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The Mythbusters Answer Your Questions
Did you guys come up with the idea for the show or was it presented to you? How did the two of you end up as the shows hosts? How did the 'Build Team' get involved?
ADAM SAVAGE -- MythBusters was created by Peter Rees. Peter produced the show "Beyond 2000" out of Australia, and had interviewed Jamie and I about a robot we had in the original "Robot Wars" (before Battlebots - remember?) back in the mid-90s. Apparently a good producer never throws away a telephone number, because in the spring of 2002, he called up Jamie and asked him if he had an interest in hosting this show he was trying to cast for (MythBusters). Jamie called me, we sent in a demo reel, and apparently they loved it. "These were just the geeks we were looking for" was what we heard back.
JAMIE HYNEMAN -- It was the idea of our producer, Peter Rees. He had interviewed me some years ago during "Robot Wars" when I had a notorious robot 'Blendo' which was instantly killing all the other robots. I was therefore somewhat notorious, so Peter spent a little time with me and when he had the idea to do the show he contacted me. I thought I could do the show but not carry it by myself, as I am not all that animated. I called Adam, who was an ex employee of mine and who was the liveliest FX guy I knew. We did a demo tape and the rest is history. The build team came as a result of the fact that the demand for the show is high, but as we do everything ourselves and don't just show up and talk, there is not enough time in a season for us to do all the shows they need - they wanted more builders. All three of the build team are people that Adam and I know well, and have worked with us in the past.
From the Front vs. From Behind? by unipus
Hey guys, great show! Just wondering, what's are the best and worst aspects of moving from behind the scenes to in front of the lens?
JAMIE HYNEMAN -- It's nice to be able to put your skills out there and be appreciated - if a tree falls down in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, did it make a sound? And then also the show allows us to do things we would never have the opportunity to experience otherwise, so it has been a wonderful education about the world at large. But personally I find the camera obtrusive and it gets in the way of my normal process. When I am at my best it is a situation where the rest of the world goes away and I am completely absorbed in designing something. Time stops. Nothing else Exists but the task in front of me. Now try to do that in front of a camera with a bunch of people around, having to repeat things so the camera can get it from different angles, and then stop and talk about it, and often have to truncate what you say so that you make a nice concise and clear statement about it..... and remember, I am a guy that does not normally talk much. Very disconcerting!
ADAM SAVAGE -- For me the best thing is that people are inspired by what we're doing. That was a result we never saw coming. There are times when I'm with my kids and people come up and don't know what to say, but really, we should all have such problems that folks are constantly wanting to tell you that they like your work. The hardest part is waiting for the camera. Jamie and I have to do things on the show super fast, and we do, but man, if we weren't shooting a show, it would go so much faster I swear. The rule is: if it doesn't happen on camera, it didn't happen. Sometimes when we're in the crunch, that can be very stifling. But again, we should all have such problems right?
Favorites? by MikesOnFire
What is your favorite Busted Myth and your favorite Confirmed one?
ADAM SAVAGE -- I've always been partial to the Penny Drop myth, i.e. will a penny dropped from the Empire State Building kill you when it hits the ground? To me, that was one of the most elegant and simple applications of science to a question that we've done. Until last week. We just worked on a myth called "bullets fired up" -- i.e., will a bullet fired directly vertically kill you when it comes back down. We did tons of research on it, and in the end, added significantly to the body of knowledge that's out there on the subject. I won't give away the ending, but we nailed this one.
JAMIE HYNEMAN -- There are no favorites! The myths are so varied in what they involve that it is comparing apples and oranges. Compare putting rockets on a full sized automobile that has been radio controlled and driven from a helicopter, to training goldfish. They are all interesting and fun - maybe some are more dangerous or exciting than others (like the rocket car), but then goldfish memory or failing a drug test by eating a poppyseed bagel is more relevant to real life.
Blown Away? by bobertfishbone
Have you ever been completely blown away by what you've found? Has there been an experiment where you two just sit back and say "Huh...who woulda thought?" Most of the myths are pretty easy to debunk, but I'm just curious as to whether or not there was actually one that you guys did that totally shocked you in being true.
ADAM SAVAGE -- We're constantly surprised by the results of what we're doing. Every day. There are countless times when we have what we think is a solid idea of what the outcome of one of our experiments will be, and the result is totally the opposite. That's probably one of the best parts of the job: being confounded by one result and coming up with a way to understand it, and to make it understandable within the confines of the show. The most surprising result? That would have to be "Liferaft Skydive." I wouldn't have bet in a million years that a raft would remain stable all the way down (from 3,000 feet!) and to see that raft, with Buster the crash-test dummy inside, float safely to the ground like a leaf. Amazing.
JAMIE HYNEMAN -- A total shock? I don't really think so -- I'm kind of philosophic about it. We are always learning new things as we shoot the show. For example, I did not know earlier that a hand gun bullet that is going relatively slowly will travel further through water than a bullet from a high powered rifle, because the rifle bullet is going so fast it just explodes from the impact and is stopped in a couple of feet. But that is just one factoid out of a thousand that we have run across in the course of doing our job. Pigs still generally don't fly.
Houston, we have a myth? by richdun
Assuming an unlimited budget, what myth would you most like to test? How about using 1960s technology to try and land on the moon?
JAMIE HYNEMAN -- You read our minds! On a side note; I once asked Adam if he was given a rocket ship and told he would be able to travel anywhere in the universe, but he would never be able to return, would he do it? Well, both of us would (but not together).
ADAM SAVAGE -- That's exactly what we want to do! Remember Salvage 1? The TV show with Andy Griffith about the guys who go to the moon with a ship they built in their garage? Jamie and I have done the research, and figured that the only way to end the debate about the "myth" of the Apollo moon landing is to go there, and bring back something that was left there during one of the Apollo moon landings.
Myths that didn't make it? by skywalker107
What Myths have you tested that have never made it on the show? What about them made you and the producers decide they didn't qualify to go on the air?
JAMIE HYNEMAN -- There are certain things that are not appropriate -- for example, myths with a highly sexual content. This is one side effect of the fact that the show seems to be popular with all ages and demographics, and that Discovery is a family oriented network.
Myths you cannot do? by jessejay356
Have there been any myths that were either too expensive or dangerous that you just couldn't get done?
ADAM SAVAGE -- We're relatively undaunted. We've found ways to do myths we thought impossible to do only months before. Besides going to the moon that is.
JAMIE HYNEMAN -- We usually figure out a way around that. This is where our particular skills come into play; a lot of what we do on the show can be done by the average Joe, but for the most part the average Joe would not be able to do it as fast, safe or inexpensively.
Bittorrent? by boatboy
Your show is available on bittorrent networks to download and watch when/where it's more convenient. Some users, however, could download the show without paying for it via cable service. How do you personally feel about this? (Cheated\Angry\Flattered\What's A Bittorrent?)
JAMIE HYNEMAN -- There will likely always be a certain amount of this kind of opportunism, and I suppose it will be self regulating to some degree. If there is too much, then quality programming will be reduced, and there will be nothing to steal. Other similar ways of avoiding commercials are also having this effect, and companies like mine are going to go out of business because the advertising revenues are being cut. Somebody has to pay for good programming, and if you cut out all the ads, and cut out the cable revenues, then you will end up with nothing but the kind of programming that is on public access stations, which is fine if that is what you happen to like, but limiting and a bit of a waste for a medium that is as powerful as TV.
ADAM SAVAGE -- Personally, I cannot condone the downloading of copyrighted work without the permission of the copyright holder. That being said, I look forward to a future where such a thing will be possible, and encouraged, and conducted in such a way that properly takes care of the needs of the artists, the distributors, AND the end users. We're not there yet, but Creative Commons is a step in the right direction to be sure.
working at M5? by kin_korn_karn
How do you recruit talent for M5? What qualifies someone to work there?
JAMIE HYNEMAN -- I pull people from the local talent pool on an as needed basis. Often by referrals from co workers or from ILM which is the only other significant shop in the Bay Area for our kind of work. I look for experience with a range of mediums, but otherwise I'm big on basic intelligence and work ethic. Putting together a crew is kind of like making soup: it's the combination of things that makes it work.
Injuries? by jacksonai
What is the worst injury anyone sustained while trying to bust a myth?
ADAM SAVAGE -- Besides a couple of stitch-worthy cuts that I've sustained, I'd say the greatest injury has been to my dignity when receiving a rectal thermometer during the "Goldfinger Revisit" myth.
JAMIE HYNEMAN -- So far we have only had minor cuts and scrapes. The worst of these was a broken finger sustained, ironically, by one of the crew when handling safety equipment; specifically the bullet resistant Lexguard panels we use which are quite heavy. We are becoming increasingly aggressive about maintaining safety on the show as over time -- as we are often replicating circumstances in which someone got hurt or killed, let's just say we have reason to be cautious.
Repeatable Experiments? by Aggrazel
I'm a father of a 7 year old who absolutely loves your show. We have it on our tivo and I'm constantly pausing the show to ask him what he thinks will happen in your experiments. You start every show with "Don't try this at home" but sometimes there are experiments that you do which you could probably try (safely) at home. Have you ever considered having a show where you say, "DO Try this at home?" Its fun to see my child get such a love of science in such a fun way.
ADAM SAVAGE -- That's a great idea! There's a book coming out next year called "MythBusters: Don't Try This at Home," that's actually about myths we did, and we offer ways that YOU can illustrate and test some of the concepts at home, safely.
JAMIE HYNEMAN -- The fact that young people are becoming interested in science as a result of the show is by far the biggest bonus for us, and one that took us by surprise as we had no intent that the show do this. However one of the reasons it has worked is that very fact that we are not really trying to be educational. We blow stuff up, we screw around. Adam puts things up his nose. Sometimes we do stuff just because we are curious. We are interesting to young people perhaps because we are a little bit out of control. Putting this into a context that you can do at home is a little difficult, and I would suggest that this be the realm of the parent, who in doing so will also learn and be all the more involved with the child, all in all a good thing. As long as the parent doesn't blow up or otherwise harm the child, which would, of course, be counterproductive.
Source Material? by DigitalSorceress
I've been a fan since your first season, and in that time, you've covered quite a few of the big, classic myths and legends. Are you ever concerned that you'll "use up" all the best source material, sort of running out of steam as it were? Or is the internet such a fertile ground for kooks and bad jokes that you figure you can go on indefinitely?
ADAM SAVAGE -- Every time I think we may be reaching the end of large scale, popular myths -- every time I can't imagine how we'll mine any more things to test out of the popular consciousness -- every time I think that we'll end up doing esoteric, historical myths at the end of the series' run (not that that's a bad thing), we come across something amazing, that nobody can believe we hadn't thought of before.
Fact vs Fun? by elrick_the_brave
When I watch your show, it's obvious that there is a lot of fun going on. Who wouldn't like blowing up, breaking down, stinking up, falling down, and all-around destroying everything? For those of us not of TV-land.. how long does it take for you guys to produce an average episode.. how much of it is fun vs time spent working on getting it right? What is the most tedious part of busting myths?
ADAM SAVAGE -- Normally, it takes us about a week to film a single myth. That's an average. We've done them in as little as a day, and taken as much as 3 weeks or more to complete the big ones (can anyone say "JetPack?"). It's not a contiguous week though. We'll work on one myth in the morning, a second after lunch, a third the next morning, and shoot blueprints for 4 or 5 myths in the afternoon. Since much of what we do requires elaborate research, not to mention extensive permits, safety forms, and insurance clearance, at any one time we might be working on 4 myths or more.
As for the fun/tedious quotient: it IS a lot of fun, no doubt, but it can also be very exacting work. One of the most frustrating things about doing the show happens to be the thing that's most fun about it: what we do rarely conforms to our expectations. We thought testing formulas for skunk removal would be simple. Get sprayed, clean it off. Turned out that just finding a skunk with full juice sacks during mating season was nearly impossible. Who would have thought that? And that's generally the rule: NOTHING is ever as simple as we think it's going to be. Really though, that's the most satisfying part too. When we beat our heads against the wall for a while, trying several different tacks towards a question, and then we achieve an elegant experiment and a bonafide result, those are the good days. And they far outnumber the bad days.
JAMIE HYNEMAN -- It takes about 3 weeks on average to do a show. While we do have fun from time to time, the bulk of my experience is worrying about keeping to the schedule, worrying about getting results, trying to keep people from getting hurt, cleaning up messes. We are in general cut up, bruised, achy from lifting, and stressed out. That being said I wouldn't trade the experience for anything, and Adam in particular is excited because he has an unlimited quantity of stories to tell at dinner parties.
Computer myths? by Short Circuit
Have you ever considered taking on some computer myths? Like whether or not it was ever possible for a virus to destroy old monitors?
ADAM SAVAGE -- The biggest problem with these for us is that they're not that visual. That being said, we've wanted for years to test different techniques for eliminating spam. Set up 2 brand new computers, hook them up to the internet, surf a little, and see what kind of spam they get. Then test to see what the actual real-world results of spam fighting techniques are (should you really click on those links that say they'll stop if you do?).
Fan science? by SilentChris
How often do fans question your results? Have you had any diehard science/physics freaks tell you you're wrong? Are there more "myth revisits" planned because of this feedback? How does it feel to have your decisions nitpicked?
ADAM SAVAGE -- Fans question our work all the time. Constantly. Fully 10% of the email I get is people telling me we got it wrong. I appreciate all the comments/criticism, etc., and much of the time, the criticism leads to a revisit, or a rethinking of our methodology. We don't claim to be infallible, and we're always totally willing to revisit our results. I like to think that places us in good company. The only criticisms I dislike are the ones that dispense with common courtesy. Sometimes I'll get just a sentence telling me that I'm an idiot, with no greeting and no signature. Jamie and I both read every email we get, we just don't have time to respond to them all.
JAMIE HYNEMAN -- We get grief from fans all the time. As far as I'm concerned, 'myths' are just an excuse for us to play around with things, and we have no corner on truth or science or anything like that. I am aware that good science doesn't work on a shoot schedule, no matter what. What I do like is the fact that the show is thought-provoking -- and if someone disagrees about a result, then great! It means people are thinking.
Wait, all this...and not a single Kari question?
Is it true there are WMD in Israel?
