Wow, 30% survived when they only had lifeboats for 10%? I guess the north Atlantic wasn't as cold as they thought.
The percentage of lifeboat space to passengers was actually about 50%, and they could have saved more if they'd overloaded them a bit. Even that amount was fully within the laws of the time and might have been a slight excess. The problem was that the laws were decades old and didn't consider the possibility of a ship as large as Titanic or her sisters.
(It didn't help that a planned lifeboat drill was cancelled, which might have been one reason they were sent out underloaded. And a couple of the available lifeboats (the collapsibles) went basically unused.)
Although your point is still correct. Titanic expert Walter Lord made the same point some years back, comparing the mistakes made on Titanic to Challenger's demise.
TSG
Who spent too much time doing QA on a Titanic educational disc once upon a time...
The businesses which can benefit the most from real-time information have already implamented it, and not as "executive dashboards." Think of WalMart. Or the U.S. Army. But they're designed to flow the information as hard data to
people who actually use the information, rather than as pretty graphs to executives. You want to empower people at all levels of your organization, not micromanage them.
I just liked this so much that I wanted to repeat it. Although it hardly need elaboration, I'll try anyway:
If real-time data is going to the executive, and he's making changes based on it, then it's going the long way around. Send it right to the people making the changes.
If the people making the changes are not able to do so independently based on said real-time data, you have a different problem to fix.
Combinations of "Real time" and "Strategy" are inherently oxymoronic in any endeavor but sports and computer games. Strategy is supposed to reflect a long-term goal. You might change your tactics, but you don't want to change your strategy based on real-time data.*
The larger truth in this is not specific to real-time data: You want as many people as possible to know as much as they can use about their current situation.
I would hope that is the real Future of Business Intelligence.
TSG
*If anyone cares to dispute, please give examples of a successful change in a) strategy, not tactics based on b)real-time data, not finished intelligence, in any other arena.
First, you have to make sure that your core data is good. The most useful way to organize it on the front end might not instantly show the best way for the CEO to see it on the back end. That means you have to translate that data (lists of order numbers, ordered products, persons ordering) into what the executive cares about (number of orders, products sold, money collected).
Whoops -- you have to find out what the executive cares about, don't you? And it might not be as simple as what he says he cares about. Are there any orders he doesn't want included -- samples, say? If some products are bundled, do we include the combined products as units, or unbundled? Is "money collected" just the cash we now have in the bank, or is it money we have been promised, or the expected revenue from what has been sold? Hopefully, the executive will find time to define his requirements this precisely.
Then you have to set up the system that can get your data from Point A to Point B. Easy if you are really certain what you are trying to answer. Not, if not.
Once that's done, then you can consider setting up a "dashboard" -- assuming you're sure that you can define the business precisely enough, and won't miss an important metric along the way, and the business won't change -- hasn't changed -- in the meantime.
I'm sure there are products that will make this process easier, but it's significant work for everyone involved. Although some of it could be automated, it will still require that the people setting it up actually THINK about what they are doing.
Hmm -- I wonder if that's why Apple is considering buying Universal music now? The music industry is at a downturn, so the company is cheaper. The trough can be expected to turn around, though, so even if their music service doesn't quite work out they might be able to sell it for a profit down the road.
And maybe Steve will release all those Joe Jackson albums that are currently languishing in the vaults there.
And I can't remember of any president of any country in Europe after WW II who became president through court decisions.
What a coincidence: We haven't had any in the United States, either.
There are all sorts of problems I had with the vote in 2000, from the tactics of both Democrats and Republicans to the Supreme Court's decision. But looking back at it, it's pretty obvious that the Supreme Court didn't change the outcome one bit.
The timeline was something like this:
(For brevity, I'll just say Bush and Gore, for which you can read "Bush's people" and "Gore's minions" or any other grouping that you wish.)
The initial count is done, Bush is ahead by a miniscule margin.
A recount is automatically initiated. Gore gains a number of votes, but is still behind.
Gore requests hand recounts in a number of districts -- largely democratic ones, of course.
A number of different legal maneuvers are made, to stop or continue those recounts -- e.g. Bush sues in federal court to have them stopped, Gore sues in Florida's state court to continue.
After going back and forth between Bush, Gore, the Florida courts, and the Florida politicians for over a month, the Supreme Court steps into the fray.
The Supreme Court rules that, given the time that has passed, it's too late to set up a fair and unbiased counting system, so the votes as counted stand.
There were all sorts of problems with their ruling -- especially since it's up to Congress to decide If there is uncertainty or irregularities in electoral voting -- but it made absolutely no difference in the outcome.
