Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

IMAX’s absurd attempt to censor Ars

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 151 posts

Re: IMAX’s absurd attempt to censor Ars

#141

Post by waterlesscloud »

nate_meurer wrote: post #125
waterlesscloud wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've obviously given up caring about downvotes here or I wouldn't have said anything at all on this story. I don't understand why the mods think discouraging people from expressing unpopular opinions is desirable. It puzzles me to the extent that I wonder if I misunderstand the purpose of having comments at all. But it's how it is.

The problem isn't that your opinion is unpopular. The problem is that you're misrepresenting your opinion in terms of a legal concept. The term "confusion" has specific meaning in trademark law, which you seem to resist acknowledging. Even if you have a point, you're going to frustrate others by being thick-headed. See dragonwriter's comment for a good concise clarification.

Honestly, we're all just talking past each other. I knew it would be hopeless to get the idea across in this environment of jump all over the stupid thing of the day, but I wanted to try anyway.

As far as the legal concept goes, it should be clear that I'm just interpreting what IMAX's general counsel seems to believe. Whether you agree with her or not, I wouldn't say she's uninformed on the topic.

Re: IMAX’s absurd attempt to censor Ars

#142

Post by nate_meurer »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #141
nate_meurer wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't that your opinion is unpopular. The problem is that you're misrepresenting your opinion in terms of a legal concept. The term "confusion" has specific meaning in trademark law, which you seem to resist acknowledging. Even if you have a point, you're going to frustrate others by being thick-headed. See dragonwriter's comment for a good concise clarification.

Honestly, we're all just talking past each other. I knew it would be hopeless to get the idea across in this environment of jump all over the stupid thing of the day, but I wanted to try anyway. As far as the legal concept goes, it should be clear that I'm just interpreting what IMAX's general counsel seems to believe. Whether you agree with her or not, I wouldn't say she's uninformed on the topic.

Uninformed or not, IMAX' action was stupid and self-destructive and they know it:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/imax-apologizes-t...

Re: IMAX’s absurd attempt to censor Ars

#143

Post by waterlesscloud »

nate_meurer wrote: post #142
waterlesscloud wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, we're all just talking past each other. I knew it would be hopeless to get the idea across in this environment of jump all over the stupid thing of the day, but I wanted to try anyway. As far as the legal concept goes, it should be clear that I'm just interpreting what IMAX's general counsel seems to believe. Whether you agree with her or not, I wouldn't say she's uninformed on the topic.

Uninformed or not, IMAX' action was stupid and self-destructive and they know it: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/imax-apologizes-t...

Eh. It just happened to be a stupid story of the day. The other 1000 people they sent letters to either complied or did nothing.

Re: IMAX’s absurd attempt to censor Ars

#144

Post by dpark »

Someone1234 wrote: post #114
dpark wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As things get smaller a greater PPI is needed to render the same level of detail. It really doesn't work that way. If your VR display is too low-resolution to convincingly render a virtual display 15 feet away, then it's too low-resolution to convincingly render the virtual display 15 inches away. Your physical display has the same resolution regardless of where the virtual screen is, and if it lacks sufficient res…

> To put it another way, your display has the ability to render a certain amount of detail, full stop. Where a virtual object is rendered is irrelevant. But we're talking about a virtual display displaying pre-existing content (e.g. video footage). We aren't talking about the object itself. If it is one foot from you in virtual space, each pixel of video footage might be mapped 1:1 into each pixel of the VR headset's…

> If it is one foot from you in virtual space, each pixel of video footage might be mapped 1:1 into each pixel of the VR headset's screen resolution.

If you can actually map pixels 1:1, you aren't in a virtual space anyway. Accomplishing this 1:1 mapping means locking the view into a single position. If you allow me to look around, then as soon as I turn my head, the angle skews and you're not mapping 1:1 any more.

> So now instead of 1:1 you might be 1:4, and you're seeing 25% of the video's original detail actually rendered on the VR headset's display.

If 1:1 looks good, then 1:4 rendered 4 times as far away looks exactly as good. If you can't see the pixels at 1:1 then you can't see the lost detail at 1:4. If you could see the lost detail at 1:4, it would mean the 1:1 image looks pixelated. Again, your physical display doesn't care about how far away something is rendered. It has a fixed resolution, and if it's too low to be convincing, it's too low to be convincing at any rendered distance.

Go play an N64 game (or find some screenshots). You'll see that everything in the foreground is pretty rough looking. Everything in the background is equally rough looking, because rendered distance doesn't change the display resolution.

> Now zoom out, and again, and again. Detail has been lost. First a little, then a lot, and as you go too far back substantial amounts have been.

This doesn't matter. If it looks good at 1:1, then it will look good at 1:4. If it doesn't look good at 1:4, it didn't look good at 1:1. The lost detail is irrelevant.

> In order to play back a 1080p video on a 1080p VR headset...

I'm pretty sure you just can't do this convincingly, no matter the "zoom" level. If you rendered the video taking the entire display, then it would unpleasantly fill your entire vision and it wouldn't be VR and it would look terrible anyway.

