As a semi-serious suggestion...why don't you pursue this idea of yours a bit more. Make a few mock-ups, take them to tech people or tech shows, get a name for yourself and some financial backing.
How do you think the guys at Apple started? They had a good idea, worked at it, got some money behind them and then took off.
Well...it might not be that huge in the UK actually...
1) The new iPod costs US$499 in the US (£320) but £399 in the UK. Rip Off.
2) iMusic tracks will be priced at 99p per track, not the 65p or so that they should be (99c). Rip Off.
3) People who buy this stuff have internet connections and know the UK is one big fat rip-off, and will have a big problem paying over the odds for exactly the same item.
You sound like you know what you're talking about so this is probably old news to you, but you know that only 25% of schizophrenics have a relapsing-remitting chronic illness....the rest are either curable (25% only have a few acute episodes) or the 10% who go on to kill themselves....
The statistics don't back you up. Schizophrenics and other mentally ill people account for fewer than 1% of murders, and when successfully treated, are just as likely to kill again as you or I. So why should they be imprisoned because they were ill when they committed a crime?
It's kinda like putting everyone with a broken arm in jail, and not releasing them when they get better - mental illness is an illness like any other, once cured you're back to normal and should be treated like any other normal person.
Well, I hear of this CRAZY idea that they use in some parts of the real (non-computer) world that people call 'stamps'! And you have to pay to put one of these on any piece of mail that you want to send to somebody else.
Now if we could just do EXACTLY THE SAME with e-mail, I think we'd enter a crazy new spam-free era! What a new and kooky idea! Stamps!
Seriously, why do we need some complicated trust-checking initiative and process that will hardly be taken up by anyone, when we can just directly transfer something that exists in the real world to an information-age process?
let me clear this up right here and now. I have lived in asia for the past 17 years of my life (though not in China)
YES, LoTR part 2 is available where I live...2 months before the release date.
And YES, Harry Potter 1 and 2 were both available months before their respective release dates, both on DVD.
Those are both facts.
Now let's get into the discussion...
Just because it comes on a DVD DOES NOT MEAN that it is DVD quality. When I go shopping for my $3 pirate DVDs, they come in 2 types at the local shops - type 5 and type 9 (referring, I think, to the number of gigabytes on each).
Now, everyone out here knows that the 9's are full DVD quality videos, and as such are only found after the original, FULL DVD has been properly and legally released. This still meant that I got to see Spiderman in DVD quality on a DVD 9 before it was released in the cinemas in the UK, because it was available as a promo DVD or whatever from the studios in the US shortly after the cinema release over there.
Now, DVD 5's are a different beast entirely. These are the DVDs that all these 'super early releases' are found on. And let me tell you - YES they are the full movie. NO, they are not worth watching. They are not even worth the $2 you can get them for at the market.
They are what we call 'cinema specials' - i.e. someone has smuggled an ultra-small handicam into a studio preview of the full movie. They are often someone unimportant, and therefore sit at the very edge of the screen, often way down in the front. So, the movies they record are at a skewed angle at best; the sound is in bad, peaking mono; and you can hear people talking all around you, often louder than the shit quality of the film sound they're recording.
At the end of a 'cinema special', you can watch the people from the rows in front of the person with the camera stand up to leave, and sometimes hear something from one of the studio people about how this is an early release copy and may not be the same as the one released to the cinemas in 2 months time.
So NO they are not lying when they say these early versions exist. NO they are not worth watching. They ruin your enjoyment of the proper film, presented in fullscreen glory, with proper sound and picture quality.
I can't believe some sheltered american who jumped to the conclusion 'I can't find it at wal-mart, so it mustn't exist and the studio must be lying' got moderated +5, insightful.
I do agree Peter F Hamilton ranks up there as one of the great technology creators of our time (like Jules Verne in his day, and Clarke in his). But his recent books (Nights Dawn, Fallen Dragon) all have one fatal flaw: The ending.
