The farmers are unlikely to be the tollbooth operators. Again, farmers don't charge each other for emergency services, like fire prevention. They do it because they expect to get service in return if they need it. Its an implied community ethic.
The tollboth operators will be the equipment OEMs, and the upstream ISPs maintaining a few miles of dedicated fiber to a few "yokels", complaining about people using their equipment without any licensing, or about them saturating said pipes that they would be subsidised to keep open.
If the carriers can't be bothered to buld/can't make a profit from building the necessary infrastructure, then permit the farmers themselves to do it.
Many farmers put up towers already for a wide variety of reasons, such as wind generators, and agricultural fuel pumps/water towers.
Allowing them to put a simple mesh extender/repeater up there so that they can help service their neighbors, with the subsidy going to the telecom upstream to not throttle the exit pipes, and the money stays where you want it to stay, and the people impacted pay for the infrastructure themselves.
Of course, that's awefully close to filthy communism..... once a functional mesh network servicing a large pool of users springs up, rest assured somebody would rush in to extract tolls on the thing.
Usually, rural types are extremely local-community driven, simply *because* there isn't a huge and diverse network of social services paid for by taxes.
Water, electric, and basic telephone on wires that are literally 70 years old. That and having the roads grated 12 times a year (if you are lucky!) Is what their tax money buys them. (Compare to city people who get prompt emergency services, prompt police protection/assistance, paved roads, and a bunch of other nice things.)
This community centric "we gotta help each other out!" Mentality is how they survive. Their crop catches fire? Who shows up first-- all the neighbors with sacks to BEAT it out, or the fire dept? Guess what? Its the former. Unless the fire is really, horribly, "omg! Its destroying the whole state!" Big, the county will only send a cop car to go acess the damages.
Similarly, the "no rural internet" problem could be solved fairly easily, if two things were permitted.
1) force the telecoms to offer a highspeed connection at radically reduced rates to farmers who then redistribute access to thir neighbors. (These are the ones right next to civic centers. You know, the ones that can get access to the main lines.)
2) free up, and preserve a spectrum chunk for longer-range (say, 5 miles tops) node to node mesh networks intended for public use.
Allow the farmers themselves to build out the network, and it will get where it needs to go.
The carriers have said they can't make a profit from it and so they won't do it. Obviously they would have no problem with somebody else doing it, since clearly no profit can be lost.
Or, is it really just a pac of lies, like most people know it to be?
Not a whole lot you can do about proxies without resorting to breaking the internet in seriously fundamental ways. Whole oppressive regimes have millions of dollars invested in trying to lock things down like that, and it still doesn't work.
Eventually you just have to be practical. There is only so much that can be locked down, and the savvy will know how the locks work. Rather than getting stingy about it, accept that it will happen, and impose a "proxy use gets your test torn up" rule, and log IPs.
A quick script to determine if the IPs accessed are proxies after the test day will quickly highlight your cheaters. (A little automated test of proxy functionality is all you need. A cli script that tells wget to use the ip as a proxy, and off you go.)
Block all traffic except port 80 http. (They don't need https, do they? They aren't checking bills online or using email, or some other security oriented task...)
Block all udp connections.
Dns filter a blacklist of known cheating sites.
Block bullshit sites like facebook, myspace and pals too. That's just good sense.
McCain and salmon breath were disqualified on grounds of being clearly chaotic evil, and stupid, respectively.
Obama was just a charismatic lair with a hollywood-bright, bleached-white smile, selling obvious lies that everyone seemed eager to lap up, because "OMG! He's black!"
Political office should never be a popularity contest, or a "Mr.America" pagent. His skincolor mattered as much then as it does now. That is to say, it matters to fuck all nothing.
The problem was that people who said "he's clearly a lieing douche, because the numbers on his promises just don't fucking add up!" Were derided as being "clearly racist".
Am I the only one who gigglesnorted after reading this?
I don't want to sound trollish, but obama was practically heralded as the chosen one, and anyone who spoke out against him was reflexively labeled a racisist biggot.....
So, now its perfectly possible to say he's a douche who shouldn't have been elected, and not be called a racisist fuck?
He's saying that the power of rights holders to deny open redistribution of cultural artifacts (songs, images, et al) is in the culture's best interests, and that this interest trumps even the culture's interest in quality healthcare and medicine.
Basically, he's saying that the artist/publisher's ability to *restrict* cultural heritage is more important than the physical health of the people those art forms are supposed to service.
Of course, he worded it in such a way as to attempt to conflate *restriction* of culture, with *creation* of culture, which are demonstrably different and antithetical things.
Fantastic doublethink there. It almost works when you don't stop to contemplate what copyright actually is, in regard to cultural proliferation.
And story tellers used to retell old stories continually, in an endless succession of chinese whispers like mutation. Such retellings and changes influenced and were influenced by the host culture in a myriad ways.
Take for instance "the bear king valamon" from norway. It has at least 8 related, and well recorded stories that are clearly influenced by (influencing?) It.
This form of copying and adaptation is as old as humanity itself is, and possibly older. The strict denial of that activity is comparatively young, and I would argue deleterious to the culture, for the benefit of a single person, or group of persons.
I find that to be illogical, and do not buy the "without those protections, people won't tell stories anymore!" Party line, because it is clearly invalidated by more than 6000 years of recorded instances of literature and rhetoric holding prime cultural realestate without them.
