It's a one-page article, and contains a really good explanation of what they mean by a book for the purposes of their counting, and why.
The following sentence from the article really which cuts straight to the heart of their concept of uniqueness:
It makes sense to consider all editions of “Hamlet” separately, as we would like to distinguish between -- and scan -- books containing, for example, different forewords and commentaries.
So, yes, if they scan textbooks they'll scan all versions they can get, and treat them as separate works.
From TFA: Well, it all depends on what exactly you mean by a “book.” We’re not going to count what library scientists call “works,” those elusive "distinct intellectual or artistic creations.” It makes sense to consider all editions of “Hamlet” separately, as we would like to distinguish between -- and scan -- books containing, for example, different forewords and commentaries. (emphasis mine)
For Google's definition of what constitutes a unique work as used to derive the stated quantity, the use of ISBN as described is perfectly valid. They are OK with "almost the same work" != "the same work".
So their counting methodology would consider "Fundamentals of Math 3rd Ed by I. M. Counting" to be a distinct work from "Fundamentals of Math 4th Ed by I. M. Counting".
In fact, if the publisher released a paperback version, it would be considered another separate work, because the typesetting and page layouts may differ, and might include different forewords, different pages on the index, etc.
It's a separate and distinct work, from Google's point of view, where they are trying to index the works that they want to scan.
Remember, their goal is to capture as much as possible of the entire sum of human writing. A different foreword is a unique work to them.
Of course, you can then disagree with Google's counting methodology, which is fine. If you do, then the number they have reached for their purposes is meaningless to you and you'd better start counting based on your own definition.
It'll take a while, good luck, and let us know what you come up with.:)
Anonymous Cowards have an "internal circulation" feature?
1. That explains their shitty posts. 2. Doesn't that mean that, eventually, drivers of the "Dung Beetle" will run out of fuel, if all the ACs stop pooping?
Also by people who have never read the article, where it explains in some significant detail how they try to determine what constitutes "a book" for the purposes of their counting.
You missed the "properly-designed" part. Multiple crumple zones, airbags, seatbelt, and a properly-designed crash frame make a massive difference.
Very big difference between absorbing 70mph (6.2 rods per second for those offended by my use of modern American units) in an inch or two, and absorbing the same thing using carefully-crafted deceleration over 6 feet.
And Volvo ain't no slouch when it comes to figuring out how to engineer a car to fold in just the right ways in just the right places.
Thanks. I'll look into that when I get home. Especially if it can sync, because having my calendar stuff on Google is handy for the next time the plugin breaks.:)
Another consideration: if you have been in enough accidents to group the co-responsible under the category "all the people," maybe it's not the "young" who are the problem in your case.
100% of the accidents I caused were caused by someone who was young, you insensitive clod!
Thousands of other middle-aged folks will tell you the same thing.
The fact that we're not yet old is irrelevant. Young people cause all traffic accidents, and I have statistical proof of that. None of us middle-agers have ever caused an accident as old people.
Autonomous collision avoidance would stop the vehicle or steer around the obstacle.
at max speed
Roadsign detection and speed governing would mean max speed = roadway speed limit. Smacking a properly-designed modern car into an immovable object at any legal roadway speed is generally not fatal.
after removing his seatbelt
In Scandinavian Volvo, seatbelt removes you. Seriously, they'd probably have some form of interlock that prevents you from removing the seatbelt while the car is at speed.
Regardless, I'm sure someone will manage to kill themselves (cars, for example, would have a hard time differentiating land from water, so your nearest boat launch would provide ample opportunity).
Agreed. I do wish Thunderbird had asked, and I usually turn off most indexing services.
Having said that, this one is pretty unobtrusive, at least in my case. But if I allow this one, which ones do I turn off, or do I suffer the death of a thousand cuts from lots of little programs all indexing the crap out of everything?
I'd say my only real feedback to the Thunderbird team would be: "Great job on the indexer, guys and gals, one of the least obtrusive I've seen. But could you have asked before you turned it on?"
The only thing I didn't like about Thunderbird 3 was that the calendar plugins all stopped working. I like having a calendar integrated with my email client. But I just went to Google's calendar and imported my last calendar file from Thinderbird into it, and all was well. It's not as nice, but it works.
I think you'll find searching is now an even cheaper operation, since the slowdown seems to be caused by the background indexing service. So actual searches should be using a perpetually-maintained index now and be really snappy.
