...when they could get Billie Holiday, one of the greatest jazz singers of all time, to record for a flat rate of $75 and screw her out of royalties and her copyright.
It's a good thing artists wised up and began licensing their works.
Stories go that Tesla would activate a magnetic field in his laboratory and then walk around with a vacuum tube for a light.
Also, Tesla showed that it was possible to transmit energy through the earth, which he discovered to have a frequency of ~8Hz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla) However, when his chief backer, JP Morgan asked how they would charge money for it, Tesla was at a loss, and so ended the possibility of transmitting power through the earth. The forces of capitalism were too great to overcome.
Also, at the risk of being off-topic, he was perhaps the first person ever to conceive of a practical doomsday machine. He believed that by using a large enough mechanical oscillator tuned to the appropriate frequency, he could use harmonic amplification to essentially shake the earth apart within a few months.
Thank you novakyu for reminding me how easy it is for one to be carried away by their own rhetoric. I agree that heating 1 kilogram of water 600C is not in practice possible due to the energy required to cross the boiling point, plus one also has to factor in the lower specific heat of water vapor. States of matter aside, our homeostasis is an energy-intensive business which makes us (or any heterotroph for that matter) unsuitable for energy production.
Yet, it seems we're flogging the off-topic dead horse, doesn't it? My apologies msgmonkey. The studio should have left the "brainframe" idea in the movie.
Actually, anyone who's had a stitch of molecular biology knows that Matrix won't happen. The basal metabolism of a human being is 1600 calories per day. I'm not sure how far a cryogenic state would lower that, but for argument's sake, we'll say that the basal metabolism of a "matrix" human would be 600 calories, an absurdly low number. That means that each person on the grid would be consuming 600 kilocalories every day. (the calories you see on the nutritional information are really kilocals) That chemical energy is equivalent to the amount of energy required to heat 1 kilogram of water 600 degrees Celsius.
Food production is an energy-intensive process. Even if it is some slop that is pumped into your bloodstream, there must be potential energy in the chemical bonds within the food, which of course, requires energy. The human body also doesn't metabolize all the food it consumes as energy and the metabolic process itself requires caloric input. Even if you collected 95% of the heat produced, you'd have an inefficient system that would not be close to producing enough energy to heat 1 kilogram of water 600C within a day. It would be more efficient to burn the food and collect the energy from that. Even better, skip the entire nutrition thing and just directly use the energy that would have been wasted in the yeast vats that maintain the useless humans.
Fortunately, the Matrix is more of an allegory on the philosophy of Idealism than a forum for discussing alternative energy.
Mind doping is becoming more common? I'm a music performance major in college. For years classical musicians have been taking beta blockers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_blockers) to alleviate nervous tension and the shakes that come with high-pressure situations such as auditions and recitals. When you and a hundred other people each have fifteen minutes to perform the most difficult orchestral literature ever written in front of a jury that is searching for the most nanoscopic flaw in your playing just to make their lives easier, many people will do anything to get an inch of edge. Even for university ensemble auditions there are students who use them.
Granted, not every classical musician you see on stage is taking pills. But there are a number who will not go on stage without them. Personally, I subscribe to the banana method. Large quantities of bananas eaten for a week before a high-pressure situation is a common "natural" practice amongst my peers as well.
But mind doping something new? Bah! This practice has been going on for a long time in the music world.
Amen brother. Being a college student as well (music major at that) I can confirm what you relate in your post. I don't know any of my friends who have purchased a physical music CD anytime recently.
What I've found more interesting is the absence of any music from the industry's cash cows. I don't see in my friend's music libraries 50 cent, Jay-Z, or Britney spears. Instead, I've discovered that students are investing more and more into oldies, Indie groups, and local bands.
It seems that the RIAA's problems stem more from the issue that the big-name acts that they've invested so much in are no longer selling records by the droves as their customers realize that the fringe groups are just as good and more unique. If that's true, blaming piracy is convenient. The only other explanation is that their flagship product is failing. Blaming criminals is much easier than blaming yourself.
Granted, take my word with a hunk of salt. Music students tend to be omnivorous in their listening tastes and also spend most of their time collecting historic recordings of Stravinsky conducting the Rite of Spring. Have any other college students noticed a trend away from the flagship acts?
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Hang on while I go kill my grandfather!
It's a good thing artists wised up and began licensing their works.
No more male enhancement pills! Now offering custom-grown penises!
Also, Tesla showed that it was possible to transmit energy through the earth, which he discovered to have a frequency of ~8Hz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla) However, when his chief backer, JP Morgan asked how they would charge money for it, Tesla was at a loss, and so ended the possibility of transmitting power through the earth. The forces of capitalism were too great to overcome.
Also, at the risk of being off-topic, he was perhaps the first person ever to conceive of a practical doomsday machine. He believed that by using a large enough mechanical oscillator tuned to the appropriate frequency, he could use harmonic amplification to essentially shake the earth apart within a few months.
Yet, it seems we're flogging the off-topic dead horse, doesn't it? My apologies msgmonkey. The studio should have left the "brainframe" idea in the movie.
Food production is an energy-intensive process. Even if it is some slop that is pumped into your bloodstream, there must be potential energy in the chemical bonds within the food, which of course, requires energy. The human body also doesn't metabolize all the food it consumes as energy and the metabolic process itself requires caloric input. Even if you collected 95% of the heat produced, you'd have an inefficient system that would not be close to producing enough energy to heat 1 kilogram of water 600C within a day. It would be more efficient to burn the food and collect the energy from that. Even better, skip the entire nutrition thing and just directly use the energy that would have been wasted in the yeast vats that maintain the useless humans.
Fortunately, the Matrix is more of an allegory on the philosophy of Idealism than a forum for discussing alternative energy.
Granted, not every classical musician you see on stage is taking pills. But there are a number who will not go on stage without them. Personally, I subscribe to the banana method. Large quantities of bananas eaten for a week before a high-pressure situation is a common "natural" practice amongst my peers as well.
But mind doping something new? Bah! This practice has been going on for a long time in the music world.
What I've found more interesting is the absence of any music from the industry's cash cows. I don't see in my friend's music libraries 50 cent, Jay-Z, or Britney spears. Instead, I've discovered that students are investing more and more into oldies, Indie groups, and local bands. It seems that the RIAA's problems stem more from the issue that the big-name acts that they've invested so much in are no longer selling records by the droves as their customers realize that the fringe groups are just as good and more unique. If that's true, blaming piracy is convenient. The only other explanation is that their flagship product is failing. Blaming criminals is much easier than blaming yourself.
Granted, take my word with a hunk of salt. Music students tend to be omnivorous in their listening tastes and also spend most of their time collecting historic recordings of Stravinsky conducting the Rite of Spring. Have any other college students noticed a trend away from the flagship acts?