Hacker Cinema
Homeland
2011 · TV series · 8 seasons
Created by Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon
CIA officer Carrie Mathison is tops in her field despite being bipolar, which makes her volatile and unpredictable. With the help of her long-time mentor Saul Berenson, Carrie fearlessly risks everything, including her personal well-being and even sanity, at every turn.
7 positive12 negative2 mixed35 neutralfrom 56 commenters
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58 comments on Hacker News
These are the best comments. Hearing from someone else with AE is really wonderful. I've heard from only a few. And I'm really happy to hear about your mostly smooth recovery. I hope it continues!
> it’s rare to see this condition mentioned outside a specialist neurology setting
I only realized this from the Wikipedia article on anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, but it's apparently what the main character (Will) suffered from in the Hannibal TV show. I watched that show and loved it. I had no idea about the specific disease he suffered from. If you had asked me before this, I probably would have said that he had something like bipolar, like Carrie in the TV show Homeland.
> imagine your immune system spontaneously deciding to run an ablation test on the live neural network inside your skull
This is brilliant. I'm totally going to steal this.
> Today, life is mostly back to normal.
This is heartwarming. I feel almost "normal" now. There are some lingering issues, but there's improvement. I hope it continues.
> My first symptoms were brief “twitches” that appeared simultaneously in my left arm and face. I later learned they were seizures.
This made me remember that I had some twitching too. I had two EEGs, but AFAIK, no evidence of seizures was found. Thank you for this, because it reminded me to write this down as a question to ask my doctors at my next follow-up.
> Wishing you the very best, and I hope the CIELO trial delivers positive results for all of us.
I'm feeling even more excited about being in the trial after the response from everyone! Especially those with AE.
-----
If you don't mind me asking, how long was it between when you first noticed symptoms and when you got treatment? And what treatment did you get? (The same as me? IVIG and IV steroids?)
> It wasn’t some sophisticated conspiracy.
It definitely was. There's nothing more annoying than the "of course all of this is true, but only crazy people think that people planned and did it on purpose."
The real conspiracy, it always seems, is that intelligence agencies ever do anything on purpose, or have any goals. They were supposed to fight the Soviets, but who decided on that? It is a mystery. Did they come up with plans? No, everybody just blundered around and did their own thing.
People are claiming that there were no plans and no coordination in offices where the same people sat at the same desks for 40 years, and were replaced by their children. It would be bizarre if you were talking about any other subject other than praise for authority and the diagnosis of people who deny its selfless goals.
> Not saying it was great.
How generous of you.
> There’s also a long history of military recruitment propaganda through Hollywood. It’s basically a genre of film. Some of them are damn good popcorn movies but it’s obvious that they are propagandizing young men to join up. Top Gun comes to mind.
You don't know that there are offices that deal with this in the military all day, and that they both help finance films and deny access to equipment and depictions of equipment to productions who don't agree to their terms? The military provides soldiers and equipment to films. This is true for all military divisions and intelligence agencies, and to my knowledge has been true since the FBI started funding and working productions in the 50s.
If you think all this stuff just sort of happens through random collisions, it's going to distort your perceptions of the world. Or specifically in my experience, to ascribe magical qualities to "the market."
One of the current funny clips is Claire Danes being silenced on the Colbert show when talking about the relationship of the show Homeland's creators to the CIA (one's father and cousin), how all the actors were invited to "spy school" every year, and how it was explained to her by somebody at CIA school that the CIA was having to deepen its similar partnerships in media to bolster support for itself against Trump (during the first term) before being quickly silenced by Colbert. She's a perfect example of people participating in every aspect of this process, yet still being unaware that it really exists. She'd call you a conspiracy theorist for mentioning it.
https://youtu.be/d6mBbyb-vIA?t=360
Season 8 of Homeland is based on an event like this
There was a TV show starring JK Simmons called Counterpoint. I was able to watch it at one point but now it is completely unavailable in the UK. Can’t even buy the series!
