI animation studio chiefs.  The pool of those willing to relocate to Chicago to make Christian films was even smaller.  Pathetically small.  In lieu of a production head, the studio was being managed by a committee composed of the studio's team leaders, most of whom were quite young and only one of whom had any previous management experience.  The process at times resembled “The Lord of the Flies” more than “The Art of Management.”  In the end, the studio would go “headless” for more than a year as our recruiter scoured Hollywood for the right person and Jonah barreled towards production like a runaway locomotive.

 

Our search finally ended in 2000 with the arrival of two seasoned industry veterans from Dreamworks Feature Animation.  One would act as Jonah's producer while the other ran the studio.  Given that the new studio head had never actually run an entire studio before, and the producer had only worked on traditionally animated films (and never in the role of overall producer), both faced a steep learning curve. Jonah would be well into production before the two had enough of a grasp of our unique production system to assemble a budget for the project.  They were inheriting a process and a crew that had been built and rebuilt over the years by a series of managers.

Gulp!

On top of that, a fair amount of hiring had already taken place with Jonah in mind.  Some department leaders had carefully thought through their own plans for Jonah and had begun hiring accordingly.  Others later admitted they started hiring simply “because everyone else was.”  The first budget forecast came in at $10 million.  I gulped.  Not the $7 million I was hoping for, but – heh, heh – it could be worse.

Within a few months, it would be.

MisCommunication/Groupthink

Back in Chicago, I told my new president I needed some time off.  We agreed that I would take the month of October off to rest and recuperate.  The team was in place.  They could manage the business without me.   October came, and Lisa and I headed to Hawaii for a week of rest.  I had intended to spend the rest of the month playing with my kids, taking pictures and studying the Bible.  The distance from Big Idea, though, gave me ample time and space to think things through and I began to doubt that things were going as well as I had thought.  One clue that perhaps they weren't came as I returned from Hawaii and was called in because my new president and executive vice president, locked in a dispute over their stock awards, were no longer speaking to one another.  Over the rest of month I noticed more and more concerning issues.  So many, in fact, that upon my return, I called all the leaders together and laid out my concerns about our direction one by one, in front of the entire team.  

The reactions were swift and strong.  Several leaders were embarrassed that I had mentioned concerns about their areas in front of their peers.  Another leader called it “the most important meeting he had ever attended.”  Our brand new head of human resources said it was “exactly what he expected Big Idea to be like.”  My president, however, wouldn't speak to me for two days.  When he finally did, he declared it “the biggest leadership disaster he had ever seen.”  The next day he instructed our new head of HR to help me write a full retraction and apology.  Boy was I confused.  I finally felt like I was leading boldly, but the man I had hired to help me lead described my bold leadership as a "disaster."  I agreed to apologize for any embarrassment I had caused by addressing concerns so publicly, but stopped short of issuing the full retraction my president had demanded.  It was clear the two of us didn't see eye-to-eye, and our relationship would be strained from here on out.

Wanna See a Joke?

Christmas, 1999.  Due to the rapid growth and hiring, we were a little short on cash.  So our annual Christmas party was held at Big Idea's new temporary offices in Lombard, Illinois.  Near the end of the evening, a good friend of mine and fellow senior leadership team member pulled me into his office and said, “Wanna see a joke?”  He dropped a thick, 3-ring binder on the table in front of me.  The cover read, “Big Idea Productions – 2000 Budget.”  Up to this point, Big Idea's growth had been so unexpected and chaotic that we had never successfully put together an annual budget or sales forecast.  Now that the leadership team was in place, though, it was time to start running things like a “real company.”  So while I was taking October off, the team had started a budget process that had produced the tome sitting in front of me.

Stop meddling, we're professionals

As soon as we returned from the holidays, I called the leaders together and posed a simple question: “What exactly are we building here?”  We were proposing to triple our expenses, while only doubling our sales.  More concerning, we were proposing to double our staff size, without increasing our ability to produce films.   Of the 165 hires being requested, only a handful were in the animation studio.  Ninety percent were in finance, HR, marketing, licensing and design.  So at 315 people we would be able to produce no more videos per year than we had produced five years earlier with a staff of 10.  The meeting ended with no answers and very little real discussion.  It was as if most of the leaders just wanted me to go write the next video and leave the business up to them.  Stop meddling, we're professionals.  My president assured me the budget wasn't yet approved and we wouldn't be hiring anywhere near that many people.  Don't worry.  We know what we're doing.

...

A few weeks later the sales results for the month of January came in.  The team missed the number they had forecast in the 2000 budget by 80%.  Not by 20%… by 80%.

When Charismatic Bad Leaders Undermine Good Apples...err...Advise

It was clear to me that changes needed to be made to my leadership team.  Though they were all good people that I liked very much, their lack of experience in the entertainment business, coupled with my lack of experience in the entertainment business, was not going to get the company through this crisis.   Nervously, I asked several key members to step down.  Several others left in protest.  (They had, by now, become a fairly tight bunch.)  By the end of 2000, my president, CFO, marketing chief and licensing chief were all gone.  Only my executive vice president and head of human resources remained.  My EVP and I quickly brought in a freelance CFO to keep the bank from panicking and shutting down the company.  We then went on a tear, trying to raise $30 million in less than 120 days.  We sent out information packets and visited with wealthy VeggieTales fans across the country.  The reaction was not good.  Though they loved the company and the films, the financial situation Big Idea now faced did not inspire confidence.  One potential investor, after reviewing the company's financials, shook his head in disbelief and muttered, “What did you do to VeggieTales?!?”

