The EU took the right stance. Even Yanis Varoufakis has said that the idea of taxing robots does not work. This is what needs to be done instead: https://www.weforum.org/agenda...
I personally *despise* the episodic model. I'm all for the serialized one, and in fact, except Netflix's offerings, the serialized versions found on networked shows pale in comparison (in terms of serialization that is). I'm one of those people who really enjoyed the serializing nature of LOST (minus the disastrous 6th season). I absolutely never watch episodic television. I find it cheap, and non-artistic. In a perfect world, I'd like most TV shows (not all, but most) to end in 3 seasons: beginning-middle-end. And each season to comprise from 6-9 episodes: beginning-middle-end. Like a book.
All what's needed is the patient making their own, home-made goat kefir (if they're not terribly allergic to dairy -- although even dairy allergies are a para-symptom of wheat allergy in reality). Kefir's 43 different bacteria and yeasts can kill CDiff, and it's being shown to do so in research (Minnesota university professor/doctor tried it recently too). But the kefir must be home-made (bottled ones don't include the full spectrum of bacteria/yeasts because of bottling regulations regarding alcohol the yeasts create), it must be from goat, sheep or buffalo milk (for less casein irritation, as the A2 casein is more compatible with humans), and it must be fermented for 24 hours (to minimize the amount of lactose ingested). Two-three cups a day of kefir (with a few berries in it, maybe with some pine and walnut nuts, also maybe with some raw, unfiltered and local honey too), and CDiff should be back in check within 3-4 days. No need for antibiotics, for pill probiotics, or doctors for that matter.
As a filmmaker and a graphics artist these days, I like Blender and its idea behind it, I really do. This is a copy of what I wrote on my blog about all that: The CGI on this movie still looks like VFX animation and not realistic. It looks fake. Camera tracking is good, modelling seems ok, but lighting and animation aren’t. There are no shadows to talk about, everything it’s too HDR-ish. If that’s what Blender can do in 2012, then color me unimpressed. That’s no Hollywood-worthy CGI. And let’s not forget that this movie was produced by the Blender guys themselves, with hand-picked Blender artists.
Unfortunately, that quality is not even good enough for TV anymore. Sure, there have been worse VFX on TV than what Blender can do, for example the re-imagined version of “V”, but thing is, there have been better ones too. Back in 2010, Stargate:Universe had some amazing VFX in some episodes, more realistic than anything I’ve seen on TV, before or after. An even more important point for TV is the time it takes to do things with the app (since their deadlines are extremely strict). Blender is not that easy to use, Maya can do better, faster.
That doesn't mean that Blender is useless. It’s not. You can’t beat its price and features in the advertising sector (which doesn't require extreme realism, it mostly needs some animation tricks), schools (for obvious reasons), or as a hobbyist artist. Blender can also prove to be a life-saver for indie filmmakers who primarily have the time to deal with Blender (rather than the money to buy other packages). So if *I* was doing an indie short movie, I would use Blender, because it's good-enough for what I would need to do, and I have indefinite time on my hands. So it’s got its uses in the world. It’s just that I don’t see it being able to compete for Hollywood movies and serious TV shows.
Terra Nova does not have a reasonable budget. It used about $16 mil for the pilot, and about $5mil for any subsequent episode, which is higher than the network TV average of $3mil.
I agree. SGU's acting way good, with Robert Carlyle, David Blue and the guy who played Greer being a step ahead of everyone else. Overall, acting was good. Only the female actors needed to step it up.
Actually, SGU at $2.5mil was cheap. Maybe not as cheap as SyFy wanted it to be, but it's cheaper than the average US show, which costs $3mil per episode these days. And that's the average price. Some network shows go up to $4 mil per episode. Cable shows are usually cheaper. "Mad Men" costs $2.5mil per episode too btw (started at $2.3mil in 2008 according to NYTimes).
The Canadian-made SGU had movie-grade FX on a TV budget (it cost $2.5mil per episode according to Robert Carlyle, the main actor on the show). SGU's FX were the best ever on TV (so far). Just check on Netflix "The Greater Good" episode to see the amount of detail and craftsmanship that went on the FX. But I think Lucas' problem is that he wants to do the FX via ILM, which is an expensive company to work with, even if he owns it. The answer is to go off shore for FX. Either Canada, or even South America.
Fully agreed. All the elderly family I have in Greece have feature phones, but they learn by habit: press some numbers, press the green button, then the red. Nothing else. They don't even know how to program their TV, someone else has to set it up for them the first time, and then they remember by habit that button with a 3 on it, is "News channel", for example. They don't want to learn how things really work. I tried. I tried with my mom, I tried to explain her the logic, but she prefers to write down on a paper which button does what, and then press these blindly, without understanding what's really going on.