Despite subscribing to the Showtime channel on Amazon Prime, I cannot watch Homeland. I can watch it on Netflix though and the audio and quality is absolute shit. And I don’t want to give Netflix 20 quid a month for that.
Why homeland? Was on a Damien Lewis binge. Love that guy’s work.
That video you linked looks like homeland season 1!
No and I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy. They were opportunistic. I remember back then hearing an interview with the writers who were describing writing each episode of 24 on a weekly basis between episodes. And the article I linked to describes how they tried to use Homeland to reflect more seriously on the ideas around torture that first appeared in 24.
Ultimately they created a show that fed into the publics desire for revenge, post 9/11, and made a big success out of it.
What it leads to is the point I already made - the goal torture is oppression; to create fear and thereby obedience, not gathering information.
I think Culpeper was also referenced in an episode of Homeland
It depends on what aspect of it you're looking for.
If you're looking for Scifi that maybe resembles it I'd say possibly Battlestar Galactica. It's a bit higher production level, although does have slow stretches during some seasons (I think middle third of S2 was one of them), and falls apart a bit when trying to put together it's ending. Writing is about the same, maybe a bit better - and has a similarish feel although not grounded on earth. Covers some interesting topics of society.
If you're looking more of the in depth discussion of the state of society (specifically American). The Wire is really spectacular. But it's not "junkfood" watching, it takes paying attention and a lot of points are subtle. It also takes about 6-7 episodes of very slow ramp up to get good, but one of the best shows of the past two decades - and plenty have said one of the most complete TV shows ever made.
If you're looking for just the easy to consume action and political intrigue, the first half of Game of Thrones fits that bill, but is now notorious for how poorly it ended. High production, lots of characters / back story.
Maybe 24 or Homeland would match if you're looking for more of a straightforward "stop the terrorists" themed show.
It all depends on what aspect of Colony you're looking for / enjoyed.
The involvement in fictional media is pretty out in the open at this point.
Here's John Krasinski, star of Amazon's Jack Ryan series, talking about how he was welcomed at the CIA and "we should thank them every day": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9Yg6y6bFeM
A good article on how the writers for Homeland closely collaborated with representatives from the US intelligence community: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/homeland-declassified-battles-backlash-cia-meetings-a-secret-call-edward-snowden-1269957/
You can watch the series which inspired Homeland there in french (Original) or german. No english subtitles though.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1676462/
https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/048080-001-A/hatufim-in-der-hand-des-feindes-1-staffel-1-10/
This reminds of a scene in Homeland. I forgot the season/episode, but the basic plot is that a Media man who was urging supporters didn't think that these supporters would get armed and confront the police/FBI. It ended with one of these supporters killed and the man shocked as he clearly didn't think it would go that far.
In my opinion, Trump is just doing that. I don't think he would have expected armed men to join this. He was probably doing it to save face. It doesn't help that democrats are making the situation worse by calling this a coup instead of taking a calmer sentence.
Here are the possible resolution scenarios:
- The men are disbanded. No one is hurt, maybe some charges against some of these men.
- One fatal shot on one side or both sides. Sad event, but then the men are disbanded and harsher charges against some of them.
The rest is drama.
> Season 3 of Homeland
Oh, what a downer that season was. On the other hand, Homeland Season 1 was one of the best bits of television I’ve seen.
We need to get better as a species at pretending certain seasons didn’t happen. Season 5 of The Wire, Season 3 of Homeland, anything after All Along the Watchtower in BSG etc
> Mr. Robot was about Occupy
I'm a Mr. Robot fan, and a real fan of Kor's influence (an ex security guy at Toyota!) on the show but I likely took a very different perspective from it than most as I'm a crypto nerd.
To me the series was like a dramatization of Naomi Campbell's Shock Doctrine [1] with very well portrayed hacks and exploits (I'm not a pen tester but some OPESEC stuff was quite accurate). And their crypto stuff was actually well developed and researched. And some hero vs villeins characters to keep things going.
