OK, so I'm probably missing some major point here, but, define "expensive" for making lasers, given that there is a laser in every cheap £20 CD player, cheap £30 DVD player, cheap £5 laser pointer... Can't be that expensive, surely?
Keep in mind they say may be in use in about ten years which means you could have some major upheavals in technology in the interim and lots of lasers would be in demand on one board or card.
And they are just over the horizon with their Atomic Pistols!
One of the beautiful things about my satellite radio is getting a bunch of old radio shows (when they aren't runing some college hoop games) which include radio plays 'X Minus 1', which were based upon many short stories in 40's and 50's sci-fi magazines. Some of it's kinda shallow, but others can be quite cool.
Now plans for using the Genesis Device on Mars are out... unless this is just a particle of preanimate matter caught in the matrix."
Cor.
Don't assume for a moment that we won't colonize and terraform Mars. It may take 100 years and start with little research outposts like those on Antarctica, but soon enough it'll all be plowed up and paved over and we'll bring all the plagues of earth, litter included.
I suppose there will be an environmentalist coalition of some sort and some fine parks will be set aside, i.e. Olympus Mons, but when competing national iterests pit India and China against any other comers, it'll be a race to colonize it and damn the environment and anyone who pipes up to protect it.
Its about time a good college combined two technologies that will combine to provide great results. Biotech... We needed something like this for a while...
Bio-engineering and Computer Technology?
"nice prototype, what do you call it?"
"T1000, it's capable lifting heavy weights, demolition and governing California"
Adams himself wrote the screenplay. He was famous for saying that he didn't want any of the incarnations of the story to ever be the same (hence why the book is different than the radio drama, etc. and so on).
The one thing I do recall about DNA was his will to constantly fudge with the whole story. Obsessive-Compulsive? It took some serious efforts on the part of well meaning friends to actually get him to write the books and he was ever after lamenting how he'd like to go back and change this or that. A bit like George Lucas, no?
Sounds like some serious liberties have been taken with the books. Malkovich could be a cameo, but if he has more than two lines you can expect the usual hollywood treatment has occured.
Now the prices they charge for dvds cds are criminal so their markup could easily be 700-800% in which case you might be right about their specific profit margins, but you're average business would be incredibly happy with a 20% margin on a 100% markup.
Keep all that in mind the next time you shell $60 for a video game cart. Mark Turmell, back when we worked in the same puny office at a midwestern college, revealed at the dawn of video games the pricing, which is probably similar today, but with larger markets. Sneakers (an Apple ][ game) sold for $8 per copy to distributors, stores sold it ~$35 Mark's cut? ~$2.00 per copy or 25% of what Sirius Software (his publisher of the time) received.
Or it could be said that Bill just took his own advice. Depends on what he was looking to accomplish.
A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose.' Now, if only Bill were as clear-minded on the subjects of Innovation and Interoperability."
I believe Gates and Company have taken the approach of patents to protect themselves from suits from others. Has Microsoft actually sued someone over copying their technologies?
I know they've harrassed people like Mike Row (MikeRowSoft.com) but don't recall them pulling any SCO moves.
With the example our government sets, is it any surprise that consumers are "taxing" the RIAA?
More likely you pay sales tax on any legit DVD and if your state govt wants more moolah they'll figure some Home Entertainment tax and slap it on your DVDs.
That must be a pretty nice business you're owning there buddy.
I knew a fellow programmer at an auto parts warehouse/distributor. ~100% mark-up was their practice. If I needed anything he could get at their cost I'd save a bundle.
I am hardly a tin foil hat wearing type but, the problem with this is that like every other means to create databases that track/document individuals or groups, they will eventually end up being mined for data that will likely violate your right to privacy. Just remember, Bush is pushing for the Patriot Act again and databases like this will simply be folded into devices like the Patriot Act.
Just dive around where there are plenty of dense redwood forests, canyons and tunnels. GPS do rather poorly in those areas. Considering how many people around where I live spend 90% of their lives deep in non-GPS friendly terrain (Boulder Creek, CA; Felton, and so on), under equal protection (or oppression) under the law would mean these people would need to be followed, too, at what would amount to great expense. I'm sure the brains behind ideas like this live in the wide open of LA and Sacto.
As an aside: gawd, I hate their use of "patriot" that way, does anybody know the etymology of the word "patriot" with respect to this legislation?