I see an indexing-related message in the notification area occasionally, but it has never really affected anything I wanted to do. I may have had to wait a second or two to get into a folder right after I've received a bunch of mail, but not often and the delay is short enough as to be pretty much unnoticeable.
Well, except right after the upgrade, when it had to index all of the emails it discovered in my folders. That caught me by surprise and took a while, and I had sporadic access to my precious saved email during the process, which was unsettling.
It would have been nice to get a "do you want to index your messages now, or turn off indexing?" prompt on first startup, because the slowdowns made me think Thunderbird had boned my email store and I'd have to go to backups.
On the other hand, that was a one-time hassle and I love the new instant search.
I did say, did I not, that airships would have a possible niche "the journey is the destination" market? (checks post, yep, comparison was specifically with cruise ships).
GP was talking about replacing "5 hour flights", aka current standard-market transport (comparison with bus, train, aircraft) with something more comfortable.
I'm merely pointing out that none of our current forms of mass-market long-distance transportation has survived in a form that is "more comfortable". If airships are THAT much cheaper to operate, you'll be able to replace a 5-hour flight that currently costs you $200 for $110 10-hour flight, and the seat might be slightly bigger to compensate for the fact that you have to sit in it longer, but the simple economies of transport ensure that you'll never get that reduction in price AND dance hall.
And given the option, hate to say it, but most people will choose the reduction in price. Companies sell what people buy, not what people claim they want. Why do you think airlines cram your knees against the seat in front of you? Because enough of us shop around and buy the cheapest seats that the airlines want as many seats on each airplane as they can, and no one has invented an "airline stretcher" to make the airplane magically bigger.
There may be other metrics other than the dollar, but none of them have reared their heads in mass public transportation in any significant scale, because travelers (people who want to get to a destination and are not focused much on the experience of the actual trip there) tend to vote with their dollars.
I can most certainly see these replacing cruise ship-type transport. But I'm not likely to ride in one, napping off my dancing in the huge dance hall in my private stateroom, on my next business trip, my boss would never sign for it.
- 20,000 feet is nearly 4 miles. You'd have to have a half-assed tracking system on a half-decent missile system to hit a target 4 miles straight up. An actual rocket-propelled grenade ain't gonna cut it. I'm not saying the tech isn't available, and I'm sure there are shoulder-mounted SAMs that can handle it, and I don't doubt that some insurgent groups might get access to them, but it's not what you can pick up at a Soviet Military Surplus store.
- If you hit anything "soft", your missile is going to punch two small holes through one of the balloons and continue sailing on by, and the thing is likely going to be able to coast to a landing for repairs, or even continue is mission. You'd have to hit something "hard" that would cause your missile to actually explode while inside the envelope or near a control system.
- An airship means there's plenty of cargo space. Including space for things like chaff, jammers, flares, and other incoming-divert-or-destroy sorts of technology. Military people tend to be pretty smart about including these things in their expensive tools if the tools have strategic value.
- The UAV's got good cameras and it's designed to look out, and if there's one there'll be lots of them. The launcher might be able to take out a single UAV, but with multiple eyes in the sky, how long do you think it'll be before that missile trajectory is tracked back to the source and a "return to sender, sealed with a kiss" is made using something very fast, very accurate, and very full of boom-boom? Repeat performances won't be terribly common.
And finally,
- These would be UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) and, as such, relatively disposable. The military is looking to use airship tech to keep the aloft longer, since they won't need as much fuel just to stay up in the air where they are needed. They'll still be a hell of a lot cheaper than a recon plane, stay on mission longer, and not that much easier to hit. More eyeballs in the sky, longer, cheaper.
And as an aside, the resources expended on purchasing a missile capable of trying to take out something like this would be orders of magnitude higher than what's needed to set a car bomb or planted roadside bomb. In other words, the insurgents, with not unlimited resources, would have to choose between setting a whole bunch of car bombs, or buying one missile. One of these UAVs taken out could actually seen as a sort of perverse victory, since the insurgents expended a LOT of their own resources to get the tools to do it.
I've flown in a DC-3 flightseeing tour in Alaska, with seats rigged the same way they would have been "back then". The seats are very roomy, mimosas are served, there are huge picture windows, and the whole thing is comfortable and enjoyable. That was how flying in airplanes used to be, back when it was the exclusive domain of the rich and famous. And it's as grand as your picture paints.