"Well, I'm an author and I would have to do something other than write my books to live! Is that what you want!?"
Yes. Yes it is. You make stories, and the stories are special, but once you give birth to them on paper, they belong to themselves, and travel the world on their own merits. No more than people should crank out babies so they can be forced into prostitution as a matter of the parents vocation should literary or artistic works be similarly abused and monopolized for money. That's my opinion on the matter. You are free to disagree, and argue the merits of the prostitution angle, but I am not alone in that view.
It is important to stress that I don't feel I am entitled to your work. On the contrary. I feel your work is entitled to influence me, and cause me to create in turn. Art forms are memes. Memes don't live unless they spread and mutate. The same is true of more complex memes, such as narratives, imagry and songs. I don't want free reign to hoard songs, images and stories. I want those things to have free reign over the whole world as an audience, and not just rich patrons of whatever publisher you are prostituting the work through.
So, beautiful madame of the brothel, stop telling me that my desire to see your daughters be free to pick and choose for themselves is just my own greedy desire to have them for myself without paying. The truly greedy one here is you, who concieved them for the sole purpose of prostituting them for your own enrichment at their expense.
This is only true because it is easier and more economical to destroy the blastocyst for collection than it is to harvest single cells from them nondestructively.
This then causes a viscious circle, in which researchers requiring access to fresh embryonic cell cultures are strapped for cash and labspace/time, because they are denied funding, because of destructive collection techniques. Being strapped for cash and time, they can't realistically use nondestructive techniques using the limited funds they get from private investments, and still do their research... necessitating destructive collection. (Which in turn, reinforces the situation where they don't get grant money.....)
The solution is to offer grant money with the hardlined requirement of nondestructive collection. When the majority of embryonic stemcell collection is non-fatal to the embryos, then the religious types won't object to the collection and research.
The scientists cannot really be the ones to act here; they are strapped for research funds enough already, and are the victims of the viscious circle. The ones that need to act are the religious politicians who are currently ignorant/recalcitrant of the non-destructive alternatives. (These non-destructive approaches have been around since the 90s, when the whole embryonic stemcell shitstorm started. I remember a c-span segment late on a Saturday night with a cellular biologist giving a presentation against the stemcell funding ban to a practically empty building. The politicians had scheduled his presentation for a time when they wouldn't be there. The whole basis of his presentation was the refutation of the "embryonic stemcells == murder" partyline that was driving the ban's momentum. It was a very good presentation, but again, nobody was in attendance.)
If you ask the hardnosed "embryonic stemcells are murder!" Religious crowd what they would think if the cells could be harvested without destroying the blastocyst, thus preserving it for future implantation, you will find that they react with shock, curiosity of if that's true, and then curiosity/anger of why that isn't done exclusively.
The problem is not that the tissue comes from blastocysts. The problem is that the blastocysts are destroyed. This is only necessary because of the funding restrictions an.d the added costs and culture times associated with single cell extractions.
Fix the funding problem with some limiting verbage to require nondestructive collection, and the whole ethical tapestry dissolves like cotton candy in a rainstorm.
Of course, the real challenge is getting the willfully ignorant in government to realize what they are doing.... as the poor researcher found out the hard way. I don't remember his name, but whoever he is, I do applaud the effort.
Personally, I think most of the world's problems would be better resolved by deactivating those particular impulses. (Sex and violence are closely related behaviorally. Both are tied heavily to the endocrine system, and are mediated by the amygdala and thalamus.) Of course, complete shutdown of the responsible areas would be highly detrimental, as the same region is responsible for other emotional states, and for a number of autonomic processes.
Still, selective suppression of lustfulness and violence would free people to become more rational and less emotional beings. Give our species' ever increasing long term impact, cessation of short term emotional solutions and thinking can only be a good thing.
Didn't the gb have a z80 though? That's a bit less powerful than the 6500series cpu in the snes.
Simply because the snes databus is 16bit doesn't mean the 3rd party cpu needs to be 16bit. The snes hardware could be treated like a 16bit peripheral, as far as the embedded SoC in the cart was concerned.
I still think something more interesting than the superGB could be made this way.
What I have always wondered about, is just how far can you push one of these old systems?
Like the snes.. it was designed to accept a 3rd party cpu inside the cartridge, in addition to the game rom.
What would happen if you built what would essentially be rom code toolbox routines to access the snes's hardware, and then switch execution to a more powerful/more modern low energy cpu, like an arm?
You would use the snes as an input device (they did make a snes mouse.....), and as the graphics hardware, but run all the heavy lifting on the arm instead of the 6500 series cpu. Other than the rom routines to do the interface, everything else is handled by a shared ram bank and an sdcard slot put into the cartridge.
Why? So you can run linux on the snes. Why? Because you could.
I bet you could do some really clever stuff by simulating a framebuffer.
I agree that you shouldn't pirate something you claim to despise. (Agreed, if you hate it, why would you steal it?)
Instead, most piracy has its roots in the following:
1) "i would like to watch it, since all my friends are talking about it, but I just can't afford premier ticket prices (there are a lot of impoverished people in the us that really can't afford theater tickets, even discount ones). In fact, I will probably never be able to afford it. If I want to see it, I will have to resort to some flavor of piracy."