Absolutely no difference.
Examination of all the Florida ballots showed that if the Supreme Court had ruled for Gore, he would still have lost. The votes he wanted re-counted didn't add enough to his column to give him the state. The only way it would have mattered was if he had requested a statewide recount that included all undercounts AND overcounts.
I think that IF every vote had been counted properly -- if every person's vote was clear, readable, and recorded -- Gore would have won. I would have preferred that the Rehnquist Court hadn't sullied their good name with a decision that made them look partisan and opportunistic. And I really would have liked a scenario that allowed both Bush and Gore to lose. But if you think that Bush was only elected due to the whims of the Supremes, you should take another look at What Really Happened.
When the Columbia first landed in the early 1980s, there was concern for the safety of the Astronauts during re-entry. Nobody was entirely certain about whether or not the ceramic tiles would hold...
The reason it was an issue was because some of the tiles hadn't held when it was first launched.
Among the first televised views from Columbia in space was looking across the cargo bay, towards the tail. A couple of the tiles on the tail were obviously missing -- so obvious that the newscasters noticed it almost immediately.
Over the next couple of days, the tiles were inspected by ground telescopes and other "assets". It landed a couple of days later, with no significant problems that I can remember.
I played hooky and went to Edwards AFB with some friends to watch it land that first time. We had heard that it would probably cause some sonic booms. As it was approaching, one of my friends asked "What's a sonic boom sound like?"
I haven't received a bonus yet, and don't know that I will be. I think it's a possibility, perhaps, of getting 1-3% of my base pay. An extra week's paycheck, that is -- wouldn't complain if I got that, wouldn't hurt if I didn't.
The office party was last Thursday, at a blues club big enough to hold everyone, a buffet dinner and open bar -- well, open enough to get beers and well drinks free. Two bands played: A blues band during dinner, a funk band for dancing later.
It was a good time. But...
Things have been so rough over the last couple of years that everyone seemed *too* thankful for what we had that night. It seemed downright solemn, as everyone concentrated on eating their ribs and not acting as if they "deserved" this bit of ostentation. Backlash, I suppose, from the New Economy years, when these sort of shindigs were expected. But then, that's when everyone was jumping ship for startups and we had to be bribed and cajoled into staying.
A large proportion of people left soon afterwards, as well. It was impossible to find a seat when I arrived, but the place was halfway to empty when the dance band started. A bathroom attendent was heard commenting about how we sure weren't treating the night like a Christmas party.
Then again, there were a lot of young single people working there back then. Now it's filled with older, married parents. Mostly the same folks.... I guess a lot changes over just a few years.
Richard Hatch is, of course, well known to everyone on Slashdot as Apollo on Battlestar Galactica.
Richard Hatch is also, of course, well known to everyone in America as the original Sole Survivor.
And it is reasonably well known that they aren't the same person. So, who wins that fight? The guy who had a starring role in a short-lived, well-known television show, or the one who had a short-lived role as the star in a well-known television show?*
I don't doubt that Bill Wyman's lawyers have a reasonable concern here, but it sure seems to get ugly fast. Personally, I think Atlanta's Bill Wyman should do what he can to waste the other Bill Wyman's money:
Agree to give up the name for a sum of money, then spend years negotiating for a reasonable amount
Start signing his column as Mick Jagger.
Legally change his name to be the same as the lawyers.
Send over an agreement that says he won't play bass as long as the other guy doesn't write about music.
Agree to include a disclaimer, then ask for approval on each one, then ask for approval on minor changes, then make major changes and start the process over...
And generally send back letters that lead the lawyers on wild goose chases. How many high-priced billable hours would it take to bankrupt The Other Guy?
Although I suppose his employer will decide it's easiest just to add a disclaimer. Sigh.
TSG
*At least in the Internet Movie Data Base there is a "I" and a "II" so that you can tell the Dicks apart.
It was Lessig who was discussing the case, but given that nit:
I think that they wanted to look at the two halves of his argument separately, while he kept referring to one as supporting the other. I think they wanted to see if either of them supported the claim individually, and I'd guess they were more interested in looking at the First Amendment issue. (As I understand it, going to the First Amendment for copyright issues isn't normally supported. They might have been looking for an easy out on that side...)
Further, based on their questions to Olson, they may have been so in favor of the Section 8 limitation argument that they didn't see the need to go any more down that path. (They gave him a *lot* of opportunities to describe the effective limits of the Copyright Clause, and he kept coming back to "Well, that's up to Congress." They didn't seem to like that answer, much.) Which, if true, is a good sign. And might mean that their questioning of Lessig was an attempt to see what help the First Amendment might give them.
