This is topic Anyone else not on here much anymore? in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 05-24-2011, 07:46 PM:
 
I realized today that it has been MONTHS since the last time I logged into this site.

I guess with Twitter and Facebook, my Internet time is wasted elsewhere.

Anyone else have this issue?
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-24-2011, 07:51 PM:
 
A lot of people spend more time on Facebook than here. If you're on Facebook, just type in the name of any prominent Film-Techer and you'll find many others among their friends list.

Me, I have a desk job in the daytime so I can keep both F-T and FB in two tabs, so I can look at them in spare moments.
 

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Posted by Tom Wienholt (Member # 1510) on 05-24-2011, 07:58 PM:
 
I still log on to film-tech pretty much daily. I don't post on the forum much but I like to read what's going on.
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 05-25-2011, 10:30 AM:
 
Don't do Facebook.

I have a Facebook name but it's just a bogus account so I can get on when other people invite me to see their pages. You have to be logged in to see a lot of stuff there.

Probably will never have a regular account on Facebook.
If they want to data mine the stuff I put on their site and use that information for marketing they can pay me for the privilege. I won't even get into all the other privacy issues.

Frankly, Facebook is bullshit anyway. The whole concept of Twitter is laughably stupid. That crap really just doesn't interest me.
I prefer web forums over blogs and "social networking." You can talk directly to the people you want to talk to and the signal-to-noise ratio is a whole lot better.

So, I'll be right here for the foreseeable future.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-25-2011, 11:51 AM:
 
Most people who work for Regal are too afraid to post here. Regal has them by the balls (or the teets). Regal owns every fiber of their being, like slaves. You are taking a big risk, Dennis Benjamin! At least you're only posting in Yak, Regal says that's OK.

Facebook is cool. I do not fear it. If there is something that I don't want to get out into the world, I don't post it anywhere. Twitter is cool. Even David Faustino from Married With Children follows my pathetic ass.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-25-2011, 12:40 PM:
 
My posting activity here has dropped a bit. It's not so much Facebook and Twitter are taking up more blogging time. There just isn't as much to talk about these days when it comes to movies.

Hollywood is putting out an unprecedented level of derivative been there, seen it already crap. Video is replacing film in theaters and even more and more in production. IMAX as we knew it is dead. The premium pricing on 3D, fake IMAX and super duper mega sound (5.1/7.1 sound that's actually being maintained) is doing more to push me away from theaters on top of the shitty movies Hollywood is releasing to play in them. My Blu-ray buying habits have trailed off to a very low level, perhaps even less than it was when I was done with DVD years ago.

Basically I just don't have anywhere near as much enthusiasm for movies in general as I did a decade ago. I still love a great movie, especially one shown in a theater that has its shit together. The problem is the movie studios and movie theaters are missing various ingredients to make the optimum movie going experience possible.

As for Facebook and Twitter, there's plenty of good and bad with either one and social networking in general. Users need to be street smart about what they post in those extremely public forums and be equally careful about clicking on links to various apps and articles. Facebook helped me get in touch with friends I haven't heard from since high school or even grade school. Facebook was certainly far better at doing this than Friendster or MySpace. Twitter can be very handy at a networking tool. Both Facebook and Twitter have useful integration with smart phones.
 

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Posted by Jonathan Smith (Member # 5609) on 05-25-2011, 01:25 PM:
 

quote: Randy Stankey

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Don't do Facebook.

I have a Facebook name but it's just a bogus account so I can get on when other people invite me to see their pages. You have to be logged in to see a lot of stuff there.

Probably will never have a regular account on Facebook.
If they want to data mine the stuff I put on their site and use that information for marketing they can pay me for the privilege. I won't even get into all the other privacy issues.

Frankly, Facebook is bullshit anyway. The whole concept of Twitter is laughably stupid. That crap really just doesn't interest me.
I prefer web forums over blogs and "social networking." You can talk directly to the people you want to talk to and the signal-to-noise ratio is a whole lot better.

So, I'll be right here for the foreseeable future.

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Randy, concur wholeheartedly. Who the hell do people think they are data mining you and asking for your personal shit?

Working with the U.S. census last summer, it was SICK what I could find just in public data, BEFORE social networking, stuff like Whitepages.com, and the new affiliated site that has sprung out of it, I've heard described as "Facebook for old people.

Forget the name now, the one that ran the ad campaign "Fidn out who's searching for you?"
 

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Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-25-2011, 01:58 PM:
 
What Bobby said.