2) "the movie is ok, but I don't feel it is worth the 20-40$ MSRP that I can't avoid when trying to get a license. I would gladly pay an a la carte price for a service like netflix, but the movies I want to watch aren't available. Yes, I could use an automated rental service like redbox, but they have some batshit crazy billing for weekend rentals, and I have to drive to pick it up and to return it. Gas isn't cheap. By the time I have done all that, the rental has cost me closer to 8-10$, instead of the advertised 1$. That's outside of my sweetspot for a single use only purchase/limited rental."
4) "it's premiere day, and this supposedly hot new movie is critically acclaimed to be 'awesome'. I don't buy it. I will download the shitty theater cam version with the beehive hairdoo lady in the middle of the frame and the crappy band-clipped audio and out of focus video to see if the theatrical performance and plot are really worth admission ticket prices. If they are, I will treat myself to the real theater experience. I might even go more than once. I pirate it first to make sure I am not going to go see the starwars christmas special."
4) fuck you, I want free stuff!
Despite what the MPAA says, the vast majority of piracy cases for movies involve the first 3. Group 4 represents an untappable market. Even if the cost of admission/sale price was 1 cent, they would still pirate. It make no sense to try to wring money out of them. They will never pay for their entertainment, and probably also steal from vending machines, and rip off the postal service by putting a cancelled stamp on their letters, switching the send and return addresses, and marking "return to sender". These people cannot be reached. You will only waste money on trying, and they will laugh at you for it.
The other three cases can be reached, however.
The first one represents an untapped demand. It comes from setting you prices too high, and/or, artificially inflating scarcity. This situation represents the impoverished in america (a growing demographic as the recession marches onward), and also represents several foriegn markets where 20-40 us dollars represents a week's pay. By trying to prevent people in high dollar markets from doing what any healthy and smart buyer would do when faced with an artificial price hike (seek product from a cheaper market), through regional restrictions, and an inflexible pricing structure, you create this first case for piracy. The solution is simple. Accept that some, but not all of you high profile buyers will buy from overseas and pay the added price of an import duty on their purchase, so that they can buy it cheaper. This happens with canadian and mexican phamicutical sales right now. The phamecutical industry wants to put a stop to it, but really they shouldn't. Likewise, the member companies of the MPAA shouldn't price themselves out of the world market in favor of shaking down some "wealthy" americans and europeans. They should accept the marginal losses, and sell according to the local market conditions, in the markets they choose to sell in. Then those people won't resort to piracy, because piracy is more work, and yields and inferior product.
The second one also relates to price, but this time in the high profile market, instead of the low profile ones. A high piracy statistic of this type means that your unit price is too high, and is outside the realm of a casual buy. This value is dependent upon the region inside the high profile market. 20-40
My mom is a triple masters in hard science. (Botany, biology, geology).
Know what she did when she got laid off?
She retired. (Shock, awe!)
Before that? She was a sheet press operator at a local laundry, a screw machine operator, a layup girl, and then a carousel artist. Mom's a trained scientist, but couldn't get a job with those degrees outside of a university setting. It was her artwork that fed us. (Damn good too.)
Seriously. I think you should leave hollywood behind. Take the skills you have gotten from them and turn it to directly compete, or use your science degrees to do something else.
Don't be afraid to leave ca. The world is a big place.
People probably pirate the movies in question, because
1) they aren't on netflix because your employers refuse to license it to them.
And
2) they refuse to pay 40$ for a disc, and then also risk being sued for format shifting it and putting the disc in a safe.
Personally, I don't pirate the current crop of movies because I find them to be immature, purilent filth catering to people with the iq of a raddish, and the sexual hormone levels of a cat in heat. You couldn't pay me to go to the movies.
As for the "50 year old people can't get new jobs" angle.. that is very near retirement age. I understand that I will never draw SS. I have my own retirement plan. Their lack of planning is not my problem. Personally, I would be perfectly content to sweep floors. I am not above berry picking either, if it keeps the light on. My best friend is a janitor. It is not a shameful vocation, and the.com years taught me how to live on a dime.
If I were the 50 year old codger, that is exactly what I would do. Get a simple job and wait to draw my retirement. Failing that, I would place ads in craigslist for a super discounted light and sound person for indie work. Perhaps both.
I would also move out of california, and to someplace more afordable, like colorado. The 1mil you pay for tract housing there will get you a mountain top mansion in co. Costs of living are lower too, so the 401k you built in ca will get you a lot more.
Just so you know, I live quite comfortably with a 4 bedroom house on 35k a year. I could never live in ca on that.
There are always options. People reject them out of hand without realizing it.
Yup. And when united air buys chineese clones, people will die from the inferior quality controls.
And, I will simply change careers again. I am always developing and expanding my skillset. Hyperspecialization preceeds extinction. I can do a whole lot of things besides what I do now.:)
When people are not valued for the quality of their work, and are not retained, all incentive to do quality work evaporates.
Instead, people milk the jobs they have, because they don't know when the next one will come. They charge a large fee for inferior work.
They tried to do that in my industry, outsourcing blueprints as freelance work. It didn't end very well. Quality was abysmal, standards and practices were ignored.
In short, it was a disaster. They kee me on retainer because without keeping people like me on retainer, planes can't be made that are safe to fly in.
It looks to me, from what you are telling me, that this is exactly what they have done in your industry. They have taken what was once a dedicated position that took pride in quality performace, and turned it into an outsourced clusterfuck. If this is the case, iit certainly explains the drastic reduction in quality over the years. That is always what happens. People pay more attention to where their next job will come from, and less on the job they are currently doing.