I wince everytime I hear President Bush use the word 'Freedom' I feel his administrations machinations have left a taint on the word it hardly deserves. But you can go back decades and find in the darkest hours of civil liberties others having spoken similarly. Joe McCarthy was only looking out for America's best interests...
I'm not sure what points you're trying to make, other than to associate DVD pirates with spammers. There's I'd say there's less than.03% people on the internet are spammers- and what's that got to do with 3% owners of DVD copy programs? I'd say you missed the analogy completely!
100% of us have to pay for the antics of a few. What about that was so hard to see?
So, what you are saying is that: IE has better error handeling than Firefox?
No, actually, I'm not. I was using an early version of Mozilla at the time. I didn't care for the response of, 'change your browser because i'm too lazy to fix my pages'
What kind of royalties do you have to pay for a CSS license? And how much will Macrovision charge for licensing?
That's actually part of your expenses. I don't want to get into accounting here, but producing anything has fixed and variable costs which go into the expense columns, profit is what's left of gross after subtracting expenses. That's why that 4% should be magnified.
I'm not attempting to justify their numbers (which could have just been pulled out of their a55 like the RIAA often does) just to shed light on the figures.
Right. Because when someone buys a DVD, it's 100% profit for industry. There's absolutely no production or shipping costs on the part of the producer, because DVDs and their packages grow on magic trees in candyland, and are delivered to Best Buy by the volunteer video fairy
I worked in the logistics industry several years ago and it really got me thinking about the costs of packaging and distribution. Granted, per 1,000 of DVD's it probably wasn't much, but when you broke them out 5 to this store, 5 to that, etc. you had to pay the hands that did the work. Packaging, too as you allude, isn't free, though it's probably less than 50 cents per DVD.
The producer needs to make a profit, the distributor needs to make a profit and the store needs to make a profit. All that considered, I'm moderately impressed that I can pick up some movies on DVD for $10. Which is a bit less than a matinee ticket, bucket of popcorn and a medium Cherry Coke.
So the 3% that survive will propogate the rest of the Internet. Or more likely the 3% that survive will propogate it's technology to the 97% of those that didn't. It's like antibiotics and resistant bacteria, the game continues.
Interesting analogy. You could also argue that less than 3% of the people on the internet are spammers, but we do tend to notice them, don't we?
3 people our of 100 ripping discs is probably more than adequate to distribute a large number, depending upon how they're set up. Some guy in Chicago, several months back, was basically running a factory in his house. Of course, he's an exceptional case, but he makes up for some volume, displacing those who do very little.
Probably they're largest concern is the professionals who rip and burn and sell at flea markets, etc.
The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the good folks at Macrovision
have unveiled a new system that will thwart 97% of existing DVD copying
software while maintaining compatibility with existing DVD players.
Suuurrre.. Then come the artifacts, the quirky behavior, then you have to shell
for a new DVD player to get it all sorted out, suddenly your old DVDs are now flaky so
you have to keep 2 DVD players... Sigh. If only there were a way to copy them all to one
format so you wouldn't have these problems...
Macrovision claims that DVD copying results in $1 billion loss for studios out
of $27.5 billion in sales. With piracy resulting in only 4% loss, why are the studios
making such a big deal?
Obviously not posted by a business owner of any sort. 4% loss may sound paltry, but if you
choose to look at that 4% as being taken out of your net profit it'll look considerable larger,
i.e. 4% out of $27B - expenses, assume a profit margin of 50%, and it's 8% Would you be happy buying
a 12-pack at the corner store, but having to sacrifice one can/bottle to some guy at the exit door for no
apparent reason?
The article also reports (mistakenly) that the market is pressing 100s
of billions of DVD annually. Who's buying all those DVDs?"
Maybe they accidently included the AOL CDs.
I'm skeptical of their claims,
since historically Macrovision's anti-copying measures have been little more than easily
circumvented snake oil, but maybe this time they've got their plan down.
Hey, it's a consumer driven economy, gotta come up with some new angle that everyone's going to give you
4% of for no apparent reason...
It's called "Handling Broken Slashcode Technology(tm)". I hope it's patented.
I had a major beef with some auction tool people used on eBay for a while, which left off closing tags and broke tables, etc. Granted I make a typo myself now and then by leaving the / off my closing tag and an entire post is in italics, but it's still readable.
I noticed IE was somehow able to resolve the ebay posting breaks, possibly by recognizing an end to a section and realizing some things needed to be resolved and filled them in as best it could.