Funeral

In April of 2001 we met an experienced Christian executive from Hollywood who wanted to help.  Clearly in dire need of someone who really knew the entertainment business, I hopped on a plane to Los Angeles and offered him Big Idea's presidency.  He hit the ground running.  Sharing an office in the basement of our old Woolworth space in Lombard with our freelance CFO, the new president soon discovered that the situation was worse than we had thought.  According to their new forecast, the company would run out of cash and be forced to shut its doors by the middle of June, just 60 days away.

 

It was clear drastic steps were needed.  The new president recommended immediately cutting staff to preserve cash.  Though I absolutely despised the thought of laying people off, it was clear that Big Idea was horribly overstaffed given our actual sales level.  Many of our leaders had built their teams based on sales forecasts that simply never came to pass.  The unthinkable was now the only way out.  

 

In early May of 2001 I stood before the entire company and explained the choices we were forced to make.  What began as a typically upbeat all company meeting soon turned into a funeral.  The whole room wilted in front of me as I explained that it would be the last day at Big Idea for some of those gathered there.  Some burst into tears.  Others sat in stunned disbelief, or hardened into anger.  For everyone, a part of Big Idea died that day.  A part of me died, too, as I found myself overwhelmed with the feeling I had let everyone down.  After the meeting I drove to a nearby park, sat on a park bench and cried.

 

30 really great people lost their jobs that day.  My president and CFO had a sinking feeling it wasn't enough – that we hadn't cut deeply enough.  I sure hoped they were wrong.

Double Edged Passion

At this point, we really had just two options.  The first was to press ahead with the current plan – to raise enough money to complete Jonah and hope that this film about a waterlogged prophet would bring in enough money to keep Big Idea's own leaky boat afloat.  The second was to radically cut back.  Stop production on Jonah, shut down the animation studio and outsource future animation to Canada or Japan, cut the company down from 200 to a core team of 30-40 people, and go back to producing just one or two VeggieTales videos per year.  Both my new president and our freelance CFO recommended this second, more radical option.  Frankly, it was the option most likely to save the company.  At least what would be left of it.  But I couldn't do it.  To pull the plug on Jonah and shutter the animation studio – the animation studio we'd been building for 9 years – seemed like a decision I would make out of a lack of faith.  Surely God was pleased with the impact we were having.  Surely he was pleased by our efforts to have even more impact.  Surely he could use Jonah to cover up the mistakes of our past, erase our fiscal shortcomings and set us on the road to renewed health and ministry.  The way I saw it, to choose the second option was to lose faith in God.  I wouldn't do it.

 

That decision made, we needed to come up with a bunch of money very quickly.  My new president knew it would be impossible to raise the money we needed from investors in 90 days.  We all knew raising money directly for Jonah's production wouldn't work, since the amount of money we needed far exceeded Jonah's production budget.   (Wanna look like a fool in Hollywood?  Tell people you need to raise $20 million to produce a $10 million film.)  The only potential source for the money, my president reckoned, was our distributors.  VeggieTales videos were still among the best-selling kids videos in the world.  Retailers wanted more.  Distributors wanted more.  The market's desire for more of our product appeared to be the only asset we had left.

"Everything Did Not Work"

The details are too long for a synopsis so you'll have to check the full article. It involves the failure of the cartoon and Live version as well as a lot of other business fall-outs between those events.

Epilogue

It's sort of like when your house is on fire and the only escape route is to jump out the window into your neighbor's yard, but you know your neighbor has a rather ill-tempered Pit Bull.  The hotter it gets, the more likely you are to say, “Let's solve the fire thing first, and worry about the Pit Bull later.”  It isn't a perfect plan, but if it's the only plan you've got…

When you own an animation studio, lacking the money for your movie really means you lack the money for your animation studio.  It isn't a good position to find yourself in.  The next choice became painfully clear, and painfully, well, painful.

In late summer of 2002, just a few weeks before Jonah's release date, we had a premier event just for the company and production crew.  The film was done.  It looked great.  Even many of the freelancers flew in to see the finished product and attend the wrap party on a boat in Lake Michigan the next night. We rented the “big room” at the McClurg Court theaters for our premier – the room that had been set up for digital projection by George Lucas's company for one of their own events.  The film looked and sounded amazing.  The crowd was thrilled, and thunderous applause followed the credits.  But I barely made it through my speech thanking everyone for their work, because I knew, along with just a few other leaders in the room that night, that the next morning we would announce that the wrap party was cancelled, the Bob & Larry Movie was postponed indefinitely, and more than half the studio would be laid off.  For those of us who knew what was about to happen, it was the most bittersweet night imaginable.