Then there's mean old Mr. Fiscal Responsibility.
I got from New England to Alaska in a series of big-ass jets on a handful of painful multiple-hour flights with my 6' 4" frame crammed into a seat that only a midget with his legs cut off could love. I was served artificial fruit juice and stale peanuts, with a generous side helping of surly from the understaffed cabin crew. And that was the way it had to be, because otherwise I could never have afforded to fly to Alaska for a 2-week adventure. If I could have sacrificed another half inch of seating space or allowed one of the cabin crew to actually slap me to work off some frustration to save another $50 on my flights, I would have, because I was paying to get to Alaska, not to enjoy the journey. My goal was to spend as little as possible to get there, and to get there in the minimum time, because I was by no means rich and I only had two weeks of vacation to see as much of Alaska as I could.
If airships are to become commercially viable, they'll have to compete. Companies will have to quickly converge to the lowest common denominator to compete - there will be a First Class you can't afford that has a few of the things you are talking about, a Business Class you probably can't afford that may have a little extra legroom, then there will be Steerage Class where the majority of us jamokes fly. That will be tuned to fit as many people as possible in as little space as possible, because whatever the lowest-cost airship operator manages to eke out of his airship will be the new standard for what travel costs.
If dirigibles are a lot cheaper per-seat than jets, then we'll start talking about Greyhound Airships, and faster-than-bus travel will become more financially accessible to a lot of folks. If they aren't, then we'll stick with jets because at least it's 5 hours of insane discomfort and not 10, and all the dirigibles will be rigged to be the equivalent of cruise ships - the journey IS the destination, because once you get there it's taken too long and you can't afford to do anything once you arrive. Which is fine - lots of people have fun in cruise ships. But it won't be an alternate form of transportation, it'll be more people traveling, just in a different way.
If they are cheaper to operate or can even begin to compete with over-the-road trucking, I see a big market for them in cargo, for sure. People? We'll have to see. They'll be a lot slower than jets, and they'll either need to be roomy or very affordable to make them worth the extra time spent traveling. And I don't see the "roomy" happening for the reasons I mentioned above.
The question was would you go to a stereo theater if you had to where special headphones to get stereo.
Hmm, I never saw that question. But now that you've asked it - yes, if it was a move that would be significantly enhanced by stereo, and headphones were the only way to get stereo in a theater, I'd absolutely wear headphones.
In fact, I'd probably bring my own to the theater today if they had some sort of standard FM transmission of the audio or jacks in the seats (then I could drown out all the extraneous noise around me - cell phones ringing, crinkling wrappers, etc).
Similarly, I will probably go and see a 3D flick or two to see what all the excitement is about. If I feel the experience is enjoyable, I'll cough up a couple of extra bucks and wear special glasses for future movies. I see about 3-4 movies a year in the theater, so I'm not terribly sensitive to ticket prices. I'd rather pay a few extra bucks and make my 2 hours more entertaining.
Most of the movies I go out to the theater to watch are, actually, "CGI demos", or movies where the effects are a significant portion of the movie experience. I spend more time in the mainstream theater than I do the local art theater.
Most of the "story films" I watch at home, but occasionally something interesting comes to the local art theater.
I don't really go there because the movie looks or sounds better than it does at home. It doesn't. The sound system is, as far as I can tell, mono, and the screen isn't huge. I go there because it's a cool place run by nice people, and they have affordable popcorn with real butter and big fluffy comfy couches for seating.
They also have a good eye for an enjoyable movie that fits in with their atmosphere. And that's what is important - different movies are filmed to be viewed in different settings and should use technology that is appropriate for the movie.
I wouldn't watch "Pirate Radio" in 3D any more than I'd watch "The Day After Tomorrow" or "Independence Day" on a small screen with a mono audio system.
But I'd happily pay a premium to wear a headset and special glasses if the movie was designed with them in mind.
Except the bank would then foreclose, and he'd have to sell the comic book to make up the difference in the foreclosure-sale price the bank got for the house and what he owed on his mortgage, or end up in bankruptcy and be forced to liquidate the comic book. In addition to the loss he incurs on the foreclosure, he'd then have a shitty credit rating and nowhere to live.
Might as well sell the comic book now, hopefully pay off or at least pay down the mortgage with it, and at least save the some interest on the mortgage and be under less debt.