It is a tricky problem for them: They don't like to overrule Congress, but also don't let Congress run wild with its own interpretation of the Constitution. Maybe we'll get lucky.
I'm assuming that the movie studios would recognize that they need better security at the movie theater end, and would work with the theaters to improve it. For this to work, the theaters would need more money for security, plus enough additional revenue to be an incentive to work with the studios.
(Granted, the Paramount decision could mean that this level of cooperation would be illegal anyway. I think, though, the courts would accept reasonable cooperation in safeguarding property being sold.)
As for your second point: Making copies of a copyrighted film, with intent to distribute or make available for distribution, could easily lead to losing the job that gives access to said film. Why risk it, unless the potential reward was significant compared to the job? The lower the pay, the less significant the risk, the more likely the attempt.
The movie studios are charging the theaters so much for the films that their only profits come from concessions.
With such a thin revenue stream, the theaters have to cut costs wherever they can.
Because the only way to get people in is to keep the theater itself state of the art, the money must come out of personnel.
The personnel that are there probably get paid minimum wage, because hey, they don't have to do much, do they?
Low wages means that there are at least a couple of people out there willing to risk making a copy of the film -- say, from the projection booth late at night. (That's the only way to make a really good-quality pirate copy, isn't it?)
So, by trying to squeeze every penny out of the movie theaters, the studios have made widespread copying of theatrical releases worthwhile at the weakest links in their value chain. And it's quite possible that this is going to destroy their entire industry.
O, the irony.
Sometimes, you just can't get around economics and human nature.
Well, first you said Mary Poppins twice. And that wasn't stolen by this measure -- Disney himself had to deal with P.L. Travers in order to get the film made. (Some issues with "script approval" evidently.)
(Unless you were talking about "Down and Out in Beverly Hills" which has some interesting similarities to Mary Poppins -- outsider drops in, teaches the family how to get along together, gets them involved with social undesirables, shows them the shallowness of their existence...)
Similarly with Peter Pan, which actually has a perpetual copyright in England. (Issued in part because the royalties all go to a children's hospital.)
Tarzan sounds right -- note that all the Tarzan copyright notices say (c) Disney/Burroughs.
Not sure about Robin Hood, though -- traditional story, I thought, never copyrighted AFAIK.
Well, I don't see that the judgement is that serious, really.
A frequently articulated belief about price fixing in the music industry is "They brought out CDs for twice as much as records when the technology was new, and haven't lowered the prices yet." Which is true enough for me.
(Coincidentally, I heard on the radio today that it's the 20th birthday of the Compact Disc format. Rah.)
That's not what this was about. This was a narrow situation involving industry reimbursement for advertising with respect to CDs sold for less than a particular price. The sole punishment for disregarding this price: No reimbursement. The wholesale price -- i.e. the money the labels got -- was the same either way.
Legally, was it price fixing? IANAL, so I dunno.
Is it a little suspicious that the wholesale price was the same? Sure -- assuming that's what was happening. (That seems a bit ambiguous, actually.)
Did this practice keep the price higher than if it hadn't been done? Probably.
Was it significant? Probably not. Intuitively, it sure doesn't sound like a big deal, and the small judgement seems to confirm how small the perceived effect was.
Will it matter? Not much: The big chains that were selling CDs as loss-leaders can keep doing that. The labels might reconsider any reimbursement plans that they do as a group, which is probably a good thing.
I can't imagine that the prices will go down any more than they already have, though, and I'm not expecting a check in the mail.
Sony and Philips come out with music technology that samples 64 times more than CDs, can hold almost two hours of stereo audio at that sampling rate [due to the data capacity of the physical media], can be played on players that also play CDs, can even be used as hybrid discs with CD-Audio, and this is A Bad Thing because there's actually [gasp] copyright protection on the discs?
Did you really think you're going to rip 9 GIGABYTES of music directly onto your iPod? Since you're just going to compress it down to MP3 anyway, what's the point? Yes, a more pristine source means better output files, but at this level I can't imagine any sort of noticeable difference. And for the moment it sounds like they are more worried about market penetration than people ripping the data -- ref the CD layer, which should be just as rippable as ever.
Sure, at some point they'll phase out the extra CD layer....although I can't imagine that will be soon. It's taken twenty years for CDs to become the primary method of music distribution, and vinyl is still around. But even if there are no more CDs out there, then we're back to...well, twenty years ago, making copies through the audio jacks or as directly as your stereo would allow. Slower and less digital, true, but then the source is presumably a lot better as well.