So the problem really is "I don't want to learn", not that iOS is too difficult to use. Especially iOS, is not.
Epirus in Greece, where I'm coming from, is a quake zone btw, we have "feel-able" earthquakes regularly there (at least once or twice a year). The biggest ones, where people died, were in 2004, and then back in 1981.
In my mother country, Greece, we have a word for this: koufovrasi. Supposedly (or so the superstition goes), a few hours before an earthquake, the weather becomes hot, stale, like you're choking, and it's like the sound doesn't travel as much (that's why it's called as such, which in free translation it means "deaf, boiled weather"). In the villages of the mountain Epirus, this is a known "sign" that an earthquake might hit soon. I personally experienced this kind of weather once or twice during in my early life there, but I don't remember if an earthquake ever hit soon afterward or not.
No, you're using the wrong update button. Not the one for ALL apps, but in each app's page. So when you try to update apps one by one, this doesn't work anymore.
This does not work here, for two different devices, and if you read the article, you will see that there are many people who can't. There are many threads about it. If you can, you're special.
Apple needs to be a bit more carefully about older versions of the OS and models. Case in point:
1. This: http://www.osnews.com/story/24428/The_Next_Brick_to_Decorate_Your_Wall_iOS_3_x_Devices After months this article got posted, the App Store STILL DOES NOT work properly. You still can't update an app from within the device by hitting "update". The button does nothing! You need iOS 4.x or above before you can update via iOS (so we now have to use iTunes, which I don't want to use since that iPod has no music in it, I just use it as a PDA).
2. Apple REMOVED AirTunes support from iOS 4 when the second generation of AppleTV came out. What they did exactly was to stop supporting the original AppleTV (that was still sold at the time), from within iOS. So I can't use the 1st Gen AppleTV to send audio too from my iOS device anymore. This used to work just fine up to a few months ago. After the iOS 4.2 update, the support was removed.
While parts of technology might stop progressing as fast, other parts of technology will start getting optimized, to get over the halting of that other part. So if hardware stops getting faster, people will start optimizing software (which is currently extremely inefficient), until we get a better HW/SW tech at some point later in the future. There's a very nice comment on the Amazon page of the book by JPS, give it a read.
>That's like saying you'll never go back to Vivaldi after hearing Mozart...
No, because both were good. In my case, I can't say that Rihanna, who sells millions of records, is better than Washed Out. She's not.
> Music is all about taste
Sure, but there's also a common denominator threshold. When you cross it, things sound kitsch.
It's like watching "Lost in Space", and then you started watching "Babylon 5", after someone transported the tapes back to 1967 for you. After you go Babylon 5, and see how much DEPTH there's there, you will find the rest of 1967's TV boring as hell.
Same with music. Yes, there are tastes, but what I tried to communicate goes beyond tastes. For example, the "taste" paradigm would work for me when thinking that I like "Surfer blood", but I don't like "Toro Y Moi" -- both pretty hipster artists otherwise. But when it comes to Rihanna and Surfer Blood, then that's not a matter of taste anymore, because we're talking about two different WORLDS. Two different products: one's music, the other one's not!
I have 140 GBs of legal music, and I will not stop buying or legally downloading free new music, not because I'm a consumer drone, but because the music changes over the years, and I want to keep up with it. I like the new stuff more than I like the old stuff. Music evolves and becomes more complex, and requires more time to get accustomed to it, and I like that because the payout is better. Of course I'm talking about underground indie music, I don't listen to mainstream artists. Either way, RIAA won't get my money, since they don't support the kind of artists I listen to.
This is true for metal, but not for indie rock music. Started in 2006, and exploded in 2009, almost all indie hipster bands given away from 1 to 3 free legal downloads per album, as promotion. That's how I got into indie music myself. This helped creating the so many indie music blogs out there, these legal free downloads. The metal scene doesn't have as many blogs, and therefore not as many free samples -- it's a bit chicken and egg problem. Plus older mentality I guess, from the bands and these older labels that run metal bands.
Anyways, Amazon has almost 10 free metal albums, with various artists in it, check them out. Email me if you need URLs.
It's all about the people and how much free time they have. For example, I grew up in the '80s, with Madonna. As any teenage girl of the time, I loved her look and music. I liked only a bit of actual rock, and mostly pop. The '90s were eurodance for me, and 2000s were adult, popularized, alternative rock. Everything I listened until 2009 was under the monicker of "popular" and "mainstream".
