That's really interesting. I skimmed through one of the videos. A good learning lesson there would be to see how they started it in the first place, how they got traction. My guess is that if you had some money up front, got the boat and the babes and started posting on a small scale by taking short trips, you'd attract interest quickly. vs. starting out with "I want to buy a boat, give me some money and I'll start making videos."
Their YouTube numbers alone definitely would not support them. Seems to be a winning combination putting the two sites together. You have a definitive project and a lot of visual interest.
I'll echo what Slashdot user Frosty Piss said above, that's actually a pretty normal distribution of money for these types of endeavors, and Patreon is not going to magically change those numbers. It is simply another tool that works well for some people and not so well for others. Frankly, their fees are far better than any other site, even with the recent changes. You keep 95%? that's the fairest site of them all.
On YouTube for example your share of the ad revenue is about 45%, or $1 per 1000 views on average. And that's way better than if you are a musician signed to a label. RIck Astley says he's made $12 total off of YouTube through his label. Someone has kept tens of thousands of dollars of revenue from the videos claimed by his copyright assigns. (the video used in Rickrolling memes has probably generated about $75,000, looking at the 75 million hits on it.)
Patreon, if you can make it work, has done a very good job of putting all the revenue you do make in your pocket. It's all up to you.
In the article there is a quote: Indeed, the creators Patreon seems to value most are those who not only make stuff people like, but are also good at marketing their stuff and themselves.
That's the definition of most successful artists. Even if you're good you still have to elevate yourself above the noise with self promotion, until it hits a snowball effect. There are a few exceptional artists, who are so good that they attract the attention of movers and shakers right away, but most people have to work for it.
This is a timely article as I have been looking into it as a way of augmenting and feeding off of my YouTube channel, which has actually been quite successful. I've been evaluating if it can be done without taking up so much time that the added income is not proportionate, as the author of the article intimated is often the case. It's either going to be a net positive or a net negative. If it doesn't work out, no one is forcing me to continue with it.
FTA: YouTuber Amanda Lee, who makes over $4,000 a month, said, âoeChannel your creativity into something youâ(TM)re passionate about â" donâ(TM)t just create something to please others or to gain views.â
Sometimes that can work, but often you are tailoring what you make to what works and what people want. If that happens to be what you like to make, then it's all good. If not, there is a creative balance in there somewhere. For example, I know that if I post a certain kinds of videos, it gets crazy hits. So I focus on that to make money, while still making other videos that I also like to make but I know won't get those hits. YouTube is a numbers game. The cumulative total of a lot of videos, some successful, some less successful, are what provide a good income. But once you have that content there, the income is passive. It's great. With Patreon, it's never really passive except in the sense that when new patrons sign up for your thing, they tyically get access to all your past content. Which makes early adopters receive less value, so there's that to overcome as well on Patreon.
FTA: I posted a gif of my dog and included a $69 tier to pay for his food. No one has done it yet. When I first signed up, I thought I was the perfect match for Patreonâ(TM)s model. But now Iâ(TM)m realizing that as a struggling photographer without a massive social media following, Iâ(TM)m probably not Patreonâ(TM)s Target Creator.
Now that's just stupid. Just like GoFundMe, don't ask for people to directly pay for your basic living expenses or your "I need to find myself" trip around the world. No one's going to do it. You have to focus on what you're creating and not your basic living needs when marketing to people.
Also, I don't know why the author of the article expects that most people should be able to make a living solely on Patreon, he seems dissapointed that it's not the case, and expects it should be the case.
The lawsuit itself is actually a result of a huge problem with YouTube's DMCA takedown system.
Youtube tries to stay out of taking sides itself in any DMCA claim, to avoid liability. Here's what happens when you use the DMCA takedown system on YouTube, which I have done so myself to remove clear infringements using my content:
You are someone who thinks there is an infringing video on youtube. You submit a DMCA takedown claim via an automated interface on YouTube.
If the claim is not responded to, the video in question is taken down. HOWEVER, if the recipient of the takedown claim files a counterclaim, the ONLY way you can counter that counter claim is to provide YouTube with evidence that you have taken legal action against the recipient, i.e. FILED A LAWSUIT.