This is GOOD! There's no DRM included,no region codes, no inherent assumption that customers are criminals, and nothing [ref DAT] to stop you from making as many copies as you want. Just not digitally.
Yet.
DVDs have been out for what, five years, now? and manufacturers are already flaunting region-free players. How long do you really think this copy-protection method will last past the point that customers find it annoying?
And all of this is assuming that the format does well enough to put CDs permanently out to pasture before the patents on *this* technology expire. Heck, I'm just starting to get used to CDs, myself.
Casino Royale is also one of Ian Fleming's 007 books, and the movie is fairly faithful to it -- at least as faithful as "serious" Bond films like Live and Let Die or The Man With the Golden Gun.
(Which is to say, it uses the main plot of the book as a jumping-off point, and one of several sub-plots -- basically the Peter Sellers plot, involving baccarat and Orson Welles.)
Austin Powers parodies Casino Royale in the casino scene, but not much more than there, and no more than any other Bond flick. What similarities exist (e.g. casino face-offs, murder attempts, underground lairs and commando raids of same) are due to the formula used for Bond movies, which both parodies took advantage of.
Did someone at Universal not notice that CD sales have been declining? I didn't do that well in my Econ classes, but I have a vague recollection that reducing the attractiveness of a product -- say, by making it more complex to use, requiring convoluted legal agreements, or removing functionality -- tends to reduce sales.
I've seen the lights go out on Broadway
I saw the ruins at my feet
You know we almost didn't notice it
We'd seen it all the time on Forty second street
(Been listening to it this week -- has a fine, defiant tone.)
TSG
There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against
powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us.
We know only that it is always born in pain. -- J. Michael Stracynzki
Not to speak for all the American people, but I am certainly patient enough to wait for the right people to be found. One reason for that is because I -- and perhaps that large proportion of the American people -- realize that this isn't going to be the sort of situation where we rush in, take over, bomb the place to bits, and leave. I expect this to be a real war, not the type that has previously been declared against Drugs, Communists, Poverty and Drugs. And it won't be over soon.
When Kuwait was invaded, it took 100 hours of ground war... but that was after six weeks of air strikes, which followed six months of preparation -- logistic, strategic, diplomatic. And we all knew exactly who the Bad Guys were, where to go and (in broad strokes) what would need to be done. I expect that it will take at least that long here just to prepare, and that the fighting will be much longer, as well.
TSG
There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against
powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us.
We know only that it is always born in pain. -- J. Michael Stracynzki
I really don't see how they are any different from all these other channels. Nobody has anything new, really. The most significant news was essentially over by noon on Tuesday.
Since then, there have been some heartbreaking personal stories, a few government actions, and an ongoing but mostly under-wraps investigation. The stations can either end their twenty-four-hour news feeds -- and no other networks have, AFAIK -- or repeat the same things over and over.
I'd prefer that they did the former, but understand why they do not. In any case, I just turn the TV on once or twice a day, see if there's anything new, then turn it off.
TSG
There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against
powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us.
We know only that it is always born in pain. -- J. Michael Stracynzki
What if it is that privacy -- the freedoms that we have -- that will prevent this in the future?
I have a theory -- a rough, unpolished one -- that the risk of terrorism is inversely proportional to the freedom a people possess. Unoppressed people have no need to attack others. Free people under the rule of law respect their lives and the lives of others.
(Yesterday's events have shaken this theory a bit, but only a bit. I believe that the plan succeeded as it did only because no passengers on the planes guessed what their final destination would be. There is a rumor that the Pennsylvania crash occurred where it did because some passengers did make assumptions about their chances, and prevented the plane from going farther. I predict that future hijacking attempts -- for any reason -- will fail because everyone would believe that a successful hijacking implies the death of all aboard.)
Allow others control over your privacy, and you give them power over you -- and over others that may not be so accepting of that position they hold. If freedom of speech is muzzled, someone may decide that there are other ways to get a message out. The more often a police officer is able to pull someone over and initiate a search, the sooner someone will decide that the government/police/people is a problem.
The more power that is handed over, the more likely it is that someone will be annoyed/disturbed/angry enough to take action. This may be the most practical reason to be truly cautious when considering losing any part of your freedom.
The good news is, I've seen two articles so far that say the problem has been over-reliance on high-technology snooping (One at National Review and one at Salon, so it appears to be a bi-partisan effort.:)) The suggested solution is more human intelligence instead -- i.e. people to infilitrate, or at least get closer to the folks who would perpetrate such attacks.