Or approach the bank and make the comic book part of the collateral on the mortgage. Banks will be very willing to work with you in preserving a loan if they have a known-good amount of collateral backing that loan. The bank could store the comic book in their vault until the mortgage was paid off, but the guy gets it back once the mortgage is paid down to the net present value of the house (which means he gets the appreciation in value of both the house and the comic book, and the bank has the security of knowing that the loan is solidly backed).
Mass-printed paperbacks haven't cost $6 each in years. Even older ones average closer to $8 now, new releases are even more.
Print-on-demand is going to make the per-unit cost higher, not lower.
Other than that, you make an excellent point. A Kindle/Nook is a relatively delicate and expensive unit compared to ink on deceased trees, which is a surprisingly durable medium. Much as I hate mosquitoes, I wouldn't want to sacrifice a Kindle to kill one.;)
Could it also be that your appreciation for the type of works changed over the years as well?
I hated, hated, hated most of the works I had to read in High School, but many stories from the same author (which I read later as an adult) drew me back to the ones I hated, and I found that adult-me actually enjoyed them. I had developed the "lameness" (also known as patience and maturity) to take the time to understand their complexity and enjoy them. Many of the books I deeply enjoyed as a child are now shallow and trite to me now, though I sometimes re-read a few just to try and recapture how I felt about them as a pup.
There are a few books (and series) I enjoyed as a youth and still enjoy today, one of them being the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, which was probably terribly inappropriate reading for me when I picked up my first-print mass-market paperback copy when I was 12 or so, but I was fascinated by it and it resonated deeply with me (as loneliness and isolation and being important somewhere no one around you really understands would with any pre-teen), and I still re-read it regularly. I keep it my paperbacks of it next to my leatherbound copy of "Lord of the Rings".:)
Look into Waldorf schooling, if you have the resources available to do it and a school nearby. I think you'll find a lot of kindred spirits there. It's no joke. You've hit the nail pretty precisely on the head.
The simpler and less specific the toys are, the more developed your child's will become to play with it. The more the toy dictates the play, the less your child will bring into it. TV is the absolute lowest form of imaginative entertainment because there's utterly no imagination involved - it's a passive absorption of images. Free play with a stick and a couple of leaves you found in the yard is the highest, because you have to figure out which sticks and leaves are just right for what you are imagining, and tune your inner story to the materials you find or create.
True, you want more than "a block of wood". You want a bunch of various-sized blocks of well-sanded and well-oiled natural wood, in several shapes that maybe suggest but absolutely don't quite dictate what they are, preferably ones that your child had a hand in shaping, and a bunch of pieces of nice-feeling silk and other cloths in various colors, and a couple of stands and wooden clips that can be combined with the silks to make anything from an airplane to a stage to a horse. Throw a few sticks and some other bits into the mix, maybe get a nice bag of marbles and a few wooden balls, and sit down and become a plaything yourself every now and then. There are few moments more beautiful in children's play than when your child decides you are a tree and starts putting silks on you for "leaves", and actually forgets you are there as anything but a tree.
But you can't combine that with TV. The two are pretty much incompatible. TV directs the imagination into non-imaginative play. They just parrot the images they see on TV, which are (by design) far more interesting and compelling than the world around them. When they see the blocks, they will just parrot out what the TV showed them, again and again and again. They will rarely think of anything original, because it takes a lot of time to process the message the TV put there.
If you are as serious as you seem about developing their imaginations, kill your television. Now. By that, I mean don't even read the rest of my post yet, go unplug it right now and move it into the garage or basement, then come back. I'll wait.
Good. Welcome back. Congratulations. Use the money you save on your cable bill to buy good toys.
And I hope you do it earlier than I did, because it took years to get "swiper no swiping" (Dora) and "we've got to save the baby cougar" (Diego) out of my daughter's play and get her to develop her own imagination based on her real life. It was an immensely hard struggle that continues to this day, 4 years after we killed our television, because once the TV gets in there it's hard to get it out.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a one-page article, and contains a really good explanation of what they mean by a book for the purposes of their counting, and why.
The following sentence from the article really which cuts straight to the heart of their concept of uniqueness:
It makes sense to consider all editions of “Hamlet” separately, as we would like to distinguish between -- and scan -- books containing, for example, different forewords and commentaries.