In case you're like me and never watched "Robot Wars"
t m/
http://www.tectonic.force9.co.uk/bestbots.htm/
http://www.m5industries.com/html/press/sfweekly.h
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
JAMIE HYNEMAN -- Other similar ways of avoiding commercials are also having this effect, and companies like mine are going to go out of business because the advertising revenues are being cut. Somebody has to pay for good programming, and if you cut out all the ads, and cut out the cable revenues, then you will end up with nothing but the kind of programming that is on public access stations, which is fine if that is what you happen to like, but limiting and a bit of a waste for a medium that is as powerful as TV.
Or, like they have been doing more and more, they are going to move to blatant advertising inside programs via product placement, discussions by characters about products and then linking outside-show ads to that, or making TV shows "commercial free" and "sponsored by Foo" (i.e. 24's season premeire a couple years ago -- which is one of the reasons I stopped watching the show).
The shows that have been doing this (Survivor, The Apprentice, etc) have done nothing but piss me off more than their existence already does. The fact that my wife watches them and I like to be w/her forces me to watch these programs. The blatant in-show advertising is actually starting to piss HER off. Want to alienate your viewership? Piss off those that actually wanted to watch your shows.
ADAM SAVAGE -- Personally, I cannot condone the downloading of copyrighted work without the permission of the copyright holder. That being said, I look forward to a future where such a thing will be possible, and encouraged, and conducted in such a way that properly takes care of the needs of the artists, the distributors, AND the end users. We're not there yet, but Creative Commons is a step in the right direction to be sure.
Sadly the networks cannot condone properly taking care of the needs of the end users. That wouldn't be fiscally responsible to their pockets.
It was nice seeing both of them answer most of the questions. I think most of us would agree that its not pure science, but aside from some notable exceptions, they more or less accomplish what they set out to do. Its entertainment and it obviously makes people think critically about what they are seeing on TV... all in all a good thing. Keep up the good work guys.
Jamie and I have done the research, and figured that the only way to end the debate about the "myth" of the Apollo moon landing is to go there, and bring back something that was left there during one of the Apollo moon landings.
Except that then the conspiracy theorists would then claim that the artifacts left on the moon were placed there by a separate unmanned mission. They could also argue that the artifacts really didn't come from the moon-- the new visit to the moon was also faked, because it's impossible to get past the Van Allen Belts, and the artifacts never left Earth.
The people who are so insistent that the moon landings were a hoax simply re-interpret and filter what facts will fit their cospiracy theory; anything that disagrees with their conclusions are simply ignored or swept under the rug.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Somebody has to pay for good programming, and if you cut out all the ads, and cut out the cable revenues, then you will end up with nothing but the kind of programming that is on public access stations, which is fine if that is what you happen to like, but limiting and a bit of a waste for a medium that is as powerful as TV.
Myth: the information wants to be free.
Status: BUSTED (if you want to keep seeing Mythbusters)
I don't mind watching a few ads if that will keep this show on the air.
in a word: yes
Video of Cement truck being exploded
It must be nice to have friends with access to several tons of commercial grade explosives.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
How is that a myth?
..about predictative modeling? Doesn't that make MythBusters just experimentation?
It was way cool of those guys to answer those questions. Are those guys the biggest stars that have been on Slashdot?
No it's not you uneducated clod. They've answered that question in other interviews. The truth is out there, go find it.
There are no favorites! The myths are so varied in what they involve that it is comparing apples and oranges.
This sounds like a myth to me, a canned answer if I ever heard. I prefer oranges to apples personally. And I would much rather do an experiment shooting something and seeing the results than finding out whether a broken clock is actually right two times a day.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
That part about the falling bullet got me thinking: If the myths actually contributed to new knowledge/discoveries, how seriously would they be taken?
Would the scientific community base future research on an entertainment program?
Would Jamie and Adam have to write a scientific publication without their crazy narrator and a really stiff academic style to be taken seriously?
50 years ago, there were giant Geritol ads all over television, and they were ON the host podiums of game shows, on the dinner tables of sitcom families, on the front desk of news programs. Why is it so bad now?
If you will quit watching a show you like simply because you can't deal with a "sponsored by" plug, you're not the target market for advertising in general. Most people are content to simply ignore the commercials, and roll their eyes at the in-show product placement. Commercials piss everyone off, but there's no reason to get on your soapbox about it.
I think they should check back on Slashdot more often for ideas.
God spoke to me.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Sadly the networks cannot condone properly taking care of the needs of the end users. That wouldn't be fiscally responsible to their pockets.
So you are actually trying to argue that users "need" to download a copyrighted work without the permission of the copyright holder? That is a "want" of end users, not a need, just like I want $1 million. There is no rational justification other than self interest.
Commercials piss everyone off, but there's no reason to get on your soapbox about it.
50 years ago they weren't showing taped programs and the actors had to really know their stuff to do their parts correctly. 50 years ago they weren't syndicating shows to show re-runs of forever after. 50 years ago was a long time ago and no longer matters.
People need to be on their soapbox and tell how they feel. How dare you infringe on another's rights because you are an anonymous troll?
As the secondary characters get more screen time, their names appear in the main credits, even if they were not before.
You can see it in nearly all non-sitcom TV shows (it doesn't usually happen in sitcoms cause the characters rarely shift and change).
See the different seasons of the West Wing for example. There are people in the credits of later seasons that were not in earlier seasons, even though they were charachters in the shows. They are just more important later.
While I realize that you're just being a jerk, they've actually answered that question in the past.
It's on page 2 of their chat transcript.
Your version of the "needs of the end users" is an endless black hole. The end user always wants faster, better, cheaper.. hell free and lots of it! Yes, sadly the networks can not afford to produce quality programming and give it away for free, without advertising or some other revenue source.
Your cynicism is misplaced - it should not be directed at the pockets of the networks, but rather at your own inability to recognize that the problem is that the end-users who choose to pirate are an unbalancing force in the ecosystem, and if and when that ecosystem comes crashing down (as many here so often claim they wish it will, at least as music is concerned), then they better be the last in line bitching about how suddenly there are fewer shows on TV (or music CDs in the stores) or that copyrightholders increasingly resort to stricter and stricted methods to try to bring some balance back.
So, let me get this straight: you don't want commercials during the show, you don't want one advertiser to sponsor the whole thing and not have any commercials, and you don't want product placements. Do you want all television to be subscription only, then? Cause someone has to pay to make these things, they're not cheap.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
By the way, will hitting a Shark in the nose cause it so much pain that the shark will swim away?
I missed Shark week...
I wonder about product placement in Mythbusters... if you have ever watched the show, they use "Mythbusters-branded" (either stick a Mythbuster print over the original labels or paint over them) everything. Cola, bug spray, gasoline, etc.
For many myths, this would work fine as long as they can get sponsorships for all the front-row stuff required by the myth. "Today, we are going to test wether or not fried chicken provided by KFC has more penetration power than thawed and frozen chicken provided by XYZ using a modified 20gal 200psi tank from MNO, 12" dia. 1/4" thick 10' long steel pipe from PQR, glass pannels from..." Sounds pretty burdensome given that they do the show primarily for fun.
Go to the moon. Just do it. It would make for 5-10 days of the best reality TV ever. 1/2 the people wuold be hopinh you die, 1/2 the people would be hoping you make it. Partner with Virgin Mobile (or whatever their rocket company is) get some big time sponsors. I'm pretty sure they could make something in their shop that would launch Buster into sub-orbital space or beyond. In fact, given funding, I know they could.
I want to download the content. That I am given no legal way to do that means now i need to steel it to get it in my preferred medium. :)
that was meant as a joke, but seriously, is offering me a free download with commercials and a non-free commercial free version really that much to ask? There are people out there than can do this without too much hassle for FREE. Try giving me nice, easy-to-find, legal links. As long as you don't try to take advantage of customers (hint: pricing) there is plenty of money to be made.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of watching commercials or product placement in TV shoes, but the shows we watch have to be funded somehow. What's wrong with an entire episode, shown commercial free, that touts a sponsor for the 1/2 hour time slot (or hour depending on the show)? I'd rather have a 2 or 3 minute commercial air before my show telling me about some product and how they are providing me the next 27 minutes of television than deal with commercials in the middle.
The unfortunate situation (depending on your point of view) is that we live in a capitalist society that is run based on profit margins. You've got to pay everyone involved. Would you appreciate it if you worked on a product, but because of circumstances you can't control your company is unable to pay you? In essence that is what we are doing when we are skipping our commercials or downloading the commercial free torrents. I'm not innocent, but commercials, unless we start paying the networks for each episode of a show we watch, are a necessary evil.
Memories become legend, Legend fades to myth, and even myth is forgotten by the time that age comes again.-Robert Jordan
I'm surprised to see that episode mentioned in the interview. I don't claim to know all that goes on behind the scenes at Discovery channel, but in all the reruns of episodes (is anyone tired of the Son of a Gun myth yet?) I almost never see the poppyseed bagel episode. I'd bet that showing potential drug-abusers a valid method of obfuscating the results of a drug screening got some uppity types angry, and we'll likely (almost) never see that episode again. The "you can't beat the breathalizer" episode gets shown alot too, but the poppy seed bagel one is never re-aired. also F Kari, and give me more Scottie!
I am an "over-enthusiastic" 17-year-old chemistry student from Grane Street, Haslingden, Lancashire, UK and I must say that I think you're the best. I have followed your work throughout my A-Level chemistry course and you've been a great inspiration to me.
Thanks!
p.s. I was very disappointed with the police explosions. They could learn a thing or two from you both!
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Your cynicism is misplaced - it should not be directed at the pockets of the networks, but rather at your own inability to recognize that the problem is that the end-users who choose to pirate are an unbalancing force in the ecosystem, and if and when that ecosystem comes crashing down (as many here so often claim they wish it will, at least as music is concerned), then they better be the last in line bitching about how suddenly there are fewer shows on TV (or music CDs in the stores) or that copyrightholders increasingly resort to stricter and stricted methods to try to bring some balance back.
If anything it's 100% properly placed. Please don't confuse me with someone that cares if TV forever dropped off the face of the earth. I would be the first to dance in the streets that I would no longer have to pay $55.98 a month for DirecTV. I could care less if 4 hours of my day were taken up by TV. I have better things to waste my time and energy on.
So I was looking at the questions and I wondered what the terminal velocity of a bullet was... :P
:D
I'm sure I got some figures wrong somewhere but is 260,000 m/h a reasonable figure for terminal velocity for a bullet?
My calculations (based on Wikipedia mostly)
sqrt((2*7.5g*9.8 m/s^2)/(.295*1.2kg/m^3*74.661912907937mm^2))
In the format of sqrt((2*mass*acceleration due to gravity)/(drag coeffecient*density of fluid it's traveling through*cross sectional area)
Is this within reason? 74.5 m/s or 268,478 m/h
P.S. Sig figs be damned
My UID is prime... is yours?
Where's a "-1 Just Bloody Stupid" rating when I need it?
I was really hoping that they'll try to bust the myth that Windows' TCO si less than Linux's.
I have better things to waste my time and energy on.
Than why are you bitching and moaning about TVs and avertisements? Go do something important, oh great one!
I emailed these guys two years ago about advice for college. I want to get into a career similar to theirs. They took the time to email me back and gave their honest advice. I'm very impressed!
Did they tell you that it was a myth that a college degree will get you a good career?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
BEST question and answers here! Sit down with your kids, engage them, challange them, let them have fun, and have fun yourself doing it! Who'd a thunk it!?
Thumbs up Aggrazel!
Long ago, there was a program named Shiva written, that caused the floppy drive to swing back and forth, creating a harmonic resonance with a IBM PC 5150, which broke it apart.
Source: The Devouring Fungus, IIRC.
Sadly the networks cannot condone properly taking care of the needs of the end users. That wouldn't be fiscally responsible to their pockets.
Not only wouldn't it be fiscally responsible to their pockets, it wouldn't be possible. It costs money to pay employees, to purchase equipment, to advertise a show. All that takes resources. You either bring in more resources than you pay out, or you do not have the resources to make the show. There is no magical fairy that is going to give us everything we want without cost. There is no way to escape the laws of reality. Even the government is a profit making corporation (the difference between a private corporation and the government is the government is a monopoly and can use violence... but both private corporations and government corporations are for-profit).
Some alternatives to this are:
1) Have shows produced completly by hobbiests. The hobbiests of course still need to make a profit, but they do that with their day job. In which case, expensive shows like Myth Busters will be very few and far between.
2) Have shows produced by some sort of government monopoly. Welcome to the world of Dubya TV! The police handle ensuring the profit model... this works, so long as you are in the same social group as the ruling class. If you want some programing that the government doesn't approve of, you are out of luck.
So far, commercial programing happens to be the best model we have for producing good television.
Disclaimer: I am talking about my own podcast here...
I have a podcast called Technorama over at http://www.chuckchat.com/ [chuckchat.com]
My co-host and I interviewed Adam Savage about a couple of months ago. It was a really good interview.
If you care to listen..here is the whole thing.
http://www.chuckchat.com/technorama/?page_id=129
"If you have done 6 impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways" -- hhgg
What's wrong with an entire episode, shown commercial free, that touts a sponsor for the 1/2 hour time slot (or hour depending on the show)? I'd rather have a 2 or 3 minute commercial air before my show telling me about some product and how they are providing me the next 27 minutes of television than deal with commercials in the middle.
Because they don't "tout a sponser" at the beginning of the show for three minutes. In the case of the 24 episode I mentioned, IIRC, the entire episode showcased Ford automobiles going here there and everywhere and included more closeups of the automobiles' Ford emblem than it did on Jack Bauer.
Take CSI: Las Vegas as another example. They talk about a particular product, I believe in the case I'm remembering most recently it was a phone that did music and they mentioned downloading the song and playing it back on that phone. At the commercial break they showed a commercial for the phone and played that particular piece of music again. VERY LAME.
How about Survivor? They have car ads all over that thing (since the beginning of the show) and this time they showed *4* of them on the show and then advertised them not only on the show and in the commercial breaks but *also* at the end of the show at their "final episode" and "reunion show".
Let's do the Apprentice, shall we? Amazing bars? Know of them? They were "created" on the show and then marketed in real life afterwards. That entire show is an extreme example of payoffs to keep it going. Yahoo, Radio Shack, Nextel, etc all paid for spots on that show to come off as "tasks" that the show participants had to complete. All it really was for was to get more name recognition.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
What I was amazed by was this:
Now try to do that in front of a camera with a bunch of people around, having to repeat things so the camera can get it from different angles, and then stop and talk about it, and often have to truncate what you say so that you make a nice concise and clear statement about it..... and remember, I am a guy that does not normally talk much. Very disconcerting!