SPOILER ALLERT
The occupy overtones felt like a distraction, and a tired trope to me; the masks were an obvious nod to the Guy Faux maskes representing Anonymous, but beyond that I think it was rather lacking any real substance--Season 3's riot at E-corp showed how quickly things escalate to violent mob-rule even against the supposed protagonists. The redistribution of wealth via a hack against the 1%'s seemed forced and cobbled together because Sam wanted the ending to fit that narrative and quite frankly it felt forcefully coaxed; whereas the mental health, loneliness and substance abuse plot was very well paced and fleshed out throughout the series.
I wasn't really satisfied with how that last hack drove the series end and how the last 'hack' saved the World was rather ridiculous to me as result--and this is from perhaps one of the most anti-nuclear voices on HN! And he survived to see his plan triumph, because reasons we cannot and will not explain beyond some far fetched off scene make-believe you will just have to accept.
I've never seen Homeland; to be honest I don't really watch TV much as popular shows feel boring to things that happen in the many sub-cultures and communities I'm involved in. That guy from Occupy I mentioned before got me into Mr. Robot at the end of season 1 but I didn't get into it much until the E-Coin vs Bitcoin plot development in S2 and binged most of it until that part.
Even during this lockdown I've been mainly re-watching/listening to old races, concerts and DJ sets while I study and do stuff. I have like 5 audio books I'm waiting to sink my teeth into so I'm afraid I won't get to see Home Coming anytime, either. I'll check out the trailer, but that's rather glib representation I imagine.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGmB63TIHLY
Edit: Saw trailer: eh, Black Mirror's Men Against Fire did that plot brilliantly, and this seems like an elongated version of it. And what is Sam's obsession with fish tanks?
PS: I don't think I've clarified my position with the Shock Doctrine; I agree with Campbell's premise, but not her conclusion(s), as Free Market Capitalism is not what is inserted in the 'window of operation' from the disaster/shock to the system, but rather a very parasitic corporate plutocracy emerges in the way Mussolini defined Fascism (the merging of State and Corporate power) is what inserts itself in practice. Even Pricenton has defined the US as an Oligarchy.
Homeland season 8 predicted this.
What are you talking about? We can and do arrest, charge, and convict "evil islamic imams" that "preach radicalization", and don't let them operate mosques. We tolerate and welcome mosques because they ban radicals and report them to the FBI:
"Monteilh eventually so unnerved Orange County's Muslim community that that they got a restraining order against him. [T]hey also reported Monteilh to the FBI"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/20/fbi-informant
You do know that Homeland is a TV show and not real life, right?
A mosque that openly fostered extremism like 8chan did would of course get shut down. By contrast, 8chan has not been shut down. Its operations have been disrupted, but it hasn't shut down, anymore than Cloudflare has shut down just because they had a site outage last month.
It's good to see attention paid to the day-to-day challenges hospital IT folks face when grappling with medical devices. These folks deserve better.
As an industry of thing-makers, we've done a pretty poor job of supporting use cases involving big diverse populations of devices that aren't centrally managed. Devices don't identify themselves in any consistent way; device makers don't allocate MAC addresses predictably from their assigned ranges; security folks often don't have link-layer visibility into their own networks; and so on.
Result: hospitals are desperate to "secure" their medical devices, yet they don't know what those devices are, what patch levels they're at, or what their "baseline" behavior is supposed to be, among other things that are crucial for security.
The security industry has decided that medical devices are a special case of IoT, and you can now choose from a wide variety of AI blinky boxes to send you anomaly alerts. That has been going about as well as it does in other domains.
Two things that may help hospital tech workers in the coming years are: efforts like IETF's MUD [1] to make devices state their purpose clearly; and efforts like the NTIA's software transparency initiative [2] that are aiming to make manufacturers say what's in their devices. The FDA is also cracking the whip on medical device makers to incorporate security into their development processes, and they love comments from nerds who can help.
