skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Obviously, the best situation would be for majorities in both parties to be against this stuff. But a world where Republicans are against it and Dems are for it is much better than the world we've had for the last few years, in which both parties were on Hollywood's side.
> the governments (federal and state) collectively spend billions of dollars ensuring that our roadways are safe for vehicles.

Where do you think that "the governments" got that money?
While yes a theatre experience is more "grand" I think I'm not alone in saying that I've watched more movies at home in the last year alone than I have spent on theatre tickets. What they'll lose in "quality" they will most definitely make in quantity. Ease of access to the content will lead to higher viewership.
Speaking as someone who did a lot of competitive public speaking back in the day, the frisson of "panic" just before you start is your friend. I'm worried if I don't feel it.

As for the rest of the advice, it's probably good advice on how not to royally suck, but not on how to actually be great. That said, your competition will probably not be that good. (The fact that Steve Jobs's keynotes are/were held in such high regard is due in some part to how lousy the competition is).

What works for me (and I have no idea if it will work for you) is to write out the entire speech, practice it a couple of times (making corrections as required), then reduce it to points, and speak from the points. That way you are, in a sense, winging it, but you aren't tempted to read the entire thing and you have -- somewhere in the back of your brain -- a strong articulation of the points you want to make.

I don't think any great speech you can think of ("I have a dream", "ask not what you can do for your country", "we shall fight them on the beaches") was "winged" and Steve Jobs famously rehearsed like crazy (as did his hero, Edwin Land).

The fact Jobs's performances came off as pretty natural was no accident. It's one thing to "embrace your ums" if you're a tiny startup, and another if any tiny thing you say will be analyzed by pundits for the next ten years. (Consider how few misstatements Steve Jobs made in all his enormously publicized "keynotes" -- and interviews for that matter.)
Well I do know one thing, being a former U.S. Marine of Iranian descent visiting your grandmother is probably the worst cover in the history of espionage.

While a bunch of Americans taking a hike on the Iraq-Iran border is one of the dumbest things to happen in recent history, It isn't beyond the realm of believability. Einstein once said that human ignorance is the only thing that is known for sure to be eternal; this incident was merely another example of this principle. If those kids were really guilty of espionage, I don't think that Iran would have released them at any cost.
I'd be pretty interested in what properties are used as attributes for modeling a potential movie. I'm guessing they don't work.
On the contrary, it would be fantastic for this to become a partisan issue. Competition works just as well in the political arena as it does in the marketplace.

Parties don't always take opposite sides of each issue. Frequently, they try to take the higher ground by claiming they do "more" ...

Wouldn't it be wonderful for both parties to compete as to who opposes draconian garbage like SOPA/PIPA more?
"And they clearly have some silly algorithms at work picking potential blockbusters. I've heard rumors that even part of the scripting is algorithmic these days (component based)."

There's nothing that sophisticated at work, I assure you. Hollywood has "creative executives" who read the scripts agents send them, and then evaluate those scripts by hand. Some are better at this job than others. Some are legitimately good at it. (Full disclosure: I held this job for 5 or so years of my career; I'd say that I was ok at it).

Scripting is done the old-fashioned way, as well, by humans using specialized word processing software (Final Draft for screenplays and teleplays, Scrivener for novels). This software helps writers sort through some of the elements they've been using, i.e., by saving character names and locations, and returning those names when called. And the programs have templates and auto-formatting. But nothing that actually does the writing for you. Not yet, at any rate. (Full disclosure: my brother is a screenwriter, and he's pretty good at it).

The challenge is that Hollywood does not have a halfway decent way of predicting or forecasting what will succeed and what won't. It is possible to judge good work from bad work, and to coach writers in improving their work. And there are "rules" of story structure, plotting, and so forth. But these are just structural. Very few people have any sort of gift for making calls about what will, or will not, succeed at the box office or on TV. Sometimes legitimately great material fails, and often legitimately atrocious garbage succeeds wildly. It tends to be a crapshoot.

I would suggest that, if we're interested in disrupting Hollywood, we stop focusing on a hypothetical, universal audience, and start focusing on niches. We have the technology now to deliver content to those most interested in seeing it. Netflix, Amazon, etc., do a very good job with collaborative filtering. The future of the content distribution business starts with interest-based segmentation, IMO. The sooner we move away from people's best guesses as to what will work for whom, the more readily we can adapt to the delivery methods already at our fingertips.
FileSonic disables all filesharing
This will not work. The problem has and will continue to be distribution and marketing, not content production. Any disruption to Hollywoods market space must center on finding a new distribution and marketing model that can attract the current content producers. Only by separating those two entities can you really disrupt the space.