So basically, for little guys like me with no money for legal action, you are basically up a creek. Most of the time when I file a takedown notice for clear infringement (someone just re-uploaded my video in its entirety) it's gone and doesn't come back. But one time someone decided to submit a counter claim making arguments for fair use that would assuredly fail in a court of law, but youtube again will not take sides and will leave the video up unless I provide evidence to YouTube that I have taken legal action against the counter-claimer.
In this case, since the people who submitted the takedown notice are a company with lawyer power, they CAN start a legal claim and basically MUST do so to get youtube to take down the video when the video's owner refuses to do it themselves.
There is no decision making or moderation on the part of YouTube. They just pass the buck.
Now in this case, I would be on the side of the defendant, because it appears to be a case of fair use, as is any footage of videogame play, companies trying to get you to agree to a dubious license when playing the game nonwithstanding.
But YouTube's way of handling these situations has helped bring this lawsuit upon the defendent. There is further mediation option or decision making on the part of YouTube. If you are a little guy who owns content that has been legitimately bootlegged you are screwed. If you are a big guy who owns content you have to sue. there is no moderation via youtube.
If everyone uses one private/public key set for everything, then if that is compromised then the third party gets access to absolutely everything and can impersonate the user?
For those of us who use different usernames/emails/passwords from server to server that seems like a downgrade in security.
Tell me I'm wrong and I'm missing something. I've used PGP in the past and use keys for SSH logins but I've never used blockchain related stuff.
But I can't say that I'm going to enjoy all the tech assist calls I'll have to deal with, from my coworkers who just want it to look / work like Windows 7 - some of which are the same people who just wanted Windows 7 to look/work like XP. (And also hated the Office ribbon.)
Heh, that'd be me. I'm running Win 7 with the windows classic theme. I've found that almost nothing they've added since XP has added to my productivity, except optimizations under the hood. I have a double-height taskbar with quicklaunch icons across the top row, two monitors and all is good.
Their search engine didn't get shitty, the other search engine (google) got far, far better. I have to say search engines were pretty bad before Google. Google did a better job of knowing what you were actually looking for, and when SEO issues reared their ugly heads, fighting that to eventually come out on top.
Yahoo basically failed to innovate and the whole site is like a time warp now.
This is old history now in Internet terms, but Yahoo Groups began as EGroups, which basically put a web GUI on listserv. It made it easier to create and participate in listserv-style email discussions.
After Yahoo acquired it, it kind of went to crap as they attempted to monetize it and integrate it with the rest of their site, but it was still the only big game in town for that particular type of discussion.
Even by the mid-2000s many people had gone over to web forums (mostly PHPBB and their counterparts) and now 'big social media' has been siphoning off users from there. PHPBB style web forums are still vastly superior to the likes of Facebook for serious threaded discussions and presentation of information. On Facebook and their ilk, everything gets lost in the shuffle, no organization. Too informal. I hope that traditional web forums survive alongside the social media giants, as a conduit for serious, archived discussions.
The chances of it coming with a version of windows that doesn't send any data back home to mama is pretty much nil.
It should be able to download security patches without sending any identifying information, tell you when it wants to do it, and be highly selective about what it does download from windows update servers.
Speaking as someone who is married to a teacher and sees all of it firsthand (and hears about all of it every night when I am not actually visiting the school) there is some technology that works and some that is completely useless. Endless standardized testing and data collection are completely useless. It takes away from actually teaching and does not contribute anything back. You are not teaching a data metric. You are teaching a child, and education is not just learning to take a test. Look abroad to find more well rounded and less myopic views of education, or look at Montessori schools. Education that includes, art, music, fun science and free play time. A healthy balance and a much reduced focus on data metrics.
Using computers to administer tests when they are needed, and to track grades and scores are good. That's about where it ends. Endless repeated testing that requires all children to follow the same learning schedule and eats away at classroom time is completely useless.
I would say that the single most important factor in determining an individual child's quality of education is class size. The difference between 20 kids in a classroom and 30 kids is enormous. What 20 kids buys you is the ability to give a much more individual focus on each child and help them personally. It greatly decreases the chances of a child slipping through the cracks and falling behind for no good reason other than they needed a little extra help and they didn't get it. It allows you to see and spot problems much more easily through the noise.