</soapbox>
(I am one of the academic researchers behind the defibrillator hacking [3] that inspired the Homeland episode mentioned in this article, and I've been cutting my fingers on innumerable sharp corners in hospital wiring closets on and off since then.)
[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-opsawg-mud/
[2] https://www.ntia.doc.gov/SoftwareTransparency
[3] https://www.secure-medicine.org/hubfs/public/publications/icd-study.pdf
Netflix has created some of the best TV shows I have watched in the past few years.
Strangers things, Maniac, The End of the F*ing World, Narcos, On my block, Master of none, El Chapo, Ozark, Glow, Disenchanted, Black mirror, Dare Devil, 13 reasons why, Jessica Jones, The Punisher, A series of unfortunate events, The OA, Orange is the new black
Those are just some of the ones I can recall at the moment.
Only other shows that I use popcorn time to watch are Game of thrones and Homeland.
There's a scene in a Homeland's episode.
"Hey you are X mins late. This is Germany man!"
I thought it was a bit too expositional IMHO.
And of course this was set in a sex shop.
In the 21st century this would be:
kidnapped by terrorists and forced to read a statement.
IIRC this was used in Homeland, the TV show.
Homeland? That's exactly what a FBI agent tries to do, but gets caught in that TV series. But yeah, guess it works most of the time.
Because indie US hackers don't target other nations? Doesn't sound strange at all that indie Russian hackers might also target the US.
Besides, what exactly does Russia stand to win from hacking into the US? To influence the elections to get Trump elected? Because that can happen without repercussions? And because the US doesn't have 10 times the resources and counter-measures?
It's only a constantly BS-fed public that watches a show like 24 or Homeland like it's some kind of documentary that will buy into that.
Russia is not USSR, and there's not much antagonism (since Russia is not exactly a world player), except one sided (the US treating Eastern Europe like it's the 60s and using Eastern European allies to suffocate the non-existant communist threat).
If Putin was actually full blown autocratic and despotic but friendly lackey, they'll be singing his praises like they did for Yeltsin back in the day. But as it stands, the problem is more than he's not selling Russia wholesale to foreign companies, than any BS "autocracy" (because the much beloved Saudi royalty are not?).
It's just that there are guns to be sold, proxy wars to be fought, and sanctions to be imposed, etc., until that country (Russia) is finally allowed to be plundered like everybody else. How dare they have their own interests in mind?
- Focus and elevate video content. Entire TV episodes are sometimes made public on Twitter - there's no way to surface this. When The Expanse has a new episode, it should go into a tab that's YouTube on Twitter.
- Pay video creators out the ass to get them to dual-publish from YouTube, and create auto-sync features that let them publish in both locations. Build in live-streaming functionality to compete with Twitch.
- "Async realtime". When watching a show, make it possible to replay Homeland tweets from the time you start. If you watch an Apple Keynote later, make the realtime tweets replay, and make it possible to add your own.
- Allow different engagement models. If someone has a whiff of abuse in their feed, make it trivial for them to see only verified + low risk users. The moment someone sends an @message to someone they've never conversed with with a single abusive word, crank the risk on them. If someone wants to engage with the firehose, make that the default.
- Make it easy to "import" feeds. I've had at least 3 friends ask me who to follow, and then we spend 15 minutes scrolling through my follow list, they manually look them up. When a new user registers on Twitter, I should be able to pick 3 people I'm most interested in following, and it should then recommend the people they like the most.
- It should be one-click to "super follow" someone, and get all their follows into my feed. Make it trivial to get an awesome, active feed. And trivial to reduce noise when I'm not interested in something.
I'm going to play fan boy here. After almost finishing the second season I have to say Mr. Robot is the best TV show I think I have ever watched. Even better than Homeland.
The funny thing is if it didn't even involve hacking I would still consider my favorite show. The psychodrama existentialism of the show is so good. The plot is so damn good. The acting is so damn good.