Of course the dork sellers would say something like, "looks ok to me in my browser", to which I'd reply, "sure, but it doesn't work for other browsers. are you willing to forfeit sales because of this?"
The answer Microsoft would be proud of: "you should stop using your browser and use IE"
TOKYO - UBS Downtown Tokyo was rocked today as a massive bomb packed inside an XBox 2 blowing rival Sony away. Dozens were injured in the blast and taken to nearby hospitals. Steve Balmer of Microsoft, Inc. was being sought by police for questioning after his statement that, "they will 'blow by Sony' with their next console."
If Philadelphia suceeds you can count on the following:
People winging about how poor the service is.
Talkshow hosts berating the government for more give-aways of taxpayer dollars (sponsored by some telco)
Saturation and further complaints (my taxdollars pay for, won't stand for it, etc)
Ultimately it'll actually be pretty good service.
Why is this a good idea anyway? Look at the stranglehold Cable TV has on communities. (oh, sure you can go satellite, but
it's still not price competitive because they're pricing to compete with near monopolies) If municipalities insisted cable
could be laid under the condition a cable company will sell, at a reasonable price, bandwidth on their cable to competitors, would
we be paying such huge prices?
Slashdot Mirror
Keep in mind they say may be in use in about ten years which means you could have some major upheavals in technology in the interim and lots of lasers would be in demand on one board or card.
One of the beautiful things about my satellite radio is getting a bunch of old radio shows (when they aren't runing some college hoop games) which include radio plays 'X Minus 1', which were based upon many short stories in 40's and 50's sci-fi magazines. Some of it's kinda shallow, but others can be quite cool.
Cor.
Don't assume for a moment that we won't colonize and terraform Mars. It may take 100 years and start with little research outposts like those on Antarctica, but soon enough it'll all be plowed up and paved over and we'll bring all the plagues of earth, litter included.
I suppose there will be an environmentalist coalition of some sort and some fine parks will be set aside, i.e. Olympus Mons, but when competing national iterests pit India and China against any other comers, it'll be a race to colonize it and damn the environment and anyone who pipes up to protect it.
Sort of an Uma Thurmanator.
Open Sores technology?
Bio-engineering and Computer Technology?
"nice prototype, what do you call it?"
"T1000, it's capable lifting heavy weights, demolition and governing California"
Simon Bar Sinister? Perhaps Mitt Romney will dash into a nearby alley and turn into Underdog to, uh, preserve the Polly Purebreads of the world.
or is that pollyanna
The one thing I do recall about DNA was his will to constantly fudge with the whole story. Obsessive-Compulsive? It took some serious efforts on the part of well meaning friends to actually get him to write the books and he was ever after lamenting how he'd like to go back and change this or that. A bit like George Lucas, no?
"in the bridge scene Marvin will shoot first"
Sounds like some serious liberties have been taken with the books. Malkovich could be a cameo, but if he has more than two lines you can expect the usual hollywood treatment has occured.
Keep all that in mind the next time you shell $60 for a video game cart. Mark Turmell, back when we worked in the same puny office at a midwestern college, revealed at the dawn of video games the pricing, which is probably similar today, but with larger markets. Sneakers (an Apple ][ game) sold for $8 per copy to distributors, stores sold it ~$35 Mark's cut? ~$2.00 per copy or 25% of what Sirius Software (his publisher of the time) received.
I believe Gates and Company have taken the approach of patents to protect themselves from suits from others. Has Microsoft actually sued someone over copying their technologies?
I know they've harrassed people like Mike Row (MikeRowSoft.com) but don't recall them pulling any SCO moves.
More likely you pay sales tax on any legit DVD and if your state govt wants more moolah they'll figure some Home Entertainment tax and slap it on your DVDs.
That must be a pretty nice business you're owning there buddy.
I knew a fellow programmer at an auto parts warehouse/distributor. ~100% mark-up was their practice. If I needed anything he could get at their cost I'd save a bundle.
It means you can afford 4% less of them. If I were you I'd get the MPAA all over your employers case as they're interfering with DVD profits!
Just dive around where there are plenty of dense redwood forests, canyons and tunnels. GPS do rather poorly in those areas. Considering how many people around where I live spend 90% of their lives deep in non-GPS friendly terrain (Boulder Creek, CA; Felton, and so on), under equal protection (or oppression) under the law would mean these people would need to be followed, too, at what would amount to great expense. I'm sure the brains behind ideas like this live in the wide open of LA and Sacto.