Holy ****, Jamie used an exclamation point!
Well, that busts a myth that I had running...
I spent the evening flickering into your darkness.
ADAM SAVAGE -- ... interviewed Jamie and I about a robot we had in the original "Robot Wars"...
... interviewed me some years ago during "Robot Wars" when I had a notorious robot ...
... we, or I?
JAMIE HYNEMAN --
Damn, I missed the original post. I wanted to ask Adam if he'd go on a date with me ;)
Either you pay for it by higher product prices (commercials are also not free) or you pay for the TV show yourself.
In the last case at least your money is going to shows you want to watch.
And no matter how much you try to resist commercials, they'll get you in the end. And if you don't buy anything anymore for which you saw an add, then what are you going to do? Live of sunlight?
So yes, bring on paid for shows. It saves me time (not having to watch ads), it saves me annoyance (not having to watch stupid ads or stupid shows while socialising with the family) and only shows I endorse get money. So that would be more sci-fi and no bloody reality.
Had an undergrad course that dealt with the intersection of political science and psychology. One of the assigned books was about schema theory; I think it was called "Processing the News." It dealt with how people react to news stories.
The human mind is wired to look for patterns. We try to identify them even in random data, meaningless data, and once we've got a working idea about a pattern we'll test new information to see if it can possibly fit in. The "schema" become self-reinforcing to some extent; it's hard to pile up enough contrary evidence, or evidence that just doesn't "fit" well enough, to make people question or revise their dearly held beliefs.
Pretty consistently when I hear a politician speak, or read a newspaper (or God forbid see the TV news), that book comes to mind. People who're trying to win you over know how to toss out the words that will let you fit ideas into the prejudices you carry around with you. A newspaper writer knows, in writing about a robbery, that you can either fit it into the "gang violence" slot or the "kid lost the bike she'd saved her allowance for" slot, and they tailor what they say to help you along.
Conspiracy wonks are pretty good examples of how extreme this tendency can be. It's truly sad how easily they can be manipulated, too, when someone wants to. Pretty clearly Israel was not responsible for 9/11, but the idea that the Mossad was behind it does fit what certain people want to think...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
so cancel your cable and STFU already. Stop wasting your time watching the damn thing and get a life.
I ate my sig.
You don't care about TV, you don't care about watching it, yet you pay $55.98/month for it? Please contact me for further instructions since you seem to love paying for things you don't care about, my bank account could use an extra $55.98 a month
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
"Sadly the networks cannot condone properly taking care of the needs of the end users. That wouldn't be fiscally responsible to their pockets."
Do you think that programs appear out of thin air created by the MagicTVFairy(tm)?
Someone has to pay for the materials and skills that go into creating a show such as Mythbusters. When you download a show from bittorrent you have recieved the benefit of those materials and skills and given ABSOLUTELY NOTHING back in return.
Grow up and realize that you aren't entitled to everything you want for free.
There are constantly new (or maybe not so new) ideas popping up like iTunes movie store and the like. I've heard ideas being pitched about buying "seasons tickets" to a show and having access to download that show, commercial-free. However, in the end, its all just going to go the way cable did: start out as a new "commercial-free" subscription service and then gradually add ads and the like until its just normal TV again.
Even making "commercial-free" stuff to start out with is hard nowadays, cause like GP said, shows have commercials filmed in now with product placing, so new services won't even be commercial free.
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
I think Mythbusters is the modern-day Mr Wizard. I grew up on Mr Wizard (and Bill Nye to a lesser extent) and it is what sparked my science interest.
Great show guys.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
For those that don't know what I am talking about, on some old shows the actors would eb doing the "commercials" right in the middle of the show. So, say someone dropped a pie, the other actor would go "That's no problem with New Floor-SuperShine Cleaner from Spaffco! Why, with Floor-SuperShine Cleaner, it will be clean in a jiffy! Yes, from Spaffco!". Makes 'modern' product placement seem pretty harmless, eh?
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
I think they should check back on Slashdot more often for ideas.
:)
We don't want them to start doing re-runs too often.
If I'm paying for a service (cable/satellite), I expect that advertisements will be removed.
I cancelled my cable service with the reason I refuse to pay for commercial advertising. Now I'm only using antenna service, so advertising is acceptable. Should there be an advertisement free video solution, I'm there. For the same reason I no longer go to the theatre by choice.
You guys really disgust me. I only watch the show to see her busts.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Isn't this a myth only if your degree is in computers?
You should really read what I post, it then allows you to understand what's going on. Ooooh, but then you couldn't troll, right?
The fact that my wife watches them and I like to be w/her forces me to watch these programs.
I have to pay nearly $70 to $80 a month for cable and really only watch a few shows or sports broadcasts. I have to pay for many other channels that I am forced to buy but never watch.
Lets test the myth to see if kari would go out with us /.er's!:
/.er's: Hey Kari, would you go out with us?
Kari: No.
Myth: BUSTED (and a restraining order against us)
Proudly posting without RTFA.
I don't like how they spray paint over the logos, or blurr out the logos. It's actually quite distracting. When they do a myth, I want to know what brands they use. I like America's Test KItchen, where they sometimes test kitchen myths and how they tell you which brands do well in their test and which ones don't. For example the cola myths, does Coke work better to clean, or does Pepsi work better. That really annoys me.
This is a cable TV show. Viewers already pay for it.
Let's do the Apprentice, shall we? Amazing bars? Know of them? They were "created" on the show and then marketed in real life afterwards. That entire show is an extreme example of payoffs to keep it going. Yahoo, Radio Shack, Nextel, etc all paid for spots on that show to come off as "tasks" that the show participants had to complete. All it really was for was to get more name recognition.
I find this complaint to be pretty funny, considering it's a show all about determining who's going to be the best person to hire based on how well he/she performs these money making business tasks and how much more money they make than the rival team.
Do you want all television to be subscription only, then?
Yes.
Cable was originally supposed to be that way. Eventually, however, the cable networks realised that they could have it both ways and further increase their revenue, so they added commercials to their broadcasting just like the broadcast networks were doing.
I wouldn't mind paying $2 for an episode of a show that I want to see. I don't know how much these stations make on advertising revenue, but I would think that a million people paying $2 for an episode of a show would more than recoup the cost of making the episode (sets, actors, doughnuts).
Consider that America has a population of something like 280 million. If we only assume that ten percent of the population are television-watchers who would be willing to pay $2 for an episode, that's still 28 million people. Five percent, even, would be 14 million. Whether it's 28 million or 14 million, though, at $2/show the potential profits could put some box office movies to shame, and would still cover all of the costs of making the show.
I really don't get why they don't go to this format for content distribution, it makes complete sense. It's just less-expensive pay-per-view, really...
(Wikipedia, tangentially, says that the 2005 estimated population is 297 million)
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
If you like to be with your wife so much, why not actualy do something other than watch TV? $55.98 a month is a lot of money to be wasting on something you don't care about just so that you can placate your wife.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Oh really? What about the BBC? The compulsary license model seems to produce a lot more quality programming than the commercial model.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
So, let me get this straight: you don't want commercials during the show, you don't want one advertiser to sponsor the whole thing and not have any commercials, and you don't want product placements. Do you want all television to be subscription only, then? Cause someone has to pay to make these things, they're not cheap.
Well unfortunately, a lot of people feel entitled to just about everything. Like free quality programming is now somehow a birthright.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Ok, there are now a bunch of responses railing on the "I need it free" post. WTF is going on? Am I on slashdot? Are pigs flying? Has common sense set in?
It depends on the show and how the advertising is done. CSI:Miami is a good example of the okay and the bad. Okay: the CSIs drive Hummer H2s in the show. The vehicle for the most part is just there -- the actors don't make a big deal about it. The bad: a few weeks ago they were advertising some cellphone music service. The in show advertising was so blatant that it disrupted the flow of the show (reminded me of the in-show advertising spoof in the move The Truman Show.
In show advertising doesn't bother me in games shows such as Survivor (sorry folks, they call it a "reality show" but it is in reality a game show where the top prize is a million bucks). Game shows have had in show advertisers forever, so if someone wins Mountain Dew or a new Pontiac Whatever-it-was, that doesn't bother me that much.
A show having a sponsor -- that's the way most shows were originally funded. The daytime soaps are called soaps because they were originally sponsored by soap companies back in the days of radio and early television. If Acme wants to sponsor a "commercial free" hour of 24, then thats okay by me. If they want a character that drinks Mountain Dew in a show, that's okay as long as they don't do it to the point where the flow of the show is interrupted. On the other hand, if it gets carried away to the point of where it starts looking like NASCAR or the advertising scene in CSI: Miami then it is too much.
Just my $0.02.
BTW, kudos to the gang at Mythbusters for some great answers. Keep up the good work!
Beware of Sleestak
I saw an ad for Sunlight last night.
Guess I can't buy that, either.
P.S. w/?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Like I'm going to take advice from a Slashdotter about women! ;-)
HBO works that way. It's $11/month on top of what we pay for cable and for that there's about 10 feeds, 1 high def. The programs and movies run uncut and without commercial interruption. Now clearly it's a workable business model since they've been doing it for years, and show no signs of stopping.
Personally, I could really go for that for all TV. You pay like $10-20 month (currently a fair bit of your bill is the cost the cable companies pays the channels to carry them) or whatever for transport. That goes to the cable company for their part in getting you the programming. That comes with only free things like public acess and PBS. Then you get whatever packages you want. Maybe some channels are $20/month/channel and some are $5/month for a 10-pack. They decide what kind of money they need to support their programming.
I would much rather pay the same amount for less channels if they were ad free. When you get down ot it, of the about 200 channels I have on my current feed I watch maybe 30 of them. I don't need the massive bundle of crap channels that you have to pay for to get some of the ones you want. For example I like all the discovery channels, there are 5 of them including the main discovery channel. The thing is, you have to pay for quite a bit extra to get them. You don't get any of them on basic cable which is like $15/month and gets you like 15 channels. To get discovery, you need to buy expanded basic which is more like $35/month which is about 60-80. However that only gets you the main feed. If you want discovery science, life, military, etc, you need digital cable. That's like $45/month, and you need to rent a digital reciver so $50/month total and is 100 or so channels.
Now I'd much rather just pay $10/month or so to discovery, and get their channel pack. Now of course it would add up with all the channels I'd want, but I bet not to more than I pay now, and I'd be much happier with no commercials.
It IS a feasable method of doing business, espically with digital cable where channel access control is easy for the cable company. The current "ad supported" model isn't necessary and, perhaps with more DVRs, it will go away.
does Coke work better to clean, or does Pepsi work better.
Well which is it??
--
Promoting critical thinking since 1994.
JAMIE HYNEMAN -- You read our minds! On a side note; I once asked Adam if he was given a rocket ship and told he would be able to travel anywhere in the universe, but he would never be able to return, would he do it? Well, both of us would (but not together).
I found this very interesting. I would love to travel to the far reaches of the universe, just to see what's out there. But I would get lonely eventually. And not being able to return? I feel people need interaction with others as much as sleep and food. OK, well maybe not AS much, you certainly wouldn't die from lack of human contact. But it'd mess you up. It'd mess me up.
I wouldn't mind paying $2 for an episode of a show that I want to see. I don't know how much these stations make on advertising revenue, but I would think that a million people paying $2 for an episode of a show would more than recoup the cost of making the episode (sets, actors, doughnuts).
Yeah, but the advertising is more reliable. Under a "buy per episode" setup, you never know for sure how many people will be buying episodes. Using advertising, you've already received your money in a lump sum when the season starts. Same reason most people work for a salary instead of doing consulting work.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
http://www.battlebots.com/meet_the_robots3/meet_te am_profile.asp?id=47
Makes 'modern' product placement seem pretty harmless, eh?
I dunno, have you seen the blatant motorola cell-phone product placement going on in CSI New York lately? It is just as brutal as your "Spaffco" example. They even somehow managed to work the phone and their cool custom ringtones into the final plot twist. Brutal.
TODO: Insert witty sig
That pickup trucks have less drag with the tailgate up than down. The bed develops a cushion of air. I have a big Dodge RAM, and have seen leaves and bits of paper endlessly circulating around the bed but never flying out. I never though it meant better drag, though.
At least now i can say that for the testings made so far, i'm bulletproof... the only one that hitted me so far bounced.
Your cynicism is misplaced - it should not be directed at the pockets of the networks, but rather at your own inability to recognize that the problem is that the end-users who choose to pirate are an unbalancing force in the ecosystem, and if and when that ecosystem comes crashing down (as many here so often claim they wish it will, at least as music is concerned), then they better be the last in line bitching about how suddenly there are fewer shows on TV (or music CDs in the stores) or that copyrightholders increasingly resort to stricter and stricted methods to try to bring some balance back.
Wrong. It will instead free those people now engrossed with producing entertainment to do more productive things. Things that bring a net gain to society as a whole. Right now, DRM and such things are like people going around breaking windows so as to artificially increase demand. It is ironic that so few are willing to see beyond scarcity; that we are so afraid of eliminating it when we are able, we must recreate it lest we discover we do not have so much need of it as we once did.
So I would see such things destroyed utterly. I do not cry for the buggy whip makers, their doom was inevitable. And so even my own trade, programming may come almost to an end. But I will survive. I will adapt. It is the only way we will ever live in the future, instead of the past.
Thus, I agree that it may well destroy the "content industries" in a way--or more likely, it will remove the illusions of $$$BIG MONEY$$$ from it. But unlike you, I see past that to realize that it is, in fact, a good thing.
For society, at least. You will obviously need to adapt. Or die. It's your choice...
Yeah, but that argument also works the other way around. The network always want to up prices or lower costs to increase their profit margin. Ideally they would only do reruns with tons of adds, and charge heftily.
/cd
What the networks needs to realize (and soon!) is that bitching about their customers behaviour is not going to change anything.
People who rip shows or download music always gets blamed that because of them, the shows will get worse and fewer and so on. While the opposite argument that (far) most people only do this because it's so easy and noone is providing competetive alternatives. The old school content providers constantly threathen their customers. Oh, we'll go out of business, we'll sue your a** off, we'll need to have music tax, we'll make cdwriter illegal and so on and so on.
All the while, they are just dinosaurs looking up on the oncomming meteor, bitching. They need to evolve or die, which is the way it is supposed to be. Let's say the three bigges networks went out of business tomorrow, how many seconds do you think would pass before someone else tried to fill their place and provide content to a ever growing market? Sure, the new guy whould have to think of a better way to run their business, but so what?