Right now the people who distribute the content are also the ones who own the rights to it. That is why you have seen such a move towards limiting the rights given to consumers of the media. There was a time when a movie house bought the reel of film and played it as much as their hearts desired. they actually made money off the tickets. That was then shifted to have the theaters pay a portion of each ticket sold to view the movie , removing the ownership right of the theater. Now the theaters don't own the movies, make no money off tickets, and are dependent on the studios for all the marketing. If you as a theater owner tried to buck the trend they would just stop giving you the privilege of screening their films and your out of buisness.

There is a great symbiotic relationship between theaters and studios that just making new content won't disrupt. If you want to "kill hollywood" you need to focus on that problem first, once content delivery and distribution are separated you will open the market for a new generation of content companies.
Am I missing something here? All I see are five boxes you can drag around with javascript which have some buttons and menus that don't do anything.
Summary: brown-nose and get favorable treatment at restaurants.

EDIT: Sorry, I'm not usually that harsh but in this instance I felt it was called for. To those who are downvoting me, please explain how this is not a concise summary of the article.

2nd EDIT: Seeing that I'm still getting downvoted by people who don't reply, let me be clear about why I'm using the term "brown-nosing". In order to achieve preferential treatment, the article advocates to:

* always eat and drink the same thing (regardless of what you actually feel like having)

* always sit in the same place (regardless of where you'd like to sit that night)

* make it a point to address people by first name (even if otherwise you'd give a shit)

* tip generously (regardless of service quality.) In other circumstances some people might be inclined to call this a bribe.

To me, this is the very definition of brown-nosing: trying to please others while acting against your own (short-term) interests, having long-term gains in mind.
Is that demo code for the caching system not broken? It looks to me like, if the cache gets rebuilt, the output is only sent to the file, and there's no output sent to the browser. I can't test that right now, and there are a few functions there I've never used, but that is what it looks like.

Also: I don't like system that just check for the age of the cache, and not a more elaborate system that, using a single simple DB query, checks if the input data has changed, before regenerating the file. That looks way more useful to me. But, of course, you have to hand code that query for each page.
For that matter, adding Chrome Frame support wouldn't be too hard (assuming the "sucking" browser was IE).
I've done enough speaking now to realise the pre-talk jitters can be harnessed by a dribble two bounces as well. If I'm standing, I usually set 2 markers to make sure I stand in 1 spot, then do a quick scan of my cheat sheet, look at the number of people then set my timer and start. Interesting point about rubbing hands and clasping. This is a classic sign of discomfort and signals to the audience the speaker is nervous.
Consistent pricing is a very bad idea. It eliminates a lot of important market signalling forces.
That makes sense when it comes to the business end but essentially you have to convince good artists to work with a far lesser medium for the sake of "higher viewership".
While this may work in the short term, this is exactly what I was worried about - for Internet freedom to become a partisan issue - with some standing to defend Internet freedom, and others wanted to restrict it. Because that means that eventually a party or a candidate will be elected to implement those restrictions. That would be an awful outcome, and I hope we can maintain Internet freedom as bi-partisan, or better yet, non-partisan.
Great! Now if the Republicans also cut their ties to religion and stopped wasting so much money on war zones, they could become a party worth voting for.
Why the negative terminology?
Aren't people overthinking this problem? The studios have shown their hand; they're wearing their weakness on their sleeve. The thing they're most worried about is piracy. If you stop paying for their product, they believe they will fail.

Either you stop consuming what they put out, or you find a way to get it without paying. That's what will "kill Hollywood".
Wow. I did not realize Al Franken was a PIPA co-sponsor.

http://sopatrack.com/congressperson/F000457-sen-al-franken
Hopefully the Democrats will fail to promote their restrictions to the younger/more liberal crowd.
I think that the "death to Powerpoint" point is too absolutist, because it may guide one towards talks that value entertainment over content. In particular, I tend to give highly technical presentations; it is essential that my slides themselves contain sufficient content to convey the core of my meaning. (It should also be said that I am an infamously fast talker -- having slides behind me can be a kind of solace to those who may be feeling as if under aerial bombardment.) The emphatic point to make, though, is this: don't read your slides to your audience -- ever. Instead, your spoken narrative should be just that: a narrative that, over the course of a minute or two, winds its way through the bullet points on the slide. Especially if your content is highly technical, this narrative is an opportunity for the less formal (and arguably, more engaging) story that surrounds your work. Reveal your humanity: don't be afraid to disclose pain, agony, excitement, euphoria or disappointment -- if the audience empathizes with you, they will naturally engage with your content. In short, use your narrative to put flesh and blood on the skeleton of your slide, and you will have a presentation that is compelling yet still rich in technical content.
"You will never be able to fund a movie like Avatar. And if you can't do that, you'll never be able to take on Hollywood."

