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While China has the largest number of coal mining fatalities in the world, the highest road death toll (and actually said to be 40% higher than official figures), the collapse of poorly-built schools in earthquakes, parents rioting in China because of lead poisoning from children's toys - and one could go on and on - you have to ask the question...

Is the Chinese government complicit in "undermining national unity" and "infringing upon national honor and interests"?

Of course it is. In fact this shit happens all over the world. So the very idea of prosecuting the *citizens* of China for being uppity (and often rightly so) is the absolute, utter height of spiteful hypocrisy. [citation needed]

[1] Source.

According to these stats, Serenity has about broken even, counting domestic and overseas ticket sales.

Rule of thumb would be that the theatrical release generates around 25% of a film's income. DVD/video sales and rental are usually around half the total gross. Given the nature of Firefly/Serenity's fan base, I would think it likely they might get more than the usual percentage from DVD sales. Word of mouth and unexpectedly high DVD sales were what spurred creation of the movie in the first place.

I don't know if there's a definition of "flop". It seems that Serenity is almost certain to be a money-maker overall, and about equally certain not be be a block-buster of "Titanic" proportions. Still 100% return on an investment isn't bad.

I can recall seeing Josh Whedon quoted to the effect that Serenity needed to make $80M to guarantee development of another sequel film. I don't know if that's total, or just theatrical release.

Yep, these are the guys who proclaimed that "home taping is killing music" back in the 1980, and killed off DAT in the 1990s. The MPAA cried bloody murder when VHS hit the market, but amazingly the global film industry is still quite robust.

What really cracks me up is that the RIAA had their heads so far up their asses that they had *no strategy* whatsoever for online music sales until Jobs came along and offered them a way out. Now that they have a path away from stupidity, they're trying to jack prices up again, the same way they did with CDs.

It's like they're fundamentally unprepared to realize that the landscape is changing and that they can't make the same margins they used to make per song. They have to shift their entire way of doing business, but they're so fat and happy that it's like Jabba the Hut doing the long jump.

Film industry revenues worldwide are roughly on the order of $180 billion, with Hollywood making up roughly a third, or $60 billion. I love games as much as the next guy, but they've got a long way to go.

(Shamelessly stealing from the previous discussion.)

Movies gross more than Games... always have, maybe always will. The stupid comparison made here is one that the game industry loves to make when trying to get mindshare... Compare movie box office versus game software/hardware sales.

If you include DVD/media sales of movies, movies win. If you don't include console hardware sales, movies win.

The movie industry (worldwide) grosses $180B. US movie industry grosses 63B. Box office only accounts for 26% of revenue.

reference: http://www.factbook.net/wbglobal_rev.htm

• World Console Software + PC Software, worldwide, 2003: US$18.5 bn
• Film industry revenues, worldwide, 2003: $180bn.
• Music (audio & video) recordings, worldwide, 2003: US$32 bn

By comparison, IBM has revenues of about $80 billion per year.

Japan allows much lighter cars than the US, some are somewhere between a Yugo and a scooter. Yet they have 60% of the car crash death rate per 10,000 cars as the US. Overall, Japan has much lighter cars too, because gas isn't cheap there.

Somehow, I'm not convinced that heavy trucks are the solution to accident deaths. John Stossel did a Myth Busters or something that showed that a mid-sized car is about as safe as an SUV. I've found some stats showing that minivans are safer than SUVs. A lot of it has to do with the fact that SUVs get into accidents more often because they have worse braking, worse handling and roll over much more often. Rollovers are also the most deadly kind of accidents too.

Regional Crash Analyses

Once one realizes that Blockbuster makes somewhere between 15% and 20% of its revenues from late fees, it's hard to believe that they're going to embrace a business model like this that eliminates those fees.

those annoying late fees -- which account for a full 15 percent of Blockbuster's $4.96 billion in revenues (Industry Standard)

One of the dirty little secrets of the home-video business, writes Lary Gerbrandt, a senior analyst at Paul Kagan Associates, is that their largest profit generator is actually late fees. (Factbook)

late fees, a revenue source that accounts for between 18-20 percent of Blockbuster's overall profits (Earthweb)

You are right about the cost changing depending on the location (California is clearly higher than say Washington State). You are also right in saying that rent is perhaps the #1 component of the cost.

I guess cost of living would be based on the consumer price index (CPI). CPI is basically the cost of a basket of goods. Let me see if I can find something ... ok... looking for the cost of living is much harder than I thought...

Here is what I found online. It isn't perfect. It doesn't include the cities we need and the conditions vary. Most of these are indexes so they are relative to some base location (usualy USA).

UN Retail Price Index for their employees

UN Retail Price Index (click on retail price index link on that page):
(as of June 2003)
USA (New York) = 100
USA (Washington, DC) = 91 (96 without housing)
India (New Delhi) = 73 (85 without housing)


This index is for UN employees and may not be reflective of true costs (since bureaucrats may have higher costs than native population eg. foreign language schools, extra security, etc).

Expat Forum The index on this page seems weird. Cost seems way too high for most countries but anyway...

USA=100
India = 93

FT Worldwide Cost of Living

Check it out.

(as of Sept 2001)

USA (New York)=101.88
USA (Washington)=101.63
India (New Delhi) = 82.08
(there are more US cities listed for the older date of Nov 2000)

Conclusion

I hate to say it but the conclusion is that everything is inconclusive right now. On average it seems New Delhi (which is NOT the IT capital) is around 7% to 27% cheaper than New York (not exactly known for IT). That 7% figure is unreliable IMO. So on average it seems to be around 20% cheaper. So someone in New Delhi will automatically have a 20% cost advantage. The figures are also a bit old so they are not necessarily reflective of the present (however the general trend should be valid).

If the figures are to be believed, I guess I was kind of wrong. I expected greater cost of living diffreences. Right now it is only 20% to 25%. I personally think the cost gap should be even greater. I think more research needs to be done to come up with a conclusive answer. It would also help if more recent figures with relevant cities are used. (Can someone else reading this and with free time do more research? Thanks :) )

Anyway, I guess the question is: would you be willing to take a 25% pay cut? OR are you ok with the US government subsidizing IT workers by 25%?

Sivaram Velauthapillai

If TV broadcasts switch to 2.35:1 to catch up, movies will start coming out with 4:1 and 5:1 aspect ratios. They'll film their stuff on a thin horizontal strip if that's what it takes to screw you over.

It's about time they released these DVDS....

I'm surprised they took so long, considering DVDs are such a huge percent of the total revenue movies make for a studio.