"But you can't compete with free". Sure you can! Provide better service, choice, convinience.
Why do you there's a Tivo in every home? Because they get (some of) it. Its not free, but it's simple, cheap and it works. Why is it that NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX and say HBO havn't created a settop box that they give away to anyone who would want one and provide all pay-per-view TV. Wanna watch 10 episodes of Simpsons in a row? Sure, 5 bucks put on you phonebill/electric bill/visa whatever. Same thing without commercials? 7 bucks...
"Shows cannot be produced that cheaply"...We'll I'm sure someone in India will be thrilled about that...
The point is that they need to provide sometings that is simple and cheap enough not to worry about it and people WILL buy it.
You want to pay for shows directly so that there will be more Sci-Fi & less reality? How many SF viewers are out there vs. how many reality show junkies? I hate most of the reality crap, but my guess is that it's on the air b/c people watch it.
Now, which shows do you think will be cheaper to subscribe to:
1) Sci-Fi with lots of $$$ special effects and few viewers
2) Reality TV, with a billion viewers watching 12 volunteer idiots compete at things like "Who can hold on to a pole the longest" for a few bucks
The way things are now, there's so much advertising on TV that I just tune it out -- it's white noise. If there's an ad, I don't even know it, I'm reading a magazine or surfing on my laptop WHILE watching TV.
So, how about this: cut the amount of advertising time from 20 minutes per hour to five or six. The networks can raise their rates appropriately. We customers would get more actual content, the signal-to-noise ratio would go down below the auto-ignore level.
With each advertising minute being more precious, commercials would probably get BETTER, would actually make more of an impression on consumers, and the return on marketing dollar would acutally go up!
Oh, and cut the crap with commercials being 12 dB louder than programming!
That's funny because cable is not free. I have to pay to get the Discovery channel. Does anyone remember when cable TV was advertised as commercial free?
I would be searching for liveable planets inhabited by earthlike beings. Preferable technologically advanced humanoids. With an abundance of shapely females.
Rarely does a thoroughly un-studied issue suddenly get full-blown peer-reviewed high-budget scientific treatment. Someone has to start with "huh, what's that, kinda interesting, what if I..." - the analysis is barely "scientific" at that point, and often induces scoffs from detractors, but is vital to getting interest going: the initial rough "hey that's neat" overview garners enough interest for someone to take it seriously, and iteratively develop enough interest to eventually warrant hard scientific review.
"Strange how much human accomplishment and progress comes from contemplation of the irrelevant."
- Scott Kim
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
1) Have shows produced completly by hobbiests. The hobbiests of course still need to make a profit, but they do that with their day job. In which case, expensive shows like Myth Busters will be very few and far between.
You mean that it's just not possible for people to sponser stuff w/o a commercial? Doesn't make much sense to me and it's only because of your indoctrination at the hands of commercialized TV since your were born that you think it's the only way it would work now.
The problem with subscription based is: who pays for startup shows? Would you pay for a new series in September before you know whether it will be worth it (say, Battelstar Galactica) or not (say, Enterprise). And what if you subscribed to a Fox show? Think they'll give your money back when they cancel it mid season? In the current model, the advertizers and producers take the risk -- and I'd rather it be them than me.
At least none of my money (direct or indirectly) would be going to that.
Companies don't make sci-fi because of their love for it. They make it because it makes them money. Perhaps not that much, but still enough. If it wouldn't, it just gets canned.
It doesn't matter which one is cheaper. The value it has for me is what important. Not even for free would I want to watch a reality show bases on it's merits. For a decent sci-fi show I would even pay some amount. How much? That depends on many factors (script, acting, money to spend, competition,...).
The unfortunate situation (depending on your point of view) is that we live in a capitalist society that is run based on profit margins. You've got to pay everyone involved.
But that's where the problem is. I'd love to pay the people making the show, but I don't have any way to do so. Instead, someone has to come up with a (completely bogus) list of the demographic breakdown of who watches the show. Then, product and service companies unrelated to the show have to decide to sponsor the show. Then, if those companies believe that a sales increase was because of an ad they ran on a particular show, they might come back and do so again.
What should happen is that I should be able to pay some money directly to the people who make the show and say, yes I support this and want more of it. Otherwise, they are getting not only bad, but sometimes harmful data that is actually lowering their profits because of all the bad collection of data from the ratings companies, the BS behind the results of advertising, etc.
Wouldn't it be better for them to have the correct data about who wants to see their show and how much they're willing to pay for it, than try to guess from the data presented to them by companies who's interest it is to skew those results?
Come on, guys, everyone and their brother knows off the top of their heads the relative volume of skunk juice sacks in relation to their mating season! Geez!
Dwarfs and Elves - will they ever make up?
Breakfasttime News
Shoes - who needs 'em?
Second Breakfasttime News.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
She has stated a number of times that Electricity is Mass Hypnosis.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
I've never watched Mythbusters. Probably because they're not on a public access station! ;) Actually HBO, Showtime, and of course PBS have some good shows on. Guess what- TV has by definition been a "waste of a medium." He and his sponsors can go screw themselves.
They don't know the difference between spam and viruses (virii?)...
>> ADAM SAVAGE -- we've wanted for years to test different techniques for eliminating spam. Set up 2 brand new computers, hook them up to the internet, surf a little, and see what kind of spam they get. Then test to see what the actual real-world results of spam fighting techniques are (should you really click on those links that say they'll stop if you do?).
Oh well, the rest is cool.
MadCow
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
ADAM SAVAGE -- Normally, it takes us about a week to film a single myth.
JAMIE HYNEMAN -- It takes about 3 weeks on average to do a show.
Sounds like there's another myth to bust somewhere.
Do you want all television to be subscription only, then?
Isn't this what cable television is or supposed to be? It works for satalite radio mostly. Why not TV? (I use XM radio and the only station with advertising is the kids station. [*flip Disney*]) Get rid of advertising on cable and satelite TV as that is subscription TV. Let PBS and PAX have the advertising.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
Another example of non-intrusive product placement - Monster Garage.
The prize is tools from a particular company, so that company gets named 2-3 times an episode, and their logo is prominent at the end.
A lot of parts are donated, so when they're rolling the new transmission into the garage they make sure you can see the logos. Sometimes the voice-over mentions the brand name, usually not.
Myth: the kind of programming that is on public access stations, which is...limiting and a bit of a waste for a medium that is as powerful as TV "The Secret Life of Machines" was a good show. I don't know about Mythbusters, never wasted my time watching it. http://www.secretlifeofmachines.com/
*wry grin* Heck, how can you be certain there is a past? It could be that the universe just came into an existence a moment ago and your "memories" are the electronic impulses that were in your head at the moment of existence.
But yeah, it's actually a pretty important point. There've been plenty of wannabe historical revisionists (Everything from the Holocaust not happening to Japan not mentioning the Rape of Nanjing in their history textbooks) and in some cases, we can't be certain what was intended to be fiction. What will people of the future think of our era if the only reference they find is a Tom Clancy book? And when you get to the common unconscious, the gap gets even wider. How many people model their view of the Civil War era off of Gone with the Wind?
Generally, some of it comes down to Occam's Razor, choosing history that "makes sense." Evidence for viability of a historical document is generally based upon the existence of supporting documents and variations of the original text. And, in some cases, it's pretty much blind faith. Why do people use Beowulf as an example of what people wore back in the era when we've never found a complete copy of the poem? Why do people insist that nothing in the Bible can be believed when we have surviving copies from centuries back that show that the text really has not changed? It's an interesting question, and almost enough to make you start believing fossil records really were put into the earth to fool us.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
http://www.secretlifeofmachines.com/ No explanation necessary
Interesting that you bring up CSI. In two recent CSI:New York episode, they've made blatent ring tone advertisements for some cell phone company and artist (must not have worked well, because I can't remember the details, just that I was a bit shocked). In the first, one of the character's phone rang and the other character said, "Isn't that the new [xyz] song?" "Yeah, I just downloaded it as a ringtone." In another, two suspects were caught because they had the same ringtone on their phones.
What was weird to me about this was that, in a way, these exchanges were very realistic in that real people would say that if they noticed a friend's ringtone. It was only because it is unusual in a TV show that it stood out.
Personally, I think it is extremely naive to think that, under present conditions, good TV shows will be produced if avenues of ad revenue are bypassed. Yes, everyone wants information and entertainment to be free. Personally, I'd settle for it to be (a) cheap, (b) reusable on different devices/media, (c) easily available, (d) not subject to subscriptions.
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
Acctuly, I like commercals. They are at times entertaining and break up the show (you know, to go to the bathroom or get a drink). Sure you could just pause TV if you had a TiVo, but, as a college student, I don't have a TiVo and won't for a while.
Also, there are some shows that I wouldn't have payed to watch yet have liked anyway.
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - S. G. Colette
Have you ever watched (or listening to) any old shows from the 40s and 50s? Do we really want to go back to that type of advertising? No, I would raher have a few 30 second spots instead of going back to the "way it was".
So our only 2 possible options are to have commercials in the show, or breaking up the show? Hmm... If only there were some sort of network of devices that could allow users to choose what they want and bring it into the home in a way that allows the actually user to carry the cost, thus eliminating the need for commercials, we could solve this problem. But since we don't have that, I guess you're right.
Bullets are generally not very massive. They rely on velocity and the fact that they expand when they hit targets at such high velocity.
.0648 .0648 = 8.42 GRAM BULLET .0648
h p
A typical deer round has a 140 to 150 grain bullet. See below for conversion to grams:
FOR BULLET WEIGHT
Grains converted into GRAMS, multiply by
Example: 130 grain bullet
130 grain bullet X
GRAMS converted into grains, divide by
Quote from http://www.hodgdon.com/data/general/conversions.p
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Early CRTs? Hell yeah, you could damage them, or in the worst case, maybe set them on fire. Modern CRTs? Nope... not only are they a lot more tolerant... I'm pretty sure they have safeguards.
The GP is right. As the bullet gains altitude (as it flies vertically up) its lateral velocity is less than needed to keep pace with the target below, which is rotating on a slightly smaller radius.
The root cause is that the surface of the rotating Earth local to the target is an accelerating (in this case rotating) reference plane.
So, no troll.
OK, I was giving hobby TV as a bad example, but you are making it seem kinda fresh!
Advertising WORKS, whether dweebs on the net want to admit it or not. If shows remain free because Apple doesn't want to rely on word of mouth to keep iPod sales up then bring on the free programming!
I actually prefer those old ads by quite a bit.
Firstly, they're typeically at the start and end, so the show runs continuously in the middle. The only exceptions I can think of are some of the comedies and variety shows. Listen to some of the Sherlock Holmes episodes. Dr. Watson converses with the Petri Wine spokesman at the beginning and end, and sometimes to move the plot along. But it never disrupts the drama with blatant advertising.
Secondly, since the actors in the shows were often quite talented, having them spend a thirty seconds about the sponsor is not annoying and sometimes genuinely entertaining. I'd much rather listen to Groucho Marx sing the Plymouth Desotto song than any of the modern radio or tv advertising.
Thirdly, the ads from then actually presented the product and its merits. Nothing was "extreme" or "edgy". They were simple, informative and to the point. It's far easier to digest an advertisement that's not annoying.
** Sig-a-licious **
then they better be the last in line bitching about how suddenly there are fewer shows on TV (or music CDs in the stores)
I don't think that would happen. If congressed outlawed copyrights and DRM technolgies today there would still be musicians making music, painters making paintings, people writing books, people making movies (albeit low budget), and people still coding programs tomorrow.
Not saying that things might seem a bit odd and vacant for a while with nothing on TV and no more great leaps and bounds in software investment, but the world would survive. A few artists might starve, but they've been starving for centuries... If you want to make money do something that is about making money... Like being a banker.
The problems with society today is that all professions are all about their money and not about their passion. (I'm getting a bit OT here)
Would you like to listen to a musician who makes his music because he wants to make roll around in money or because he likes to make good music.
Would you like to go to a doctor because he likes his income or his desire to heal people.
Would you like to have a lawyer who does it out of desire for money or the desire to see justice.
I know... I know... These statments are overly idealistic and if we forced soceity to not be like this we wouldn't have any doctors, lawyers, or musicians except for the handful who did it for the sake of passion. And life would be very crappy...
But to tell you the truth... The human race could do without all the TV shows, crap music, and useless media we have today. We spent billions on this useless stuff and yet we haven't got much to show for it other than wasted time.
The only reason I say we shoulnd't pay these media outlets is that it could be spent elsewhere in technology and things that will directly mankind. You know... Like a space program... Artificial intelligence... Robotics... Nanotechnology... Maybe Immortality if we ever get around to it... Things that would actually make a friggin difference to our lives rather than watching a TV screen to pass time in our wasted lives from conception to death.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
We just worked on a myth called "bullets fired up" -- i.e., will a bullet fired directly vertically kill you when it comes back down. We did tons of research on it, and in the end, added significantly to the body of knowledge that's out there on the subject. I won't give away the ending, but we nailed this one.
That really doesn't need any experimentation - just a knowledge of what type of impact the skull can sustain - the rest can be theoretically determined (although the air resistance on a falling bullet might be a bit tough to calculate). Muzzle velocity and weight of bullet are going to determine the rest.
I always wondered about magicians picking members of the audience to come on stage to "confirm" what was happening. Couldn't tell if they were "plants" or not ... until Penn Jilette picked me to go on stage to confirm their double-bullet-catch trick. While that doesn't necessarily convince anyone else that their chosen audience members are not "plants", at least I know.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
I find those things distracting too... but not doing so would be free publicity for whoever's generic product (bleach, gasoline, oil, etc.) I happened to be using and if I was producing a show, I would probably be tempted to do the same. By covering labels, they are telling manufacturers "you're not on the show unless you directly sponsor us", which seems perfectly fair for a documentary/reality-style entertainment/science show.
If they did not cover product labels, people with vested interests in a product category with few competitors could be tempted to start pushing/fabricating myths involving their products to get some free publicity. Sponsorships usually cost more than the freebies unless we get into expensive or burdensome freebies like concrete trucks.