The problem is, it's more expensive -- harder to recruit, harder to train, harder to support the folks who are out in the cold. On the other hand, it's harder to spoof as well, and it's less intrusive on our liberties. (Not to mention that it has a better chance of success than outlawing encryption...)
It does mean you have to trust the CIA and FBI more, though, not to abuse their additional power.
Twelve years ago, people expected that nuclear fire was going to rain down from the sky any second. We knew that, if that happened, it would mean death to the human race, not just the personal, individual sort of death that we all must expect anyway. It had been that way for decades, with the fear sometimes more, sometimes less.
"Our way of life" got along pretty well, though.
There will be changes, I expect -- some good, some bad. We can each try to be a force that struggles for improvement in What Happens Next. Decide what you want the future to be, and work towards it.
Please note that Threatcon Charlie is an indicator of expected terrorist activity, not military alert. Just working from memory here, but it indicates a significant threat of terrorist attack. Threatcon Delta is higher and suggests that an attack is imminent.
...does not apply to the offer for sale or provision of, or other trafficking in, any previously-owned interactive digital device...
Perhaps the way to break this is to bend it the wrong way: Try to change this so there is an outcry.
Like, sending letters to legislators decrying the use of these existing machines and demanding that any law of this sort has to eliminate the danger they pose to content producers. The law should require any owners of pre-existing devices to a) register with the government or b) submit their devices to the local FBI for destruction. (No taking, though: the user gets a market-value payment. Since existing devices are illegal, though, they have no significant market value...) Think they'd fall for it? What if we made some minor contributions at the same time?
Risky, but tempting. The joys of armchair legislating...
Slashdot Mirror
The percentage of lifeboat space to passengers was actually about 50%, and they could have saved more if they'd overloaded them a bit. Even that amount was fully within the laws of the time and might have been a slight excess. The problem was that the laws were decades old and didn't consider the possibility of a ship as large as Titanic or her sisters.
(It didn't help that a planned lifeboat drill was cancelled, which might have been one reason they were sent out underloaded. And a couple of the available lifeboats (the collapsibles) went basically unused.)
Although your point is still correct. Titanic expert Walter Lord made the same point some years back, comparing the mistakes made on Titanic to Challenger's demise.
TSG
Who spent too much time doing QA on a Titanic educational disc once upon a time...
- If real-time data is going to the executive, and he's making changes based on it, then it's going the long way around. Send it right to the people making the changes.
- If the people making the changes are not able to do so independently based on said real-time data, you have a different problem to fix.
- Combinations of "Real time" and "Strategy" are inherently oxymoronic in any endeavor but sports and computer games. Strategy is supposed to reflect a long-term goal. You might change your tactics, but you don't want to change your strategy based on real-time data.*
- The larger truth in this is not specific to real-time data: You want as many people as possible to know as much as they can use about their current situation.
I would hope that is the real Future of Business Intelligence.TSG
*If anyone cares to dispute, please give examples of a successful change in a) strategy, not tactics based on b)real-time data, not finished intelligence, in any other arena.
First, you have to make sure that your core data is good. The most useful way to organize it on the front end might not instantly show the best way for the CEO to see it on the back end. That means you have to translate that data (lists of order numbers, ordered products, persons ordering) into what the executive cares about (number of orders, products sold, money collected).
Whoops -- you have to find out what the executive cares about, don't you? And it might not be as simple as what he says he cares about. Are there any orders he doesn't want included -- samples, say? If some products are bundled, do we include the combined products as units, or unbundled? Is "money collected" just the cash we now have in the bank, or is it money we have been promised, or the expected revenue from what has been sold? Hopefully, the executive will find time to define his requirements this precisely.
Then you have to set up the system that can get your data from Point A to Point B. Easy if you are really certain what you are trying to answer. Not, if not.
Once that's done, then you can consider setting up a "dashboard" -- assuming you're sure that you can define the business precisely enough, and won't miss an important metric along the way, and the business won't change -- hasn't changed -- in the meantime.
I'm sure there are products that will make this process easier, but it's significant work for everyone involved. Although some of it could be automated, it will still require that the people setting it up actually THINK about what they are doing.
TSG
And maybe Steve will release all those Joe Jackson albums that are currently languishing in the vaults there.
TSG
What a coincidence: We haven't had any in the United States, either.
There are all sorts of problems I had with the vote in 2000, from the tactics of both Democrats and Republicans to the Supreme Court's decision. But looking back at it, it's pretty obvious that the Supreme Court didn't change the outcome one bit.