It has been a while since I have been excited about any current mainstream film release, and the pattern of boring movies does not seem likely to change anytime soon. The vast majority of screenings that I have attended during the last year have been revivals, rather than current titles.

Similarly, the technological developments in the cinema industry are, for the most part, no longer about improving picture and sound quality, but rather about reducing costs while producing quality that is "almost as good" as whatever they attempt to replace. This is sad.

At this point, my involvement in the exhibition business is pretty much limited to occasional film festivals and special screenings. And I am fine with that. Showing films has been a hobby for me, anyway, and I have always made a point of not being dependent on the (small) income that it generated.

I don't know what the future holds for exhibition, but I'm willing to bet that movies will eventually (in ten years? one hundred years? who knows?) become like live theater is today: a fairly pricey and rare event for the average patron. I don't necessarily see this as a problem, however, if screenings are seen as an opportunity to put on a special show, rather than just a way to sell as much popcorn and show as much advertising as possible to the audience.

As for my opinion on social networking (as if anyone asked): Twitter is a load of crap--it's just a normal blog site with more restrictions. I don't see th epoint. I can see how some might find Facebook useful, but I would not personally want to give away a bunch of personal information for the purpose of having Facebook put advertising all over it and make money off of it, while not even allowing me to own my own content. In any case, I am in the phone book. People who need to find me know how to do so. I don't need Facebook for that.
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 05-25-2011, 02:11 PM:
 
Absolutely NOTHING on Facebook is there to be a warm and fuzzy meeting place. Oh, it may be disguised to LOOK like that, but it's ALL there for only one thing -- to troll for your personal information and all your friends that they will SELL. EVERY SINGLE PIXEL on your monitor screen when you loggin is there for one razor-sharp focused purpose only, and that is to get you to either BUY something or to give up personal information that they can SELL to someone.

Every game, every puzzle that they design is for one of those two purposes and each to make money off you. And if they expose you to crooks and thieves and risk your identity in any number of ways, well, too bad for you -- read their fine print....you have agreed to hold them harmless in EVERYTHING under the sun. If they expose your children to predators and pedophiles, hey, better make the best of it. It's the internet's equivalent of a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Yah, I am on it -- was for about two weeks until I realized it was a modern Tower of Babble....wait....OK, a Tower of Babble with a wolf inside dressed in sheep’s clothing. I haven't shut my account down because like Randy, I just use it if someone leaves me a message, which I answer admonishing them to STOP IT and email me if they have someone to say. But as far as communication of any substance, Facebook actually discourages it. They are not interested in giving you a forum to voice substantive ideas or discussions.

Then there is that transparant self-promotion it encourages people to participate in -- "Ooooh, see what great causes I've joined!" "Ooooh, look what award I just won." "Ooooh, see what a great humanitarian I am....join my Stop The Norwegians From Clubbing Baby Seals Group." It's pathetic.

Me, if I want to communicate, there is such a thing called email, and better than that, I PICK UP A DAMN PHONE. Anything you can do on Facebook you can do with email or a Yahoo group, or direct communication voice-to-voice -- you know, real human beings talking to real human beings. And you do it without being party to a billion dollar company that passes out false sleeze mongering about its competitors.

Facebook a pure sleaze operation thru and thru....spend ten minutes on it and you feel like you need to take a shower.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-25-2011, 02:47 PM:
 
It's only all that if you let it. I have never clicked on a FB ad. As far as marketing to me based on my interests....well, either my interests are so goofy that nobody can target me, or I'm just immune to it -- I haven't noticed any increase in spam, or junk mail, and I'm a fairly regular Facebook user.

As for all the games and such......people who would actually pay for that crap are just being stupid. If you can't entertain yourself on the internet without paying, you need to find a good book or something and turn off the computer.

The craziest thing is how you can "send gifts" to people which are not really gifts, just little icons on their wall....and people PAY MONEY to do that! How idiotic is that? When I hear of this kind of thing happening (along with the big sales of things like giant TVs, jet-skis, Xboxes and so on) I feel like our economy is in better shape than we think it is.
 

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Posted by Keri Delio (Member # 6170) on 05-25-2011, 04:01 PM:
 
I go by an alias on Facebook. It's handy for keeping up with people that live far away. Honestly I've found more folks on there that I know who expose so much about themselves freely it scares me just to see/read it.
This is the only place on the web where I actually go by my real name. I really don't like the policy from a personal security standpoint but I do enjoy reading the threads here and commenting occasionally else I would not have registered.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-25-2011, 06:08 PM:
 
LOL at all of the Facebook paranoia. Put on your tinfoil hats, guys! Facebook is exactly what you make of it. Information about you can be found without Facebook. Also, am I the only one here who knows how to put their Facebook page on private? You can't see shit about me unless I let you see it. At most, you can see that I am on there and perhaps a low resolution version of my profile picture. No boogie men for me to worry about. As far as data mining goes, what exactly are they mining? What could they? I don't see any ads on Facebook at all since I use Adblock Plus. So instead of being scared that everyone is spying on me, I just go on and have fun. And if there is something that I don't want known, then I don't post it.