Your industry doesn't run the risk of killing people though.
Dancing to the tune of a mega consortium that posts continual growth that consistently outpaces inflation, whilemultaneously telling you that it just can't afford to keep you gainfully employed and plays the shell game to avoid paying you any benefits, just so you can grasp at the carrot of royalties that will never appear (well documented), does not strike me as sane nor as rational.
Stop playing their game.
If you can't get a job in showbiz, get a different one. I did. I wasn't always an engineer you know. I was an IT person who lost his shorts on the.com burst. I changed professions.
You know what will happen if you let hollywood die on the vine? They'll offer much tastier employment options.
My industry produces physical products. We buy raw materials, and process them into goods, while maintaining very strict quality controls. (If we didn't, people literally would die.)
The reason you don't get retainers, is because somebody else in a cushy office is juggling numbers, and rolling in cash, and considers you expendable.
That's why.
They own the market, don't have to copete too hard for entertainment dollars, and you are just peons.
Want retainers? Kill the fatcat studios, and return to small ones again. You will be valued for your quality work, and will have many more job options.
It is a lie that hollywood has to stay big. A fat smelly one.
No, I don't get to say no. (Well, I can, but then I need to find a new employer. They pay me to do a job, not tell them no.:) )
I do however get to play an integral role in getting contracts. In addition to drawing up prints, making design change proposals, and creating solid model geometry for internal manufacturing, I also get to make what I call "propoganda materials".
The company I work for is a smaller (smaller than boeing and pals) general aviation fabrication company. We accept contract orders to manufacture parts and assemblies for the larger companies, where the costs of retooling or specialist fabrication would be impractical, but the need for it remains. As such, we need to win fabrication jobs to keep the doors open. In addition to my normal engineering responsibilities, I also assist in planning plant expansions, and creating the PR "let us make your parts for you! Here's how we will do it!" Materials.
Recently I helped win a very large assembly package worth several million dollars for my company with my PR. What my company doesn't know is that I was also asked candidly by some senior engineers from boeing that I am friends with if my employer would actually be able to fill the production order volume of the contract (we have to machine, finish, assemble, and inspect a 15+ component aerospace assembly in volumes of 60+ assemblies per month. We had to restructure our shift scheduling to meet it.). I told them in total honesty that if my employer couldn't, they would certainly do whatever they could to try, and that I felt that they could probably pull it off.
We got the contract, and have met our order requirements not for 5 months running.
What did I get for my trouble? My employer bought me some VIP movie tickets, which I have yet to use. (They never expire.)
The way I look at it is this: I work for my company. The fruits of my hard work are what make me an asset to the company, and is why they retain me. I survived the crazy fallout of the cessna crash (cessna laid off 2/3 of its workforce a few years back during the bank crash), because I am valuable. What I make for my company, belongs to my company. That is the agreed terms of my employment contract. I am reimbursed for my time with an hourly wage, and a steady, reliable pay cycle with medical, dental, and vision health plans. When I finish a drawing, it belongs to the company. They can wipe their asses with it, I don't care. Sell it. Lease it, pimp it out... its theirs.
I feel the same should be true in a movie production company. If you are good at what you do, then you are valuable enough to be kept on retainer.
There are times when I don't have much work to do. Like I said, we do contract work for big companies. My job is only needed for brand new orders, or when our customer makes an engineering revision. As such, there are times where I have very little to do. When that happens, I actively ask for alternative work to do. I don't care if they hand me a broom to sweep with, as long as I get paid, and am not pulling a george jetson. This is how I got involved in making PR materials, and how I got involved in planning building expansions. Simply because your job title says "engineer" doesn't mean that is all you are allowed to do.
That kind of shit only happens in union shops, where people *want* to play george jetson. It is one of the reasons I dislike the current trend that unions have taken, and why I will never join one. I prefer to be useful, and draw an honest days pay.
By being a versatile and valued employee, I enjoy a more robust employment experience. I can openly talk with the owners of my company, and have even been personally thanked by them for my hard work. That means something to me.
That said, I find the bullshit in hollywood completely unacceptable. There are people demanding pay for work they were paid to do 20, even 50 years ago. There are sleazy accountants lying left and right on expense reports. There are people lobbying to keep contempo
4) I don't buy blueray, because I find the pricing is nor sensible. I am a netflix customer. I have not downloaded a movie illegally in over 3 years. Netflix scratches that itch. I do no go to theatres either, as I feel the experience is overhyped, and I am dissatisfied with the current crop of movies that have come out in the past 2 years. With the exception of a few foreign films, I find the theatrical quality of the shows themselves are not even worth my time, let alone my money. I don't even watch them on netflix. I certainly won't pirate them.
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The farmers are unlikely to be the tollbooth operators. Again, farmers don't charge each other for emergency services, like fire prevention. They do it because they expect to get service in return if they need it. Its an implied community ethic.
The tollboth operators will be the equipment OEMs, and the upstream ISPs maintaining a few miles of dedicated fiber to a few "yokels", complaining about people using their equipment without any licensing, or about them saturating said pipes that they would be subsidised to keep open.
See my reply above.
If the carriers can't be bothered to buld/can't make a profit from building the necessary infrastructure, then permit the farmers themselves to do it.
Many farmers put up towers already for a wide variety of reasons, such as wind generators, and agricultural fuel pumps/water towers.