Video on demand will definitely be the way television distribution will end up. However, the difficulty is in implementing the billing systems. With cable bundles, the cable company just needs to enable/disable whole channels and bill you monthly. With video on demand, the content distributors need to be able to track everyone's individual accesses. Of course this is possible, but does require some infrastructure and technology implemented. Getting really into the details, there are issues like what happens when a show is partially watched. Ideally, you shouldn't have an all-or-nothing system like Pay-Per-View. Micropayments would be the ultimate -- paying a cent per minute or something would allow channel surfing and such.
Or, like they have been doing more and more, they are going to move to blatant advertising inside programs via product placement,
Well, it can't be worse that all the very annoying blurring all the time, that almost ruins everything for me. I HATE that.
Didn't they leave a laser http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/21jul_llr. htm target on the moon, that is designed to bounce back a laser aimed at it? Perhaps if you could independently confirm the existance of that mirror, you could prove that there have been men on the moon.
It would also give you the chance to play around with some cool high-intensity lasers as well!
Add to that that slashdoters are not the average consumer. If everything moves to a subscription style service we will have reality tv with fantastic production value, (Survivor - International Space Station) and geeky shows or new shows that can't get popular because they're filming on 8mm.
If I had to pick between product placement and commercials, product placement wins hands-down every time. I would MUCH rather watch President Bartlett drink a Pepsi during the course of The West Wing than be subjected to diaper ads every ten minutes. We have to pay for "free" TV some how, and if product placements are the way, then so be it.
For the father of the seven-year-old who wants experiments to do at home - try watching Zoom, on PBS. It's all about doing experiments and other activities at home, documenting the results, and sending them to the web site to compare with other kids' results. Basically, it's teaching the foundations of the scientific method. (Full Disclosure - I was lead developer for the Zoom web site for two years.)
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
I saw an ad for Sunlight last night.
Guess I can't buy that, either.
Buy sunlight? I get it for free.
Hopefully, nobody from the SPAA will read this...
I'm currently paying about $80/month for standard cable (a crapload of channels + HBO).
That's $960/year.
My neighborhood alone probably generates $50,000 - $100,000 for the cable company a year.
In 1990, there were 3,541,308 family homes in the county where I live, of which my cable company probably services a signifcant portion of. If just 1% of those total homes had the same basic cable package as me today, that would be $33,996,480 a year.
And that's just a single medium-sized county in a single state.
So, we have:
* You and I paying the cable company.
* The cable company paying the networks.
* The advertisers paying the networks.
Yes, yes... I realize this is an overly simplistic view of things -- but even still, it seems to me that we are already paying for the shows AND paying to watch commercials.
I'm convienced that they are going to launch a "Mythbusters" brand of, ehm, everything they showed on the show. Imagine that for a product placement!
What annoys me is forcing me to sit through commercials in the movie theater, before the movie starts. I paid a lot of money to see the movie, and I really don't want to waste my time seeing commercials, (or about 10 movie previews).
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a) A bittorrent network where I can download the shows, legally, with commercials as needed and perhaps localized ones (a nice ad for a store in Arizona doesn't help me where I live, but a globally available product is fine)
b) The ability to rate the ads. Computers are an interactive medium, why not create a system that allows you to download a video format including commercials, but with the ability to hit say "1-9" to give a rating, or choose INFORMATIVE, BORING, FUNNY, EXCITING, INTERESTING. The ratings for the commercial could be uploaded at the end of the episode
c) Commercials are fine so long as they don't suck, with the ratings in (b) you could tell advertisers which commercials suck, and hopefully they'd begin to make better ads (some ads are actually worth watching, heck some are damn funny)
Do you think the cable grows in the ground like so many tree roots? Do you think the programs just appear on that cable without the benefeits of expensive facilities, equipment and trained staff?
Moreover, do you really think your $25/month pays for the production of the thousands of shows that are broadcast to your home 24/7?
If you want ad-free, subscription based television it already exists in the form of HBO et al. You're more than welcome to sign up and step off your soapbox at any time.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
Comparing the airspeed of African and European swallows, both with and without coconuts. And if such laden swallows could achieve the necessary range to carry the coconuts to England.
*That* I'd like to see.....
You're infringing on MY rights by saying I have no right to disagree with you. See how that works?
And you totally missed my point on top of it. 50 years ago, they put a giant GERITOL or GE or COMPANY logo in the middle of everything so it was in every shot. What the actors were doing is irrelevant; what's relevant is that the in-show product plug has over 50 years of precedent. You can look at the last 20+ years of sitcoms, and anyone drinking a can of soda is:
A) holding a can that's already had the logo obscured
B) holding it such that the logo faces away from the camera
C) holding it such that the logo is clearly visible to the camera.
But to you, it somehow ruins your ability to watch a TV show, simply because it's become cool to make fun of the in-show product placement. Don't overinflate your particular case as representative of the entire population.
This is a cable TV show. Viewers already pay for it.
And thank you very much for it. It means that it can be shown on the free-to-air channel SBS here in Australia...without ads!
you have an aeroplane on a runway, and the runway was a giant conveyor belt, and the plane was trying to take off but the runway was moving backwards at the same speed as the plane, would the plane take off?
I don't know about that, because it is a documentary science type show, they should show what they used. They had one show where Pop Rocks was the sponsor. Now most people know that Pop Rocks doesn't kill. But what if results were that Pop Rocks when used in certain ways did kill people. Then either the show is canned or a generic term is used for Pop Rocks. It annoys me more because I see this and blurring on Mythbusters than any other show on the Discovery Channel.
The human mind is wired to look for patterns. We try to identify them even in random data, meaningless data, and once we've got a working idea about a pattern we'll test new information to see if it can possibly fit in. The "schema" become self-reinforcing to some extent; it's hard to pile up enough contrary evidence, or evidence that just doesn't "fit" well enough, to make people question or revise their dearly held beliefs.
I've been fairly deeply interested in Astrology this year, and your description of pattern finding and re-enforcement sounds like my own experiences with Astrology. My current view of Astrology is that it's an interesting tool for formalizing the pattern finding process.
Abstract Astrology (not what people preach or charge for) makes no testable predictions about the world. It is a symbol system with rules, but it takes a human to convert any astrological data into concrete predictions, and there's no way to make that conversion scientific. The astrology you find in a newspaper is no more scientific than the comics you often find on the same page.
I maintain that the reasons humans continue to propagate myths, superstition, religion, astrology and other unverifiable world models are that a lot of this "common knowledge" is either useful in some subtle way or was at some time. A lot of religious rules originated out of practices which improved hygene and otherwise improved the survivability of the adherents. Some superstitions may have originally promoted safer behavior or general caution in dangerous situations (walking under a ladder). Astrology and Tarot provide some people with an additional way of examining, understanding or communicating about complex situations. It's another language.
It sounds to me as if he wishes to be with her while she watches television, not as if it's the only time he's able to be with her.
Besides that; do you really think that because he doesn't like TV but she does is going to cause the outright cancellation of the service? It's a marriage; there's some level of compromise involved. I'm sure he has hobbies and interests that she doesn't share, but she doesn't forbid them because they make him happy.
(Insert cliche about Slashdot and marriage/women here)
Common short-form for "with". Obviously you figured it out, else you wouldn't have been able to respond.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
Why charge $2 an episode when you can charge twice as much as that for the season DVD AND get all the advertising profits? AND not have to film 20 minutes out of every hour.
Face it, big and small screen entertainment industries have it pretty good. The problem is that people are willing to pay that much for their fun, so they never have to implement any efficiency techniques to what they do. "Lavish" is the word of the day with the bigwigs involved in making us our escapist worlds. The closest we've come to cutting costs in TV is reality shows.
"There are more important things than stopping terrorism. Upholding the Constitution is one of them." - Ars Forumer.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Pilots, series, and / or season openers could be free to get people hooked on a show.
Hell, I think that'd probably significantly increase the quality of programming too.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Why do you ass-u-me that expensive facilities are required for quality programming? I'm not a fanboy of American Idol and its offspring. Are you really trying to justify television advertising as a requirement for cable to exist?
Most television in my country currently is fairly low budget, not to mention the tax credit of 30% of salaries for films made in my country.
Moreover, do you really think your $25/month pays for the production of the thousands of shows that are broadcast to your home 24/7?
Why do you 1) assume that I'm in a country that has thousands of shows broadcast into my home 24/7? 2) assume that I think thousands of television shows that are broadcast into my home are anything more then a waste of resources.
If you want ad-free, subscription based television it already exists in the form of HBO et al. You're more than welcome to sign up and step off your soapbox at any time.
Ad-free, subscription based television does not exist yet, in my country. Why do you ass-u-me I'm American? You've made countless assumptions in your reply, and you know what that makes you.
"I saw this on Mythbusters, and got to thinking."
Somehow I don't think that is the best opening for a paper.
So you're gonna make us immortal, and then make us live forever without TV? You cruel cruel psychopath!!!
The problem with advertising on TV is how much money they expect to make. It's too much! Actors and actresses get paid far too much, as do all the people associated to them in Hollywood. There's no reason why they should be paid millions and millions of dollars for what they do. This comment is not aimed at the mythbusters--just TV people in general. I loved the southpark that poked fun at the whole situation. It went something like "See poor Britney Spears? She had hoped to buy a new Learjet IV, but had to settle with a Learjet III because of piracy! See this guy wanted a gold plated swimming pool? He has wait an extra month before he can afford it!" I don't mind paying for enterainment if it's worth it--but frankly hollywood has grown to some pretty high expectations at the expense of the average american. The problem is the average american is too stupid to not just blindly swipe their credit card. They just announced a change in bank law that makes the minimum payment on credit cards 4% instead of 2%. Why? Because americans are too stupid to not pay the minimum payment and be in debt forever!
the Apollo Hoax Believers are the biggest pack of prats walking the Earth.
Personally I think the holocaust deniers are worse. Hundreds of thousands of survivors, camps still there with ovens and gas chambers and all, mass graves, and they want us to believe it all just didn't happen. What do you mean, it didn't happen? Well, something had to kill 2/3 of Europe's Jews. They didn't all just walk into the ocean at the same time.
You could conceivably stage a single trip by a single spacecraft. You can't really make something up involving millions of people.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
(picture me, vigorously shaking my head back and forth, making the cartoon "yi-yi-yi" sound.)
Self-interest is the cornerstone of our entire economic society. Without self-interest, no homeowning, no shareholding, no pensions, no insurance.. In short, without self-interest, there can be no commerce.
Not really fair to harass people for acting according to what they are taught every day.. greed is good, remember?
I don't even understand this.
Here's a plan: Stop paying DirectTV. Perhaps then they will release you from the shackles that apparently hold you in front of your television and their programming.
"I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/lectures/10_Archimede sResult.html
No channel accurately captures what i want to see.
I want _shows_. Infact, i dont even want all the shows of a given series.
I haven't had any kind of TV service for a while now. What i've recently discovered is that i love anime. Not all of it, but a bunch of stuff i never expected to like.
To discover shows, i've done research at anidb, talked to friends, etc. I'll grab the first few episodes of a show and see how i like it. If i do, i end up getting all the episodes/OVAs/whatever from that series.
What i want is the ability to preview a show for free, and if i like it, get more episodes of it. I want these on my PC, with zero advertising, and in a format i can view on any of my home computers. I want it to play flawlessly inside of Windows media Center (or some other unified-media-shell like Myth or something..)
I am willing to pay for the right content on the right terms. I don't want a cable service - i want it to come into my home network via IP.
I was making this argument to someone the other day. Today, people are willing to pay $40-$130 for a DVD box set of a season of a show they like. DVD quality, zero playback hassles, no commercials - just the content they know they like, in a large batch.
Imagine if consumers could get the same experience (or better), but for the media provider, there are no physical manufacturing costs, on wholesale/retail middlemen, etc. You simply buy a season of "Monk" or wahtever and the transport is IP. If the terms of use were similar to a DVD (i.e. i can take my file and burn it in such a way that i can play it anywhere without too much hassle, and its not tied to my PC/OS/whatever) i'd be happy to pay 80-95% of the DVD price. But for the distributing company, its almost entirely profit, especially compared to DVDs..
Shows i'd pay to watch, based on the above terms/model:
- WRC coverage
- F1 races
- a bunch of Anime
fyi, a series i happen to like is "Inuyasha". The distribution model for these so far is kind of crazy.. in the US there are DVDs issued with 3 episodes on them.. for $19. Eventually, a whole-season set will come out at the $85 price point.. this is usually 26 episodes. The show had 167 episodes made before production abruptly stopped. You can see that getting the series on 3-ep discs would cost $1100.. where as getting the show as 1-season box sets would cost $550 or so. Even so, we're talking $3.20/ep which seems a bit high to me. Inuyasha is a star property and Viz can realistically charge whatever they want for it and it will probably still sell well. But I wonder, how much lower could that price-per-episode be if we remove the physical distribution alltogether? And how much more profitable for Viz at the same time ?
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
This post is the "WTF?" winner for the day.
I don't like or care about something I'm paying a large amount of money for. I don't care if it goes away, because then I won't have to pay for it.
Last I checked, DirecTV subscriptions are not compulsory. Do yourself a favor and cancel your subscription and go "waste your time and energy" on something productive. Maybe you'll invent something that will give the rest of the world a reason to dance in the streets with you.
I tend to agree with the idea that there's very little worthwhile on TV nowadays, but I still pay for it because, between the members of my family, we find enough of the programs "sufficiently interesting" to make it worth the $50 per month.
Maybe America would do well overall if we each watched a little less TV, but one can only be productive for so many hours in the day before a little mindless entertainment is in order.
Yay! Just think how much TV I can watch!
Except that pay-per-view has gone up, up, up. I have Dish Network and when I signed up, years ago, the ppv's were $1.99. A couple of years later they went up to $2.99. Now most of them are $3.99. So now I just get my movies from NetFlix. I average 8 per month for $15. Which works out to ~$1.87 per movie. If you then burn a copy, which costs another 30 cents for the blank DVD, you now have a permanent copy for about $2.17.
You are aware that with a reader base of over 250,000 people, not everyone here can be pathetically single. I won't say that everyone is happily involved, but in any significantly large group, you will find individuals who match any profile.
But ya, I wouldn't take relationship advice from most Slashdotters.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
But you really have to congratulate the team behind Mythbusters. It's the only show I've ever seen that actually comes even vaguely close to giving the uninitiated a real idea of what science is and how it works. If more people understood this, we might not be fighting constant battles with numbskulls like the ID crowd.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
goldfish memory...is more relevant to real life.