Hamilton favours the 'Deus Ex Machina' ending, where everything is INSTANTLY SOLVED by some great hulking piece of superadvanced technology. No great, well devised plot twist to dot the i's and cross the t's. No wonderful character summaries that leave you questioning. Just a big 'Abracadabra' and Shazam! It's all better. All fixed.
A lot like Crichton (I mean, just blow up the island to get rid of the dinosaurs, or just 'think away' the mental powers of sphere, or even just 'mutate away' the superdeadly thing of the andromeda strain? How shit.) in his work.
Well, we can hope for better things in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
Fossil evidence shows life emerging 400 million years ago.
*BEEP* Wrong!
Try more like 2.5 to 3 *billion* years ago.
http://www.wmnh.com/wmel0000.htm
And that's just the first thing that turned up under Google.
-Nano.
As a semi-serious suggestion...why don't you pursue this idea of yours a bit more. Make a few mock-ups, take them to tech people or tech shows, get a name for yourself and some financial backing.
How do you think the guys at Apple started? They had a good idea, worked at it, got some money behind them and then took off.
Do it.
-Nano.
I hear also that IBM had a great relationship with Nazi Germany.
http://news.com.com/2009-1082-269157.html
-Nano.
Could iPods be used as 'portable storage' for firewire-enabled hand held video recorders? I could sure use 30Gb of storage space clipped to my belt.
-Nano.
Well...it might not be that huge in the UK actually...
1) The new iPod costs US$499 in the US (£320) but £399 in the UK. Rip Off.
2) iMusic tracks will be priced at 99p per track, not the 65p or so that they should be (99c). Rip Off.
3) People who buy this stuff have internet connections and know the UK is one big fat rip-off, and will have a big problem paying over the odds for exactly the same item.
-Nano.
Amusingly...the ISPs could refuse to hold unencrypted logs, and ONLY hold encrypted ones.
Then 'lose' the keys.
Then for the RIAA to break the code would be against the DMCA, and they'd fuck themselves right in their collective asses.
Would be amusing...unlikely, but amusing.
-Nano.
You sound like you know what you're talking about so this is probably old news to you, but you know that only 25% of schizophrenics have a relapsing-remitting chronic illness....the rest are either curable (25% only have a few acute episodes) or the 10% who go on to kill themselves....
-Nano.
You're just plain wrong.
The statistics don't back you up. Schizophrenics and other mentally ill people account for fewer than 1% of murders, and when successfully treated, are just as likely to kill again as you or I. So why should they be imprisoned because they were ill when they committed a crime?
It's kinda like putting everyone with a broken arm in jail, and not releasing them when they get better - mental illness is an illness like any other, once cured you're back to normal and should be treated like any other normal person.
-Nano.
Except the UK.
No photo-IDs here.
Come join us.
-Nano.
Do you happen to be tall, attractive, white, upper middle-classed and born in the country in which you live?
How odd...these are the exact same people the police never seem to bother in any country...I wonder why?
Now imagine if you weren't...would you see compulsory ID cards in the same way?
-Nano.
And here I was hoping there was intelligence across the Atlantic...
-Nano.
CmdrTaco uses a *modem* to *dial up* for his email?
Get with the times d00d! Broadband it, man.
-Nano.
Rising fuel prices in the US? Don't make me laugh.
Try paying US$5 per gallon like we do in Europe, then you'll know what high fuel prices are like.
-Nano.
My big fat hairy american ass.
-Nano.
And they killed farscape to bring us this crap?
-Nano.
Right, so that's now two of my favourite shows taking a nosedive.
Samn TV is gonna suck for the next few years.
Buffy and Farscape. Perfect TV.
-Nano.
And the quistion on everyone's mind is: Just how much cocaine can you pack into one of these things?
-Nano.
black guy? Star Trek was pioneering in it's racial equality, and even featured the first interracial kiss shown on television.
-Nano.
How, in the name of Christ, does this get +2, insightful?
I think I'll just repeat what an AC posted a few stops up:
Is is a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's sarcasm flying right over your head!