So, yes, if they scan textbooks they'll scan all versions they can get, and treat them as separate works.
From TFA: Well, it all depends on what exactly you mean by a “book.” We’re not going to count what library scientists call “works,” those elusive "distinct intellectual or artistic creations.” It makes sense to consider all editions of “Hamlet” separately, as we would like to distinguish between -- and scan -- books containing, for example, different forewords and commentaries. (emphasis mine)
For Google's definition of what constitutes a unique work as used to derive the stated quantity, the use of ISBN as described is perfectly valid. They are OK with "almost the same work" != "the same work".
So their counting methodology would consider "Fundamentals of Math 3rd Ed by I. M. Counting" to be a distinct work from "Fundamentals of Math 4th Ed by I. M. Counting".
In fact, if the publisher released a paperback version, it would be considered another separate work, because the typesetting and page layouts may differ, and might include different forewords, different pages on the index, etc.
It's a separate and distinct work, from Google's point of view, where they are trying to index the works that they want to scan.
Remember, their goal is to capture as much as possible of the entire sum of human writing. A different foreword is a unique work to them.
Of course, you can then disagree with Google's counting methodology, which is fine. If you do, then the number they have reached for their purposes is meaningless to you and you'd better start counting based on your own definition.
It'll take a while, good luck, and let us know what you come up with. :)
Anonymous Cowards have an "internal circulation" feature?
1. That explains their shitty posts.
2. Doesn't that mean that, eventually, drivers of the "Dung Beetle" will run out of fuel, if all the ACs stop pooping?
Also by people who have never read the article, where it explains in some significant detail how they try to determine what constitutes "a book" for the purposes of their counting.
Voting is all masturbation anyway. It gives you a rush and a warm feeling but in the end you're only screwing yourself.
Does it really matter which hand you use?
You missed the "properly-designed" part. Multiple crumple zones, airbags, seatbelt, and a properly-designed crash frame make a massive difference.
Very big difference between absorbing 70mph (6.2 rods per second for those offended by my use of modern American units) in an inch or two, and absorbing the same thing using carefully-crafted deceleration over 6 feet.
And Volvo ain't no slouch when it comes to figuring out how to engineer a car to fold in just the right ways in just the right places.
But both are unmanned. It's like "Robot Wars". :)
Thanks. I'll look into that when I get home. Especially if it can sync, because having my calendar stuff on Google is handy for the next time the plugin breaks. :)
Another consideration: if you have been in enough accidents to group the co-responsible under the category "all the people," maybe it's not the "young" who are the problem in your case.
100% of the accidents I caused were caused by someone who was young, you insensitive clod!
Thousands of other middle-aged folks will tell you the same thing.
The fact that we're not yet old is irrelevant. Young people cause all traffic accidents, and I have statistical proof of that. None of us middle-agers have ever caused an accident as old people.
As Meatloaf once observed... "Don't be sad... Two outta three ain't bad."
hit a bridge pillar
Autonomous collision avoidance would stop the vehicle or steer around the obstacle.
at max speed
Roadsign detection and speed governing would mean max speed = roadway speed limit. Smacking a properly-designed modern car into an immovable object at any legal roadway speed is generally not fatal.
after removing his seatbelt
In Scandinavian Volvo, seatbelt removes you. Seriously, they'd probably have some form of interlock that prevents you from removing the seatbelt while the car is at speed.
Regardless, I'm sure someone will manage to kill themselves (cars, for example, would have a hard time differentiating land from water, so your nearest boat launch would provide ample opportunity).
Agreed. I do wish Thunderbird had asked, and I usually turn off most indexing services.
Having said that, this one is pretty unobtrusive, at least in my case. But if I allow this one, which ones do I turn off, or do I suffer the death of a thousand cuts from lots of little programs all indexing the crap out of everything?
I'd say my only real feedback to the Thunderbird team would be: "Great job on the indexer, guys and gals, one of the least obtrusive I've seen. But could you have asked before you turned it on?"
The only thing I didn't like about Thunderbird 3 was that the calendar plugins all stopped working. I like having a calendar integrated with my email client. But I just went to Google's calendar and imported my last calendar file from Thinderbird into it, and all was well. It's not as nice, but it works.
I think you'll find searching is now an even cheaper operation, since the slowdown seems to be caused by the background indexing service. So actual searches should be using a perpetually-maintained index now and be really snappy.