In 2009 I started listening to underground indie bands, and today I mostly listen to artists that record music at home, and not only don't even have a contract with an indie label (let alone a major one), but they don't think they will ever sell a single digital unit, so they give their album for free on Bandcamp.
When all that took place in my head, within the last 2 years, I'm now INCAPABLE of listening to pop music. I hate it. I hate 95% of mainstream music. I feel that the bedroom artists, that don't have to answer to anyone, are the true heroes who PUSH the boundaries to explore new kinds of music.
I'm a 37 years old. I don't look like a hipster at all (more like a fat computer-stricken geek). But because I had the time and will (no kids you see), I took the time to educate myself about new kinds of music. In the beginning it felt like random notes, completely hookless, but as the time goes by and you get accustomed to the sound, a new musical world will show up in front of you. After that tipping point (it took me over a year to get sonically there), you can never go back to the old style of music. It will sound too little, too cheesy, too kitch, too unintelligent.
Agreed. Last year I paid *over* $2000 for music, so that puts me probably not just on the top-14% of consumers, but probably on the top-1%. But like you do, I always check what I buy, I don't buy whatever random stuff are around. Youtube has neither good or bad effect, because it neutralizes its position by helping me decide to buy something or not. If youtube didn't exist, I would probably buy LESS.
What's the killer though is that 80% of my new music these days is downloaded for free from BandCamp rather than bought. Not because I don't want to buy (I've can prove that I do to anyone who would check my iTunes and Amazon receipts), but because the KIND of music I listen these days very rarely can be found on iTunes, and to much less extend, on Amazon. I started listening to obscure indie bands that record at home, and these people just do music for fun, and so they often don't charge any money for it.
More importantly, it's that THESE musicians are pushing the boundaries of music, since they don't have to answer to any music exec. 95% of popular music will never win me back, so for these execs mentioned in the article, I'm already a dead customer. Even if I spend so much money for music (since it's mostly for indie labels' music, and the rest is music I get legally for free).
Slashdot Mirror
The EU took the right stance. Even Yanis Varoufakis has said that the idea of taxing robots does not work. This is what needs to be done instead: https://www.weforum.org/agenda...
I personally *despise* the episodic model. I'm all for the serialized one, and in fact, except Netflix's offerings, the serialized versions found on networked shows pale in comparison (in terms of serialization that is). I'm one of those people who really enjoyed the serializing nature of LOST (minus the disastrous 6th season). I absolutely never watch episodic television. I find it cheap, and non-artistic. In a perfect world, I'd like most TV shows (not all, but most) to end in 3 seasons: beginning-middle-end. And each season to comprise from 6-9 episodes: beginning-middle-end. Like a book.
Non-native EMF (such as from devices) is not the same as EMF from the sun.
All what's needed is the patient making their own, home-made goat kefir (if they're not terribly allergic to dairy -- although even dairy allergies are a para-symptom of wheat allergy in reality). Kefir's 43 different bacteria and yeasts can kill CDiff, and it's being shown to do so in research (Minnesota university professor/doctor tried it recently too). But the kefir must be home-made (bottled ones don't include the full spectrum of bacteria/yeasts because of bottling regulations regarding alcohol the yeasts create), it must be from goat, sheep or buffalo milk (for less casein irritation, as the A2 casein is more compatible with humans), and it must be fermented for 24 hours (to minimize the amount of lactose ingested). Two-three cups a day of kefir (with a few berries in it, maybe with some pine and walnut nuts, also maybe with some raw, unfiltered and local honey too), and CDiff should be back in check within 3-4 days. No need for antibiotics, for pill probiotics, or doctors for that matter.
As a filmmaker and a graphics artist these days, I like Blender and its idea behind it, I really do. This is a copy of what I wrote on my blog about all that: The CGI on this movie still looks like VFX animation and not realistic. It looks fake. Camera tracking is good, modelling seems ok, but lighting and animation aren’t. There are no shadows to talk about, everything it’s too HDR-ish. If that’s what Blender can do in 2012, then color me unimpressed. That’s no Hollywood-worthy CGI. And let’s not forget that this movie was produced by the Blender guys themselves, with hand-picked Blender artists.
Unfortunately, that quality is not even good enough for TV anymore. Sure, there have been worse VFX on TV than what Blender can do, for example the re-imagined version of “V”, but thing is, there have been better ones too. Back in 2010, Stargate:Universe had some amazing VFX in some episodes, more realistic than anything I’ve seen on TV, before or after. An even more important point for TV is the time it takes to do things with the app (since their deadlines are extremely strict). Blender is not that easy to use, Maya can do better, faster.