I don't have to make an Avatar to beat Hollywood. That's fighting fire with fire. We can fight fire with water. If a consumer watches one of my studio's productions instead of watching Avatar, we didn't just earn $0.99 -- we also stole a $10.50 purchase from 20th Century Fox.

I'm betting that when given a cleaner, more enjoyable alternative to the mandatory commercials, overpriced fatty junk food, and general awfulness that the current moviegoing experience has degraded into, we can steal a fair amount of business.
I believe some Thinkpads' drivers expose a /sys interface to disable/blink that light.
While I have nothing against eating with hands (people who eat pizzas with knives and forks are insane IMO), stating that "You have no idea in whose mouths those forks have been, and how well they've been washed and handled afterwards" is absurd: by the same argument, you have no idea where the chef's hands have been, where the dishes the food is sitting have been, etc. There's no good reason to believe that eating with your hands is more hygienic (particularly for people with long fingernails or wounds).
OK, I know we've ventured a little more into politics lately with the SOPA thing, but this is not in any way germane to Hacker News. It's pure political outrage. Please flag this kind of story if you want to keep up the level of discourse here.
Why would something like this necessarily forego theaters? I suspect that a studio built like this could work out licensing agreements with theaters, and that theaters might even become more profitable and affordable because of it.
Incidentally, Paul Buchheit is the former Google employee who taught them how to insert ads in Gmail and coined their adopted tenet "Don't be evil".

Assuming internet VC's were given what they clearly want, enough to boldly proclaim "Kill Hollywood" -- carte blanche to distribute motion pictures and other entertainment media via internet -- do we really believe that the businesses they would sponsor to do this would not "be evil" in similar ways to the current entertainment media incumbents?

"Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss."
But even then, it's not even always true. I'd wager the majority of these women end up in a cycle of jerks. You just selectively hear about the ones who give up, and settle. This isn't a matter of fate - it's a matter of perception.

Women and men change their expectations as they get older. It's part of growing up. Both sexes start to look past what is exciting RIGHT NOW to what is important to building a lasting relationship.

Anecdotally this has been the case for me. The women I personally am interested in dating now (@28) bear little resemblance to the women I wanted to date when I was fresh out of college (@23).
> Where did the MPAA bit even come from?

Most of the congresspeople the MPAA buys are "sanely leftist", for whatever reasons.
The antonym of passive is active.
Since the linked article is almost wholly a quote and rehash of Julian Sanchez's article for Ars Technica [1], why not just read that?

1. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/internet-reg...
A bit of CSS3 and three JS libraries: http://i.imgur.com/aQDg1.png
Why Nice Guys Don't Always Make It to the Top
There really isn't anything revolutionary or innovative in this. It's basically the same exact model as Hollywood with different players.

In addition, if the only distribution model is online streaming at 0.99, you'd need to sell 10M views to just break even. Yes, this can be achieved for a single hit, but for every single one to break even is similar to the current model.

One of the key things with the internet and technology is that:
1) Technology has enabled talented artists, filmmakers, and musicians to produce high quality content at a reasonable costs. Take a look at all the quality production that is around on the internet.
2) The internet has enable low cost distribution and discovery service. This means that we can increase the number of distribution channels for much lower cost than the existing model.

Because of these two facts, this enables smaller productions (you don't need $10M revenue if your cost is $30k) and more niche audience. Think of all the long-tail movies that do not get made because the target audience is too small; these would become economically feasible with internet distribution.

The indie film industry follows this similar model. A lot of indie films are low budget films made by students and budding stars. These films and talent are then discovered by the big budget studios and brought into that fold. (Think of the indie film community similar to the open source community in tech.) They are often looked down upon by the big budget studios and the community is looking for that one opportunity to break big. They have as much distaste for the Hollywood model as the tech industry does. There is a huge opportunity in bringing them into the fold of the startup industry to counter Hollywood. Provide them a clear path of success without giving up much of their rights or stake and they'll surely jump at the new approach.

Lastly, the internet is a great talent discovery. Look at the number of mega stars that have been found on YouTube and other websites. The problem is that once someone becomes "Internet Famous", how do you turn them into "Real Life Famous". People like Justin Bieber have no choice but to fall into the hands of the existing production model.

Provide your consumers (in this case the movie production and the movie consumers) with a better product and all else will follow.

tl;dr -

1) Embrace the Indie Film industry -- they are desperately looking for a partner in taking on big studios. They have already been in this fight for years, that we have only recently just joined.