Th music, the timing of title screen and the font used. I love it all.
i think i saw this in the tv series of homeland s05 ;)
Homeland seems pretty critical of US policy in Season One, perhaps too much so. After Season One (which should have been the only season) it becomes laughably transparent pro-Israel/anti-Iran propaganda rather than pro-CIA.
It's even more brainless and nonsensical than 24, but unlike that show, Homeland actually seems to take itself seriously.
Many if not most of the TV shows or movies where you see heavy army gear and equipment that wouldn't be there without the government's cooperation, will be heavily influenced by the government and in what light it shows the US government.
It's why I stopped watching shows like 24, Homeland, Person of Interest, and so on, after the first season or two. I couldn't stomach the propaganda anymore.
I watch a lot of TV series. When I say "Homeland" to it, it takes me to a page about Homeland in general. From there I have to select a poorly named button to say "I want to see the episodes I own", and then I have to scroll along with no visual indication of which I've watched. When I hit Menu from that, I'm dropped in to the main menu, with no obvious way back. If I go in via TV Show from the main menu, it's a different UI that works more sensibly. This and 101 other minor irritations with the UI just get between me and my content.
> Homeland is a TV show, for entertainment.
It's also an excellent example of propaganda.
Homeland is a TV show, for entertainment. No one is happy with a lot of documentaries, the TV shows that are meant to get at facts and not just entertain.
So while I don't want to give Homeland a free ride, it'd be too much to expect more from the show.
> Homeland isn't a documentary ...
True, but I don't feel it's not enough for Homeland's producers, or anyone, to say 'it's not our problem'. We all live in a community and are responsible for taking care of it and for the consequences of what we do. "No man is an island."
People absorb their views of the world from TV, in part. With widespread prejudice against people who believe in Islam, portraying stereotypes of that prejudice worsens a dangerous situation. Many, many very bad things in history have resulted and are resulting from that kind of prejudice. It's similar to portraying all black skinned people on TV as drug dealers; many people, seeing only stereotypes, come to believe them.
Well, the show depicts largely terrorists and criminals. Activists apparently want long diatribes about how wonderful Arab and Muslim families are to "balance" it out.
Homeland isn't a documentary. Its a dramatic show about national security and as such it will probably not paint a realistic picture of the average Muslim, because average Muslims aren't really what its supposed to portray. The same way professional wresting doesn't portray the average man's body or reality tv about wealthy people doesn't portray the average person's lifestyle.
hmm, this is local.
for cities in central europe like berlin, munich, vienna the indicators for poor neighborhoods are mobile-phone repairshops, internet cafés and kebab/döner/falafel places. immigrants from the south-east, from turkey to afghanistan shaping these areas.
as nicely illustrated in the current episodes of Homeland.
Oh man, I wish I had this heart rate data for when I was watching Homeland S03E12 for the first time. I distinctly remember that episode being an emotional roller coaster unlike pretty much anything else I've watched. I know my heart rate was really high at some point. I wouldn't be surprised if it was up in the 140-150 range. That show has an incredible ability build crazy amounts of tension. S01E11 was also off the charts.
Was anyone else reminded of that 'Homeland' episode?
Didn't he only want encryption without a government backdoor to be illegal?
I don't really think anyone has a problem with giving the latest episodes of Homeland and Downton Abbey to our political elite.
Warning: spoilers ahead
Homeland was pretty subversive in its first season, I mean, up until Brody decided not to blow himself and the rest of the high-ranking officials up in that bunker it was a pretty bleak affair: a decorated US marine, now a politician, who decides to kill the VP of the United States and a couple of other generals, you don't usually get that in block-busters. Afterwards, and especially starting with season 2, it did indeed become a propaganda thingie.
Otherwise you're completely spot on. As a film junkie it really bothers me that our generation doesn't have its "Apocalypse Now", "The Deer Hunter" or "Rambo I - First Blood" (whose director has just been interviewed in the latest Cahiers du Cinema issue), it's all white-washed, depressing propaganda. There are a few exceptions here and there (De Palma's "Redacted", Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker", partially), but otherwise we're treated not as adults, but as kids who need to be told "nice" stories about what's really happening around us.