Also, classroom aids and special programs to help children with behavioral issues are very thin on the ground. The lower the socioeconomic scale in the neighborhood, the more this becomes critical. The average family income of schoolchildren should be proportionate to the class size. The lower the income, the lower the class size should be. Anyone who has observed classes in both high income schools and low income schools would probably agree with me. There are far more behavioral issues and other needs in a poor classroom. Their home life is much more varied, and for many of these children, School is their only safe place where they are welcomed and loved. You are a teacher, a counselor, a mom, a dad, whatever they need. My wife sometimes go buy clothes for the kids that show up with dirty clothes with holes in them. Just that small act makes the child feel so much better about themselves, and their performance in school improves. She is always there for a hug or to listen to their problems and help them cope with life.
The class sizes are one way to illustrate how funding is the opposite of what it should be now. Wealthy schools typically have lots of tax income as well as plenty of extra money generated through PTAs and parent donations.
Poor schools, who need extra activities and support the most get the least amount of either.
I don't have a good answer for any of this, only realities of what's on the ground here. Perhaps if schools stopped spending money on technology that is aggressively marketed to them and does not work, they could use the money on more staff. Case in point, I know that in our local district, hundreds of thousands of dollars have gone towards technology programs that could have been used to hire a few more teachers and made a big dent in class sizes.
It's easy for people who are not teachers or principals to come up with ideas that sound good. But ideas that actually work require a lot of input from the troops on the ground, and not just at your blessed Cupertino school where children are well supported with highly involved, highly educated parents. You need to look at what works in poor, rural schools where many basic needs are not met. Talk to the teachers. Ask them what they need to help their kids. More often than not, it has nothing to do with technology. It has to do with nurturing and that fuzzy stuff that cannot be quantified.
As everyone else here has mentioned, the selection on the streaming service is far inferior to the DVD and Blu Ray selection. Also, BRD quality is much higher (25mbits/sec 1080P) and there are extras, which I like. There really is no direct comparison between the two services.
I subscribe to both, because my wife and step-daughter like all the original content streaming shows, and I like sometimes more obscure or older movies. There are a large amount of A-list movies that are not on the streaming service as well, depending on who they have deals with at the time.
I have a 100-title queue on the DVD service, of which almost none are available on the streaming service. (to Netflix' credit, when they are available on streaming, they add a 'play' button next to the queue item.)
The whole situation is honestly ridiculous, and in a world absent of crazy complicated licensing schemes and deals, all the DVD titles should also be made available for streaming. The two should be equivalent as far as who gets paid. But they are not, and we continue to have a very fractious market where you have to pay a dozen different streaming services to get access to everything. Netflix' DVD-by-mail is the closest thing to a single source where you can get titles from all the major (and minor) production companies for one low price.
There are 50 vertical fields per second interleaved with each other. Each field consists of every other line, so each field is half the vertical resolution of the full signal. There are 576 vertical scan lines in the signal, so each field is 288 lines.
The human eye is fooled into seeing a full 50 frames per second due to the high field rate.
By converting to 50 FRAMES per second, he is interpolating each field into a full frame signal.
So in this case, each field is being doubled to a frame, and then being scaled again by 2.25 times to arrive at 1080. So you're taking an extremely low resolution frame and up-ressing it. He would be better off leaving it at 480-50P and uploading it like that. Less data to encode and compress. As is, you're taking 288 lines and scaling up to 1080 lines. Upscaling has its limits as far as how much it can improve the signal.
The actual spatial resolution of a VHS tape is about 200 lines anyway. (the amount of detail you can perceive inside that higher resolution signal)
Also, hopefully he is correcting the D1 aspect ratio to 1:1 (square). It looks like he did in the video I watched.
VHS was the absolute worst of the worst in terms of signal quality, but it was there first and it won over Beta. Sony got their revenge later with Blu Ray./former broadcast engineer
I really liked Time Enough for Love and its life positive message. Here is a guy who lived forever, was tired of it and wanted everyone else to appreciate the short lives that they had.