Boy is it. I can't tell you how many times I come home at the end of a hard day's work and start telling my goldfish about it, until finally he says, "Who the hell are you?" Until you've owned a goldfish, you can't understand the emotional trauma that causes -- to have your own goldfish forget who you are. I hope one day we have a cure, but until then I'm just happy that the thankless job of goldfish care is finally getting some much-deserved recognition.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I seem to remember one episode of seinfeld used to cost about 2 mil in actor's fees only. One episode of a good show can be quite expensive. On the other hand, you don't really have 10 percent of the total population watching it. Of the total number of people who watch TV regulary in that timeslot you have a lot of competing channels, so it's more like 70% watch TV, 20% of that watch at that particular time, and 10% of that watch that show, so it can be as low as 1-2% or less. And 2$ per episode is a lot, it's like 5 bucks a day or 150$ a month.
Ok, so I'm not very convincing, the numbers look like they can add up, but i just realised... this system would promote only good shows and would bury very very fast less then good ones. Which is not what the studios want... what they want is what they have now: everybody watches TV, regardless of content, so they make money. If people paid for shows, they would tend to watch TV less, except for really good stuff. So, less money with greater effort.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Actually, I was talking about the monthly cable subscription charge for cable television.
Because you said you had cable television. How many shows were broadcast to your cable installation? 12?
Not being American myself, I'm not sure where you got the assumption I was inferring so for yourself. Care to point that out in my reply?
BTW - if you'd point out what "your country" is, perhaps it would be easier to discuss the situation in your particular part of the planet rather than griping about assumptions.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
"Sadly the networks cannot condone properly taking care of the needs of the end users. That wouldn't be fiscally responsible to their pockets."
So you are actually trying to argue that users "need" to download a copyrighted work without the permission of the copyright holder? That is a "want" of end users, not a need, just like I want $1 million. There is no rational justification other than self interest.
I think the word "need" in this sense is not so much what a particular person wants, but more like what the market demands. Broadcasters have enjoyed a half century of total control of the means, timing, and content of all entertainment of the public. The fact that they have built an industry abusing that control no more constitutes "need" than does your example of the desires of a user. You are not entitled to a continuous, legally protected revenue stream just because technology allowed you to get it at some point in the past. The market is defined by the desires of everyone involved and their ability to control the terms of how those desires are satisfied. You lost control because circumstances changed? (the development of new types of fish nets, railroads, p2p, etc.) That's too bad. Adapt or die. If you choose to attempt to cancel the free market by artificially controlling it via IP law, the result is the formation of a black market whose size is determined by the extent to which the artificial control seeks to change market reality, and the opportunity to avoid that control. By way of example, if early movie makers must operate on the other side of the continent and close to the border in order to evade the "needs" of Thomas Edison's film projector patent police, they will.
That's reality. That isn't the way one or more particular parties to the transaction want it to be - that's the way it really is. Deal.
A falling bullet actually killed Henry McDaniel of Orlando almost a year ago. It was big news locally. Here is the scoop:
http://www.local6.com/news/4084756/detail.html
Man Arrested In New Year's 'Falling Bullet' Death
Bullet Traveled 1 Mile Before Piercing Man's Heart
POSTED: 5:51 pm EST January 14, 2005
UPDATED: 10:28 pm EST January 15, 2005
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Orange County sheriff's deputies have arrested a 24-year-old man Friday who allegedly fired a bullet into the sky on New Year's Eve that later fell to earth and pierced a man's heart, according to Local 6 News.
Henry McDaniel, 75, was walking in a neighborhood near Orlando just before midnight when he collapsed in the street, witnesses and sheriff's officials said. He had been at a party celebrating the New Year with friends and had decided to visit another house.
Before he collapsed, McDaniel told friends who were standing with him near the street: "Boys, something hit me. Something hit me."
Doctors at Orlando Regional Medical Center later discovered the bullet, which struck his heart.
Officials blamed the death on a common but illegal practice by New Year's Eve revelers to shoot into the air and began an investigation.
On New Year's Eve, an Orlando police officer responded to the 1000 block of Plymouth Avenue after reports of gunshots.
The Orlando police officer reportedly confiscated a gun from Richardo Roach, 24, (pictured, left) and then contacted the Orange County Sheriff's Office after hearing about McDaniel's death. Roach reportedly admitted to firing the gun into the air, Local 6 News reported.
The weapon was examined forensically by the Sheriff's Office and then by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. It was determined that the confiscated weapon fired the round that killed McDaniel.
The bullet traveled more than one mile before it came down and hit McDaniel, Local 6 News reported.
Roach was interviewed by officers and later arrested. He has been charged with manslaughter.
Libertas in infinitum
In commercial catologues, or fast food menus (I bet you know all about those), perhaps. In ordinary prose? Bollocks. Can't argue w/you now though, I'm just about to watch "Dances w/wolves", or maybe I'll read "Travels w/my Aunt".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This sounds sort of like how Mythbusters airs in Australia.
Mythbusters airs as an extended cut (approximately 52 minute run-time) on SBS TV in Australia with no ads in the show. SBS TV is a Free-To-Air channel which anyone with reception can view without charge.
Don't worry, if there comes a day when you live with a woman you'll understand.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
Your cynicism is misplaced - it should not be directed at the pockets of the networks, but rather at your own inability to recognize that the problem is that the end-users who choose to pirate are an unbalancing force in the ecosystem, and if and when that ecosystem comes crashing down (as many here so often claim they wish it will, at least as music is concerned), then they better be the last in line bitching about how suddenly there are fewer shows on TV (or music CDs in the stores) or that copyrightholders increasingly resort to stricter and stricted methods to try to bring some balance back.
The reason we are having this conversation is that technology has changed and the incremental cost to distribute information has fallen precipitously. Trying to moralize this market change makes about as much sense as blaming the death of the steamboat industry on people wanting to get to their destinations faster (via rail). The market is a free market. Making your money is your responsibility, not mine. If your business model is stupid/outdated, you will fail. That is not my fault. I am not obligated to support your outdated business model.
Sunlight soap?
--
no sig for you. come back one year.
rj
Some alternatives to this are:
Add this one to your list - work for hire.
Just as you currently pay a subscription fee for things like cable tv access and magazines - you could also "subscribe" to the production of a specific show. As long as the pre-paid subscription fees are enough to support the production costs plus whatever level of profit the producers think they can squeeze from their customers, each episode gets created. If the fees aren't enough to support production, that is a sign that either the asking price is too high and/or nobody cares enough about the show anyway - a purely free market approach.
The beauty of this solution is that the show is paid for up-front, that means the production company can lock in guaranteed profit before shooting even starts. Today, television and film production is very high risk - as a SWAG I'd say less than 10% of shows ever turn a profit. Of those that due turn a profit, probably only 10% are able to be profitable during first run, around 90% do not turn a profit until syndication. Being able to guarantee a profit up front would radically change the way hollywood works.
There is another benefit too, to the subscribers. Besides being able to directly "vote with their dollar" for the shows they want to see created, there is no reason to forbid redistribution. In other words - the producers already got paid, they don't need copyright law to force people to pay for copies of the show. Instead, they can just give it away to anyone who wants a copy or wants to give a copy to his 10 million closest friends.
Allowing completely free redistribution will create a feed-back mechanism too - the free copies of shows will serve as advertising for new, unproduced shows. Like crack cocaine, the first one is free - except as long as enough people are willing to put their money where their mouth is to continue funding production, then the entire show will also be free.
Would you like to go to a doctor because he likes his income or his desire to heal people.
I don't particularly care what motivates him as long as he does his job. Besides, we all know there's only one thing that motivates all of mankind, and money is but one means toward that "end," if you get my meaning.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
1 week or 3 weeks to produce a myth? Haha, seems like we know who's doing the tedius work!
"I hope they legalize drugs so you hurry up and fucking die." Charles Bronson (the band, not the man)
Stop wasting your time
Says the Slashdot poster.
In other news, Ron Jeremy is encouraging celibacy, Keith Richards is promoting clean living, and Oprah would like people to eat less.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
These guys are awesome and I try to watch the show whenever I see it on. One show that always bothered me though was about the myth that you can fool the breathalyzer machine buy using pennys and mouth wash etc. The real myth is based on the PBTs (personal breath testers) used by the police out in the field. Those can be fooled relatively easily while the big machines in the jail work pretty well.
w/ = with
Since there were supposedly more than just one moon landing...
wasn't the cast of friends getting some on the order of one million dollars each per episode??? Thats a LOT Of money. I dont think $2 an ep would be quite enough for a show of that price range.
Cable was originally supposed to be that way. Eventually, however, the cable networks realised that they could have it both ways and further increase their revenue, so they added commercials to their broadcasting just like the broadcast networks were doing.
Keep in mind that originally, music videos themselves were a B2B promotional tool used by record companies to sell bands to record-store chains. Then, when MTV came about, it was the catalyst that brought so many people into cable subscriptions. The commercials became the content. There's no distinction. So people would pay their $20/month to get cable, to watch MTV, which was essentially nothing but advertisements, and to bolster their revenue, they placed ads for other products in between ads for record albums (music videos). Can you think of a better scam?
So now, record companies pay radio stations to play the hits, just like McDonalds pays radio stations to air ads for burgers. The music you hear on radio is an ad. Where's the content? There's no content. Why should there be any content?
I shut off my satellite service two years ago. I don't really miss it. There are a couple of shows I'd like to watch, and I purchase or rent them on DVD. Video on Demand is an idea whose time has come. The technology isn't there yet. But it's only a matter of time.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Broadcasters have enjoyed a half century of total control of the means, timing, and content of all entertainment of the public.
Not at all. Broadcasters have enjoyed a half century of total control of the means, timing, and content of television and radio. Before that, there were playhouses which were "controlled" by evil playhouse owners. Before that, I suppose people entertained themselves in small groups. Or paid minstrels. Possibly evil minstrels. Either way, it's pay someone to do it, or it's DIY.
Don't be a slave to the broadcasters or their programs. Take what you will for as much as you will pay.* If the price is too high, read a book, join a club, build something. Don't show the bastards by breaking the laws that they paid for, show them by sidestepping the "must watch this TV show" cycle. It's TV, not oxygen.
*e.g. I don't have cable TV. Lots of nifty shows on cable, but the price is too high for me. So I stick to FTA and ads.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Ever since the Air Conditioner test I have not been happy to sit and watch mythbusters with my friends. The issues I felt with it were that it was not scientific enough or appropriate to the myth that they were trying to bust.
It's things like that were the myth that is being tested is not what the myth originates about, and the scientific method (or lack thereof) that annoys me. Before that one I quite enjoyed the show, post that one, I became super critical of all tests! Other stuff that annoyed me - cans in cars exploding - which was "busted" I have personally had it happen to one of 12 sitting in a car, i think the hiding of branding gave extra strength or something to the can. Admittedly it appears that that one is more related to manufacturing flaws and faults in the container than anything else
Do the following really mean anything? SCSA MCP CCSA CCNA
--I'm not actually after an answer!
Considering there's a large number of specialties to choose from, varying from the important brain surgeon, to the frivolous cosmetic plastic surgeon (the kind that removes crows feet from the faces of old ladies, not the bravely-reconstructing-damaged-kiddie type). Some of these specialties are more lucrative that others, as are some hospitals. When you need a specialist to save your life, you'll probably be very thankful that they possess a little altruism.
:-) )
I am all in favour of doctors being well recompensed, especially surgeons, because the less they have to worry about life's shitty little details, the more they can concentrate on the job at hand. Which might be me.
(I get it now. "there's only one thing that motivates all of mankind, and money is but one means toward that "end," if you get my meaning." You mean sex with a supermodel
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
It kinda sucks for those of us who have no legal means of accessing the content.
I live in Norway, but sadly there is no tv stations showing my favorite american tv series. This is why i end up downloading these series from the internet.
SBS has ads, just not in the middle of the show. Ten minutes of ads at the end of the show, and I'm too lazy to get my arse off the couch to do something else before South Park comes on.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Wouldn't it be much easier to balance the books, though?
They wouldn't be getting that much if no-one was watching the show. And if it became a "premium" show, then people may pay (more?) to watch it. When it goes off the boil, down come the outrageous salaries.
If there's a more direct financial connection between producer and consumer via PPV, than the rather nebulous connection via ratings surveys, then it will be easier to recompense artists and producers.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
50 years ago, there were giant Geritol ads all over television, and they were ON the host podiums of game shows, on the dinner tables of sitcom families, on the front desk of news programs. Why is it so bad now?
Because nobody wants to see a Pepsi logo on the Enterprise, or see Captain Picard say, "Just Do It" instead of "engage".
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Nonsense. If the government were a for-profit entity its primary goal would be to maximize the budget surplus.
To what end? I would think that end users would want to do things "above board", to encourage the advertisers and Discovery Channel to continue producing this show.
Want to watch the shows on your own time, without the need to deal with stupid cable companies for getting Discovery Channel? The show is available on DVD, without commercial interruptions, I'd bet.
If the end user cannot be bothered to give incentive to the people paying for the show to support the show somehow, then the show will slide in quality or go away altogether, and then we'd all lose.
Actually - whilst not being an expert in the matter - I can't see how it's a workable business model across the board from many perspectives. I'll ignore most aspects I can think of immediately and just state that the most glaring aspect is that they are certainly partially in a niche which if extended to the rest of the marketplace would result in increased costs of production coupled with reduced revenue from subscribers. Think about it - on the subscriber front - more content competition means the same number of subscribers to a larger number of services -- on the costings front - the competing networks who are now the sole providers of content are NOT going to be providing pricing to their competitors in a fashion to be considered representative of true cost. I'll admit presently show producers have a vested interest in making their show profit but they also have a vested interest in making their product as available as possible to many consumers. Putting this solely into the hands of the networks is a conflict of interest IMHO. Apart from that - how would we ever find out about the new shows which nobody has heard of or is willing to pay for. What about the business case of funding days of our lives Vs an untried show concept like mythbusters. We all love mythbusters after the fact but before the fact we could hardly have been described as a fan. I think the comment that it's a workable business model in so far as 'everybody should operate like this' is a bit shallow in real world interpretation, shortsighted and rooted in the 'mythology' of the present dynamics of the market.
Since there were supposedly more than just one moon landing...
... Jamie and I have done the research, and figured that the only way to end the debate about the "myth" of the Apollo moon landing is to go there, and bring back something that was left there during one of the Apollo moon landings.
You mean it wasn't just the Apollo 11 mission that was claimed be a hoax?
