Hacker Cinema
Pawn Stars
2009 · TV series · 25 seasons
Go inside the colorful world of the pawn business. At the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop on the outskirts of Las Vegas, generations of the Harrison family run the family business, and there’s clashing and camaraderie every step of the way.
1 negative9 neutralfrom 10 commenters
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10 comments on Hacker News
Lots of very plain-looking things work as trademarks. Some obvious examples: AAA, BBB, Target, Just Do It.
There's a lot of nuance in trademarks, including geographical nuance. It's possible for someone to open a small bakery in Boise, Idaho named Bread Stuff and not conflict at all with an existing local bakery named Bread Stuff that operates in Fresno, California.
Having different uses can count, too. Moe's Barber Shop can be a defensible trademark, but that doesn't necessarily conflict at all with Moe's Car Parts across town.
Except: There's also a concept of well-known trademarks, which supercede some of these things. There's a place called Gold and Silver Pawn Shop, in Vegas. There was a time person could build a pawn shop in Somewhere Else Entirely with that same name, and that'd be fine. But now that the Pawn Stars TV series has made the place very famous, it's something that would almost certainly be shown to be a well-known mark if someone were naive enough to try to use that name for their own new pawn shop, today. The Vegas shop would almost certainly win that court battle.
I'd like to think that notepad++ is also a well-known mark by this point.
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Anyway my intent earlier was just to help promote the concept of registration being optional-but-useful, not to write a book about trademarks. :)
And IANAL. I just got wrapped up in a trademark issue myself nearly 20 years ago, wherein I had been doing nothing wrong by using a name that another small company had been already been using in a very different market segment. Our uses were for very different things.
They subsequently got much bigger and arguably came to be well-known, and they wanted me to stop using that name. I had a valid case: I wasn't infringing when I started.
But I no money and no lawyers, while they had enough money and lawyers that there was no way I'd survive in court.
Hell, there was no way I'd even be able to afford to appear in court; I'd have lost by default and probably been required to pay for the whole mess. I was broke as fuck back then (I still am, but I was then, too).
But what I did have was some time, so I used that time to stuff my brain full of information about how trademarks work -- to prove to myself whether I had a leg to stand on as much as anything else.
I should have just given up. A sane person would have just washed their hands of it all and moved on. But I really liked the name I was using, and I am not always very sane.
It worked out OK, I guess: At the end of that very stressful time, I wound up giving them exactly what they wanted, and they ended up giving me some money in exchange. No courtroom was involved.
And now we're square. (And to be clear: I don't blame them at all for any of this. They're a good company. But even good companies are required to actively defend their trademark. Trademarks are not like patents: You need to use it, and actively defend it, or it is lost.)
Pawn Stars is semi-scripted entertainment, not necessarily representative of how real pawn shops operate. The actual prices were were negotiated before the episode was recorded.
But of course there will be a large bid / ask spread on collectibles and small quantities of precious metals. Dealers have to make a profit. Anyone who doesn't like the price is free to sell on eBay or at a local coin show or something.
Honestly I think I am going to cancel my Max subscription.
The main reason that I subscribed to it was for its broad range of exclusive animated content, like Close Enough, Final Space, Infinity Train, and Adventure Time: Distant Lands. All but one of those have been removed from Max now (I guess for tax writeoffs and avoiding royalties?), and with their recent price increase for a bunch of awful reality TV shows, I'm done.
I do not know that there's anything I care about less than "My 600 Pound Life", and no matter how much they try and get me to watch that or "Pawn Stars", I find it unlikely that that's going to change no matter how many times they try and convince me otherwise.
I'm generally all for paying for my media (I have a lot of blu-rays, I own the entire series of Adventure Time and Adventure Time: Distant Lands on blu-ray), but I almost feel like piracy is kind of a civic duty at this point. If these corporations are going to make it impossible to watch their media legitimately, then the community needs to step and preserve the shows themselves.
And maybe we should resist programs that are "exclusive to streaming".
They aren't missing anything either. Subconciously I thought that I needed to stay on top of things like the news, how the stock market is doing, whatever the latest tech hardware releases are, etc. but now, most of the time I forget those are even things.