As an aside: gawd, I hate their use of "patriot" that way, does anybody know the etymology of the word "patriot" with respect to this legislation?
I wince everytime I hear President Bush use the word 'Freedom' I feel his administrations machinations have left a taint on the word it hardly deserves. But you can go back decades and find in the darkest hours of civil liberties others having spoken similarly. Joe McCarthy was only looking out for America's best interests...
100% of us have to pay for the antics of a few. What about that was so hard to see?
No, actually, I'm not. I was using an early version of Mozilla at the time. I didn't care for the response of, 'change your browser because i'm too lazy to fix my pages'
That's actually part of your expenses. I don't want to get into accounting here, but producing anything has fixed and variable costs which go into the expense columns, profit is what's left of gross after subtracting expenses. That's why that 4% should be magnified.
I'm not attempting to justify their numbers (which could have just been pulled out of their a55 like the RIAA often does) just to shed light on the figures.
I worked in the logistics industry several years ago and it really got me thinking about the costs of packaging and distribution. Granted, per 1,000 of DVD's it probably wasn't much, but when you broke them out 5 to this store, 5 to that, etc. you had to pay the hands that did the work. Packaging, too as you allude, isn't free, though it's probably less than 50 cents per DVD.
The producer needs to make a profit, the distributor needs to make a profit and the store needs to make a profit. All that considered, I'm moderately impressed that I can pick up some movies on DVD for $10. Which is a bit less than a matinee ticket, bucket of popcorn and a medium Cherry Coke.
Interesting analogy. You could also argue that less than 3% of the people on the internet are spammers, but we do tend to notice them, don't we?
3 people our of 100 ripping discs is probably more than adequate to distribute a large number, depending upon how they're set up. Some guy in Chicago, several months back, was basically running a factory in his house. Of course, he's an exceptional case, but he makes up for some volume, displacing those who do very little.
Probably they're largest concern is the professionals who rip and burn and sell at flea markets, etc.
Suuurrre.. Then come the artifacts, the quirky behavior, then you have to shell for a new DVD player to get it all sorted out, suddenly your old DVDs are now flaky so you have to keep 2 DVD players... Sigh. If only there were a way to copy them all to one format so you wouldn't have these problems...
Macrovision claims that DVD copying results in $1 billion loss for studios out of $27.5 billion in sales. With piracy resulting in only 4% loss, why are the studios making such a big deal?
Obviously not posted by a business owner of any sort. 4% loss may sound paltry, but if you choose to look at that 4% as being taken out of your net profit it'll look considerable larger, i.e. 4% out of $27B - expenses, assume a profit margin of 50%, and it's 8% Would you be happy buying a 12-pack at the corner store, but having to sacrifice one can/bottle to some guy at the exit door for no apparent reason?
The article also reports (mistakenly) that the market is pressing 100s of billions of DVD annually. Who's buying all those DVDs?"
Maybe they accidently included the AOL CDs.
I'm skeptical of their claims, since historically Macrovision's anti-copying measures have been little more than easily circumvented snake oil, but maybe this time they've got their plan down.
Hey, it's a consumer driven economy, gotta come up with some new angle that everyone's going to give you 4% of for no apparent reason...
I had a major beef with some auction tool people used on eBay for a while, which left off closing tags and broke tables, etc. Granted I make a typo myself now and then by leaving the / off my closing tag and an entire post is in italics, but it's still readable.
I noticed IE was somehow able to resolve the ebay posting breaks, possibly by recognizing an end to a section and realizing some things needed to be resolved and filled them in as best it could.
Of course the dork sellers would say something like, "looks ok to me in my browser", to which I'd reply, "sure, but it doesn't work for other browsers. are you willing to forfeit sales because of this?"
The answer Microsoft would be proud of: "you should stop using your browser and use IE"
Isn't that what's left after skipping all the commercials?
i watch 7 of 9 in 5
People winging about how poor the service is.
Talkshow hosts berating the government for more give-aways of taxpayer dollars (sponsored by some telco)
Saturation and further complaints (my taxdollars pay for, won't stand for it, etc)
Ultimately it'll actually be pretty good service.
Why is this a good idea anyway? Look at the stranglehold Cable TV has on communities. (oh, sure you can go satellite, but it's still not price competitive because they're pricing to compete with near monopolies) If municipalities insisted cable could be laid under the condition a cable company will sell, at a reasonable price, bandwidth on their cable to competitors, would we be paying such huge prices?