Film-Tech is waaaaay more public than Facebook is, hence the reason Regal-types don't post here much.

Keri Delio, since I know your real name I am going to make life really hard for you. I don't know how, but I surely will. The government will know about this. Job opportunities will surely be lost. If only you went behind an alias. It pays to be scared!
 

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Posted by David E. Nedrow (Member # 4981) on 05-25-2011, 06:18 PM:
 
Plus, Facebook isn't a forum in the classic (CompuServe threaded-style) sense.

Things like PHPbb and UBB came along to fill the gap when CompuServe imploded. I worked there when it happened, but escaped unharmed.

Face book has no facility for providing a manageable interface to any type of threaded conversation.

I dislike Facebook when people try to use it for a "forum", in much the same way I dislike a blog used as a company's actual website. Ugh.
 

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Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-25-2011, 06:33 PM:
 
Joe--I'm not paranoid. I have always used my real name when posting stuff online. I'm not a believer in hiding behind aliases or anonymous comments. I just don't see how a Facebook account would improve my life, and I don't see the need to post a bunch of stuff on a commercial web site where it will be surrounded with advertisements which benefit someone else. I also don't like the idea of granting anyone else unlimited worldwide rights to my words and pictures without compensation.

Actually, I prefer Usenet newsgroups to web forums (fora?), but spammers and general lack of interest in net news have made that form of communication less useful than it was a decade ago.
 

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Posted by Keri Delio (Member # 6170) on 05-25-2011, 07:27 PM:
 
I didn't say I was scared, said I just didn't like it for my own reasons.
I'm not paranoid, but at the same time I don't care to make my life an open book on the web either.
A lot of you guys seem to like putting words into other peoples' mouths around here for whatever reason, especially if someone has a dissenting opinion.
 

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Posted by Ian Parfrey (Member # 5122) on 05-25-2011, 08:13 PM:
 
F-T & F-B can live together in perfect har-mon-y.
Side by side ... blah blah blah ( Geez that song is )

I see F-T as a place for serious discussion and comments more than 2 sentences long with substance to suit.

F-B is more for 'stream of consciousness' and more 'on-the-fly' comments. This should not be seen as denigrating the F-B comments but as just my POV on things.
 

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Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 05-25-2011, 08:27 PM:
 
There have been times when Facebook has dome some incredibly dumb things relating to privacy and advertising, but I'm pretty well fine with it lately.

I can hide the apps as soon as somebody pops up a notice that they're using one in my feed. And I don't at all mind that Facebook targets advertising around my 'likes' and whatever else. It actually HAS successfully targeted stuff to me that resulted in a purchase or two.

Also, I'm now following Joe and Bobby on Twitter.
 

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Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 05-25-2011, 08:35 PM:
 
I deactivated my Facebook last September.
Failbook and Lamebook are far more entertaining.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-25-2011, 08:42 PM:
 

quote: Joe Redifer

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Film-Tech is waaaaay more public than Facebook is

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quote: James Westbrook

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Failbook and Lamebook are far more entertaining.

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quote:

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posting risky shit like "I'm away from my house for the next 2 weeks on vacation (please come burglarize my home)!"

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quote: Dennis Benjamin

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I realized today that it has been MONTHS since the last time I logged into this site.

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quote: Randy Stankey

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What if the government uses information gained from Facebook to target you for criminal investigation?

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quote: Mike Blakesley

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People who post updates like "My new batch of weed is killer" deserve to have the government come to their door, I guess.

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For being a loser weed-head, or for breaking the law?

Nevermind, 2 reasons are better than one.
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 05-26-2011, 03:12 PM:
 
The thing is that people who are NOT doing anything illegal can and HAVE BEEN raided by the government based on information gained from "alternate" sources.

People who use the computer a lot use more electricity and pay higher electric bills. Rightly so. But if the government targets you and raids your house because you use more than 95 KWh per month, suspecting you grow dope in your basement, that is wrong.

If you go on Facebook and say innocuous things, the government or anybody else can use that information against you regardless of whether you actually do anything wrong. Just saying something like, "Smoking marijuana is fun," can get you busted.