I see an indexing-related message in the notification area occasionally, but it has never really affected anything I wanted to do. I may have had to wait a second or two to get into a folder right after I've received a bunch of mail, but not often and the delay is short enough as to be pretty much unnoticeable.
Well, except right after the upgrade, when it had to index all of the emails it discovered in my folders. That caught me by surprise and took a while, and I had sporadic access to my precious saved email during the process, which was unsettling.
It would have been nice to get a "do you want to index your messages now, or turn off indexing?" prompt on first startup, because the slowdowns made me think Thunderbird had boned my email store and I'd have to go to backups.
On the other hand, that was a one-time hassle and I love the new instant search.
I did say, did I not, that airships would have a possible niche "the journey is the destination" market? (checks post, yep, comparison was specifically with cruise ships).
GP was talking about replacing "5 hour flights", aka current standard-market transport (comparison with bus, train, aircraft) with something more comfortable.
I'm merely pointing out that none of our current forms of mass-market long-distance transportation has survived in a form that is "more comfortable". If airships are THAT much cheaper to operate, you'll be able to replace a 5-hour flight that currently costs you $200 for $110 10-hour flight, and the seat might be slightly bigger to compensate for the fact that you have to sit in it longer, but the simple economies of transport ensure that you'll never get that reduction in price AND dance hall.
And given the option, hate to say it, but most people will choose the reduction in price. Companies sell what people buy, not what people claim they want. Why do you think airlines cram your knees against the seat in front of you? Because enough of us shop around and buy the cheapest seats that the airlines want as many seats on each airplane as they can, and no one has invented an "airline stretcher" to make the airplane magically bigger.
There may be other metrics other than the dollar, but none of them have reared their heads in mass public transportation in any significant scale, because travelers (people who want to get to a destination and are not focused much on the experience of the actual trip there) tend to vote with their dollars.
I can most certainly see these replacing cruise ship-type transport. But I'm not likely to ride in one, napping off my dancing in the huge dance hall in my private stateroom, on my next business trip, my boss would never sign for it.
A few relevant points:
- 20,000 feet is nearly 4 miles. You'd have to have a half-assed tracking system on a half-decent missile system to hit a target 4 miles straight up. An actual rocket-propelled grenade ain't gonna cut it. I'm not saying the tech isn't available, and I'm sure there are shoulder-mounted SAMs that can handle it, and I don't doubt that some insurgent groups might get access to them, but it's not what you can pick up at a Soviet Military Surplus store.
- If you hit anything "soft", your missile is going to punch two small holes through one of the balloons and continue sailing on by, and the thing is likely going to be able to coast to a landing for repairs, or even continue is mission. You'd have to hit something "hard" that would cause your missile to actually explode while inside the envelope or near a control system.
- An airship means there's plenty of cargo space. Including space for things like chaff, jammers, flares, and other incoming-divert-or-destroy sorts of technology. Military people tend to be pretty smart about including these things in their expensive tools if the tools have strategic value.
- The UAV's got good cameras and it's designed to look out, and if there's one there'll be lots of them. The launcher might be able to take out a single UAV, but with multiple eyes in the sky, how long do you think it'll be before that missile trajectory is tracked back to the source and a "return to sender, sealed with a kiss" is made using something very fast, very accurate, and very full of boom-boom? Repeat performances won't be terribly common.
And finally,
- These would be UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) and, as such, relatively disposable. The military is looking to use airship tech to keep the aloft longer, since they won't need as much fuel just to stay up in the air where they are needed. They'll still be a hell of a lot cheaper than a recon plane, stay on mission longer, and not that much easier to hit. More eyeballs in the sky, longer, cheaper.
And as an aside, the resources expended on purchasing a missile capable of trying to take out something like this would be orders of magnitude higher than what's needed to set a car bomb or planted roadside bomb. In other words, the insurgents, with not unlimited resources, would have to choose between setting a whole bunch of car bombs, or buying one missile. One of these UAVs taken out could actually seen as a sort of perverse victory, since the insurgents expended a LOT of their own resources to get the tools to do it.
I'm sorry, but I have to point out something.
I've flown in a DC-3 flightseeing tour in Alaska, with seats rigged the same way they would have been "back then". The seats are very roomy, mimosas are served, there are huge picture windows, and the whole thing is comfortable and enjoyable. That was how flying in airplanes used to be, back when it was the exclusive domain of the rich and famous. And it's as grand as your picture paints.