Allowing them to put a simple mesh extender/repeater up there so that they can help service their neighbors, with the subsidy going to the telecom upstream to not throttle the exit pipes, and the money stays where you want it to stay, and the people impacted pay for the infrastructure themselves.
Of course, that's awefully close to filthy communism..... once a functional mesh network servicing a large pool of users springs up, rest assured somebody would rush in to extract tolls on the thing.
That's how shit like that works.
Usually, rural types are extremely local-community driven, simply *because* there isn't a huge and diverse network of social services paid for by taxes.
Water, electric, and basic telephone on wires that are literally 70 years old. That and having the roads grated 12 times a year (if you are lucky!) Is what their tax money buys them. (Compare to city people who get prompt emergency services, prompt police protection/assistance, paved roads, and a bunch of other nice things.)
This community centric "we gotta help each other out!" Mentality is how they survive. Their crop catches fire? Who shows up first-- all the neighbors with sacks to BEAT it out, or the fire dept? Guess what? Its the former. Unless the fire is really, horribly, "omg! Its destroying the whole state!" Big, the county will only send a cop car to go acess the damages.
Similarly, the "no rural internet" problem could be solved fairly easily, if two things were permitted.
1) force the telecoms to offer a highspeed connection at radically reduced rates to farmers who then redistribute access to thir neighbors. (These are the ones right next to civic centers. You know, the ones that can get access to the main lines.)
2) free up, and preserve a spectrum chunk for longer-range (say, 5 miles tops) node to node mesh networks intended for public use.
Allow the farmers themselves to build out the network, and it will get where it needs to go.
The carriers have said they can't make a profit from it and so they won't do it. Obviously they would have no problem with somebody else doing it, since clearly no profit can be lost.
Or, is it really just a pac of lies, like most people know it to be?
Hmm...
Panspectral? Not merely multispectral?
Will the students be issued flashlights, or will the tests be administered in braile?
Not a whole lot you can do about proxies without resorting to breaking the internet in seriously fundamental ways. Whole oppressive regimes have millions of dollars invested in trying to lock things down like that, and it still doesn't work.
Eventually you just have to be practical. There is only so much that can be locked down, and the savvy will know how the locks work. Rather than getting stingy about it, accept that it will happen, and impose a "proxy use gets your test torn up" rule, and log IPs.
A quick script to determine if the IPs accessed are proxies after the test day will quickly highlight your cheaters. (A little automated test of proxy functionality is all you need. A cli script that tells wget to use the ip as a proxy, and off you go.)
Block all traffic except port 80 http. (They don't need https, do they? They aren't checking bills online or using email, or some other security oriented task...)
Block all udp connections.
Dns filter a blacklist of known cheating sites.
Block bullshit sites like facebook, myspace and pals too. That's just good sense.
McCain and salmon breath were disqualified on grounds of being clearly chaotic evil, and stupid, respectively.
Obama was just a charismatic lair with a hollywood-bright, bleached-white smile, selling obvious lies that everyone seemed eager to lap up, because "OMG! He's black!"
Political office should never be a popularity contest, or a "Mr.America" pagent. His skincolor mattered as much then as it does now. That is to say, it matters to fuck all nothing.
The problem was that people who said "he's clearly a lieing douche, because the numbers on his promises just don't fucking add up!" Were derided as being "clearly racist".
Personally? Right now i'd rather vote for kodos.
Am I the only one who gigglesnorted after reading this?
I don't want to sound trollish, but obama was practically heralded as the chosen one, and anyone who spoke out against him was reflexively labeled a racisist biggot.....
So, now its perfectly possible to say he's a douche who shouldn't have been elected, and not be called a racisist fuck?
When did that happen? I'm honestly curious.......
I suggest he try the lane pulsator IV
Nevermind that it is intended for use on cattle, given the track record with Good ol AC and goatse, I figured he needed the industrial size.
Even more insidious than that even.
He's saying that the power of rights holders to deny open redistribution of cultural artifacts (songs, images, et al) is in the culture's best interests, and that this interest trumps even the culture's interest in quality healthcare and medicine.
Basically, he's saying that the artist/publisher's ability to *restrict* cultural heritage is more important than the physical health of the people those art forms are supposed to service.
Of course, he worded it in such a way as to attempt to conflate *restriction* of culture, with *creation* of culture, which are demonstrably different and antithetical things.
Fantastic doublethink there. It almost works when you don't stop to contemplate what copyright actually is, in regard to cultural proliferation.
And story tellers used to retell old stories continually, in an endless succession of chinese whispers like mutation. Such retellings and changes influenced and were influenced by the host culture in a myriad ways.
Take for instance "the bear king valamon" from norway. It has at least 8 related, and well recorded stories that are clearly influenced by (influencing?) It.
This form of copying and adaptation is as old as humanity itself is, and possibly older. The strict denial of that activity is comparatively young, and I would argue deleterious to the culture, for the benefit of a single person, or group of persons.
I find that to be illogical, and do not buy the "without those protections, people won't tell stories anymore!" Party line, because it is clearly invalidated by more than 6000 years of recorded instances of literature and rhetoric holding prime cultural realestate without them.
"Well, I'm an author and I would have to do something other than write my books to live! Is that what you want!?"
