Unruly Behavior

The Motion Picture Artists Association (MPAA) may well have finally gone insane.

They are attempting to pass legislation to have all home theater owners have to pay a $50 registration fee or face a $500,000 fine for showing movies without a permit.

MPAA wants to be big brother. - This was Slashdotted on 11-28-2006, so the link might be tough to get up at first.

From the Article:
"Just because you buy a DVD to watch at home doesn't give you the right to invite friends over to watch it too. That's a violation of copyright and denies us the revenue that would be generated from DVD sales to your friends," said Glickman. "Ideally we expect each viewer to have their own copy of the DVD, but we realize that isn't always feasible. The registration fee is a fair compromise.

Each viewer has to have their own copy? WTF? I have five people in my house, so I have to buy five copies of "The Little Mermaid"? I have somewhere close to 300 movies on DVD, and now I'm going to have to start having "Viewer Licensees" for everyone in my freaking family to watch a movie or pay them $50 a year?

And what about rentals? Do I have to rent five copies at Blockbuster now for everyone to watch a movie?

What a bunch of assholes. "We think all our customers are thieves by default," is not a good way to run your business guys.

Labels: dvd, home theater, joke, mpaa

Except "Thanks."

Came back from a branch trip last week to find a printed page on my desk informing me of a "Staff Development - Mandatory Meeting" that was to be held yesterday from 4:30 PM to 9:30 PM.

Great, I hate meetings.

So yesterday about 4:15 PM a tour bus shows up outside the office to pick us up for the training. On the bus we go, and in comes the bank president/owner.

Says, "I'm sorry to say there is no training tonight. You guys have been working really hard, and I just wanted to find a way to say 'Thank-you', so this bus is taking you to the Houston Galleria for dinner at the Cheescake Factory, then I have an envelope for each of you with $200 and you are going shopping after dinner."

Needless to say I'm floored. It was great, had a really good meal, bought outfits for all my kids Build-a-Bears for the Christmas season, The SIMS 2 Pets for my wife's Nintendo DS, Gears of War and Dead or Alive Extreem 2 for my XBOX 360.

This job just gets better each day.

Labels: meetings, work

Saw this over at Jake's site, and obliterated his score on my first try, so I just had to gloat...



The Hexadecimal Colours Game

Labels: games, other blogs

Ok,

I've been at the new job about six weeks now, and folks are finally finding me for help.

Here are a couple of the better support calls today.

Got an e-mail with this in the body of the message like this:

"I am getting copies on my copier from [location]."

Call me crazy, but getting copies on a copier doesn't seem that out of place. Even if someone is printing and you are unaware that they are printing, this would be normal behavior in my experience.

Then I got a call from someone who moved their laptop to another office. It wouldn't work in the new office. Took a wild guess. Asked if they unplugged the network cable from the wall and into their computer. "Yes," they said. So they plugged their computer to the other computer in the office and wondered whey they couldn't see the network.

Yep! Support is great!

Labels: stupid users, work

Ok, this one is a no-brainer. Xerox will send a Thank You card to American Troops with your name and home town and a special message to boot on the card.

There are lots of cards to choose from, so click the link below and let some soilders know you support their efforts for our country.

Let's Say Thanks

Labels: freebie, war