The next morning Big Idea's nine-year effort to build a feature animation studio ended.  Worst of all, the folks who got laid off were many of those who had worked the hardest on Jonah.  People who had put their lives on hold to help launch Big Idea into the world of feature films, who had just fallen across the finish line in exhaustion, found themselves rewarded with… pinkslips.  Many were understandably angry.  One artist sent out an email to the whole company as he was packing his things saying simply, “Has anyone seen my copy of ‘Where's God When I'm F-f-fired?!?'” Another said he would never again work so hard for an employer.  But others were remarkably gracious, pointing out to their peers the friendships that were forged at Big Idea during Jonah's production.  I honestly wondered if keeping the company alive was worth the emotional toll on those let go as we tried to save it.  But throughout, I clung to hope.  “If Jonah works,” I thought, “I'll bring them all back.”

Silence of the Heavens

Friday, October 4, 2002.  Jonah's release date.  It's amazing to find yourself in a position where 3 years of hard work will be justified – or not – in one day.  While opening day box office doesn't necessarily tell you exactly how a film will perform, it tells you a lot.   For Jonah to pay back its production and marketing costs and have any hope of returning additional monies to stabilize Big Idea, we figured we needed at least an $8 million opening weekend.  Given that our film was only going out on 800 screens (as opposed to the 3000+ of major family films), an $8 million gross was aggressive, though theoretically achievable. More importantly, that kind of gross would get noticed by the newspapers, which would get people talking, which could lead to the kind of buzz that can boost a film to a whole different level.  Suffice it to say, we were all a little tense.

 

The first call from Artisan came in at about 2pm central time, just a few hours after the film had opened on the East coast and in the Midwest.  3 or 4 of us huddled in a marketing room to listen.  The numbers were off the chart.  Huge.  Moms with preschoolers were evidently turning out in droves – selling out afternoon screenings.  We were so happy we felt like crying.  And dancing.  If those numbers held up, we could be looking at a $10+ million opening weekend which would place Jonah in the top 2 or 3 films that week and earn us lots of free press in newspapers across America.  Perhaps God was going to use Jonah to save Big Idea after all.

 

The second call came at 4pm.  Something had changed. The numbers now didn't look nearly as good as just two hours earlier.  While some theaters were selling out, others appeared to be half empty.  The first numbers from our 120 screens in Canada were horrid.  Our visions of a $10 million opening weekend melted. $8 million didn't look very likely either.  Artisan believed we were headed somewhere in the vicinity of $6 million.  We deflated.  While respectable, $6 million probably wouldn't put the film on track to recoup its investment, much less bail out the rest of the company.  In just two hours we had gone from euphoria to deflation - an emotional swing so powerful that even 2 1/2 years later, it feels like it happened yesterday.

 

The final number for opening weekend was $6.5 million, below the $8 million we were hoping for but enough to earn Artisan congratulatory calls from competing studios.  Conventional wisdom in Hollywood had Jonah opening at about $3 million.  Artisan was thrilled, and immediately requested approval to spend another $3 million on TV ads to keep the momentum going.  Perhaps Jonah would have the “legs” of a “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” they reasoned.  Additional ads could carry quotes from the generally positive reviews we were receiving.  While I had serious misgivings about spending any more money on the film, I couldn't help but wonder if an extra boost at this critical moment might be the thing that would push Jonah over the proverbial hump.  Maybe that $3 million would mean the difference between a $20 million gross and a $40 million gross.  Maybe that $3 million would save the company.  I approved the additional spend.

 

In the end, Jonah grossed just over $25 million at the domestic box office.  Since half of that money stays with the theaters, Artisan received a little more than $12 million, which wasn't enough to recoup the $15 million they had spent marketing the film.  (Artisan wasn't worried, though, since they would continue recouping their money from the home video release.)  On the one hand, $25 million was a lot more than the $18 million I had originally projected.  Jonah was the 6th highest grossing movie in America on opening weekend (bumped out of the top 5 by the surprise success of the urban comedy “Barbershop”) and the number two film in America in terms of gross per theater.  Virtually everyone in Hollywood was surprised by our performance, which would help us immensely in trying to put together subsequent films.  But the reality was clear that Jonah was unlikely to return its own investment, much less fund the rest of Big Idea.  

 

“Well,” I thought, “maybe if the home video doesreally, really well…”

I was beginning to sound like a Cubs fan.

The winter of 2002 was a difficult time at Big Idea. Not that any time in the prior 2 years had been particularly chipper, but things were really glum now. With Jonah's theatrical release behind us, we nervously awaited the home video launch in March.   Spirits aboard the good ship Veggie were sinking rapidly.  The Lyrick lawsuit had already cost us $2 million in legal fees, and the bills kept coming. 3-2-1 Penguins and "Larryboy 2D" were shut down.  "The Bob & Larry Movie" was indefinitely postponed.  Two more rounds of layoffs rocked the company as we desperately tried to preserve cash.  Noticing the water rising in the hold, artists started jumping ship.   Blue Sky Studios in New York was just starting production on “Robots,” their follow-up to the surprise CGI hit “Ice Age.”  One Big Idea artist left for Blue Sky, and several others immediately followed.   Eventually so many Big Idea artists jumped at the project that we began referring to any studio sick days as “Blue Flu.”

