There was an article (registration required) in this Sunday's New York Times about an audiovisual genre called by the portmanteau word machinima (machine plus cinima).

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Whenever a friend discovered a particularly cool stunt inside Halo -- for example, obliterating an enemy with a new type of grenade toss -- Burns would record a video of the stunt for posterity. (His friend would perform the move after Burns had run a video cord from his TV to his computer, so he could save it onto his hard drive.) Then he'd post the video on a Web site to show other gamers how the trick was done. To make the videos funnier, sometimes Burns would pull out a microphone and record a comedic voice-over, using video-editing software to make it appear as if the helmeted soldier himself were doing the talking.

Then one day he realized that the videos he was making were essentially computer-animated movies, almost like miniature emulations of ''Finding Nemo'' or ''The Incredibles.'' He was using the game to function like a personal Pixar studio. He wondered: Could he use it to create an actual movie or TV series?

Weirdest of weirdnesses, Micro$oft is not suing for intellectual property violations ...

Weirdest of weirdnesses, Micro$oft is not suing for intellectual property violations ...
Give them time! I'm also stunned that the government hasn't given them problems!

Interesting concept. I can't say that I've heard of "machinima" before.

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Give them time!

No. According to the article, the company (an MS subsidiary) that owns Halo has granted the producers of the Red versus Blue license to use the characters from their XBox game. They see it as free advertising.

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I can't say that I've heard of "machinima" before.

I can't say I have ever hear of "halo" before either.

Microsoft is very litigous, but only when they believe the lawsuit will help them in some way. In this case, they have nothing to lose. The people buy Halo to play it, and record these videos. Anyone who was going to buy the game would want to do so to record their own videos, or try out the cool hand grenade moves, etc. Halo is an advanced enough game, one of the most popular games out there, that viewing video clips would make any gamer want to own it.

Add this to the fact that they are using their computers to distribute the videos, which are most likely running Microsoft software, using video editing tools, probably sold by Microsoft, and so on.

Unless they disseminated the pre-recorded video clips in the game, there is probably no legal recourse Microsoft to stop them, fair use and all.

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Unless they disseminated the pre-recorded video clips in the game, there is probably no legal recourse Microsoft to stop them, fair use and all.

If only litigants were so rationale. The studio that owns the Harry Potter movie rights sent lawyers round to some Harry Potter fan sites and shut them down, even though they were not selling anything. Rooster Teeth (the Red vs Blue producers) are selling DVDs with M$-owned IP in them.

[Added a negative modifier.]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

Ah, well, when I see the name, "Microsoft, " I assume that it means that Bill Gates needs Viagra - and a whole lot more!

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If only litigants were so rationale

I don't know much about Internet litigants, so I can't make a judgment about that. However, generally, from what I've seen, the person would be a lot less litigious if the offender would admit fault and say, "I'm sorry." That's true certainly in medicine, and in fact there are studies that show that physicians who apologize will be sued less frequently and for less money. In Illinois there is new legislation that says that physicians who apologize cannot be sued for that apology.

Remember the lady who won millions of dollars from McDonald's because she spilled hot coffee on herself? We have talked about that here before, but she had third degree burns (which means that the heat burned all 3 layers of her skin), and McDonald's had many previous reports of burns from too-hot coffee. All the poor woman originally asked for was her medical bills to be paid. McDonald's stubbornly refused to take any responsibility and to even pay the $80,000 or so for her medical bills...even though there was a clear record that others had been burned and they had done nothing. The rest is history...and, frankly, I think they deserved exactly what they got.

The Stella Liebeck case has been quoted and misquoted more often than just about any. The details can be found at Randy Cassingham's Stella Awards site which gives details of this, and many other supposed tort claims, most of them no more than urban legends.

Stella Liebeck did eventually receive good compensation from McDonalds but the figures quoted are all guesswork since the final settlement was confidential.

In fact, for every person injured while drinking McDonalds coffee, 23,999,999 people managed to drink their coffee without any injury whatever. To suggest that McDonalds are being cavalier with the safety of their customers by serving coffee hot is, I suggest, rather a unfair in the light of the true facts, all of which can be found here http://www.stellaawards.com/stella.html

Richard, if you recall, you and I talked about this in depth a year or go or so. I had sent you an excellent, well-referenced article on this from the Wall Street Journal.