I didn't put words in your mouth, I asked you if what you meant was that 100% of people that downloaded the latest episode of Homeland pay for it through their cable subscription. The cable companies also provide ways for you to record the TV you pay for, I don't agree that torrents should serve that purpose.
Maybe, but I don't think it was done actively. I remember when I was still at a certain military institution and the Dean was periodically pulling in all of the cadets in small groups during "Dean's hour", a period immediately following lunch, to remind us that torture is something that flies in the face of everything we were about to stand for, especially as we were about to graduate and head off to Iraq/Afghanistan. He even tried to get the folks running 24 to quit showing it so prominently [1]. I think it was really just about making money - torture has shock value just like anything else that pushes the established boundaries of violence for television. So I don't think there's some broader conspiracy, I think the people running Fox are really just assholes and capitalized on people's fears.
There's something to be said for the post-9/11 zeitgeist that it gonna take us a really, really long time to get over. We see it in super hero movies (if I have to watch Manhattan get pulverized one more time...) and in a more evolved and complex form with Homeland. I think it'll be years before we come to terms with how we've responded as a society and with what we've done.
[1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9876686
I'm surprised no one has brought up Homeland's past two episodes. It's fiction to be sure, but I think the raw emotions can be seen in the episodes. I have issues with people here being armchair ethics police.
Also, I have just skimmed the report, so may be in error, but is there any context to those tortured? If they did not share with the CIA when they asked nicely, why? Did the tortured gun down innocent civilians? Are they known to have plans for a large attack? What would you do in that situation?
I refuse to make the jump to "America the Gestapo" I refuse to make black and white "torture is wrong, always" OR "they got what's coming to them".
There is evil. There is good. We get into theological and moral implications if I go any further so I'll stop there lest I get downvoted because I believe in some old white guy with a beard.
I remember watching the Homeland episode set there and thinking "This can't be real". Even in that over the top series, it felt too much...
So audience data when you're talking about original productions can be a blessing and a curse. We don't need big data to tell us that the top four favorite subjects of Netflix users are marriage, royalty, parenthood, and reunited lovers. We've been telling stories about those things for hundreds - if not thousands - of years.
The data can also be misleading, because sometimes what audiences want isn't what's good for dramatic effect. Both Dexter and Homeland suffered from audiences reacting positively to the main character, which caused Showtime to stop the writers from making creative decisions that yes, would have alienated the audience initially, but on the other hand would have made for shows that would have in their later seasons been better received.
Another example: I'm pretty sure that if you looked at the Netflix data it would show that people liked to watch movies and TV shows that either had happy endings or twist endings. The former makes you feel good, the latter makes you appreciate the writing. What people really don't like are ambiguous endings. If we based creative decisions purely on audience data a show like The Sopranos wouldn't have the ending it does. The upshot of all of this is that many writers end up 'cheating' the data to get their shows made. Take Orange is the New Black, where the creator Jenji Kohan has gone on record saying she basically used the main white, engaged protagonist as a trojan horse to get the show commissioned. What I'm basically trying to say in this rant is that using data to inform what shows to commission is one thing, but using it to direct the shows as they progress is another (and something I'm against).
Yes, involuntary commitment, at least a post-72 hour commitment imposed by a judge, should be a dealbreaker. Having filled a Klonopin prescription no, but having filled a lithium prescription yes. Unipolar depression isn't quite the softball mood disorder people may realize (in comparison to bipolar), I wouldn't want citizens prone to major depressive episodes to have guns either, and it's also noteworthy that those diagnosed with depression often turn out to have something more colorful, such as bipolar.
edit: As for bipolar CIA agents on Homeland, they should be restricted to carrying pistol-shaped tasers.
What if Anon was a 'covert' branch of the NSA? Or Wikileaks a CIA sub-contractor? Wouldn't that be an awesome twist on an already convoluted saga?
