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AMC is considering letting people text in movie theaters
Just as AMC was starting to win customers back by replacing every old seat in its auditoriums with recliners, the company wants to destroy that good will among moviegoers. That's because CEO Adam Aron thinks letting people use their phones during a movie would be a good idea. "When you tell a 22-year-old to turn off their phone, don't ruin the movie, they hear 'please cut off your left arm above the elbow,'" Aron tells Variety. "You can't tell a 22-year-old to turn off their cellphone. That's not how they live their life." Yes, he actually said that.
Breakfast Topic: What rating would you give your guild chat?
Here in the US, the Motion Picture Association of America assigns ratings to our movies. A quick summary of each: G Suitable for all audiences PG Parental guidance suggested PG-13 Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13 R Parent or guardian must accompany those under 17 NC-17 Too adult for 17 and under, so they aren't even admitted In It came from the Blog, the rule for guildchat is that it must be PG-13. In the Sex Talk edition of Drama Mamas, the guild's forum chat seems to be closer to NC-17. Now, I don't think that talking about sex necessarily means that the chatters are immature. Mature people can have very mature conversations. But the R to NC-17 chatter in trade chat and battlegrounds is from immature people. There is a huge difference between inappropriately sexual and maturely sexual. But I digress. Many family guilds will keep it from G to PG, but some stronger language and more mature topics are often allowed at night. It came from the Blog can't do that because we have Australians and other international folk whose days overlap with our nights. We don't want people to be wary of letting their kids play with us because of time zone prejudice. What rating would you give your guildchat?
Breakfast Topic: Does /spit need to go?
In the interest of full disclosure, I feel I should be totally honest with you all. I hate spitting. Of course, I know it has its uses -- one can't swallow toothpaste, after all -- but people spitting in the street? Gross, and completely unnecessary. When I used to cycle competitively, people did it all the time, and I hated it then, too. I was reading the comments on a recent Breakfast Topic and noticed that one thing that cropped up a bit in people's dislike of PvP was the use of unpleasant emotes by their enemies to rub in their victory or simply just as play progressed. This brought /spit to mind. It's something that I see every now and then, and I honestly cannot understand what possible purpose it ever served in the game or what purpose it continues to serve now, apart from providing another avenue for people to be unpleasant to one another. If there was one emote from WoW that I would remove, /spit is the one. But as I said, as a person who hates spitting, perhaps I'm just being unfair. So, dear readers, maybe you disagree? Or maybe there's another emote you dislike more than that one? I can put up with /rude, but not /spit. At least /rude can be funny if used at the right time and in the right context. What do you think?
Ringtone causes New York Philharmonic mid-performance strike
A classical music fan who thought the rules didn't apply to them wound up in a sticky situation when his iPhone's ringtone blared out during Tuesday's performance of Mahler's Ninth at the Avery Fisher hall. The New York Philharmonic's musical director Alan Gilbert heard the disturbance and after a few aggressive looks, stopped his orchestra partway through the final movement until the phone was silenced. Hopefully that person learned a very valuable lesson, and everyone else will remember that there's a special circle of hell reserved for those who don't mute their phone at the theater.
Rude Gameware's Fierce Laser Gaming Mouse v2 has a long name and a lengthy spec sheet
When the crew at Rude Gameware aren't flipping burgers, they're building gaming gear -- like this Fierce Laser Gaming Mouse V2 -- and while we haven't seen anything particularly groundbreaking, there's some bang for the buck to be had. This rodent in particular brings the heat with a 5000dpi laser sensor, a 1ms response time and 1000Hz polling rate, on-board memory to save configurations and macros for each of its seven programmable buttons, adjustable weights and on-the-fly DPI, a braided cord and even a moderately comfortable-looking design. Best of all, it'll manage to deliver all that for a nickel shy of $50 next month. Oh, it'll have some storied competitors at that price point, to be sure, but now you have more choices. Isn't capitalism grand? PR after the break.
Rude Gameware's Fierce Teflon & Steel mousepad can take the heat
Rude Gameware new's Fierce Teflon & Steel Mouse Surface may not have a built-in calculator or USB hub, but it is made of Teflon and steel, which makes it a multipurpose mousepad in its own special way. Still can't justify spending $30 on a mousepad? The next best alternative is as close as your kitchen cupboard.
Drama Mamas: We hate hate
Dodge the drama and become that player everyone wants in their group with the Drama Mamas. Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are real-life mamas and experienced WoW players -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your server. We're taking your questions at DramaMamas (at) WoW (dot) com. The other night, one member of a random PUG The Spousal Unit was in announced exactly which bosses would be downed. He stated that any disagreement would cause something on his body to be put into something on your body -- only he used slightly more graphic words. The run was fine, because, though his method of communication was crude, it did convey a strategy that worked. There are some, however, who are being crude and offensive in the same way that creeps in college libraries reveal themselves to solitary students. These poster children for GIFT (Note: The link for GIFT is not safe for work. But if you are not familiar with Penny Arcade's theory about the internet, you really need to go there.) aren't criminals in the legal sense of the word, but they do have victims and therefore I will call them perps. Who knows what motivates them. Maybe they are troubled teens who have terrible home lives and should be pitied. I don't know and honestly I don't care. I'm too busy spending my sympathy on Haiti to include these jerks in my monkeysphere. And besides, at some point you have to take responsibility for your actions, regardless of how horrible your environment is. This week, we talk about these GIFTed perps.