We will have to agree to disagree on this. The strange thing is, a year ago you agreed with me!

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We will have to agree to disagree on this

I didn't mean to disagree about Stella, simply to point out that her case is much mis-quoted.

Richard, first of all the "mis-quoting" of the case is almost always (at least in the U.S.) favoring McDonald's; their PR work with this case was obvious. Second, the article your posted was not as complete as the one in the Wall Street Journal; there were many facts about the actual temperature of their coffee and how they had been warned numerous times to lower the temperature. But, finally, and most importantly, when it comes to safety, you cannot accept anything but 100% accuracy. The fact that millions of cups of their coffee had been drunk with no burns, with only a small percentage causing massive burns, makes absolutely no difference. The company had been warned that their coffee was too hot and had injured many people, and they did absolutely nothing until they lost a major lawsuit. Then they took action.

It sounds to me that the law worked exactly as it should in this case.

Well, I wondered if anyone was going to challenge Richard's "true facts." The article was certainly biased and, as Kalleh pointed out, did not contain all of the "true facts," as Richard purported. There are many accounts of this case on the internet, usually with a bias. By emphasizing one aspect of the case you can slant it whichever way you want it. As Wikipedia says, "It is a good example of the use of selected information to support a given position."

Here is a 1994 Wall Street Journal article by Andrea Gerlin. I don't know whether it's the one kalleh referred to. Here's what the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA) says about the case.

It always amazes me that, no matter how many days or months or years a trial goes on, a person who has heard only a small fraction of the testimony through such reliable media as newspapers, tv, and neighborhood gossip, can immediately pronounce a verdict and can state, unequivocally and without any doubt, whether the verdict of the jurors, who have sat through all the testimony and deliberations, is right or wrong.

Tinman

Edited to include link to Andrea Gerlin article in Wall Street Journal

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But, finally, and most importantly, when it comes to safety, you cannot accept anything but 100% accuracy.

In fact, that is one of the myths that is frequently repeated in the media, to the extent that people believe it.

Every human endevour attracts risk and it's a balancing act as to how much risk is acceptable. Interestingly, the percentage risk that people believe is acceptable varies hugely and the Stella case is typical. The chance of being badly burnt by a cup of McDonald's coffee would seem to be one in 24 million - and that is deemed to be too high by the US courts.

The risk of being blown up by a terrorist bomb on London Transport, notwithstanding the recent outrages, is almost too small to measure (4 million people travel on the underground every day and 8 million travel on the buses). But the attacks have meant that many people have switched to driving, walking or riding bicycles where the risk of being killed is far, far higher. Indeed, more pedestrians are killed or injured every day in London than are killed or injured on the tube in several months (including those attacked by muggers or rapists). But you try to tell a lady travelling home late at night that she's safer on the tube than she is in a car and she'll laugh in your face - although statistically it's true.

100% safety is not achievable and anyone who thinks it is knows nothing about risk analysis. One other example - BSE - which meant that the USA (and other countries) banned the import of British Beef because of its tenuous link with CJD. More people are killed every year by falling out of bed than are killed by CJD - should we ban high-level beds? The risk of being killed by smoking is huge - but the young girl who was being interviewed about BSE didn't seem to worry. She was puffing away at a cigarette while telling the interviewer that she would never again eat beef!

All providers of public services undertake risk assessment and decide how much to spend on risk avoidance and the decision is based on how many lives and injuries they consider will be saved for how much cost. The public's peception is one of the main factors which is why the railways and the airlines have to spend far nore on safety than do some other undertakings since the public expect a much higher level of security from them. Which is why UK trains now have to have automatic train protection - brakes that come on should the driver pass a signal set at danger - even though the number of such incidents are very few and accidents arising from them even fewer. But does your car have a device that stops it if you jump a red light? Not on your life - although the risk of accident in such cases is far higher than it is on a rail system.

That statement about the truth being the first victim of war can extend to other realms.

Statistics can prove anything if you use the right ones. Take the following:

But you try to tell a lady travelling home late at night that she's safer on the tube than she is in a car and she'll laugh in your face - although statistically it's true.

I'll bet that this statistic includes everyone who uses the Tube, attackers and obvious non-victims included - which waters it down significantly. A woman in a car may have the same risk as anyone else of being in a traffic accident, but travelling alone on public transport at night she's more likely to be picked by an attacker than a 6'5" bodybuilder.