With Dr. Jerry's passing, it may be time for a re-read of Mote and Gripping Hand.
There -really- needs to be a licensing regime where popular commercial music can be used on user's videos, and for the creator of the music and the creator of the video to share the ad revenue. On my videos I do not use commercial music (I license royalty free music, which is like finding a needle in a haystack in terms of finding a good match for your piece) so that I may monetize the videos, but every once in a while I would love to use a piece of pop music or a film score in a video. It would be great if I can just do it, and then the artist / publisher gets a cut depending on the length used.
Right now if a video has a copyrighted song in it, the publisher can either claim the whole video, or take it down. It's all or nothing. I don't believe there is a revenue sharing option, which would make everyone happy and allow for an explosion of creativity.
That's a good way to see it. As a commodity, although one that, more so than other things, has value only because people think it has value. So it still is a bit like a fiat currency, whereas cotton and gold can be put to physical uses. but I guess there is a lot of 'virtual' stuff that has market value like that. It's all gambling in the end.
So which is it? The Barbarian at the gate or a useless holding currency? Or some kind of intermediary that can coexist with the current banking system, which is needed to actually buy things.
The Agency figured if it could convince those at corruption hotspots, such as customs agents and border guards, to use e-payment methods, then it might curb the amount of cash those agents pocketed every day.
Why would they act against their own self interest given their situation? In very poor countries where everyone including government officials and police are paid very little, graft is a way of life. It takes a lot more than trying to force an e-payment system to change this type of behavior. There is a reason judges in the United States are paid very well. To make them more immune to bribery. If any given official who's job it is to handle lots of money is not paid well himself, he will tend to skim off the top.
It takes a deep-rooted cultural shift to move away from graft, and the solution is much more complex than simply trying to implement an e-payment system. Also, if, as the quoted official says, it is very arcane and difficult to use (and that is not just an excuse to keep pocking to the loot) that presents even less of an incentive.
A multi-pronged approach has to involve their own government's willingness to truly change the behavior of their officials from the top down, in addition to whatever magic etchnology solution the west is proffering. It is a very difficult thing to do when the culture is deeply embedded in an organization at all levels.
The nickname for these was "Trash 80" and it was quickly eclipsed by better offerings from Commodore and Apple. As the personal computer market took off, they were seen as the bottom of the barrel in terms of performance, software offerings and curb appeal. But it was a start. We did have a lot of them in my Jr. HIgh and that's what we played Oregon Trail and some math programs on, before Apple became very aggressive about placing their machines in schools, and Apple IIc's and IIe's started to show up. I was a commodore user at home, starting with the Vic-20, then C-64, 128, then every flavor of Amiga, while PC's were still in a pretty sorry state for graphics and sound. (CGA, EGA, and good sound only if you could afford a Roland sound card, and had games that supported it)
Did not migrate to PC's till the Doom era of the mid-1990s, although I did teach myself basic on a PCjr (286) in the early 80s my dad had access to at his work.
Currently you have to sign up for ContentID manually anyway. They don't give it to everyone by default. You have to show that you're hosting all original content.
I'm for this change as I spend a lot of time filing takedowns for people who re-up my videos, and it's only thanks to alert viewers who take the time to send me messages that I find out about them. I don't have time to do routine searches. I will likely be signing up for contentID fairly soon.
Do you think the average teenager or soccer mom who uses these features actually cares who invented what first? They are not reading these stories, they are not concerned with abstract hand-wringing. They just care if the platform they use does that cute little trick where they can overlay a cat nose on their face in realtime. Facebook knows this. They are appropriately more concerned with their bottom line than with the opinion of tech journalists. I just don't see the point. Competitors in every industry copy each other and try to one-up each other. that's the whole point. If you feel you are losing ground to X competitor because they rolled out Y new feature, you're going to also roll out Y new feature and hopefully add Z innovation on top of it, and X competitor may copy Z new innovation back in return. Why single out the feature arms race of social media?
Slashdot Mirror
That's really interesting. I skimmed through one of the videos. A good learning lesson there would be to see how they started it in the first place, how they got traction. My guess is that if you had some money up front, got the boat and the babes and started posting on a small scale by taking short trips, you'd attract interest quickly. vs. starting out with "I want to buy a boat, give me some money and I'll start making videos."