Yes. Yes it is. You make stories, and the stories are special, but once you give birth to them on paper, they belong to themselves, and travel the world on their own merits. No more than people should crank out babies so they can be forced into prostitution as a matter of the parents vocation should literary or artistic works be similarly abused and monopolized for money. That's my opinion on the matter. You are free to disagree, and argue the merits of the prostitution angle, but I am not alone in that view.
It is important to stress that I don't feel I am entitled to your work. On the contrary. I feel your work is entitled to influence me, and cause me to create in turn. Art forms are memes. Memes don't live unless they spread and mutate. The same is true of more complex memes, such as narratives, imagry and songs. I don't want free reign to hoard songs, images and stories. I want those things to have free reign over the whole world as an audience, and not just rich patrons of whatever publisher you are prostituting the work through.
So, beautiful madame of the brothel, stop telling me that my desire to see your daughters be free to pick and choose for themselves is just my own greedy desire to have them for myself without paying. The truly greedy one here is you, who concieved them for the sole purpose of prostituting them for your own enrichment at their expense.
I appreciate the art, not the artist.
This is only true because it is easier and more economical to destroy the blastocyst for collection than it is to harvest single cells from them nondestructively.
This then causes a viscious circle, in which researchers requiring access to fresh embryonic cell cultures are strapped for cash and labspace/time, because they are denied funding, because of destructive collection techniques. Being strapped for cash and time, they can't realistically use nondestructive techniques using the limited funds they get from private investments, and still do their research... necessitating destructive collection. (Which in turn, reinforces the situation where they don't get grant money.....)
The solution is to offer grant money with the hardlined requirement of nondestructive collection. When the majority of embryonic stemcell collection is non-fatal to the embryos, then the religious types won't object to the collection and research.
The scientists cannot really be the ones to act here; they are strapped for research funds enough already, and are the victims of the viscious circle. The ones that need to act are the religious politicians who are currently ignorant/recalcitrant of the non-destructive alternatives. (These non-destructive approaches have been around since the 90s, when the whole embryonic stemcell shitstorm started. I remember a c-span segment late on a Saturday night with a cellular biologist giving a presentation against the stemcell funding ban to a practically empty building. The politicians had scheduled his presentation for a time when they wouldn't be there. The whole basis of his presentation was the refutation of the "embryonic stemcells == murder" partyline that was driving the ban's momentum. It was a very good presentation, but again, nobody was in attendance.)
If you ask the hardnosed "embryonic stemcells are murder!" Religious crowd what they would think if the cells could be harvested without destroying the blastocyst, thus preserving it for future implantation, you will find that they react with shock, curiosity of if that's true, and then curiosity/anger of why that isn't done exclusively.
The problem is not that the tissue comes from blastocysts. The problem is that the blastocysts are destroyed. This is only necessary because of the funding restrictions an.d the added costs and culture times associated with single cell extractions.
Fix the funding problem with some limiting verbage to require nondestructive collection, and the whole ethical tapestry dissolves like cotton candy in a rainstorm.
Of course, the real challenge is getting the willfully ignorant in government to realize what they are doing.... as the poor researcher found out the hard way. I don't remember his name, but whoever he is, I do applaud the effort.
Ever heard of a bacculum?.....
Here's a hint.. the bone forms through ossification of a portion of the corpus cavernosum.
Another hint: humans are one of the few (only?) Primates to lack them.
(Granted, you would probably have to inject the stuff for that to happen.... and I doubt it would be controlled.)
It creates more problems than it solves.
Re: baby momma drama.
Personally, I think most of the world's problems would be better resolved by deactivating those particular impulses. (Sex and violence are closely related behaviorally. Both are tied heavily to the endocrine system, and are mediated by the amygdala and thalamus.) Of course, complete shutdown of the responsible areas would be highly detrimental, as the same region is responsible for other emotional states, and for a number of autonomic processes.
Still, selective suppression of lustfulness and violence would free people to become more rational and less emotional beings. Give our species' ever increasing long term impact, cessation of short term emotional solutions and thinking can only be a good thing.
Didn't the gb have a z80 though? That's a bit less powerful than the 6500series cpu in the snes.
Simply because the snes databus is 16bit doesn't mean the 3rd party cpu needs to be 16bit. The snes hardware could be treated like a 16bit peripheral, as far as the embedded SoC in the cart was concerned.
I still think something more interesting than the superGB could be made this way.
What I have always wondered about, is just how far can you push one of these old systems?
Like the snes.. it was designed to accept a 3rd party cpu inside the cartridge, in addition to the game rom.
What would happen if you built what would essentially be rom code toolbox routines to access the snes's hardware, and then switch execution to a more powerful/more modern low energy cpu, like an arm?
You would use the snes as an input device (they did make a snes mouse.....), and as the graphics hardware, but run all the heavy lifting on the arm instead of the 6500 series cpu. Other than the rom routines to do the interface, everything else is handled by a shared ram bank and an sdcard slot put into the cartridge.
Why? So you can run linux on the snes. Why? Because you could.
I bet you could do some really clever stuff by simulating a framebuffer.
I agree that you shouldn't pirate something you claim to despise. (Agreed, if you hate it, why would you steal it?)
Instead, most piracy has its roots in the following:
1) "i would like to watch it, since all my friends are talking about it, but I just can't afford premier ticket prices (there are a lot of impoverished people in the us that really can't afford theater tickets, even discount ones). In fact, I will probably never be able to afford it. If I want to see it, I will have to resort to some flavor of piracy."