The timeline was something like this:
(For brevity, I'll just say Bush and Gore, for which you can read "Bush's people" and "Gore's minions" or any other grouping that you wish.)
- The initial count is done, Bush is ahead by a miniscule margin.
- A recount is automatically initiated. Gore gains a number of votes, but is still behind.
- Gore requests hand recounts in a number of districts -- largely democratic ones, of course.
- A number of different legal maneuvers are made, to stop or continue those recounts -- e.g. Bush sues in federal court to have them stopped, Gore sues in Florida's state court to continue.
- After going back and forth between Bush, Gore, the Florida courts, and the Florida politicians for over a month, the Supreme Court steps into the fray.
- The Supreme Court rules that, given the time that has passed, it's too late to set up a fair and unbiased counting system, so the votes as counted stand.
There were all sorts of problems with their ruling -- especially since it's up to Congress to decide If there is uncertainty or irregularities in electoral voting -- but it made absolutely no difference in the outcome.Absolutely no difference.
Examination of all the Florida ballots showed that if the Supreme Court had ruled for Gore, he would still have lost. The votes he wanted re-counted didn't add enough to his column to give him the state. The only way it would have mattered was if he had requested a statewide recount that included all undercounts AND overcounts.
I think that IF every vote had been counted properly -- if every person's vote was clear, readable, and recorded -- Gore would have won. I would have preferred that the Rehnquist Court hadn't sullied their good name with a decision that made them look partisan and opportunistic. And I really would have liked a scenario that allowed both Bush and Gore to lose. But if you think that Bush was only elected due to the whims of the Supremes, you should take another look at What Really Happened.
TSG
The reason it was an issue was because some of the tiles hadn't held when it was first launched.
Among the first televised views from Columbia in space was looking across the cargo bay, towards the tail. A couple of the tiles on the tail were obviously missing -- so obvious that the newscasters noticed it almost immediately.
Over the next couple of days, the tiles were inspected by ground telescopes and other "assets". It landed a couple of days later, with no significant problems that I can remember.
I played hooky and went to Edwards AFB with some friends to watch it land that first time. We had heard that it would probably cause some sonic booms. As it was approaching, one of my friends asked "What's a sonic boom sound like?"
A second later: BOOM, then BOOM.
It was a good day, that day.
TSG
The office party was last Thursday, at a blues club big enough to hold everyone, a buffet dinner and open bar -- well, open enough to get beers and well drinks free. Two bands played: A blues band during dinner, a funk band for dancing later.
It was a good time. But...
Things have been so rough over the last couple of years that everyone seemed *too* thankful for what we had that night. It seemed downright solemn, as everyone concentrated on eating their ribs and not acting as if they "deserved" this bit of ostentation. Backlash, I suppose, from the New Economy years, when these sort of shindigs were expected. But then, that's when everyone was jumping ship for startups and we had to be bribed and cajoled into staying.
A large proportion of people left soon afterwards, as well. It was impossible to find a seat when I arrived, but the place was halfway to empty when the dance band started. A bathroom attendent was heard commenting about how we sure weren't treating the night like a Christmas party.
Then again, there were a lot of young single people working there back then. Now it's filled with older, married parents. Mostly the same folks.... I guess a lot changes over just a few years.
TSG
Richard Hatch is also, of course, well known to everyone in America as the original Sole Survivor.
And it is reasonably well known that they aren't the same person. So, who wins that fight? The guy who had a starring role in a short-lived, well-known television show, or the one who had a short-lived role as the star in a well-known television show?*
I don't doubt that Bill Wyman's lawyers have a reasonable concern here, but it sure seems to get ugly fast. Personally, I think Atlanta's Bill Wyman should do what he can to waste the other Bill Wyman's money:
- Agree to give up the name for a sum of money, then spend years negotiating for a reasonable amount
- Start signing his column as Mick Jagger.
- Legally change his name to be the same as the lawyers.
- Send over an agreement that says he won't play bass as long as the other guy doesn't write about music.
- Agree to include a disclaimer, then ask for approval on each one, then ask for approval on minor changes, then make major changes and start the process over...
- And generally send back letters that lead the lawyers on wild goose chases. How many high-priced billable hours would it take to bankrupt The Other Guy?
Although I suppose his employer will decide it's easiest just to add a disclaimer. Sigh.TSG
*At least in the Internet Movie Data Base there is a "I" and a "II" so that you can tell the Dicks apart.