Their YouTube numbers alone definitely would not support them. Seems to be a winning combination putting the two sites together. You have a definitive project and a lot of visual interest.
I'll echo what Slashdot user Frosty Piss said above, that's actually a pretty normal distribution of money for these types of endeavors, and Patreon is not going to magically change those numbers. It is simply another tool that works well for some people and not so well for others. Frankly, their fees are far better than any other site, even with the recent changes. You keep 95%? that's the fairest site of them all.
On YouTube for example your share of the ad revenue is about 45%, or $1 per 1000 views on average. And that's way better than if you are a musician signed to a label. RIck Astley says he's made $12 total off of YouTube through his label. Someone has kept tens of thousands of dollars of revenue from the videos claimed by his copyright assigns. (the video used in Rickrolling memes has probably generated about $75,000, looking at the 75 million hits on it.)
Patreon, if you can make it work, has done a very good job of putting all the revenue you do make in your pocket. It's all up to you.
In the article there is a quote: Indeed, the creators Patreon seems to value most are those who not only make stuff people like, but are also good at marketing their stuff and themselves.
That's the definition of most successful artists. Even if you're good you still have to elevate yourself above the noise with self promotion, until it hits a snowball effect. There are a few exceptional artists, who are so good that they attract the attention of movers and shakers right away, but most people have to work for it.
This is a timely article as I have been looking into it as a way of augmenting and feeding off of my YouTube channel, which has actually been quite successful. I've been evaluating if it can be done without taking up so much time that the added income is not proportionate, as the author of the article intimated is often the case. It's either going to be a net positive or a net negative. If it doesn't work out, no one is forcing me to continue with it.
FTA:
YouTuber Amanda Lee, who makes over $4,000 a month, said, âoeChannel your creativity into something youâ(TM)re passionate about â" donâ(TM)t just create something to please others or to gain views.â
Sometimes that can work, but often you are tailoring what you make to what works and what people want. If that happens to be what you like to make, then it's all good. If not, there is a creative balance in there somewhere. For example, I know that if I post a certain kinds of videos, it gets crazy hits. So I focus on that to make money, while still making other videos that I also like to make but I know won't get those hits. YouTube is a numbers game. The cumulative total of a lot of videos, some successful, some less successful, are what provide a good income. But once you have that content there, the income is passive. It's great. With Patreon, it's never really passive except in the sense that when new patrons sign up for your thing, they tyically get access to all your past content. Which makes early adopters receive less value, so there's that to overcome as well on Patreon.
FTA:
I posted a gif of my dog and included a $69 tier to pay for his food. No one has done it yet. When I first signed up, I thought I was the perfect match for Patreonâ(TM)s model. But now Iâ(TM)m realizing that as a struggling photographer without a massive social media following, Iâ(TM)m probably not Patreonâ(TM)s Target Creator.
Now that's just stupid. Just like GoFundMe, don't ask for people to directly pay for your basic living expenses or your "I need to find myself" trip around the world. No one's going to do it. You have to focus on what you're creating and not your basic living needs when marketing to people.
Also, I don't know why the author of the article expects that most people should be able to make a living solely on Patreon, he seems dissapointed that it's not the case, and expects it should be the case.
There is no honor among thieves...on any side of the aisle!
The lawsuit itself is actually a result of a huge problem with YouTube's DMCA takedown system.
Youtube tries to stay out of taking sides itself in any DMCA claim, to avoid liability. Here's what happens when you use the DMCA takedown system on YouTube, which I have done so myself to remove clear infringements using my content:
You are someone who thinks there is an infringing video on youtube. You submit a DMCA takedown claim via an automated interface on YouTube.
If the claim is not responded to, the video in question is taken down. HOWEVER, if the recipient of the takedown claim files a counterclaim, the ONLY way you can counter that counter claim is to provide YouTube with evidence that you have taken legal action against the recipient, i.e. FILED A LAWSUIT.