Since any effort to raise or borrow additional money was precluded by the unresolved lawsuit with Lyrick, settling the suit became our top priority.  Lyrick's new owners at HIT wouldn't budge, though.  As a last resort, we explained our financial situation to HIT's CEO. We had $500,000 set aside to try the case in court.  We offered HIT that money as a last ditch settlement offer, confessing that if the suit went to court and we lost, we would be forced into bankruptcy and Lyrick would have to get in line with the other creditors.  We were out of money.  HIT still refused to settle and the case was scheduled for April in Dallas federal court.

 

Tensions were also rising higher internally as we searched for new ways to cut costs.  My president in LA thought our Chicago operations could be cut back significantly.  Given the death of 3-2-1 Penguins and Larryboy 2D, I wondered why we still needed the staff in LA hired to oversee their development.  He wanted to shut down the animation studio in Chicago. I wanted to curtail his development efforts in LA.   Unable to resolve our differences, we parted company.  The LA office closed shortly thereafter.

 

The changes saved us some money, but now I was the only one left at the company with enough knowledge of our distribution experience to represent Big Idea at the Lyrick trial.  Our Dallas attorneys flew to Chicago to prepare me for my first experience in big time litigation.  Bob the Tomato and Barney the Dinosaur were about to mix it up in front of a jury of their peers.

 

Meanwhile, back in the world of retail, the Jonah home video and DVD hit stores March 4, 2003.  Like the film in theaters, it performed solidly if not spectacularly, selling about 2.5 million copies.  I had hoped for 3 million, but the four years since I had made my original projection had seen a steady weakening in VeggieTales' sales.  Every property has a “life cycle,” and Jonah, conceived at VeggieTales' peak, was hitting home video about 2 years late.  Even worse, my original forecast was ignorant of the fact that Jonah's two-disc format and shiny “holofoil” packaging, plus Artisan's use of Fox Home Video for certain fulfillment services would add an extra $1.50 or more to the cost of each DVD.  The result was much less money coming back to recoup Artisan's marketing expenditure and, ultimately, our investment. In the end we sold 2.5 million copies of Jonah on VHS and DVD and didn't see a single penny of revenue.  Our $14 million investment ($12.5 million for production plus another $1.5 million for computer gear we assumed we'd use on future movies as well) was completely lost.

 

By early April 2003 only 65 people remained at Big Idea, down from 210 just 6 months earlier.  Thirteen of us gathered for an evening prayer meeting just a few days before I was to head down to Dallas for the trial, and prayed earnestly for the survival of Big Idea.  The next week I walked to a department store across the mall from our offices and picked out a suit to get me through the projected 2-3 weeks of sitting in court.  I called it my “law suit.”  I arrived in Dallas and checked into the Hampton Inn across from the Federal building.  It had been fourteen years since I started GRAFx Studios, initiating my quest to tell stories and make a difference in the world.  Now it appeared it would all be decided by nine strangers sitting under cold fluorescent lights in a courtroom that, combined with the Texas accents of most of the participants, made me wonder if I had just woken up in a bad episode of "Matlock."

 

The first day was jury selection.  Two women quickly identified themselves as huge VeggieTales fans and confessed that they couldn't possibly imagine Big Idea doing any wrong.  They were quickly excused from the room, never to be seen again.  (No doubt eaten in the parking lot by an angry purple dinosaur.) At lunch our lawyer told me to try to look more “interested” in the jury selection process.  As if wearing a suit every day wasn't punishment enough!  It's not that I wasn't interested, mind you.  It was just that after 4 or 5 hours of listening to lawyers ask truck drivers if they had any strong preconceived notions about Christians, Texas or Barney the Dinosaur, one's mind can wander. I tried harder.

 

Over the next week I would be asked not to look around the room casually.  Not to bounce my knee.   Not to exhibit excessive interest in the light fixtures overhead.  I was beginning to think I might not be cut out for this line of work.  The court proceedings themselves vacillated between painfully boring and extremely aggravating.  Lyrick's lawyer at times made me so angry I wanted to jump up and yell, “That's ridiculous!”  But by then I had learned that my job was to sit still and look interested.  Nothing more, nothing less.  So on the outside I appeared interested.  But on the inside I was asking God to cut the power to the Federal building so we could all go home.

 

In the end, Lyrick's argument boiled down to this: Even though a contract had never been signed nor even fully agreed on, and acknowledging that copyright law precludes the transfer of any rights without a signed document, they insisted there was a binding agreement between Lyrick and Big Idea based on the original offer letter that bore their president's signature and a return correspondence from one of my employees that carried his signature on a fax cover sheet.  Even though their president's letter clearly stated that there would be no “binding relationship” until a formal agreement was signed by both parties, Lyrick argued that this letter and our fax cover sheet constituted the binding relationship.  