Then there's mean old Mr. Fiscal Responsibility.
I got from New England to Alaska in a series of big-ass jets on a handful of painful multiple-hour flights with my 6' 4" frame crammed into a seat that only a midget with his legs cut off could love. I was served artificial fruit juice and stale peanuts, with a generous side helping of surly from the understaffed cabin crew. And that was the way it had to be, because otherwise I could never have afforded to fly to Alaska for a 2-week adventure. If I could have sacrificed another half inch of seating space or allowed one of the cabin crew to actually slap me to work off some frustration to save another $50 on my flights, I would have, because I was paying to get to Alaska, not to enjoy the journey. My goal was to spend as little as possible to get there, and to get there in the minimum time, because I was by no means rich and I only had two weeks of vacation to see as much of Alaska as I could.
If airships are to become commercially viable, they'll have to compete. Companies will have to quickly converge to the lowest common denominator to compete - there will be a First Class you can't afford that has a few of the things you are talking about, a Business Class you probably can't afford that may have a little extra legroom, then there will be Steerage Class where the majority of us jamokes fly. That will be tuned to fit as many people as possible in as little space as possible, because whatever the lowest-cost airship operator manages to eke out of his airship will be the new standard for what travel costs.
If dirigibles are a lot cheaper per-seat than jets, then we'll start talking about Greyhound Airships, and faster-than-bus travel will become more financially accessible to a lot of folks. If they aren't, then we'll stick with jets because at least it's 5 hours of insane discomfort and not 10, and all the dirigibles will be rigged to be the equivalent of cruise ships - the journey IS the destination, because once you get there it's taken too long and you can't afford to do anything once you arrive. Which is fine - lots of people have fun in cruise ships. But it won't be an alternate form of transportation, it'll be more people traveling, just in a different way.
If they are cheaper to operate or can even begin to compete with over-the-road trucking, I see a big market for them in cargo, for sure. People? We'll have to see. They'll be a lot slower than jets, and they'll either need to be roomy or very affordable to make them worth the extra time spent traveling. And I don't see the "roomy" happening for the reasons I mentioned above.
Summary: Google sold the sizzle, but forgot to tell people there was meat behind it.
Well, if I was the man who had a dog and Bingo was his name-o, and Wave killed Bingo, I know why I wouldn't like it.
The question was would you go to a stereo theater if you had to where special headphones to get stereo.
Hmm, I never saw that question. But now that you've asked it - yes, if it was a move that would be significantly enhanced by stereo, and headphones were the only way to get stereo in a theater, I'd absolutely wear headphones.
In fact, I'd probably bring my own to the theater today if they had some sort of standard FM transmission of the audio or jacks in the seats (then I could drown out all the extraneous noise around me - cell phones ringing, crinkling wrappers, etc).
Similarly, I will probably go and see a 3D flick or two to see what all the excitement is about. If I feel the experience is enjoyable, I'll cough up a couple of extra bucks and wear special glasses for future movies. I see about 3-4 movies a year in the theater, so I'm not terribly sensitive to ticket prices. I'd rather pay a few extra bucks and make my 2 hours more entertaining.
Most of the movies I go out to the theater to watch are, actually, "CGI demos", or movies where the effects are a significant portion of the movie experience. I spend more time in the mainstream theater than I do the local art theater.
Most of the "story films" I watch at home, but occasionally something interesting comes to the local art theater.
I don't really go there because the movie looks or sounds better than it does at home. It doesn't. The sound system is, as far as I can tell, mono, and the screen isn't huge. I go there because it's a cool place run by nice people, and they have affordable popcorn with real butter and big fluffy comfy couches for seating.
They also have a good eye for an enjoyable movie that fits in with their atmosphere. And that's what is important - different movies are filmed to be viewed in different settings and should use technology that is appropriate for the movie.
I wouldn't watch "Pirate Radio" in 3D any more than I'd watch "The Day After Tomorrow" or "Independence Day" on a small screen with a mono audio system.
But I'd happily pay a premium to wear a headset and special glasses if the movie was designed with them in mind.
Except the bank would then foreclose, and he'd have to sell the comic book to make up the difference in the foreclosure-sale price the bank got for the house and what he owed on his mortgage, or end up in bankruptcy and be forced to liquidate the comic book. In addition to the loss he incurs on the foreclosure, he'd then have a shitty credit rating and nowhere to live.