Worse, there are no apologies and they take little or no action to correct their behavior. They still use unreliable information to harass people just because they think a crime MIGHT HAVE been committed.

This doesn't even consider the fact that other people who are even more unscrupulous and even less accountable can do anything they want and are, for the most part, are above the law. (Or "below" the law.)

The idea of Facebook as a place for people to connect and share is all right but the way they collect data about users, the underhanded way they use it against users and the total lack of responsibility for security of that data is terrible.

The risks are not worth the rewards.
 

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Posted by Chad Souder (Member # 343) on 05-26-2011, 07:32 PM:
 
Facebook gets careless people fired from their jobs.

This will help with some of the information sharing:

Account drop menu>Account settings>by Privacy click "manage"

Choose "custom" then under Apps and Websites, click "Edit your settings"

By Instant personilization, click "Edit Settings"

Ignore the stupid video attempt to convince you and uncheck the "Enable instant personalizaztion on partner websites" box.

This is a big way Facebook makes it's money.
 

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Posted by Joshua Waaland (Member # 287) on 05-27-2011, 08:48 AM:
 
Thanks Chad. I just did what you said for the settings. Man! They do not want you changing that setting. A box also appears after the video and says that people have been spreading false rumors about that setting, and do you really want to change it. This tells me they obviously make money from this or sell your info and do not want you changing it. They also buried it deep within the settings so you cannot find it very easily. I may have clicked my way through eventually, but it would have taken a while. I have been going through all of the settings to check them now.
 

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Posted by Mike Heenan (Member # 392) on 05-30-2011, 02:22 PM:
 
I remember when the paranoia about that first started... mine was unchecked by default, I don't know if that's the way it was for other people though.
 

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Posted by Michael McGovern (Member # 4807) on 05-30-2011, 09:43 PM:
 
The reason this board has been slowing is that the face of the business has changing. If you work for one of the chains, and you primarily do projection, by the fall you'll have two choices, swap over to operations management, or file for unemployment. From what I hear, the studios are hoping to phase out 35MM entirely by next year, although I'll believe that one when I see it.

Business at the theater level is in a decline, while home viewing, particularly on the digital distribution front is booming. The studios are already planning for the day when they can avoid the theater as a distribution channel altogether. First it's a one month delay for an overpriced PPV release, next it's a two week delay. Before long Transformers 4 debuts on PPV and Netflix the same day as it's theatrical release, and then it's all over.

I made this comparison in a different thread, but I still say it's totally apt. When I was a kid we would play video games at the Arcade. Sure, we had video games at home, but if you wanted to play the newest, best games, with the best quality graphics, you had to go to the arcade to do it. It was big business too, games like Pac-Man, Galaga, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, etc made millions in coin-op revenues alone, easily as much as a blockbuster film. Then, maybe six months down the line, after a successful run in the arcade, you might be able to play the games on your Nintendo, but they would be of inferior quality, because the technology in the arcades couldn't be recreated at home at a reasonable price.

This is the way things were for years and years, but then things changed. Slowly the technology of your home video games improved to the point where they met and eventually exceeded that of the games in the Arcade. People stopped going to the arcades, because they were rendered mostly irrelevant. Soon after, the video game producers skipped the arcade as a distribution channel altogether, and shortly after that Arcades as we knew them were extinct, or at least almost completely marginalized.

The arcades of today only exist to serve a very specific market like families and children, and they mostly feature rigged carnival games, and not video games. True arcades were driven out of business not because of any bad business decisions by the operators, but because the content providers abandoned them, and found greater profits by selling direct to the consumer. The few retro arcades left are operated by people who have a passion for that business, and not by people looking to make a profit, because there aren't any profits to be made.

We in the movie business are going to become the arcades of tomorrow. We are at the mercy of the movie studios, and if they decide that it's time to cannibalize the theater business, then there's not much that Regal, or AMC, or NATO is going to be able to do to stop them.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-30-2011, 09:54 PM:
 

quote: Michael McGovern

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Business at the theater level is in a decline, while home viewing, particularly on the digital distribution front is booming. The studios are already planning for the day when they can avoid the theater as a distribution channel altogether. First it's a one month delay for an overpriced PPV release, next it's a two week delay. Before long Transformers 4 debuts on PPV and Netflix the same day as it's theatrical release, and then it's all over.

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quote: Michael McGovern

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the quality of your average Megaplex with their poorly lit picture, broken speakers, and varying sound quality.

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quote: Michael McGovern

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Business at the theater level is in a decline, while home viewing, particularly on the digital distribution front is booming.

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