-Nano.
> Remember, this guy didn't attend flight school first.
Wow.
I got the odd feeling that NOONE had attended flight school before powered flight was invented.
But then again they keep digging up these ancient Egyptian driving licenses from all these tombs...
-Nano.
ps. gullible was taken out of the dictionary today
"He did too much L-D-S in the 60's"
"Thar be whales, captain!"
I have actually seen that film 13 times - the most of any film I've watched. It's just one hell of a feel-good film.
And, I think I preferred TOS anyway...
-Nano.
Well, I hear of this CRAZY idea that they use in some parts of the real (non-computer) world that people call 'stamps'! And you have to pay to put one of these on any piece of mail that you want to send to somebody else.
Now if we could just do EXACTLY THE SAME with e-mail, I think we'd enter a crazy new spam-free era! What a new and kooky idea! Stamps!
Seriously, why do we need some complicated trust-checking initiative and process that will hardly be taken up by anyone, when we can just directly transfer something that exists in the real world to an information-age process?
-Nano.
Right,
let me clear this up right here and now. I have lived in asia for the past 17 years of my life (though not in China)
YES, LoTR part 2 is available where I live...2 months before the release date.
And YES, Harry Potter 1 and 2 were both available months before their respective release dates, both on DVD.
Those are both facts.
Now let's get into the discussion...
Just because it comes on a DVD DOES NOT MEAN that it is DVD quality. When I go shopping for my $3 pirate DVDs, they come in 2 types at the local shops - type 5 and type 9 (referring, I think, to the number of gigabytes on each).
Now, everyone out here knows that the 9's are full DVD quality videos, and as such are only found after the original, FULL DVD has been properly and legally released. This still meant that I got to see Spiderman in DVD quality on a DVD 9 before it was released in the cinemas in the UK, because it was available as a promo DVD or whatever from the studios in the US shortly after the cinema release over there.
Now, DVD 5's are a different beast entirely. These are the DVDs that all these 'super early releases' are found on. And let me tell you - YES they are the full movie. NO, they are not worth watching. They are not even worth the $2 you can get them for at the market.
They are what we call 'cinema specials' - i.e. someone has smuggled an ultra-small handicam into a studio preview of the full movie. They are often someone unimportant, and therefore sit at the very edge of the screen, often way down in the front. So, the movies they record are at a skewed angle at best; the sound is in bad, peaking mono; and you can hear people talking all around you, often louder than the shit quality of the film sound they're recording.
At the end of a 'cinema special', you can watch the people from the rows in front of the person with the camera stand up to leave, and sometimes hear something from one of the studio people about how this is an early release copy and may not be the same as the one released to the cinemas in 2 months time.
So NO they are not lying when they say these early versions exist. NO they are not worth watching. They ruin your enjoyment of the proper film, presented in fullscreen glory, with proper sound and picture quality.
I can't believe some sheltered american who jumped to the conclusion 'I can't find it at wal-mart, so it mustn't exist and the studio must be lying' got moderated +5, insightful.
-Nano.
What about the 95% of the rest of the world that lives outside the US and to whom the 1st amendment doesn't apply.
You arrogant american.
-Nano.
I do agree Peter F Hamilton ranks up there as one of the great technology creators of our time (like Jules Verne in his day, and Clarke in his). But his recent books (Nights Dawn, Fallen Dragon) all have one fatal flaw: The ending.
Hamilton favours the 'Deus Ex Machina' ending, where everything is INSTANTLY SOLVED by some great hulking piece of superadvanced technology. No great, well devised plot twist to dot the i's and cross the t's. No wonderful character summaries that leave you questioning. Just a big 'Abracadabra' and Shazam! It's all better. All fixed.
A lot like Crichton (I mean, just blow up the island to get rid of the dinosaurs, or just 'think away' the mental powers of sphere, or even just 'mutate away' the superdeadly thing of the andromeda strain? How shit.) in his work.
Well, we can hope for better things in the future.
-Nano.