2) "the movie is ok, but I don't feel it is worth the 20-40$ MSRP that I can't avoid when trying to get a license. I would gladly pay an a la carte price for a service like netflix, but the movies I want to watch aren't available. Yes, I could use an automated rental service like redbox, but they have some batshit crazy billing for weekend rentals, and I have to drive to pick it up and to return it. Gas isn't cheap. By the time I have done all that, the rental has cost me closer to 8-10$, instead of the advertised 1$. That's outside of my sweetspot for a single use only purchase/limited rental."
4) "it's premiere day, and this supposedly hot new movie is critically acclaimed to be 'awesome'. I don't buy it. I will download the shitty theater cam version with the beehive hairdoo lady in the middle of the frame and the crappy band-clipped audio and out of focus video to see if the theatrical performance and plot are really worth admission ticket prices. If they are, I will treat myself to the real theater experience. I might even go more than once. I pirate it first to make sure I am not going to go see the starwars christmas special."
4) fuck you, I want free stuff!
Despite what the MPAA says, the vast majority of piracy cases for movies involve the first 3. Group 4 represents an untappable market. Even if the cost of admission/sale price was 1 cent, they would still pirate. It make no sense to try to wring money out of them. They will never pay for their entertainment, and probably also steal from vending machines, and rip off the postal service by putting a cancelled stamp on their letters, switching the send and return addresses, and marking "return to sender". These people cannot be reached. You will only waste money on trying, and they will laugh at you for it.
The other three cases can be reached, however.
The first one represents an untapped demand. It comes from setting you prices too high, and/or, artificially inflating scarcity. This situation represents the impoverished in america (a growing demographic as the recession marches onward), and also represents several foriegn markets where 20-40 us dollars represents a week's pay. By trying to prevent people in high dollar markets from doing what any healthy and smart buyer would do when faced with an artificial price hike (seek product from a cheaper market), through regional restrictions, and an inflexible pricing structure, you create this first case for piracy. The solution is simple. Accept that some, but not all of you high profile buyers will buy from overseas and pay the added price of an import duty on their purchase, so that they can buy it cheaper. This happens with canadian and mexican phamicutical sales right now. The phamecutical industry wants to put a stop to it, but really they shouldn't. Likewise, the member companies of the MPAA shouldn't price themselves out of the world market in favor of shaking down some "wealthy" americans and europeans. They should accept the marginal losses, and sell according to the local market conditions, in the markets they choose to sell in. Then those people won't resort to piracy, because piracy is more work, and yields and inferior product.
The second one also relates to price, but this time in the high profile market, instead of the low profile ones. A high piracy statistic of this type means that your unit price is too high, and is outside the realm of a casual buy. This value is dependent upon the region inside the high profile market. 20-40
Oh yes,
My mom is a triple masters in hard science.
(Botany, biology, geology).
Know what she did when she got laid off?
She retired. (Shock, awe!)
Before that? She was a sheet press operator at a local laundry, a screw machine operator, a layup girl, and then a carousel artist. Mom's a trained scientist, but couldn't get a job with those degrees outside of a university setting. It was her artwork that fed us. (Damn good too.)
Seriously. I think you should leave hollywood behind. Take the skills you have gotten from them and turn it to directly compete, or use your science degrees to do something else.
Don't be afraid to leave ca. The world is a big place.
People probably pirate the movies in question, because
1) they aren't on netflix because your employers refuse to license it to them.
And
2) they refuse to pay 40$ for a disc, and then also risk being sued for format shifting it and putting the disc in a safe.
Personally, I don't pirate the current crop of movies because I find them to be immature, purilent filth catering to people with the iq of a raddish, and the sexual hormone levels of a cat in heat. You couldn't pay me to go to the movies.
As for the "50 year old people can't get new jobs" angle.. that is very near retirement age. I understand that I will never draw SS. I have my own retirement plan. Their lack of planning is not my problem. Personally, I would be perfectly content to sweep floors. I am not above berry picking either, if it keeps the light on. My best friend is a janitor. It is not a shameful vocation, and the .com years taught me how to live on a dime.
If I were the 50 year old codger, that is exactly what I would do. Get a simple job and wait to draw my retirement. Failing that, I would place ads in craigslist for a super discounted light and sound person for indie work. Perhaps both.
I would also move out of california, and to someplace more afordable, like colorado. The 1mil you pay for tract housing there will get you a mountain top mansion in co. Costs of living are lower too, so the 401k you built in ca will get you a lot more.
Just so you know, I live quite comfortably with a 4 bedroom house on 35k a year. I could never live in ca on that.
There are always options. People reject them out of hand without realizing it.
Also, I believe I told you that I don't pirate movies. Could you please stop insisting that I am one, because I refuse to swallow hollywood's bunkum?
Thanks.
(The more you tell me, the more inclined I am to desire hollywood to dry up completely. When the ship sinks, the rats jump ship.)
Yup. And when united air buys chineese clones, people will die from the inferior quality controls.
And, I will simply change careers again. I am always developing and expanding my skillset. Hyperspecialization preceeds extinction. I can do a whole lot of things besides what I do now. :)
(Just so you understand me perfectly here)
When people are not valued for the quality of their work, and are not retained, all incentive to do quality work evaporates.
Instead, people milk the jobs they have, because they don't know when the next one will come. They charge a large fee for inferior work.