But I liked this reasoning:
ADAM SAVAGE --
So, why didn't NASA send one of the later Apollo missions to the Apollo 11 site to bring back an Apollo 11 item, thus proving the Apollo 11 mission was real?
Tag lost or not installed.
How about shows produced by hobbits? (It's hobbyist, BTW.)
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Zero point or Free Energy or Orgone, etc... is a topic that seems to be tabu at the main stream media...
/. is not an exception to this.
And
One day there will be a revolution and i hope be here to watch the cards castle drops down.
Projecting much?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
There is nothing about them that isn't equalled or exceeded by a good tocque. The adaptation by the US military as a replacement for the BDU, or baseball cap or even boonie hat cap is ridiculous and shortsighted, although it probably helped to raise recruitment stats. I really don't care what kind of hat you wear, I always wore a cowboy hat back in the day that was a close replica of John Wayne's. I only wear headgear at work anymore, hats are an affectation I've decided to drop, except as protection from impact, sparks, or foul weather.
Product placement can be done well or ot can be done poorly. Things like computers are product placements by default - if somebody is using a computer in a scene, somebody's brand is going to be there. Why not put that up for bid?
Product placements that are more explicit is where you have to have a good writer who understands the audience. There was an episode of Gilmore Girls where the main character was overly groggy in the morning, unable to concentrate and stumbling about. She explained that she woke up at 4AM and in a 'Marylin Moment' took an extra Tylenol PM.
So, the show is pushing the effectiveness of Tylenol PM's somnolent qualities - something a viewer might be interested in acquiring - but it's done in a way that's "not according to label directions" and to comedic effect.
The wrong way to do this would be to have the daughter state that she's having trouble sleeping and the mother suggest that she take a Tylenol PM. So, a special breed of product placement writers may be forming their own niche pretty soon.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Product placement
Lights, camera, brands
Oct 27th 2005
From The Economist print edition
Product placement is rapidly blurring the line between content and advertising
[Image, credit Allstar]
NEAR the beginning of “Lost”, an American television drama about a group of plane-crash survivors on a Pacific island, a silver attaché case made by Zero Halliburton takes centre stage. No matter what the characters do to try and force their way into it, only the key to the case finally reveals its contents. This is product placement to die for.
In 2004 the value of product placement in American television grew by 46%, according to PQ Media, an alternative-media research firm. Adding in films, magazines, videogames and music as well as TV, the market was worth $3.5 billion in 2004. Leslie Moonves, chairman of CBS, a broadcast-television network, recently said that three-quarters of all scripted prime-time network programmes will soon contain paid product placement. The growth is occurring because advertisers reckon that it helps to sell their brands, and television firms are desperate for extra money as some of their traditional advertising moves to the internet and elsewhere.
When Channel 4, a British broadcaster, started showing “Lost” in August, it had to decide what to do about the attaché case, because showing products on television for money is mostly illegal in Europe. In the end, it left the incident in, reasoning that British viewers would not recognise the product, or its placement. Such dilemmas are about to disappear. The European Commission will soon alter its laws to allow product placement. It has accepted its television producers' arguments that Europe's ban puts them at a disadvantage to Hollywood, where product placement is an important source of extra funding.
The phenomenon is not new. In the 1930s, Procter & Gamble started broadcasting “soap operas” on the radio featuring its soap powders, and tobacco brands have long used films and TV to lend glamour to smoking. But advertisers are pushing their way into content far more aggressively than ever before. This is chiefly because they doubt the effectiveness of 30-second spot advertisements. Increasingly, viewers are using personal video recorders to skip them, or are choosing to pay for content without commercials.
Even books now carry product placement, and Broadway musicals too. Newspapers are under pressure to do the same, but are mostly holding out. Last week, the American Society of Magazine Editors decided not to change its rules to allow titles to blur the line between content and ads, as many advertisers had hoped it would.
In the film industry, a lot of product-placement deals are made in return for a brand spending large sums marketing the association with the film, as well as for hard cash. Advertisers are becoming increasingly pushy. Brand owners do not just want their car in the film, complains the head of product placement at a film studio, they also demand tickets to the premiere and for the stars to be photographed in front of their brand boards.
In television, the fastest-growing area of the market for product placement, advertisers and TV firms are trying to work out a more structured and standardised business model. Most placements are currently done on a barter basis. An advertiser will agree to lift its spend on traditional 30-second spots around a show, for instance, in return for product placement inside it.
The tricky part is working out exactly what product placement is worth. At the moment, no-one knows how to price it. So far it seems to have the biggest effect when accompanied by traditional ads. The Coca-Cola Company, for instance, found that audience recall of its ads during “American Idol”, a reality show full of Coke placements, was 49% higher than during other programmes.
Oh for the w
Yes, new technology, if better and ECONOMICALLY VIABLE will surplant ineffecient ones just like rail supplanted the steamboat. Let's be very clear on this: RAIL supplanted the steamboat because it benefitted BOTH SIDES: SUPPLIERS (rail) could make money doing it, and USERS would benefit from it.
There is NO such mutual relationship in the bold new world of instant piracy. Rather, all you get is that the user demand, but that the supply is unwilling to play because there is insufficient incentive for them to do so. You'd have to be an absolute moron not to realize at this point. This is not progress or technological/economic advancement: it's an unbalanced situation that is unsustainable.
If and only if the content providers find an economically viable way to distribute their content, or some completely new content providers come and seize the opportunity because the traditional content providers are too incompetent or slow will you see actual progress. As we see, they are trying this with things like iTunes and TV-shows-downloadable-on-demand. But to say that such models have now been proven to be viable is speculative at best.
PIRACY no more outdates an IP business model than a CROWBAR outdates jewelry stores.
Scott A. Sanford of the NASA AMES Research Center offers this dubunking http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volum e1/v1i3/air-1-3-apples.html/(WARNING: this site often returns 404s) of the Apples and Oranges comparison myth at the HotAIR website. So I think our friends at Mythbusters should not use that particular analogy anymore.
Though I would suppose that the tires and/or wheel bearings in the landing gear might very well burst into flame and cause the gear to collapse first.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
Would you like to listen to a musician who makes his music because he wants to make roll around in money or because he likes to make good music.
Would you like to go to a doctor because he likes his income or his desire to heal people.
Would you like to have a lawyer who does it out of desire for money or the desire to see justice.
I'd listen to the musician who played the best music, the doctor who was most likely to save my life, and the lawyer who would do the best job defending me. I'm not that concerned with why they're doing it.
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl
I don't remember the story, but I do remember that part.
Anyhow, isn't "what goes up, must come down" one of the basic laws of physics? ;-)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I agree, having watched a whole two episodes of Braniac, it's an almost complete disappointment.
The most disappointing part, though, is that the show would be very, very easy to fix. The problem isn't the things they do on the show. The majority of it is good, if a bit silly, science. I don't even have a problem with the fact that it's edited for 12-year olds with ADD.
The problem is the tone of the show, and in particular, the crass commentary.
There was one episode I saw, for example, which featured a segment asking how much weight you actually gain by eating a quarter-pound burger. It turns out to be measurably LESS than a quarter of a pound because of the energy required to actually do the eating. While not in the same league as Mythbusters, this is a very good piece of television science. However, the announcer then had to speak in British-euphemistic terms about the subsequent trip to the toilet, which was completely unnecessary.
I'm not squeamish about this sort of thing at all, but the impression that you get is that the show is not an offbeat science programme at all, but rather dumbed-down science for people who enjoy laughing when someone refers to a fart as a "bottom biscuit".
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Not if it has a high enough escape velocity ;-)
But actually, I guess people don't generally think this'll hurt them because:
1) The bullet will land very very far away (depends on the angle)
2) The bullet will "reach an apex and eventually have zero speed because of a change in acceleration and thus vectors"
3) They fail to also take into account that even though it is just "falling" at the normal rate of acceleration due to gravity, that it doesn't have much surface area, is designed to be aerodynamic, and has a very high terminal velocity.
If I remember correctly a human has a terminal velocity of somewhere between 150-250 MPH. Not very fast in the grand scheme of things, but fast enough to kill you if you hit a brick wall, or the ground, at that speed. Well, a bullet has much less surface area, thus a much higher terminal velocity.
Sadly though, my post wasn't fiction, it was fact. Could you imagine being that unlucky to just be walking along and all of the sudden drop dead due to a bullet falling from the sky. I mean what are the odds?
Libertas in infinitum
Here in Austin, we get things like NPR and things like 'so and so helped pay for this' and then right back to it. I approve. As far as product placement, seems to me that it may be a good thing. If revenue comes from advertising, and advertising is integrated into the product (the show), then the incentive to limit distribution dissappears. We are one step closer to "Did you miss part of tonight's show? Grab the torrent! Send it to your friends!".
And I know what you're going to say next, but if the ad placement becomes too intrusive (ie. breaks the show) then no one will watch it. Just as you and your wife discovered. Perhaps you would put up with it a little more if it resulted in more reasonable treatment of the end user.
Come on, man. This is Slashdot.
---
The only thing I hate more than a hypocrite is a person who hates hypocrites.
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
Taken from the link: "Adam: I'd also like to answer an unasked question here -- we're NOT gay! We're both happily married, and we're not even remotely gay.
Jamie: It's true: We're both quite happily heterosexual, thank you very much. Not that there's anything wrong with that!"
Well I guess the myth is... *whooo...bang!*
[ B U S T E D ]
w00t
So do these two fuck each others assholes or who?
Granted the death rate by accidental gunshot is quite small...
I just googled around a bit, and it seems your ovarall odds of an accidental death are about 2698:1 in any given year. Or 35:1 over your lifetime.
That seems kind of high, but 34/35 is 97% which doesn't sound so bad.
That leaves a 1/35 or 2.9% chance of accidental death.
So, by my slashdot(tm) calculations, you only have 97 + 2.9 = a 99.9% chance of dying (sometime in your lifetime.)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Wait, your talking about a channel that is on SUBSCRIPTION based cable... Why are there commercials again?
--WooooHoooo--
Excellent responses. Hats off to you both, and much continued success. c_v
No... a corporation doesn't nessicarily want to return the biggest dividends, it can use profit for capital expenditures (In the case of government capital expenditure would be manufacturing a crisis that require even more government spending... say something like the Iraq war). And for a government, it is not nessicarily bad to borrow money, because they control the money supply and can always devalue the currency (and the current ruling party, or at least the current leaders, will not be around when the debt comes due anyway, so why worry about it?).
Seeing that it missed me completely, and hit the ground instead, I'd have to say "No".
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
you just posted it instinctively
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
Grandparent is using faulty logic at best, thinly veiled creationist argument at worst. faith is blind acceptance.
Yes, we should stop wasting money on what we want and spend it on what YOU want.
Seriously, why aren't scientists traveling to the moon purely for the fun of it? If we stopped paying them I'm sure some of them would still study rocketry. Somebody else would stop by to pick of you trash just because they liked clean streets, and you would still go to your crappy job if they stopped paying you.
watch how fast the ascent module takes off. This is 1/6 gravidity and it took off like a rocket.
i get the feeling he's a troll, though. (A moon troll!)
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
Think about this: (I think it was) Gene Youngblood, who said "The show is the commercial for the commercial.
[ ]Clever sig [X]Lame sig
I'm sure that this comment won't be read by many since I'm posting this late, but I'd like all the fighting robot fans to know that many of the Battlebots competitors are still out there. Check out the Robot Fighting League:
http://botleague.org/
Your design to a real part online: Big Blue Saw
If some cable company came up to me and offered me 5 channels at a reasonable price, I'd pay, but only if I get to choose the five channels.
At the moment the only way I can get my five channels is to sign up for 500 other channels of garbage for $60 a month - which I'm not paying.
Going back to mythbusters, I'd pay $1 an episode for AVIs, no problem.
The only thing keeping my money out of the producer's hands is the fact that I don't have any reasonable/legal options for watching the show. As things stand, I'm downloading...
No sig today...
No. It might if it hit you instead of the ground.
To get 2 meter resolution on the moon's surface from the earth, you'd need a telescope 100m in diameter. The largest earth-based telescope we have is 10m in diameter.
And moreover, you'd have to put it in space, because otherwise you'd just be magnifying the heat waves in the earth's atmosphere. (This is a problem you start seeing in telescopes only 10 *inches* across, so yeah, it's a big deal)
This is, of course, prohibitively expensive. You may as well build it on the moon, because it would be cheaper to manufacture it there instead of trying to build a rocket large enough to get it into earth orbit.
Worse than the technical problems, is that the moon hoaxers will still say it's a hoax. They simply don't want to believe, therefore they don't. Already they choose to ignore the blazingly obvious evidence that we *have* been to the moon, so showing them more pictures isn't going to change anything. The fact that most of them are barking mad doesn't help matters.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
JAMIE HYNEMAN -- The fact that young people are becoming interested in science as a result of the show is by far the biggest bonus for us, and one that took us by surprise as we had no intent that the show do this. However one of the reasons it has worked is that very fact that we are not really trying to be educational. We blow stuff up, we screw around. Adam puts things up his nose. Sometimes we do stuff just because we are curious. We are interesting to young people perhaps because we are a little bit out of control.
Science without experimentation is like reproduction without a fetus. It just doesn't happen. Mythbusters is an interesting, entertaining, and educational show where they use basic concepts of science (get curious about something, make a theory, cook up a test to try the theory, do the test, and make a conclusion) in order to try out people's ideas.
What's sad is that science is so often cuby-holed into knowing the specific gravity of a particular compound - but this isn't science, just fact regurgitation. Science is a method that, when followed, results in a long-term tendency towards truth.
So many people think science is stuffy and arrogant, but Mythbusters is science in action. I love it!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I really didn't want to start thinking about their dueling firecrotches.
AHHHH GET OUT OF MY BRAAAIN!!!
How much would it be for all of us to just pony up directly to the Mythbusters and cut out the middleman?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I had a problem with that one too. First they did one test using a meter to measure gasoline consumption rate, and found that the A/C was more efficient. Then they did another with a set amount of gasoline in the tank and drove till the car ran out, and found that the windows down was more efficient.
However, for this second test, they felt that it was dangerous to drive as fast as they had for the first test, and so set the speed lower for the second test. Of course, this should change the results -- higher speeds mean more wind resistance, and particularly, I would think, in the case of having your windows down.