You're stastically (apparently) more likely to die in a a)car accident than b)a plane crash, yes, but if you have the misfortune of actually being involved in either, I believe there's more chance of surviving a car wreck than a plane wreck. Put more succinctly, the chances of being involved in a) are higher, but, if you do get involved, the chances of dying are greater in b). I think that's probably why more people are scared of air travel than road travel, although factors such as the relative novelty of air travel are also relevant.

We can't forget the words of Disraeli, who had quite a way with them.

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There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics

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Statistics can prove anything if you use the right ones. Take the following:

Quite so. But I don't use that tactic. The statistics are there for all to see; the inferences people draw from them are their own. Just out of interest, here are the 2001 statistics for UK road accident deaths on various methods of travel. See if you can guess which is which. (Fatalities are per billion passenger kilometres)

Motor cycle/moped 112

Foot 48

Pedal cycle 33

Car 3

Van 0.9

Water 0.4

Bus or coach 0.2

Rail 0.1

Air >0.01

Mouse over to the left to see the answer - which I think proves my point about perception. Similar statistics are available for crimes and you'll find that most crimes against the person take place in a familiar environment (home or office)n and are committed by a person known to the victim.

As a mathematician I can't let that pass unchallenged. The statistics are there for all to see, as you say, but even here there is an interesting point to note. The fatality rates are given per billion passenger kilometres. This doesn't take into account at all that the average journey length for someone on foot is no more than a couple of miles while the average journey length for someone on an aircraft is thousands (or even tens of thousands) of miles.

So for every airline passenger that survives the journey there need to be about 10000 pedestrians who survive the journey for these statistics to be comparible.

I suspect that if you take the figures for number of deaths per thousand trips by each method of transport a very different picture will emerge because vastly more people make trips on foot than by air.

While you have presented your facts without drawing a conclusion there is an automatic and extreme bias in the way the statistics have been gathered.

Another way of tabulating the same raw data would be per journey. As each pedestrian is making an individual journey he would count as one "incident" were he to be run over. If a plane crashes then that's still one "incident" but with the loss of several hundred lives.
You see the problem. No matter how you present the data it will always have some kind of bias. You could present the raw data listing all the journeys examined and the number of fatalities but that would be unreadable and the moment anyone produces a tabulated version, the bias is automatic and unavoidable.


THIS PROBLEM IS INHERENT IN ANY STATISTICAL DATA.

This is one reason why mathematicians and scientists treat statistical data with extreme caution.

Of course all of that doesn't begin to take into account things like sample size, population selection or phase space.

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No matter how you present the data it will always have some kind of bias.

I entirely agree. Deaths per journey would show a different ratio, I agree, since pedestrian journeys are far more frequent than air journeys. However, if you take the journeys that are similar - car, van coach and rail, then it is clear that car journeys are about 30 times more dangerous than rail journeys. But I'll bet you'll not find too many people who realise that and who drive to London because they believe trains are unsafe.

I think it was Amos Tversky who observed that people generally tend to overestimate small risks and underestimate large ones.

Well, Richard, between this thread and the one where you think cell phones are a necessity on Maslow's Hierarchy of needs...it is a good thing that there is an ocean between us!

First, thanks, Tinman, for that excellent post about the McDonald's lawsuit. It was similar to the Wall Street Journal article I had originally read. Remember, the Wall Street Journal is extremely conservative and would be expected to support businesses.

Richard, when I say that we must accept 100% safety, you must realize that's the goal! You are right that there is a cost/benefit issue that must be considered. We could all spend our lives in a plastic bubble to prevent infections, but that's hardly worth the cost or the aggravation. Of course safety will never be 100%, but surely you cannot argue that should be the goal. (Remember, I work for an organization whose sole mission is to protect the public.) However, in this case it is not too much to ask the company to lower the temperature of their coffee in order to prevent 700 major burns. In fact, to lower the temperature of the coffee would indeed save energy (and money). As the report stated, that is precisely what they did.

Yet, it's a pity they didn't do it sooner after their customers had experienced all those severe burns. Believe me, there is nothing more painful than a burn. I have taken care of many burn patients, and it is agonizing to have the dead tissue debrided. Besides the pain, infection can easily set in, or other complications can occur, that can kill patients, especially elderly ones. This case was a no-brainer.

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