Furthermore, they argued, even though the unsigned draft agreement clearly stated that we could walk away if we did not approve of a new owner or replacement for Dick Leach, Lyrick's lawyer pointed out that they had added the wording “approval which Big Idea will not unreasonably withhold.”  We pointed out that we had never agreed to such a vague phrase (which, in fact, was one of the reasons the agreement was still unsigned and under negotiation). Now Lyrick went for broke.  Big Idea didn't walk away because we didn't like HIT Entertainment, they argued.  HIT Entertainment was a perfectly acceptable partner.  We didn't walk away because HIT Chairman Peter Orton wasn't an acceptable replacement for Dick Leach.  Dick Leach was hardly active in the business any more.  No, Big Idea walked away because we wanted more money.  Lots more money.  Big Idea didn't walk away because of philosophical convictions, Lyrick explained to the jury. We walked away because we were greedy for money. And that was not a “reasonable” reason to walk away. Yes, Big Idea had the right to approve of HIT's purchase of Lyrick.  But we “unreasonably withheld that approval.”  I looked at the jury.  Could they possibly be buying this?

Finally, recognizing that VHS sales were declining rapidly and damages from lost VHS sales would be minimal, Lyrick argued that we had given them DVD rights to all our films, even though the draft contract clearly stated “videocassette” only.  Their evidence: the two films we had allowed them to release on DVD to test audience interest in the new format.  Lyrick's lawyer showed the two DVD cases to the jury, highlighting the Lyrick logos on the back corner.  “See?  They gave us DVD rights.”  This argument struck me as particularly preposterous.  "They'll never go for that logic," I chuckled to myself.

The jury was sent away with four questions to answer - questions that would determine the fate of everything we'd built in 14 years.  The next week we returned to court to hear the conclusions.  Did Lyrick Studios and Big Idea have a binding agreement?  "Yes," the lead juror responded.  Did Big Idea have the right to walk away if they didn't approve of the sale of the company?  Again, "Yes."  Did Big Idea 'unreasonably withhold' that approval?  "Yes."  And finally, did Lyrick have the rights to VeggieTales DVDs?  "Yes."

The gavel came down awarding Lyrick $11 million in damages.  All their legal fees, plus every penny they estimated they would have made selling VeggieTales DVD's over the remainder of the term stated in our unsigned draft agreement.  Lyrick's lawyers were ecstatic.  Big Idea's lawyers were flabberghasted.  Our lead lawyer, a great guy who was shocked by the loss, drove me to the airport for a long, painful flight back to Chicago.  Big Idea Productions was dead.  It was over.

Joe Maloney said:

January 11th, 2007 at 12:50 am

As a lawyer, I’d like to comment on Phil’s account of the trial in his book. I was impressed at Phil’s ability to understand the other side’s arguments. Most persons in his position are so focused on their own perspective they cannot grasp the other side’s arguments; but Phil fully understood Hit’s legal/factual case. So he was all the more credible in explaining why those arguments were completely, totally, wrong.
The court of appeal decision, which reversed the jury’s verdict, did so for just the reasons Phil articulated. It’s a very rare thing for a court of appeal to reverse a jury verdict. In his book, Phil gives what may be the most likely explanation for how it was that the jury got it wrong: God blinded them, because God wanted Big Idea Inc. to fail, so Phil could be Phil. A lawyer would provide another explanation, though: the trial court judge should never have let that case go to the jury.
Finally, I was moved by Phil’s gracious words about the lawyer who lost the case; and admire his restraint in speaking about the lawyers for Hit Entertainment.
Good luck, Phil.

Responsibility

A dream is a powerful thing.  There is little more thrilling than seeing a dream come to life.  And little more heartbreaking than watching it die.

Shortly after Jonah hit theaters, I got a letter from a fan in the Midwest with a two-page critique of the film.  It hadn't done as well as it could have, he explained, because of serious flaws in its story structure.  He went on to explain Jonah's flaws at great length.  While some of his points were certainly well taken, what struck me more about the letter was the emotion behind it.  He was angry.  Really angry. He closed with the interesting statement that if I didn't respond to his criticism, he would send his letter to major Christian magazines and “expose” our creative shortcomings to the entire Christian world.

A dream is a powerful thing.  Letters like his made me realize just how much emotion people had invested in my dream.  Not just the artists, designers and business people who had moved their families across the country to actively join the effort, but also the fans.  This fellow, like many others, was so excited about my dream of a “Christian Disney” that my failure to deliver on that dream struck him much more deeply than you would expect.  Big Idea had become his dream, too, and now that his dream was failing, he was angry.

 

When we lose something, be it a job, a relationship, or a dream, we want to know why.  Whose fault was it?  Who should I be mad at, because I really want to be mad at someone!  So it was with Big Idea.  

So the members of that first executive team are the villains!  You could probably come to that conclusion, but I don't think so.  I mean, can I really blame packaged goods executives for attempting to use packaged goods marketing techniques to sell films that ultimately show up on store shelves as – packaged goods?  And VeggieTales success itself had become a huge challenge.  Whenever you have an unprecedented hit, future planning becomes extraordinarily difficult simply because there are no precedents.  There were no comparables for VeggieTales.  Our sales had skyrocketed 3300% in four years!  Against that backdrop, how do you project the future?  More skyrocketing?  Was our growth almost done, or just getting started?  Look at another example:  Between Christmas 2003 and Christmas 2004, sales of Apple's iPod increased by a staggering 500%.  A huge success, but also a huge challenge.  How many iPods do you make for Christmas 2005?  500% more than 2004?  100% more?  10% less?  Unprecedented success is extremely difficult to manage simply because it is unprecedented.  Every year is a big ol' guess.  Guess wrong one way and you'll choke your success by running out of product or not having enough man-power to support the demand.  Guess wrong the other way, and you could crash and burn right in the midst of your success.  As wrong as the forecasts my team made in 1999 ended up being, I honestly believe they did the best they could with the information and the experience they had.