I just like imagining such possibilities, of course this is probably not the case, but the implications ... I guess I have been watching too many Homeland episodes lately. :)
Would you rather pay $80 to watch Game of Thrones and Homeland, or $80 a month for a year ($960 total) to watch those episodes plus old rerun movies and syndicate shows? I suppose it's a matter of preference but I choose the former :)
So, off the top of my head I can think of these female lead roles who are 'strong' and a whole lot more, including sometimes vulnerable, weak, contradictory and even capricious:
Carrie from Homeland // Sookie from True Blood // Sonya from The Bridge // Sarah from The Killing // Jackie from Nurse Jackie // Tara from United States of Tara
All of those are TV shows, not movies. But I think that is just my own bias, I have a hard time remembering characters in movies because I only get ~90 minutes of exposure, compared to 450-1000 minutes a year with TV.
One point in support of the argument though -- Sucker Punch which was primarily a female cast, had to cut the most pivotal scene in the entire movie where the lead choses sex & death of her mental self rather than fighting because, despite not being explicit, it was the difference between a PG-13 and an R rating.
Of possible interest -- There was a homeland episode [1], where they used a hack on a pacemaker to assassinate someone. This caused lots of discussion around medical device security [2] [3] [4] [5].
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-hogan/homeland-recap-season-2-episode-10-broken-hearts_b_2229246.html
[2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/singularity/2012/12/06/yes-you-can-hack-a-pacemaker-and-other-medical-devices-too/
[3] http://www.cnbc.com/id/100306578
[4] http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Homeland-Pacemaker-Hack-2206357.S.192475623
[5] http://blog.ioactive.com/2013/02/broken-hearts-how-plausible-was.html
Two new models for TV apps I see are:
1. Games that are specifically fitted to replace TV. They'll probably be non competitive, fit for nearly passive consumption, with great story and visuals. Machinarium is one example, and i heard good thing about the walking dead story wise.
But there would be a need to finding all those games and marketing them to TV viewers.
2. Israeli TV production houses seem on some disruptive path. For example hatufim, the TV series homeland was based on, cost $50k per episode, vs $2.5 million per homeland episode. Those financial limits make israeli producers focus on good stories, which is the reason Hollywood does lots of deals with israeli companies.
On the other hand, such cost structure makes it much easier to try new things: releasing all episodes at once(really helps to be absorbed with content), new finance models,new ads tech,new ways to access global audiences, new kinds of stories.
And TV as apps could make it easier to build such models.
There is nothing inherently wrong with choosing to release reports that you own or have exclusive license to in any way you want, tiered or not. I pay for Showtime, and therefore I get to see new Homeland episodes before people downloading from free torrent sites get to. I have chosen to pay; they have chosen not to pay. Same thing here.
A significant chunk of the money Reuters pays for the reports, which they recoup through subscriptions, winds up going to pay for the production of the reports anyway. The only thing that surprises me about this is how much money they are likely leaving on the table. They should let people bid for early access.
The TV show "Homeland", right? Not another book?
Torrent freak sensationalising as usual. Fox was sending takedown notices to Google of links to the Homeland TV show. Included in these notices were some links to a novel with the same name that was available on torrent sites. Seems like a simple mistake. As much as I dislike Fox the title here is completely misleading.
Edit: I agree with the other commenters there should be some sort of financial penalty for this. It's a simple mistake but as it will impact the author of the novel negatively Fox should have to reimburse him in someway. I'm not exactly sure how that would work but it's something that needs to be looked at with the DMCA.
Homeland, the TV series, is based on a similar premise and, whether you like the show or not, it works.
I've always wondered why films and TV series (with limited budgets) don't just use off-the-shelf screens from Windows, OS X, or Linux distros. Are there some copyright/trademark issues that get in the way? It seems like a lot of work to develop your own UI that will only be on the screen for a few seconds.