So basically, for little guys like me with no money for legal action, you are basically up a creek. Most of the time when I file a takedown notice for clear infringement (someone just re-uploaded my video in its entirety) it's gone and doesn't come back. But one time someone decided to submit a counter claim making arguments for fair use that would assuredly fail in a court of law, but youtube again will not take sides and will leave the video up unless I provide evidence to YouTube that I have taken legal action against the counter-claimer.
In this case, since the people who submitted the takedown notice are a company with lawyer power, they CAN start a legal claim and basically MUST do so to get youtube to take down the video when the video's owner refuses to do it themselves.
There is no decision making or moderation on the part of YouTube. They just pass the buck.
Now in this case, I would be on the side of the defendant, because it appears to be a case of fair use, as is any footage of videogame play, companies trying to get you to agree to a dubious license when playing the game nonwithstanding.
But YouTube's way of handling these situations has helped bring this lawsuit upon the defendent. There is further mediation option or decision making on the part of YouTube. If you are a little guy who owns content that has been legitimately bootlegged you are screwed. If you are a big guy who owns content you have to sue. there is no moderation via youtube.
If everyone uses one private/public key set for everything, then if that is compromised then the third party gets access to absolutely everything and can impersonate the user?
For those of us who use different usernames/emails/passwords from server to server that seems like a downgrade in security.
Tell me I'm wrong and I'm missing something. I've used PGP in the past and use keys for SSH logins but I've never used blockchain related stuff.
But I can't say that I'm going to enjoy all the tech assist calls I'll have to deal with, from my coworkers who just want it to look / work like Windows 7 - some of which are the same people who just wanted Windows 7 to look/work like XP. (And also hated the Office ribbon.)
Heh, that'd be me. I'm running Win 7 with the windows classic theme. I've found that almost nothing they've added since XP has added to my productivity, except optimizations under the hood. I have a double-height taskbar with quicklaunch icons across the top row, two monitors and all is good.
Except in this case there is no Pepsi to compete with them. They'll shove it down your throat and you'll like it...
Their search engine didn't get shitty, the other search engine (google) got far, far better. I have to say search engines were pretty bad before Google. Google did a better job of knowing what you were actually looking for, and when SEO issues reared their ugly heads, fighting that to eventually come out on top.
Yahoo basically failed to innovate and the whole site is like a time warp now.
This is old history now in Internet terms, but Yahoo Groups began as EGroups, which basically put a web GUI on listserv. It made it easier to create and participate in listserv-style email discussions.
After Yahoo acquired it, it kind of went to crap as they attempted to monetize it and integrate it with the rest of their site, but it was still the only big game in town for that particular type of discussion.
Even by the mid-2000s many people had gone over to web forums (mostly PHPBB and their counterparts) and now 'big social media' has been siphoning off users from there. PHPBB style web forums are still vastly superior to the likes of Facebook for serious threaded discussions and presentation of information. On Facebook and their ilk, everything gets lost in the shuffle, no organization. Too informal. I hope that traditional web forums survive alongside the social media giants, as a conduit for serious, archived discussions.
Ghostery does basically the same thing, and probably better. It works with the new version of firefox. (it's a WebExtension)
https://www.ghostery.com/
The chances of it coming with a version of windows that doesn't send any data back home to mama is pretty much nil.
It should be able to download security patches without sending any identifying information, tell you when it wants to do it, and be highly selective about what it does download from windows update servers.
Speaking as someone who is married to a teacher and sees all of it firsthand (and hears about all of it every night when I am not actually visiting the school) there is some technology that works and some that is completely useless. Endless standardized testing and data collection are completely useless. It takes away from actually teaching and does not contribute anything back. You are not teaching a data metric. You are teaching a child, and education is not just learning to take a test. Look abroad to find more well rounded and less myopic views of education, or look at Montessori schools. Education that includes, art, music, fun science and free play time. A healthy balance and a much reduced focus on data metrics.
Using computers to administer tests when they are needed, and to track grades and scores are good. That's about where it ends. Endless repeated testing that requires all children to follow the same learning schedule and eats away at classroom time is completely useless.