> that 1cm needs to have the same pixels as 1080p to display 1080p video with no loss of detail

You're stuck on the idea that you need 1:1 pixels. You don't. You need a display with sufficient resolution to be convincing to your eyes. Once you have that, you can render your virtual 1080p image at any distance that would work in the real world and not care about how pixels are mapping.

Re: IMAX’s absurd attempt to censor Ars

#145

Post by shiggerino »

zzleeper wrote: post #58
MCRed wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite depressed to see you being downvoted for making cogent points. It's a shame HN has become slashdot.

Has it? The quoted article had an interview with a developer where the developer mentioned IMAX. Not the article, but a guy with quotes around it. How does that lead to any consumer confusion at all?

At least HN doesn't seem to be perpetuating the Reddit hypocrisy about voting for quality and not popularity, but the problem remains, voting popular opinions up and unpopular ones down only serves to turn the place into an echo chamber. Though mostly it's annoying to have to select the text to be able to read it as it gets lighter and lighter.

Re: IMAX’s absurd attempt to censor Ars

#146

Post by Nadya »

shiggerino wrote: post #145
zzleeper wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it? The quoted article had an interview with a developer where the developer mentioned IMAX. Not the article, but a guy with quotes around it. How does that lead to any consumer confusion at all?

At least HN doesn't seem to be perpetuating the Reddit hypocrisy about voting for quality and not popularity, but the problem remains, voting popular opinions up and unpopular ones down only serves to turn the place into an echo chamber. Though mostly it's annoying to have to select the text to be able to read it as it gets lighter and lighter.

Stylish browser addon -> Add CSS for HN for "font { color: #333 !important; }"

Now all comments are the same color, regardless of votes.

I dislike the fading mechanism for the reasons I describe here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9746702

Re: IMAX’s absurd attempt to censor Ars

#147

Post by shiggerino »

Nadya wrote: post #146
shiggerino wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least HN doesn't seem to be perpetuating the Reddit hypocrisy about voting for quality and not popularity, but the problem remains, voting popular opinions up and unpopular ones down only serves to turn the place into an echo chamber. Though mostly it's annoying to have to select the text to be able to read it as it gets lighter and lighter.

Stylish browser addon -> Add CSS for HN for "font { color: #333 !important; }" Now all comments are the same color, regardless of votes. I dislike the fading mechanism for the reasons I describe here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9746702

Good idea. But what I should do is write a script that in addition to that puts and indicator so I know which posts the HN readership has decided my feeble little mind needs to be spared from lest I too start having unpopular opinions.

Which is too late by now anyway, since I have tons of them.

Re: IMAX’s absurd attempt to censor Ars

#148

Post by ElComradio »

ak39 wrote: post #85

I can only imagine the precious 5 seconds of thought given to the decision to respond to Ars by the IMAX Chief Admin Officer: "Hmm, we know we have nothing to stand on here, but if we politely ask Ars to remove references to IMAX and they do, matter ends there. If Ars doesn't comply, we just lost 5 minutes of drafting this pointless letter. Nothing really to lose." Hits send. The irony? IMAX is now paying the real co…

I am sure there are about 0 people who will not go see an IMAX movie over this.

Re: IMAX’s absurd attempt to censor Ars

#149

Post by cmurf »

Well the reality is, many people are bad at their job. But then there's the select slice of those who are also embracing their own hubris in the process and thoroughly expect they won't be called out on it.

Re: IMAX’s absurd attempt to censor Ars

#150

Post by jacquesm »

derekp7 wrote: post #101
ak39 wrote: post #85

I can only imagine the precious 5 seconds of thought given to the decision to respond to Ars by the IMAX Chief Admin Officer: "Hmm, we know we have nothing to stand on here, but if we politely ask Ars to remove references to IMAX and they do, matter ends there. If Ars doesn't comply, we just lost 5 minutes of drafting this pointless letter. Nothing really to lose." Hits send. The irony? IMAX is now paying the real co…

I was wondering, if a legal trick can be used to limit these C&D letters that have no merit. Effectively, the lawyer on the other side of the letter is making a legal claim, that the law says what you are doing is wrong. If that claim is clearly baseless, then shouldn't the their lawyer be held on malpractice charges? After all, they are licensed and certified experts, and have a duty to not mislead the public.

This strategy works as long as the other party doesn't call your bluff. Which is a very large number of instances compared to the number of instances where the other party decides to tell you to sue or get lost.

It's kind of amusing if you call a legal bluff, the other party now has two bad choices: either they will have to go away quietly and the issue will remain or they have to actually sue and will most likely lose (that's never guaranteed).

The real downside is not that these lawyers make dubious or baseless legal claims (it's up to you to respond or take them serious or not), the problem is that most people will not feel qualified to make that call and so will either comply or run up some legal expenses.

So for small entities (private individuals for instance) folding is usually the only option. In this case Ars was a pretty dumb target of such a C&D, they're part of the media and will of course use it to maximum effect.

Post reply on HN