If they had thought of any of this (or mentioned it, if they did), they could have made the point that the A/C is more efficient at freeway speeds and windows down at surface street speeds, which is a more interesting result, I think.
Revisit the myth! Do you read me, Adam and Jamie?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Evil Minstrels ? Are they the kind that do melt in your hand ?
The answer to this is fairly simple, really.
/. that I have no bearing on the situation (and I think it goes without saying that there are parameters that I have missed), but it seems like a business model that could be eased into, and could either complement or replace traditional programming. I wouldn't be surprised if the iTunes video store is already doing stuff like this, since it has all the technological issues solved and a good portion of the marketing ability in place.
Nielsen ratings determine which pilots end up succeeding (or so I'm told), so...
Have a channel (or several) that provides pilots for free. Accept pre-orders for the show while the pilot is running.
Now, you have a much more reliable alternative to the nielsen system. Not only are you getting good demographics about people who are interested in the show, you're getting a direct response from those that want to see the show.
Not enough to make a buck? Refund the pre-orders. Obviously a simple credits system would work well here (see: pre-paid cell phones).
The potential for such a thing has great advantages. Not only could you serve more traditional advertisements on the pilot channels (which gives big advertisers a much smaller set of time slots to fight over, which only equals more $$$), but the shows could be arranged in a way that allows for cliff-hangers or other enticing future content at the end of the pilot, drawing more curious viewers.
I think it's fair to say that because I'm posting this on
But since you're in Norway, it's not like you have much to worry about from the MPAA.
You're infringing on MY rights by saying I have no right to disagree with you.
Geez.... Neither one of you understand what it means to have your rights infringed. You're both still able to yammer on about your opposing opinions. This "infringement" thing hasn't seemed to have any dampening effect on either of you.
Disagreeing with someone isn't infringement. Even saying "You're wrong" or "You have no right to say that" isn't infringement.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
So, kinda like the channel in hotels that shows you all the porn you could be watching if you did pay per view?
It's TV, not oxygen.
No. But comments like this are a breath of fresh air....
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Because nobody wants to see a Pepsi logo on the Enterprise, or see Captain Picard say, "Just Do It" instead of "engage".
Why not. I see trucks every day with ads plastered on the sides. That's reality. I think the "Just Do It" would be a bit contrived, but having characters mention a product name is also reality. "Hey, Bob, want something to drink?" "I'll have a Pepsi." Here in the real world I hear people talk products and preferences every day. As long as it flows naturally I don't have a problem with it. "Hey, Bob, have a seat." "Nah. I need to get some Preparation H to help shrink swollen hemmorhoids and end this itching and burning." Yeah, that's a bit awkward and doesn't sound at all real.
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As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Cable was originally supposed to be that way. Eventually, however, the cable networks realised that they could have it both ways and further increase their revenue, so they added commercials to their broadcasting just like the broadcast networks were doing.
If a cable company came along and promised no commercials during the running of any of the shows it carries, and charged competitive rates for monthly service, it would go out of business. I don't have the numbers handy since I'm going off what an acquaintenance told me about cable operations (he works for Time Warner as a sales manager, so I'm inclined to believe his numbers are accurate). But he said it takes anywhere from six to 12 months for a new customer to become profitable. In other words, it's not until you've had service for one whole year before the cable company makes a penny in profit off you. If they had no commercials, how much longer do you think it would take? What kind of business model would support that kind of ROI? What stockholder with a brain is gonna wait X years for a return, when the company down the street is promising bigger returns sooner?
Or, prove me wrong and go start your own cable company, sans commercials.
And before it gets brought up, TiVo is not a cable company, and their revenue stream is not dependent on commercial advertising. So their success, or even the success of cable companies offering their own brand of DVR, isn't quite the same. After all, those cable operators selling/leasing DVRs are still happily selling time to advertisers, too.
And HBO is not a valid comparison, either. Out of 168 hours of programming in any given week, how much of that time is spent on original programming? Maybe three or four? Compare that with broadcast and basic cable networks, who have to come up with anywhere from double to ten times that amount.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I bet that if you got a police report from either the Orlando PD http://www.cityoforlando.net/police/ OR the Orange County Sheriff's Dept http://www.ocso.com/ it would probably have this information in it.
Libertas in infinitum
Back in the days before cable, we had satellite, and basically all you got was a couple of channels, and yes, they were commercial free. Now you get commercials even on satellite and cable.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
But the advertisers pass on the cost to you through the product. I'd rather the producers take all the risk.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
PIRACY no more outdates an IP business model than a CROWBAR outdates jewelry stores.
Cute talking point. Did you come up with that on your own?
It wasn't an IP business model. It was a business model based upon providing distribution of entertainment. The need for that distribution effectively no longer exists. The reaction of the entrenched industry is to supplant that original both-sides-benefiting need for distribution with artificial market pressure via IP law. By your "benefit both sides" criterion, DRM is indefensible, for example - it provides no more benefit to users than allowing the steamboat industry to regulate maximum steam pressure in locomotives would benefit the railroad industry.
Sure. I am all for 100% pay TV. Because people won't pay for television that sucks. They can try and cram another reality show down our throats but if we have to pay to play and nobody is interested in more recycled reality crap then we don't have to put up with it, they won't make any money, and less crap will get made. While at the same time advertisers are left without a method for getting their products to the masses. So they can develop a system for paying people to look at ads. I hate commercials, ads, banner ads, pop ups etc. I hate them enough that if I see the same commercial over and over I just turn the TV off, regardless of what I was watching. So if commercials and advertising are going to be intrusive and annoying I should get paid for having to put up with them. The money I make from putting up with advertising bullshit will help ofset the cost of paying for television. With the added benefits that I get paid evertime I'm inconvenienced by an add, and that I won't have to be subjected to crappy television shows since I won't pay for them.
The technology is there. Bittorrent would work great for this sort of distribution and it would offset the cost for the distributor. Provide a VCD image of the episode in question so it can be burned and watched in most DVD players, and with the high number of people wanting to watch it and a half-decent connection, you wouldn't have to wait long to get it. Hell, they could even leave in the ads to help pay for the show. Sure some people would skip them, but it's not really all that different from what people do now with Tivo. The only real problem there is that broadband has not yet reached significant penetration in the U.S. The number of people still using dialup is staggering, and as long as that's the case we'll never see a distribution model like this in North America.
This poo is cold.
Who modded this Troll?? Should be funny, RTFA.
or, from the advertiser's point of view:
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Don't worry. The joke was worth the karma hit.
I'm not normally one to nitpick, but Plymouth and DeSoto were seperate brands aimed at different markets. They were both owned by Chrysler, though.
This poo is cold.
That kind of thing isn't even new for CSI. Back when the Dreamcast launched, Nick and Warrick on the original CSI started talking about how realistic the graphics were in NFL2K. Granted, it wasn't exactly out of character for them to talk about that sort of thing, but still, not exactly subtle.
This poo is cold.
Redundant? As in, lots of people missed out on asking Adam for a date? I don't get it. What's redundant about a comment no one else has made?
That depends on whether or not I'm guilty :)
Why do they use "Mythbusters brand cola" in the cola dissolving stuff or the pop rocks show? Didn't Coke or Pepsi want to be supplying that with plenty of on-screen time? They probably don't want their product in a bad light if something "bad" happens.
I notice that for the ping pong ball boat salvage show, they didn't bother to block out all of the Stiga and Butterfly logos on the balls.
Sorry.
I've actually tried downloading a few shows via bittorrent. It's just plain not worth the time and the quality sucked. I have not tried iTunes video service, which also hosted the show I was trying to watch. But from what I've heard - it's not full-video quality, they're geared towards viewing on a video iPod.
The experience from renting a DVD was simply superior in every way, and worth the money.
For say $5 an episode, if I had a convenient way to view the show at DVD-quality level on my home theater system, and if I could reliably download in less than 12 hours, and keep a copy I'd burn onto my own media, then I'd say that the technology was there. So part of it's broadband penetration, and part of it is the quality of the downloadable content, which is inferior to DVD - and that's also mainly a function of bandwidth availability.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
What happened to some of the questions that questioned their use of the scientific method. There were plenty rated 5.
Grow some balls, you damn spineless fluffers.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
Hey that's fine by me... If I could pay $15 for a subscription to the scifi channel or pay $30 for a season of a show that I can watch, abeit a little time for downloading to start or pay $3 an episode of a particular show I wouldn't mind. I would welcome it because I could keep things like firefly on the error, $15 bucks an episode might be a bit expensive, but I would rather pay $60/month for a show I wanted to see without commercials rather than $115/month, current rates in my area to get a few channels I would actually watch, granted if the basic cable cost were 65 I would be paying more, but I wouldn't have to waste my time watching commercials. I was 10 minutes for every 30 minutes on average with commercials, actuall I think 8 minutes might be closer but I don't watch than much.
Anyway my time and the ability to invest in a show that I wanted to watch rather than crap would be vary much appreciated. If you had commercial channels as well you could recoop you show cost there as well. Lots of people would watch commercial channels, but if I could help pay for the shows I watch I wouldn't mind...
Consider this, I think that firefly cost 1 million an episode to produce so let's double that to $2 million each show for a huge profit... I'm not sure how many fans are out there but 1 in 250 seems like it would be quite low... that gives us 1 million viewers for a specific show which is available at their convience I'm pretty sure that most of use would be willing to pay $2 a show. This is for an unpopular show, imagine what lost or 24 or Wrestling would make even charging say $.25 a show...
This model of distribution is possible right now and I would far prefer it to the current system.
PS, Someone mentioned burning cd's above, I don't won't mind this as a subscription service, but keep track of the shows I have paid for so that I can view them again or better yet charge me an additional fee for this service...
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
Right now I pay $50/mo for cable tv, getting every show on it I want to watch, both new seasons and reruns of stuff I didnt watch when it originally aired years ago. Ignoring the already aired stuff, lets make a decent playlist of stuff worth watching on a weekly basis.
24, rescue me, the shield, family guy, american dad, the simpsons -- I left a lot out to compensate for not everything airing in the same season, but as far as I know all of these do. Thats 6 tv shows, or 4.5 hours of entertainment per week. Lets be nice and say, $2/episode for the hour longs, $1.50 for the half hour shows. That brings us to $10.5 per week, or $40 per month. And thats if you just watch as little as I listed, leaving you without anything to watch after you've watched them all. No reruns of old shows, no new shows you dont want to put $2 for but end up being good, just the shows you preselect as being worth your money.
Using firefly as your example, where are they going to get that ~$1m or so to film a pilot? The networks sure wont pay for it..too big of a risk of nobody wanting to watch it since nobody knows about it. Even if you would pay for it, you'd never even get the chance to, because nobody would fund it up front. Shows like dark angel or firefly or, well, most everything good on fox never have time to pick up a viewer base because theyre cancled so fast for not bringing in enough ad revenue. How little do you think they'll make when people have to pay extra just to see it? How many shows even get good in their first season? Go watch some star trek:TNG reruns and tell me you'd pay $2/ep for the first season. That show would have been dead before it ever had a chance to grow into what it became.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
These issues of making pilots are the same as the ones that are encountered currently.... You do know that neilson(sp?) ratings are used to set advertising prices for shows currently? And that if your show is unknown, you are not going to get much income for ads during that show? That's why the networks advertise shows and create new shows in order to get a higher market share and charge more money... The new system is just the same, except that it's the end user that gets to decide how good a show is not a lot of marketing research.
There are hundreds of pilots made every year that do not show up on television because the marketing department do not think that they can make enough income off of the shows... ie, there are more profitable shows.... If we had a system that ensured that every time a show is viewed, there is a payment, then there will always be a profit any time a show is viewed and actually a lot more pilots will become available since the network does not have to worry what show is going to be the most popular. Ie the network will use more bandwidth, but it will also have a guarenteed return on any bandwidth it uses, so with minimal advertising there is no reason not to put their entire catalog online generating income versus having to pick and chose shows.
Wouldn't it be nice to have consumers making the choices about what shows they want? Btw, your $50 minimum with cable is unlikely to go down, this is one of the wonderful advantages of most municiples in the United States giving cable companies exclusive contracts, ie monopolies. The cable company wants it's cut for maintaining the cable line and you will still have to pay for the additional content on top of that, so this will not be a cheaper solution, merely a way of shifting the focus from attracting advertisers to attracting the interests of viewers... My free time is worth more than $2/hour and if I were able to guarentee that I could watch something interesting every time I sit in from of the TV, I'd be more inclinded to do so. Currently I have little desire to watch 99.99% of the shows, and it looks like you are in the same boat... Wouldn't it be nice to spend $70/month get all your options that you have now, note we don't have to get rid of the commercial channels just expand pay per view, and be confident that you could sit down and watch what you want to watch any time you want to watch it?
Hopefully that makes it a little clearer... It's not primarily an issue with cost, more an issue of convience and not having to view all the commercial crap online.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
Most cable providers already have video on demand in many markets (including my own). While the technology is there and works really well, the play list of both the free and pay shows is seriously lacking. So far the best on demand content ive seen are the IMAX videos, discovery and history channel programs on demand. Everything else is really limited.
There are commercials in the On Demand feed but they are tacked to the beginning and end of each program.
"Don't mess with him, he taunts the happy fun ball."
How is this not something that could also be faked? If they faked the Apollo 11 landing, faked the leaving of items, etc. then could they not just as easily have saved the props in some vault, retrieve them from there, send another fake mission to the moon with the props secretly stashed on board, and "return with the items left on the moon during the original mission"?
It's not that hard for a party to fake a verification scenario of something that was supposedly faked by them to begin with. It would be much more convincing if a NASA-independent mission were to retrieve these things, yet, still likely fakeable given today's special effects wizardry. ILM and Pixar could easily do the whole thing with a special effects studio and a render farm.
Go back to trying to figure out how much more curry you can shove up your ass, you rude-ass probably-Indian whiny ass SOB.
The cost of the subscriptions will be higher than anything you save from lower prices.
And it will also mean you can't watch anything casually, you have to pay for EVERYTHING you watch individually, you can't just sit down and flick through the channels to see what's on. You can't watch five minutes of a programme then do something else, because you want to get your money's worth.
Micropayments are an idea that's dead in the water.
Erm :) Obviously the myth was busted
There was quality TV in the first place?
Any show worth watching will eventually come out on DVD, and I can get it then. Mythbusters is a fun, educational program, but $50/month to Comcast is WAY more than it's worth. At least my Internet provider doesn't force ads on me in addition to their monthly bill.