I did notice that in an episode of Homeland that Saul was runing Media Player Classic on Windows to watch a video from an SD card, with the titlebar blurred out (so the name of the app wasn't visible). Later, another character watches the same video but there's a total custom UI used to bring up the video. In the same episode.
Felt compelled to post because I hadn't seen Suits mentioned. Modern Family continues to be reliable for laughs and hasn't been added yet. The League is the other show which I find myself laughing out loud at least a few times every episode.
Hell on Wheels surprised me by having a strong second season.
I had high hopes for Copper, but it hasn't really grabbed me in the 1st handful of episodes.
Agree with all the obvious ones:
Homeland, Louie, Newsroom, Sherlock, Game of Thrones, Community.
My wife is addicted to Castle and I've come to really enjoy it too. Since we've caught up to date with that we've now switched over to Person of Interest, which I'm really enjoying.
I've fallen behind with the following and plan to catch up ASAP:
Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, 30 Rock, Breaking Bad.
PS: yeah, I watch a lot of TV :)
Louie, Season 3 stands out to me as the best show of the year. Every 'section'(between advert breaks) is extremely well written, directed, and even orchestrated. Each 'section' feels like an operatic movement, with each episode being extremely cohesive and emotive. From an artistic point of view, it's one of the best shows of the year. From a comedy point of view, it's probably the best show of the year, definitely the stand out show for me this year.
Homeland was also very good this year, it managed to keep up the suspense and excellent acting, I'm excited to see the new season next year.
I enjoyed Dexter, I'm not sure I like where they are heading though, it's getting darker and darker by the series. I also enjoyed Castle, I think it's very funny and well written, but perhaps I have a soft spot Nathan Fillion.
Most anticipated TV series for next year is the new Arrested Development. I love the first three seasons, I'm a bit nervous with netflix financing it, I hope the (probably) smaller budget hasn't meant too many compromises in terms of writing and production, but with the excellent cast from the previous seasons all returning, I'm excited to see how they're going to pick up from the end of season 3.
I just added it to the list. Perfect timing, because I need a new TV series to get addicted to now Dexter and Homeland are over for the season.
The OP is begging the question. The Release Window never had anything to do with technology. Its has always been about money. Money is not an "analog era relic".
Obviously the content producers have considered doing away with release windows, and for now have chosen not to. Its safe to assume they've decided they'll make the most money this way. So why? That is a much more interesting question.
Some things to think about:
1) iTunes/Amazon/Google pay the content producer each time they sell something (basically consignment), instead of making a big purchase upfront and then reselling the product (like DVDs, or even Netflix). The DVD model seems much better for the content producer, as the DVD saler is taking some of the risk whereas iTunes/Amazon/etc assume none of the risk.
2) Cannibalization is a bigger issue than we might think. Streaming with no release delays is basically an a la carte model. Its likely this would reduce the content producer's total take.
Chris Dixon has a great article on why bundling can be a win for both sellers and buyers here: http://cdixon.org/2012/07/08/how-bundling-benefits-sellers-and-buyers/
3) The author is probably overestimating the increased sales generated by an earlier DVD/streaming release.
4) Not everyone is willing to pirate content, simply because it is illegal to do so. For some people, not being a thief is more important than seeing Homeland Season 2 right now. Thus the growth of piracy may be limited in a way the OP does not understand (not by viruses or technological hurdles, but just because some people don't want to be pirates).
Perhaps there's a model where simultaneous releases do make more sense for the sellers. I'd certainly welcome it. But its not obviously better for the sellers, and protecting your revenue stream is not equivalent to being stuck in a "wasteful rear-guard fight for the preservation of an analog era relic", as the OP claims.
to me it's simpler - big budget, well-made TV series are flat out better than movies.
id rather spend the same money as two theater tickets a month for HBO / Showtime and watch Homeland, Game of Thrones, 24/7 etc.
Example: Girl with a Dragon tattoo would be an unreal premium TV series. A 2hr 40min movie seems rushed and messy whereas a 12-18 episode TV season could do this and other amazing books justice.