Ultimately, of course, I could have overruled them at any point.  I could have stopped the hiring.  Cut staff.  Decreased the forecasts.  Redirected the strategies. As controlling shareholder, CEO and sole boardmember (building a board of directors was something we often discussed but never got around to actually doing), I had the final word on everything.  So who is ultimately to blame for the collapse of Big Idea.  Well, me, of course.  Sure, I could blame the guy who engineered the distribution moves that sparked the lawsuit, but he wouldn't have had to do that if I hadn't allowed the company to become so huge and indebted.  I could blame our production management for not sticking to my original plan for Jonah, but then I have to remind myself that when the film went into production, wehad no production management.  And I could blame the first executive team for making the company so huge, but then I have to remember that one of the things that attracted them to Big Idea in the first place was a line I put into our mission statement way back in 1997 – something about building “a top 4 family media brand within 20 years.” A statement that sounded an awful lot like we were supposed to get really big.  A statement that, even at the time, I was pretty sure had emanated suspiciously from my own noggin in response to a business book exercise, as opposed to from God after much prayer and reflection.

So there you have it.  The real culprit is Jim Collins, author of the book Built to Last.  Oh, if only it were that easy.  I have seen the enemy, and he is me.  My strengths built Big Idea, and my weaknesses brought it down.  Throughout Big Idea's history, my business instincts were generally quite good.  But I had no experience managing people or leading teams to accomplish goals.  I had, after all, spent my high school years in the basement experimenting with film cameras and computers.  I was a shy kid who would rather read Starlog Magazine or build a rudimentary optical printer out of cannibalized 8mm projectors than show up at the prom or run for student government.  As VeggieTales took off, I became terrified that my business inexperience and lack of people skills would result in Big Idea's failure.  So, in a panic, I brought in others to help, often spending far too little time getting to know them before or after the hire.  I then backed down from my own convictions, assuming that an executive with an impressive resume surely knew better than a Bible college dropout.  And I launched projects like Jonah before we were really ready to handle them, assuming we'd figure things out on the fly as I had done in the basement and with the very first VeggieTales episode.  The result was some amazingly rabid fans, and absolute organizational chaos.  The result was the rise – and fall – of Big Idea.

Apology

For the record, I'm sorry.  A lot of wonderful people brought their dreams to Big Idea.  And almost all of them were deeply affected both by the persistent organizational chaos and by the trauma of the slow, painful collapse.  The ultimate responsibility for both lie with me.  And I'm really, really sorry.  Just as Big Idea really wasn't ready to tackle the production challenge of Jonah, I really wasn't ready to tackle the management challenge of Big Idea.

For (IMO) the opposite perspective in which a pioneer was too aggressive, you can read the Wired Article of Duke Nukem which mouser posted in this DC Link.

Testimonials

Steve Black said:

September 17th, 2006 at 1:50 am

WOW! What a great, and tragic, story. I was saddened to hear of the crash of Big Idea - but had not idea of what happened behind the scenes.

Regardless of all the legal issues, bitter former employees, poor decisions and risks - you created a great product. Your hard work and even mistakes are an ispiration to others to push the envelope. You scratched the surface of a market that is longing for fun entertainment without a “heavy” message. This allows the mainstreem to accept it - when they might run from a full out Christian theme.

For what it is worth - my kids don’t know or understand business. What they know is - the love Bob and Larry. They still sing the silly songs.

Disney lost his first creations through poor legal decisions. If he didn’t take that hit - he never would have gone back to the drawing board and created a mouse.

Get back on the horse. Create again.

Ron Yamauchi said:

September 20th, 2006 at 10:06 pm

A fascinating story. Thanks for posting this, Mr. Vischer.

As a film critic and a somewhat reluctant atheist, I’m not one of your natural allies, but I honestly can say that Jonah is a terrific movie that my kids and I have watched many many times. They even play the computer game.

The big idea behind Big Idea — children’s entertainment with solid family values — is still extremely needed in the market and in our homes. Please continue your excellent work.

Did I say work? I mean, your excellent goofy humour, singable songs, out-of-left-field wit, and general shenanigans!

P.S. I haven't actually viewed and downloaded these torrents and I did zero research on the series so I don't even know how complete these collections are but to save anyone's time searching, these two torrent urls seems to host a semi-complete collection.

This one seems to be the public torrent with the most seeders

This one seems to have the largest overall GB

Be warned though that these are monova links and while it is also a popular service, it isn't up there with Isohunt, BTJunkie, (old) Piratebay and (old) Mininova in terms of popularity so I'd at least suggest scanning it with a good anti-malware just in case.

971

General Software Discussion / Re: Evernote alternative that has an online interface?

« Last post by Paul Keith on December 28, 2009, 01:00 AM »

I don't have Surfulater but J-Mac, have you tested this on other online services?