I think that they wanted to look at the two halves of his argument separately, while he kept referring to one as supporting the other. I think they wanted to see if either of them supported the claim individually, and I'd guess they were more interested in looking at the First Amendment issue. (As I understand it, going to the First Amendment for copyright issues isn't normally supported. They might have been looking for an easy out on that side...)
Further, based on their questions to Olson, they may have been so in favor of the Section 8 limitation argument that they didn't see the need to go any more down that path. (They gave him a *lot* of opportunities to describe the effective limits of the Copyright Clause, and he kept coming back to "Well, that's up to Congress." They didn't seem to like that answer, much.) Which, if true, is a good sign. And might mean that their questioning of Lessig was an attempt to see what help the First Amendment might give them.
It is a tricky problem for them: They don't like to overrule Congress, but also don't let Congress run wild with its own interpretation of the Constitution. Maybe we'll get lucky.
TSG
(Granted, the Paramount decision could mean that this level of cooperation would be illegal anyway. I think, though, the courts would accept reasonable cooperation in safeguarding property being sold.)
As for your second point: Making copies of a copyrighted film, with intent to distribute or make available for distribution, could easily lead to losing the job that gives access to said film. Why risk it, unless the potential reward was significant compared to the job? The lower the pay, the less significant the risk, the more likely the attempt.
TSG
The movie studios are charging the theaters so much for the films that their only profits come from concessions.
With such a thin revenue stream, the theaters have to cut costs wherever they can.
Because the only way to get people in is to keep the theater itself state of the art, the money must come out of personnel.
The personnel that are there probably get paid minimum wage, because hey, they don't have to do much, do they?
Low wages means that there are at least a couple of people out there willing to risk making a copy of the film -- say, from the projection booth late at night. (That's the only way to make a really good-quality pirate copy, isn't it?)
So, by trying to squeeze every penny out of the movie theaters, the studios have made widespread copying of theatrical releases worthwhile at the weakest links in their value chain. And it's quite possible that this is going to destroy their entire industry.
O, the irony.
Sometimes, you just can't get around economics and human nature.
TSG
(Unless you were talking about "Down and Out in Beverly Hills" which has some interesting similarities to Mary Poppins -- outsider drops in, teaches the family how to get along together, gets them involved with social undesirables, shows them the shallowness of their existence...)
Similarly with Peter Pan, which actually has a perpetual copyright in England. (Issued in part because the royalties all go to a children's hospital.)
Tarzan sounds right -- note that all the Tarzan copyright notices say (c) Disney/Burroughs.
Not sure about Robin Hood, though -- traditional story, I thought, never copyrighted AFAIK.
But in general I certainly agree.
TSG
A frequently articulated belief about price fixing in the music industry is "They brought out CDs for twice as much as records when the technology was new, and haven't lowered the prices yet." Which is true enough for me.
(Coincidentally, I heard on the radio today that it's the 20th birthday of the Compact Disc format. Rah.)
That's not what this was about. This was a narrow situation involving industry reimbursement for advertising with respect to CDs sold for less than a particular price. The sole punishment for disregarding this price: No reimbursement. The wholesale price -- i.e. the money the labels got -- was the same either way.
Legally, was it price fixing? IANAL, so I dunno.
Is it a little suspicious that the wholesale price was the same? Sure -- assuming that's what was happening. (That seems a bit ambiguous, actually.)
Did this practice keep the price higher than if it hadn't been done? Probably.
Was it significant? Probably not. Intuitively, it sure doesn't sound like a big deal, and the small judgement seems to confirm how small the perceived effect was.
Will it matter? Not much: The big chains that were selling CDs as loss-leaders can keep doing that. The labels might reconsider any reimbursement plans that they do as a group, which is probably a good thing.
I can't imagine that the prices will go down any more than they already have, though, and I'm not expecting a check in the mail.
TSG
Sony and Philips come out with music technology that samples 64 times more than CDs, can hold almost two hours of stereo audio at that sampling rate [due to the data capacity of the physical media], can be played on players that also play CDs, can even be used as hybrid discs with CD-Audio, and this is A Bad Thing because there's actually [gasp] copyright protection on the discs?
Did you really think you're going to rip 9 GIGABYTES of music directly onto your iPod? Since you're just going to compress it down to MP3 anyway, what's the point? Yes, a more pristine source means better output files, but at this level I can't imagine any sort of noticeable difference. And for the moment it sounds like they are more worried about market penetration than people ripping the data -- ref the CD layer, which should be just as rippable as ever.