I would say that the single most important factor in determining an individual child's quality of education is class size. The difference between 20 kids in a classroom and 30 kids is enormous. What 20 kids buys you is the ability to give a much more individual focus on each child and help them personally. It greatly decreases the chances of a child slipping through the cracks and falling behind for no good reason other than they needed a little extra help and they didn't get it. It allows you to see and spot problems much more easily through the noise.
Also, classroom aids and special programs to help children with behavioral issues are very thin on the ground. The lower the socioeconomic scale in the neighborhood, the more this becomes critical. The average family income of schoolchildren should be proportionate to the class size. The lower the income, the lower the class size should be. Anyone who has observed classes in both high income schools and low income schools would probably agree with me. There are far more behavioral issues and other needs in a poor classroom. Their home life is much more varied, and for many of these children, School is their only safe place where they are welcomed and loved. You are a teacher, a counselor, a mom, a dad, whatever they need. My wife sometimes go buy clothes for the kids that show up with dirty clothes with holes in them. Just that small act makes the child feel so much better about themselves, and their performance in school improves. She is always there for a hug or to listen to their problems and help them cope with life.
The class sizes are one way to illustrate how funding is the opposite of what it should be now. Wealthy schools typically have lots of tax income as well as plenty of extra money generated through PTAs and parent donations.
Poor schools, who need extra activities and support the most get the least amount of either.
I don't have a good answer for any of this, only realities of what's on the ground here. Perhaps if schools stopped spending money on technology that is aggressively marketed to them and does not work, they could use the money on more staff. Case in point, I know that in our local district, hundreds of thousands of dollars have gone towards technology programs that could have been used to hire a few more teachers and made a big dent in class sizes.
It's easy for people who are not teachers or principals to come up with ideas that sound good. But ideas that actually work require a lot of input from the troops on the ground, and not just at your blessed Cupertino school where children are well supported with highly involved, highly educated parents. You need to look at what works in poor, rural schools where many basic needs are not met. Talk to the teachers. Ask them what they need to help their kids. More often than not, it has nothing to do with technology. It has to do with nurturing and that fuzzy stuff that cannot be quantified.
...I can't take you to that destination. The government told me not to.
As everyone else here has mentioned, the selection on the streaming service is far inferior to the DVD and Blu Ray selection. Also, BRD quality is much higher (25mbits/sec 1080P) and there are extras, which I like. There really is no direct comparison between the two services.
I subscribe to both, because my wife and step-daughter like all the original content streaming shows, and I like sometimes more obscure or older movies. There are a large amount of A-list movies that are not on the streaming service as well, depending on who they have deals with at the time.
I have a 100-title queue on the DVD service, of which almost none are available on the streaming service. (to Netflix' credit, when they are available on streaming, they add a 'play' button next to the queue item.)
The whole situation is honestly ridiculous, and in a world absent of crazy complicated licensing schemes and deals, all the DVD titles should also be made available for streaming. The two should be equivalent as far as who gets paid. But they are not, and we continue to have a very fractious market where you have to pay a dozen different streaming services to get access to everything. Netflix' DVD-by-mail is the closest thing to a single source where you can get titles from all the major (and minor) production companies for one low price.
PAL is 50 FIELDS per second, not frames.
There are 50 vertical fields per second interleaved with each other. Each field consists of every other line, so each field is half the vertical resolution of the full signal.
There are 576 vertical scan lines in the signal, so each field is 288 lines.
The human eye is fooled into seeing a full 50 frames per second due to the high field rate.
By converting to 50 FRAMES per second, he is interpolating each field into a full frame signal.
So in this case, each field is being doubled to a frame, and then being scaled again by 2.25 times to arrive at 1080. So you're taking an extremely low resolution frame and up-ressing it. He would be better off leaving it at 480-50P and uploading it like that. Less data to encode and compress. As is, you're taking 288 lines and scaling up to 1080 lines. Upscaling has its limits as far as how much it can improve the signal.
The actual spatial resolution of a VHS tape is about 200 lines anyway. (the amount of detail you can perceive inside that higher resolution signal)
Also, hopefully he is correcting the D1 aspect ratio to 1:1 (square). It looks like he did in the video I watched.