They tried to do that in my industry, outsourcing blueprints as freelance work. It didn't end very well. Quality was abysmal, standards and practices were ignored.
In short, it was a disaster. They kee me on retainer because without keeping people like me on retainer, planes can't be made that are safe to fly in.
It looks to me, from what you are telling me, that this is exactly what they have done in your industry. They have taken what was once a dedicated position that took pride in quality performace, and turned it into an outsourced clusterfuck. If this is the case, iit certainly explains the drastic reduction in quality over the years. That is always what happens. People pay more attention to where their next job will come from, and less on the job they are currently doing.
Your industry doesn't run the risk of killing people though.
Dancing to the tune of a mega consortium that posts continual growth that consistently outpaces inflation, whilemultaneously telling you that it just can't afford to keep you gainfully employed and plays the shell game to avoid paying you any benefits, just so you can grasp at the carrot of royalties that will never appear (well documented), does not strike me as sane nor as rational.
Stop playing their game.
If you can't get a job in showbiz, get a different one. I did. I wasn't always an engineer you know. I was an IT person who lost his shorts on the .com burst. I changed professions.
You know what will happen if you let hollywood die on the vine? They'll offer much tastier employment options.
I suggest you consider it.
Or, you can beg for scraps, like you are now.
Don't cry to me about it though.
Again, *why* is that?
My industry produces physical products. We buy raw materials, and process them into goods, while maintaining very strict quality controls. (If we didn't, people literally would die.)
The reason you don't get retainers, is because somebody else in a cushy office is juggling numbers, and rolling in cash, and considers you expendable.
That's why.
They own the market, don't have to copete too hard for entertainment dollars, and you are just peons.
Want retainers? Kill the fatcat studios, and return to small ones again. You will be valued for your quality work, and will have many more job options.
It is a lie that hollywood has to stay big. A fat smelly one.
No, I don't get to say no. (Well, I can, but then I need to find a new employer. They pay me to do a job, not tell them no. :) )
I do however get to play an integral role in getting contracts. In addition to drawing up prints, making design change proposals, and creating solid model geometry for internal manufacturing, I also get to make what I call "propoganda materials".
The company I work for is a smaller (smaller than boeing and pals) general aviation fabrication company. We accept contract orders to manufacture parts and assemblies for the larger companies, where the costs of retooling or specialist fabrication would be impractical, but the need for it remains. As such, we need to win fabrication jobs to keep the doors open. In addition to my normal engineering responsibilities, I also assist in planning plant expansions, and creating the PR "let us make your parts for you! Here's how we will do it!" Materials.
Recently I helped win a very large assembly package worth several million dollars for my company with my PR. What my company doesn't know is that I was also asked candidly by some senior engineers from boeing that I am friends with if my employer would actually be able to fill the production order volume of the contract (we have to machine, finish, assemble, and inspect a 15+ component aerospace assembly in volumes of 60+ assemblies per month. We had to restructure our shift scheduling to meet it.). I told them in total honesty that if my employer couldn't, they would certainly do whatever they could to try, and that I felt that they could probably pull it off.
We got the contract, and have met our order requirements not for 5 months running.
What did I get for my trouble? My employer bought me some VIP movie tickets, which I have yet to use. (They never expire.)
The way I look at it is this: I work for my company. The fruits of my hard work are what make me an asset to the company, and is why they retain me. I survived the crazy fallout of the cessna crash (cessna laid off 2/3 of its workforce a few years back during the bank crash), because I am valuable. What I make for my company, belongs to my company. That is the agreed terms of my employment contract. I am reimbursed for my time with an hourly wage, and a steady, reliable pay cycle with medical, dental, and vision health plans. When I finish a drawing, it belongs to the company. They can wipe their asses with it, I don't care. Sell it. Lease it, pimp it out... its theirs.
I feel the same should be true in a movie production company. If you are good at what you do, then you are valuable enough to be kept on retainer.
There are times when I don't have much work to do. Like I said, we do contract work for big companies. My job is only needed for brand new orders, or when our customer makes an engineering revision. As such, there are times where I have very little to do. When that happens, I actively ask for alternative work to do. I don't care if they hand me a broom to sweep with, as long as I get paid, and am not pulling a george jetson. This is how I got involved in making PR materials, and how I got involved in planning building expansions. Simply because your job title says "engineer" doesn't mean that is all you are allowed to do.
That kind of shit only happens in union shops, where people *want* to play george jetson. It is one of the reasons I dislike the current trend that unions have taken, and why I will never join one. I prefer to be useful, and draw an honest days pay.
By being a versatile and valued employee, I enjoy a more robust employment experience. I can openly talk with the owners of my company, and have even been personally thanked by them for my hard work. That means something to me.
That said, I find the bullshit in hollywood completely unacceptable. There are people demanding pay for work they were paid to do 20, even 50 years ago. There are sleazy accountants lying left and right on expense reports. There are people lobbying to keep contempo
Oh, and
4) I don't buy blueray, because I find the pricing is nor sensible. I am a netflix customer. I have not downloaded a movie illegally in over 3 years. Netflix scratches that itch. I do no go to theatres either, as I feel the experience is overhyped, and I am dissatisfied with the current crop of movies that have come out in the past 2 years. With the exception of a few foreign films, I find the theatrical quality of the shows themselves are not even worth my time, let alone my money. I don't even watch them on netflix. I certainly won't pirate them.