Sure, at some point they'll phase out the extra CD layer....although I can't imagine that will be soon. It's taken twenty years for CDs to become the primary method of music distribution, and vinyl is still around. But even if there are no more CDs out there, then we're back to...well, twenty years ago, making copies through the audio jacks or as directly as your stereo would allow. Slower and less digital, true, but then the source is presumably a lot better as well.
This is GOOD! There's no DRM included,no region codes, no inherent assumption that customers are criminals, and nothing [ref DAT] to stop you from making as many copies as you want. Just not digitally.
Yet.
DVDs have been out for what, five years, now? and manufacturers are already flaunting region-free players. How long do you really think this copy-protection method will last past the point that customers find it annoying?
And all of this is assuming that the format does well enough to put CDs permanently out to pasture before the patents on *this* technology expire. Heck, I'm just starting to get used to CDs, myself.
IMHO, it's not worth worrying about.
TSG
TSG
(Which is to say, it uses the main plot of the book as a jumping-off point, and one of several sub-plots -- basically the Peter Sellers plot, involving baccarat and Orson Welles.)
Austin Powers parodies Casino Royale in the casino scene, but not much more than there, and no more than any other Bond flick. What similarities exist (e.g. casino face-offs, murder attempts, underground lairs and commando raids of same) are due to the formula used for Bond movies, which both parodies took advantage of.
TSG
Perhaps this is a contrarian sales strategy?
TSG
I've seen the lights go out on Broadway
I saw the ruins at my feet
You know we almost didn't notice it
We'd seen it all the time on Forty second street
(Been listening to it this week -- has a fine, defiant tone.)
TSG
There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain. -- J. Michael Stracynzki
When Kuwait was invaded, it took 100 hours of ground war... but that was after six weeks of air strikes, which followed six months of preparation -- logistic, strategic, diplomatic. And we all knew exactly who the Bad Guys were, where to go and (in broad strokes) what would need to be done. I expect that it will take at least that long here just to prepare, and that the fighting will be much longer, as well.
TSG
There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain. -- J. Michael Stracynzki
Since then, there have been some heartbreaking personal stories, a few government actions, and an ongoing but mostly under-wraps investigation. The stations can either end their twenty-four-hour news feeds -- and no other networks have, AFAIK -- or repeat the same things over and over.
I'd prefer that they did the former, but understand why they do not. In any case, I just turn the TV on once or twice a day, see if there's anything new, then turn it off.
TSG
There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain. -- J. Michael Stracynzki
I have a theory -- a rough, unpolished one -- that the risk of terrorism is inversely proportional to the freedom a people possess. Unoppressed people have no need to attack others. Free people under the rule of law respect their lives and the lives of others.
(Yesterday's events have shaken this theory a bit, but only a bit. I believe that the plan succeeded as it did only because no passengers on the planes guessed what their final destination would be. There is a rumor that the Pennsylvania crash occurred where it did because some passengers did make assumptions about their chances, and prevented the plane from going farther. I predict that future hijacking attempts -- for any reason -- will fail because everyone would believe that a successful hijacking implies the death of all aboard.)
Allow others control over your privacy, and you give them power over you -- and over others that may not be so accepting of that position they hold. If freedom of speech is muzzled, someone may decide that there are other ways to get a message out. The more often a police officer is able to pull someone over and initiate a search, the sooner someone will decide that the government/police/people is a problem.
The more power that is handed over, the more likely it is that someone will be annoyed/disturbed/angry enough to take action. This may be the most practical reason to be truly cautious when considering losing any part of your freedom.
TSG
The problem is, it's more expensive -- harder to recruit, harder to train, harder to support the folks who are out in the cold. On the other hand, it's harder to spoof as well, and it's less intrusive on our liberties. (Not to mention that it has a better chance of success than outlawing encryption...)
It does mean you have to trust the CIA and FBI more, though, not to abuse their additional power.
TSG
"Our way of life" got along pretty well, though.
There will be changes, I expect -- some good, some bad. We can each try to be a force that struggles for improvement in What Happens Next. Decide what you want the future to be, and work towards it.
TSG
TSG
Perhaps the way to break this is to bend it the wrong way: Try to change this so there is an outcry.
Like, sending letters to legislators decrying the use of these existing machines and demanding that any law of this sort has to eliminate the danger they pose to content producers. The law should require any owners of pre-existing devices to a) register with the government or b) submit their devices to the local FBI for destruction. (No taking, though: the user gets a market-value payment. Since existing devices are illegal, though, they have no significant market value...) Think they'd fall for it? What if we made some minor contributions at the same time?
Risky, but tempting. The joys of armchair legislating...
TSG