Would be interesting to see what services work well with it.

The Surfulater-Dropbox was what kept me considering whether I should buy the program or not.

972

General Software Discussion / Re: Evernote alternative that has an online interface?

« Last post by Paul Keith on December 27, 2009, 07:58 PM »

@rxantos

It's not an alternative but you might want to consider the secure notes feature in LastPass.

Maybe you could even get them to add features to it.

Still...I'm guessing most would be saying to use fsekrit or TrueCrypt combined with DropBox.

973

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / GTD In the Early 19th Century

« Last post by Paul Keith on December 27, 2009, 05:14 PM »

@field:
[ ] plow

@axe:
[ ] chop wood
[ ] kill chicken

Source Article

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Living Room / Re: Open Source Proves Elusive as a Business Model

« Last post by Paul Keith on December 27, 2009, 04:21 PM »

[P.S. - Sorry, I don't really know what I'm talking about. I just got caught up in a rant while reading the last few replies.]

Of course the irony of gratis in the FSF philosophy is that it failed to account the social stigma associated with freedom (a clue they could have found when observing libertarianism) and thus they inadvertedly created a communist/socialist-analogical community who consider such GPL products as welfare as opposed to a free market-analogical community who understands the power of humanity to build small markets up instead of being a slave to their consumerism.

Is interesting that in a capitalistic world, people expect software to be free. I wonder if you can say that to your landlord, to give free rent. Or how about at the store, free food. Get my meaning, software takes effort and time, and thus on a capitalistic world is not possible to expect software to be free.

We aren't in a capitalistic world. We are in a capitalist-associating world.

It's like the technological upgrade to religion where people think they're following the teachings of their religion but is in reality blindly following the teachings of their religion authorities.

Still, the examples are poor.

Tons of addicted MMORPG players pay their rent and most likely tons of those won't pay their rent for FOSS despite their support because they're two different visions: One is often perceived like fire, the other is often perceived as the Playboy Mansion.

How about the store? E-bay, Amazon, Lulu.

More like where's our realization of the value of barter?

Where is our school's elementary education on money so that we wouldn't be influenced by our average adult's limited perception of money?

To quote a Nolan Chart article I once woofed: Where is this in our basic History class?! (P.S. I'm not American though and don't keep up with educational trends so these might not apply)

(You might want to head straight to the article to get a more balanced view by being able to read the comments section)

Most people seem to treat money as if it were an object. And for most people, money is an object, or to put it better, acquiring money is an objective. But in reality, money should not be viewed as an object, but rather as a tool. Money serves three main purposes: as a medium of exchange, as a unit by which to measure economic value, and as a means by which to store wealth.

Unit to Measure Economic Value

More importantly, money serves as a unit by which to measure the value of all goods and services in an economy. By creating a standard unit of economic measure, we can easily compare the value of different goods and services. Using money as a measurement, we can have a pretty good idea how much our labor or work is worth, and what it will cost us to buy food, clothing, building materials, fuel, and anything else—and it is relatively easy to compare the value of each of these, and manage our budgets accordingly.

Without money, however, we would be stuck with a barter system. For a chicken farmer who wants to build a new barn, he would have to know how many eggs he needs to trade for lumber. And that will be different for different lumbermen according to their need for eggs or who they might know who would want to trade eggs for something else they want. How many eggs is a pound of nails worth? How many pounds of nails would it take to buy a car? How many cars would you need to trade for a house? How many pounds of beef could you buy with your piano? Without money as a standard unit of measurement, the barter system can be rather capricious, and the value of goods and services might vary wildly depending on what each trader needs at that moment, and how perishable the commodities are.

Maybe one board is worth two dozen eggs to the lumber man, and the egg farmer is willing to pay it. But say the farmer needs five-hundred boards; that means he would have to trade a thousand dozen eggs for the lumber to build his barn. Can he get a thousand dozen eggs together all at once? And even if he can, what is a lumber man going to do with a thousand dozen eggs? If he doesn’t need them, he certainly wouldn’t trade for them! And so this touches back on the use of money as a medium of exchange, but it also leads to the third purpose of money:

For most of human history, money has been coined, not printed.

And even when currency was printed, it was not actually money. For instance, most printed currency in the United States was merely a note that was redeemable for gold or silver (called "specie"). The gold and silver was legal tender—that is gold and silver was actually money. Currency was merely a note that was intended to represent the specie. From time to time, governments have issued paper currency without backing it with any commodity. The revolutionary colonies printed "Continentals", and during the American War Between the States, the U.S. printed "Greenbacks." But for most of this country’s history (and indeed the long history of civilization), most legal tender has been in the form of gold, silver, copper or other coin, or measured by metal bullion.

With the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913,

we started to see a momentous shift by large banking interests to create a system of fiat money. In 1934, when the federal government confiscated all privately-held gold in the United States, the value of the U.S. dollar was defined in terms of gold, being 0.048379... troy ounces of gold per dollar (or $20.67 per troy ounce of gold). Even after this, and up until 1972, the value of the dollar was defined by law in terms of gold. But after a half-century of money-manipulation, the bankers finally got their way, and the value of the U.S. Dollar was allowed to be determined by other means.