I watched a lot of the History Channel, TLC and Discovery Channel growing up. I've seen all manner of documentary about all manner of thing. I'd say plop your kids in front of that every now and then, but these days it's just Pawn Stars and Hoarders and Deadliest Catch.
Yea, I don't think the average show from the 70's was good.
Though, if your going to compare the average show, then the competition is more like 'Pawn Stars', 'My Teen is Pregnant', 'Tiny House Hunters', etc. Or you could compare similar longer running shows like Three's company (8 seasons) vs. Two and a Half Men (12 seasons).
So, my guess is a random episode of 'Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour' was probably better than a random episode of a random cable TV show. Though, it's also very dated at this point. It's also likely worse than say the best south park episode or whatever show you actually like.
Anyway, I am not saying the 70's wins hands down, hell I was not even alive then. But, I do think people are confusing shows about things they like with actual quality. I might like 'How It's Made' but it's not exactly deep.
I know as a kid I had a ton of "collections" - Pez, coins, stamps, Pokemon cards, Nintendo games, postcards, baseball cards, old newspapers, books.
For many of those, I would build up and hold on to things because I thought they'd be valuable some day, or maybe future kids/grandkids would benefit from having something handed down. I also like history and really enjoy seeing antique craftsmanship.
Even though stuff like the Beanie Baby craze crested and fell pretty quickly, you still have shows like Antiques Roadshow and Pawn Stars that show all of those hidden gems. Or, in the coin world, you'd read about some trove of uncirculated buffalo nickels being discovered in an attic somewhere. Or, if you ever go to the Andy Warhol museum, there's a whole section dedicated to his "time capsules" of collected mundane stuff, much of which ends up providing some kind of historical value.
When I was a kid, no one told me about putting money into mutual funds and compound interest (or if they did I didn't listen), let alone the principle of survivorship bias. Besides, that stuff is boring compared to the Star Wars Episode I Pez collection and commemorative Pepsi cans[1]. If I had held on to my 20 our of 24 opened cans, maybe I could have sold them for 30 bucks or so!
I've been having a lot of reality checks as I get older. I kept my Star Wars prequel novelizations in good condition, but I can also get a book in similar condition on Amazon for 5 or 6 bucks. And I never read my parents' favorite fiction books, so there's a solid chance that my kids won't care either. Maybe in the midst of getting rid of these things I'll get rid of the one thing that could be worth thousands in a generation or two, but that's like playing the lottery, isn't it?
[1]: www.ebay.com/itm/Star-Wars-Episode-1-Exclusive-Pepsi-Display-Collectors-Item-Set-of-24-Cans-/253064909025
Tomorrow's schedule: http://www.history.com/schedule.do
* Swamp People (multiple episodes) - Cajun reality show * Down East Dickering - knockoff Pawn Stars reality show * 'Info Documentaries' - pretty sure this is 3 hours of infomercials * Gettsyburg Civilians - a history show! At 4:30am. * UFO Files - from 7am til 5pm * Ancient Aliens - 5pm til 8pm * more UFO Files until midnight
That's the entire schedule for the day, no omissions. Reality shows, then informercials, then 17 (seventeen!) straight hours of aliens. They do spend 30 minutes on Gettysburg at 4:30am, which along with WWII is the only history the History Channel even considers touching.
Ever watch the tv show "pawn stars"? At least once an episode there's some guy - with no idea about what he has - walk in with an idea that they're going to sell some piece of trash for $5,000. When the bosses actually look at the piece, they offer $100. the guy leaves the shop hurt because "it's gotta be worth more than that", in spite of the fact that they don't know antiques or don't know how to run a basic business.
Same thing I think happens with programming. "I have this idea, and I know (somehow) that $500 is a fair price, in spite of the fact that they are neither technical people or... ever commissioned custom development before".
So, it's not just software development...
I am guilty of downloading one episode of Pawn Stars after my DVR messed up the recording. My DVR re-recorded it the next day. If this is illegal, then I'll just get a VPN and cancel my satellite service.
The plan? To release approximately 25 videos over the course of the next year sharing 37signals' stories inside the office and out.
Sounds like a reality tv show to me. Something like Pawn Stars or Orange County Choppers.