VHS was the absolute worst of the worst in terms of signal quality, but it was there first and it won over Beta. Sony got their revenge later with Blu Ray. /former broadcast engineer
I really liked Time Enough for Love and its life positive message. Here is a guy who lived forever, was tired of it and wanted everyone else to appreciate the short lives that they had.
With Dr. Jerry's passing, it may be time for a re-read of Mote and Gripping Hand.
There -really- needs to be a licensing regime where popular commercial music can be used on user's videos, and for the creator of the music and the creator of the video to share the ad revenue. On my videos I do not use commercial music (I license royalty free music, which is like finding a needle in a haystack in terms of finding a good match for your piece) so that I may monetize the videos, but every once in a while I would love to use a piece of pop music or a film score in a video. It would be great if I can just do it, and then the artist / publisher gets a cut depending on the length used.
Right now if a video has a copyrighted song in it, the publisher can either claim the whole video, or take it down. It's all or nothing. I don't believe there is a revenue sharing option, which would make everyone happy and allow for an explosion of creativity.
That's a good way to see it. As a commodity, although one that, more so than other things, has value only because people think it has value. So it still is a bit like a fiat currency, whereas cotton and gold can be put to physical uses. but I guess there is a lot of 'virtual' stuff that has market value like that. It's all gambling in the end.
Didn't you just post a story about how no one actually buys anything with it?
So which is it? The Barbarian at the gate or a useless holding currency? Or some kind of intermediary that can coexist with the current banking system, which is needed to actually buy things.
Why would they act against their own self interest given their situation? In very poor countries where everyone including government officials and police are paid very little, graft is a way of life. It takes a lot more than trying to force an e-payment system to change this type of behavior. There is a reason judges in the United States are paid very well. To make them more immune to bribery. If any given official who's job it is to handle lots of money is not paid well himself, he will tend to skim off the top.
It takes a deep-rooted cultural shift to move away from graft, and the solution is much more complex than simply trying to implement an e-payment system. Also, if, as the quoted official says, it is very arcane and difficult to use (and that is not just an excuse to keep pocking to the loot) that presents even less of an incentive.
A multi-pronged approach has to involve their own government's willingness to truly change the behavior of their officials from the top down, in addition to whatever magic etchnology solution the west is proffering. It is a very difficult thing to do when the culture is deeply embedded in an organization at all levels.
The nickname for these was "Trash 80" and it was quickly eclipsed by better offerings from Commodore and Apple. As the personal computer market took off, they were seen as the bottom of the barrel in terms of performance, software offerings and curb appeal. But it was a start. We did have a lot of them in my Jr. HIgh and that's what we played Oregon Trail and some math programs on, before Apple became very aggressive about placing their machines in schools, and Apple IIc's and IIe's started to show up. I was a commodore user at home, starting with the Vic-20, then C-64, 128, then every flavor of Amiga, while PC's were still in a pretty sorry state for graphics and sound. (CGA, EGA, and good sound only if you could afford a Roland sound card, and had games that supported it)
Did not migrate to PC's till the Doom era of the mid-1990s, although I did teach myself basic on a PCjr (286) in the early 80s my dad had access to at his work.
I'm more interested in work being done to bring back flavor in tomatoes, which for some time now have been selected for looks rather than taste.
Currently you have to sign up for ContentID manually anyway. They don't give it to everyone by default. You have to show that you're hosting all original content.
I'm for this change as I spend a lot of time filing takedowns for people who re-up my videos, and it's only thanks to alert viewers who take the time to send me messages that I find out about them. I don't have time to do routine searches. I will likely be signing up for contentID fairly soon.
Do you think the average teenager or soccer mom who uses these features actually cares who invented what first? They are not reading these stories, they are not concerned with abstract hand-wringing. They just care if the platform they use does that cute little trick where they can overlay a cat nose on their face in realtime. Facebook knows this. They are appropriately more concerned with their bottom line than with the opinion of tech journalists. I just don't see the point. Competitors in every industry copy each other and try to one-up each other. that's the whole point. If you feel you are losing ground to X competitor because they rolled out Y new feature, you're going to also roll out Y new feature and hopefully add Z innovation on top of it, and X competitor may copy Z new innovation back in return. Why single out the feature arms race of social media?
Many entire cities also have the same rules.