Might as well sell the comic book now, hopefully pay off or at least pay down the mortgage with it, and at least save the some interest on the mortgage and be under less debt.
Or approach the bank and make the comic book part of the collateral on the mortgage. Banks will be very willing to work with you in preserving a loan if they have a known-good amount of collateral backing that loan. The bank could store the comic book in their vault until the mortgage was paid off, but the guy gets it back once the mortgage is paid down to the net present value of the house (which means he gets the appreciation in value of both the house and the comic book, and the bank has the security of knowing that the loan is solidly backed).
Good point. Let me rephrase that.
"Plz I cn haz u off mah l@wnz0rz?"
Better?
Mass-printed paperbacks haven't cost $6 each in years. Even older ones average closer to $8 now, new releases are even more.
Print-on-demand is going to make the per-unit cost higher, not lower.
Other than that, you make an excellent point. A Kindle/Nook is a relatively delicate and expensive unit compared to ink on deceased trees, which is a surprisingly durable medium. Much as I hate mosquitoes, I wouldn't want to sacrifice a Kindle to kill one. ;)
Could it also be that your appreciation for the type of works changed over the years as well?
I hated, hated, hated most of the works I had to read in High School, but many stories from the same author (which I read later as an adult) drew me back to the ones I hated, and I found that adult-me actually enjoyed them. I had developed the "lameness" (also known as patience and maturity) to take the time to understand their complexity and enjoy them. Many of the books I deeply enjoyed as a child are now shallow and trite to me now, though I sometimes re-read a few just to try and recapture how I felt about them as a pup.
There are a few books (and series) I enjoyed as a youth and still enjoy today, one of them being the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, which was probably terribly inappropriate reading for me when I picked up my first-print mass-market paperback copy when I was 12 or so, but I was fascinated by it and it resonated deeply with me (as loneliness and isolation and being important somewhere no one around you really understands would with any pre-teen), and I still re-read it regularly. I keep it my paperbacks of it next to my leatherbound copy of "Lord of the Rings". :)
Look into Waldorf schooling, if you have the resources available to do it and a school nearby. I think you'll find a lot of kindred spirits there. It's no joke. You've hit the nail pretty precisely on the head.
The simpler and less specific the toys are, the more developed your child's will become to play with it. The more the toy dictates the play, the less your child will bring into it. TV is the absolute lowest form of imaginative entertainment because there's utterly no imagination involved - it's a passive absorption of images. Free play with a stick and a couple of leaves you found in the yard is the highest, because you have to figure out which sticks and leaves are just right for what you are imagining, and tune your inner story to the materials you find or create.
True, you want more than "a block of wood". You want a bunch of various-sized blocks of well-sanded and well-oiled natural wood, in several shapes that maybe suggest but absolutely don't quite dictate what they are, preferably ones that your child had a hand in shaping, and a bunch of pieces of nice-feeling silk and other cloths in various colors, and a couple of stands and wooden clips that can be combined with the silks to make anything from an airplane to a stage to a horse. Throw a few sticks and some other bits into the mix, maybe get a nice bag of marbles and a few wooden balls, and sit down and become a plaything yourself every now and then. There are few moments more beautiful in children's play than when your child decides you are a tree and starts putting silks on you for "leaves", and actually forgets you are there as anything but a tree.
But you can't combine that with TV. The two are pretty much incompatible. TV directs the imagination into non-imaginative play. They just parrot the images they see on TV, which are (by design) far more interesting and compelling than the world around them. When they see the blocks, they will just parrot out what the TV showed them, again and again and again. They will rarely think of anything original, because it takes a lot of time to process the message the TV put there.
If you are as serious as you seem about developing their imaginations, kill your television. Now. By that, I mean don't even read the rest of my post yet, go unplug it right now and move it into the garage or basement, then come back. I'll wait.
Good. Welcome back. Congratulations. Use the money you save on your cable bill to buy good toys.
And I hope you do it earlier than I did, because it took years to get "swiper no swiping" (Dora) and "we've got to save the baby cougar" (Diego) out of my daughter's play and get her to develop her own imagination based on her real life. It was an immensely hard struggle that continues to this day, 4 years after we killed our television, because once the TV gets in there it's hard to get it out.