Now, let’s back up about 200 years.

The statesmen of the young United States realized the dangers of fiat currency. They saw the value of the "Continentals" printed during the American War for Independence evaporate in short order. For this reason, when they drafted the U.S. Constitution in 1787, they specified that no state shall make anything but gold or silver legal tender. Furthermore, they vested the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof specifically in Congress—and up to 1913, Congress exercised this power without much problem. Then they created the Federal Reserve, and the power to regulate the value of money began to shift from Congress to this banking cartel.

I call the Federal Reserve a banking cartel, because that is what it is. It is a quasi-public entity, chartered by Congress with certain duties and responsibilities, which has been granted a monopoly on managing the money supply in the United States. But it didn’t happen all at once, because at the time it was created, gold and silver were still legal tender, and U.S. treasury notes were still redeemable for specie at a fixed value. It took the crisis of the Great Depression to allow the confiscation of all privately-held gold in the country and replace it with fiat currency, Federal Reserve Notes, which is what we have today. (This is a subject worth a very thick book.)

What is the value of the Federal Reserve Notes in your wallet?

Well, the value now fluctuates daily, hourly, by the second. Money traders and banking houses now manipulate the value of currencies all over the world. Since its inception, the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve have created constant fluctuation. But over time, it results in continual inflation: what $1 buys today would have cost less than 5-cents in 1913. But except for a few periods of rampant inflation, this devaluation of the dollar has been relatively gradual, so maybe it isn’t such a big deal.

Who is Favored by Inflation?

Debtors: If I owe money to someone, and inflation occurs, when I end up paying that money back, it is worth less than when I first borrowed it, and may be easier to get. But then of course, there is interest, and the lender must be assiduous to make sure the interest is enough to ensure a profit after considering inflation. And if dollars are worth less in the future, that means I’ll have to make sure whatever line of work I am or whatever products I produce, my income at least keeps up with inflation, if I am to pay back that loan, the interest, and come out ahead.

IRS: When you buy or sell anything, the IRS makes you determine your capital gains by subtracting the base value from the gross sale price (and perhaps subtracting other associated costs). Let’s use an example: say Mr. and Mrs. Peterson bought a house in 1970 for $35,000 and they sold it in 2000 for $155,000. Their profit, for tax purposes, was $120,000. At a 15% tax rate, they owe $18,000 in capital gains taxes. But what did the value of the dollar do in those 30 years? Well, there are a number of things you might compare: the consumer price index, average annual wages, the value of a commodity like silver or gold, etc. Let’s just use the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index. It says that $35,000 in 1970 dollars would be equivalent to about $155,000 in 2000 Dollars. So, if the dollar lost so much value that it takes $155,000 in 2000 to buy the same amount of goods and services as $35,000 in 1970, what was Mr. and Mrs. Peterson’s actual profit? What they had to sell and work for the buy the house in 1970 is actually equal to what they would have to sell and work for to by the same house in 2000! Realizing the inflation of the Dollar, there was no actual profit! But to the IRS, Mr. and Mrs. Peterson owe $18,000 in taxes (in 2000 Dollars). And so there’s one example of how inflationary policy favors government tax collection at the expense of tax payers.

The people who get to spend the new money first.

When the money supply grows faster than the aggregate of all the goods and services in an economy, the result is inflation. But when new money is printed, the person who spends the money first gets to enjoy the value of that cash before the general value of the currency decreases. And so who is it that usually spends that money first? Banks. Those who borrow new money from banks. Government. Contractors who are paid by the government. These are the folks who realize an advantage by spending the new money before inflation occurs from the increased money supply.

And there is a third class of people who benefit from a monetary policy that allows the value of money to fluctuate: banks and money-traders. As I will explain with an allegory, while over the long-term tendency is for inflation to devalue fiat currency, in the short-term the value of a given currency might go up and down. This allows for clever traders to capitalize on these exchange differences, acquire when the exchange is down, and trade when it goes up, and pocket the difference. Such trading activity does nothing to add value to the money, nor does it create any wealth or contribute in any positive way to economic prosperity. But it is a simple way to make a profit, and a small percentage of this exchanged money is continually skimmed by the banks and other money-changers.

Capitalistic world? Most of us stupid people don't even know we're g. married!

Reference:

There is not a man in the country that can't make a living for himself and family.  But he can't make a living for them *and* his government, too, the way his government is living.  

What the government has got to do is live as cheap as the people. -- The Best of Will Rogers

Source: PopUp Wisdom

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / NANY Suggestion: tf doc version of Accomplish More by Doing Less

« Last post by Paul Keith on December 27, 2009, 04:07 AM »

Demo Copy made with Zoho Creator

(Link describing the method also located in that link)

P.S. I'm just suggesting tf docs because it's the only one I know of. Still my biggest problem is knowing of an app or a boiler plate that auto-generates stars and has a unique way of highlighting merge projects and a much easier edit method like the input method of NowDoThis or the project view of Behance Action Method Online + notes detail hover preview and a blank form where you can write down the result after a month.

Note that if anyone knows any other productivity purgers, thank you for also sharing.