Pepsi apologizes for sexist iPhone app, inadvertently fans the flames
PepsiCo's Amp Energy brand stirred up a lot of hatred in the last couple of months when the "AMP UP Before You Score" app [iTunes Link] was released. This app, branded as sexist and inappropriate by a lot of people who rated it in the App Store, provides guys with cards to "identify her type," pickup lines that are useful with a particular "type" of woman, and ways of keeping track and spreading the news via social networking if you "get lucky."A public apology was made by Amp on its Twitter feed (@ampwhatsnext) which introduced the app and its questionable content to a larger audience. Even worse is that the apology included a new Twitter hashtag, #pepsifail, and was retweeted on several other Pepsi feeds. That had the effect of not only causing more people to become aware of the app, but also increased the furor towards it and towards PepsiCo.A post on Advertising Age noted that Pepsi's strategy seems to be somewhat confused, as they haven't pulled the app, and by linking the Amp Energy app to the Pepsi brand they're beginning to get heat for the entire brand -- not just the app.An App Store review by iPhone developer Raven Zachary said it best: "Dear Pepsico, your iPhone app, AMP UP before you score, is offensive and is a great new case study for branded apps gone wrong." You have to wonder, though, if this is actually working to introduce many more people to the Amp Energy brand.[via AdAge]
Hi, my name is mandy*
Do you ever stop to think about the other players in WoW? The game attracts a wide range of folks, but odds are good many of them are remarkably similar to you in many ways. Sometimes it's hard to remember that there is a living being behind those pixels. Someone who is excited by triumphs and aggravated by mistakes. Oddly enough, we don't always treat them as real people.Take for instance one of the PUGs I did this evening. Within 10 minutes of joining the group, the Hunter typed a vulgar joke in party chat. At this point I saw four options four options for dealing with it:
Breakfast Topic: How do you tag necropolis mobs?
It was an interesting time in Azeroth yesterday. Thousands of people on each server showed up to fight against the scourge invasion. The masses were tagging mobs left and right, all in hopes to get some elusive Necrotic Runes.All this open PvE fighting has brought up an interesting question, one that many people have some strong feelings on. What is the appropriate way to tag mobs? Is it okay to camp spawn points and AoE immediately in order to grab some scourge? Is it okay to take away another person's Shadow of Doom? What about if you accidently tag something you shouldn't have? Do you give them some gold in exchange?I have to admit, after trying for over two hours to summon a Shadow of Doom and tag it, my group decided to go a different route. We went to a new spawn point, summoned all four, and threw out as much AoE as possible. Our thought was that doing this would mean we'd at least be able to get one Shadow (we ended up getting them all). This of course upset everyone else that was there – but we had tried for a while before hand to get a single one. And we did summon all the Shadows ourselves.While this might be a questionable activity to some, it's what we did. But what would you do? How have you handled, and will you handle, tagging these mobs?
The NetShare debacle: Apple, explain yourself
Put yourselves in Nullriver's shoes for a minute: you create an app (NetShare - see TUAW passim), which as far as you can tell does not break any of the App Store rules. You submit it to Apple for inclusion. It passes the vetting procedure (so it must be OK, right?) and goes live online, for sale to real people. Then it disappears, with no warning. No explanation is given. Then it returns. For a while. Again, no explanation. Then it goes offline again. (I've now lost count how many times NetShare has been online, then offline, rinse and repeat.) And throughout all this, you get nothing from Apple. No explanation. No reason. No polite email asking you to wait. Not even an impolite email. Nothing.
He Said/She Said: It's a man's WoW
Welcome to another edition of He Said/She Said where Amanda Dean and David Bowers take on some of the deepest gender issues in the World of Warcraft universe. This time we discuss the expectations of men and women in guilds and how WoW reflects the larger society. Amanda: I don't know how many times I've heard of women flirting their way into raids or excellent gear. Perhaps this happens in some cases, but these are the bad apples. I find myself growing kind of tired of the stereotype that girls can't play WoW. The truth is that many women play WoW, and many of us are very good at it. Because of the stereotypes, A lady has to work considerably harder in a guild to earn respect. It's like being guilty of being a twit until proven otherwise.
Forum post of the day: Rude emails
Alyse posted on the Hello Kitty Online official Staff Lounge forum that she's having a bad time with another player who's sending mean, nasty emails. Alyse had posted a video application for the Beta Test that other player left a rude comment about. They started exchanging emails and the other player has gotten totally out of line. She's completely missing the super-positive spirit of the game. Alyse doesn't know what to do. She said "Then in the last e-mail she sent me she used full-fledged profanity at me. I refuse to curse when I'm upset and I find it very trashy to do so. I was completely offended by her e-mail so I chose to completely stop trying to reason with her and I deleted it." Tohomiko_K said that she sent an email to Alyse. I sure hope it's a nice one. All I have to say to Alyse is, "you go girl!" She's really smart for deleting the last email and I'm really proud of her for not sinking to the cursing level. How would you respond to someone sending you rude messages in Hello Kitty Online?