2) Use technology to assist in discovery.
SOPA still exists huh?
Ask HN: What mac apps are essential for GTD?
I just purchased a MacBook Pro, and I'm already in love with it. I want to get my life completely organized and synced well between my iPhone 4 and iPad.

What are the best apps I should download for getting things done (GTD)? What are apps that are essential for basic time, workload, and project management? Free apps are ideal, but good software is always worth paying for.
Pretty good start. Nice job.
There is talk of this in Hare's book called Snakes in suits[1]. He alludes to actual research iirc, the basic gist says the percentage of diagnosable psycopathy in populations like prisons and upper echelons of corporations are significantly higher than in the general population and specifically higher than one would expect when controlling for other possible explanations.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0060837721
I agree - there are strong points here.

I'm not sure if this was intended or not, but I think you are describing YCombinator for Movies + a distribution platform to support it. At least as I read it, these are the two strong thoughts that come to mind. The biggest issue with Hollywood is its lock on distribution chan
nels - this is where the biggest opportunity for disruption lies IMO.

Perhaps YCombinator + OpenHulu(API) is the magic you are looking for? Keep thinking, I think this is in the right direction.
This article crosses the line for me. I'm tired of largely redundant SOPA articles in any event, and one that gets into broader political trends is one step too far.

https://twitter.com/#!/patio11/status/161131025097961475
Somewhere along the line, and I hope it wasn't in a Hunter S Thompson story, I heard that Lyndon Johnson said "Never get caught sleeping with a live pig or a dead woman."
Hands Off Our Internet
A Defining moment in the SOPA PIPA Protests in San Francisco on Jan 18th. The 2 Bills were shelved the next day by Congress, but the fight is not over yet. Please share and spread awareness.
it would be very useful to know exactly what tools and techniques the border agents are using.

Is there software that detect HDDs that are disabled via BIOS? Do the border agents reset the BIOS? Are they looking at individual files and encrypted archives?
This is exactly what they wanted to happen. MegaUpload was about causing fear.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak out because I was Protestant.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Seeing how all candidates besides Ron Paul, and I would think a big part of the Republican party right now wants more laws like the Patriot Act, defending the Internet seems completely incompatible with the current Republican party. Sure, they used to be about limited Government and all that, but I don't think that's really their core anymore. If they do this, it will be purely a political play. But who knows, maybe this will give the opportunity to some people who actually believe in this to rise up in the party. But ultimately, I'd still hate for this to become a partisan issue. Both - or all - parties should want Internet freedom.
Show HN: my indie music startup
While that'd be a nice way for competition to play out, I doubt that's what we're actually going to see. What both programs really agree on is precisely "copyright for entertainment works". The Democrats are pushing SOPA; the Republicans pushed the DMCA and copyright extension. They disagree mainly over tactics/timing/details.

I can see the Republicans trying to strongly dissociate themselves from SOPA, but I give it approximately 0% chance that they're going to recant the DMCA or Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, or even loosen their position on the DMCA moderately to the extent of supporting more exemptions to the anti-circumvention clause.
Yeah it is hard for the founders to know what people will pay for ahead of time. In a few cases there they had free competition, although that may have sprung up after they started. If you have free competition and are looking for direct payments from users as a model you have to think you can build a much better product than the free alternative.

Something like Twitter I think is a great example of people probably not knowing they wanted it until they used it and it built up a bit. Sure they are ad supported, but Twitter could have very easily fit into the type of stories in this post had things went a little differently.
hmmm, production budgeting and scheduling pretty much works already like what was described here, even producers (executive ones, not line) and directors have a performance stake. Maybe there is a perception that productions are lavishly spending in drunken stupor (probably because of showbiz associated glitz), but almost every ship is run really tight in productions - real tight.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Each movie or TV show is a startup, even if all are within a single studio/production company. You can't magically run out of budget and simply ask for more money. When that happens, you might get money to finish up, but you'll also be out of work and you get managed until project is finished. Every single item gets budgeted. Most money drains happen when deadlines are slipped, since when freight train of principal photography starts it costs serious money to operate and can't be stopped. Sometimes it can really be out of producers control (special weather needed, permits suddenly in trouble, actor dies...), but it rarely happens and every major production has insurance coverage for situations like that... but when it happens you get managed. And nobody likes that, it can tailspin the situation towards evil and gets your rep tarnished.

Also, $0.99. While it would be nice, simple arithmetic calculations on average budgets and viewings sing a different song.
interesting noise reduction opportunity. I like it.