That doesn't mean that Blender is useless. It’s not. You can’t beat its price and features in the advertising sector (which doesn't require extreme realism, it mostly needs some animation tricks), schools (for obvious reasons), or as a hobbyist artist. Blender can also prove to be a life-saver for indie filmmakers who primarily have the time to deal with Blender (rather than the money to buy other packages). So if *I* was doing an indie short movie, I would use Blender, because it's good-enough for what I would need to do, and I have indefinite time on my hands. So it’s got its uses in the world. It’s just that I don’t see it being able to compete for Hollywood movies and serious TV shows.
Terra Nova does not have a reasonable budget. It used about $16 mil for the pilot, and about $5mil for any subsequent episode, which is higher than the network TV average of $3mil.
I agree. SGU's acting way good, with Robert Carlyle, David Blue and the guy who played Greer being a step ahead of everyone else. Overall, acting was good. Only the female actors needed to step it up.
Indeed. He made Babylon 5 for a $600,000 per episode. Which is amazing, even if you count inflation.
Actually, SGU at $2.5mil was cheap. Maybe not as cheap as SyFy wanted it to be, but it's cheaper than the average US show, which costs $3mil per episode these days. And that's the average price. Some network shows go up to $4 mil per episode. Cable shows are usually cheaper. "Mad Men" costs $2.5mil per episode too btw (started at $2.3mil in 2008 according to NYTimes).
Here's a screenshot from the said SGU episode: http://i.gateworld.net//gallery/albums/uni_season2/207-TheGreaterGood/screencaps/sgu_207_0205.jpg
The Canadian-made SGU had movie-grade FX on a TV budget (it cost $2.5mil per episode according to Robert Carlyle, the main actor on the show). SGU's FX were the best ever on TV (so far). Just check on Netflix "The Greater Good" episode to see the amount of detail and craftsmanship that went on the FX. But I think Lucas' problem is that he wants to do the FX via ILM, which is an expensive company to work with, even if he owns it. The answer is to go off shore for FX. Either Canada, or even South America.
Fully agreed. All the elderly family I have in Greece have feature phones, but they learn by habit: press some numbers, press the green button, then the red. Nothing else. They don't even know how to program their TV, someone else has to set it up for them the first time, and then they remember by habit that button with a 3 on it, is "News channel", for example. They don't want to learn how things really work. I tried. I tried with my mom, I tried to explain her the logic, but she prefers to write down on a paper which button does what, and then press these blindly, without understanding what's really going on.
So the problem really is "I don't want to learn", not that iOS is too difficult to use. Especially iOS, is not.
Epirus in Greece, where I'm coming from, is a quake zone btw, we have "feel-able" earthquakes regularly there (at least once or twice a year). The biggest ones, where people died, were in 2004, and then back in 1981.
In my mother country, Greece, we have a word for this: koufovrasi. Supposedly (or so the superstition goes), a few hours before an earthquake, the weather becomes hot, stale, like you're choking, and it's like the sound doesn't travel as much (that's why it's called as such, which in free translation it means "deaf, boiled weather"). In the villages of the mountain Epirus, this is a known "sign" that an earthquake might hit soon. I personally experienced this kind of weather once or twice during in my early life there, but I don't remember if an earthquake ever hit soon afterward or not.
No, you're using the wrong update button. Not the one for ALL apps, but in each app's page. So when you try to update apps one by one, this doesn't work anymore.
This does not work here, for two different devices, and if you read the article, you will see that there are many people who can't. There are many threads about it. If you can, you're special.
Apple needs to be a bit more carefully about older versions of the OS and models. Case in point:
1. This: http://www.osnews.com/story/24428/The_Next_Brick_to_Decorate_Your_Wall_iOS_3_x_Devices
After months this article got posted, the App Store STILL DOES NOT work properly. You still can't update an app from within the device by hitting "update". The button does nothing! You need iOS 4.x or above before you can update via iOS (so we now have to use iTunes, which I don't want to use since that iPod has no music in it, I just use it as a PDA).
2. Apple REMOVED AirTunes support from iOS 4 when the second generation of AppleTV came out. What they did exactly was to stop supporting the original AppleTV (that was still sold at the time), from within iOS. So I can't use the 1st Gen AppleTV to send audio too from my iOS device anymore. This used to work just fine up to a few months ago. After the iOS 4.2 update, the support was removed.
While parts of technology might stop progressing as fast, other parts of technology will start getting optimized, to get over the halting of that other part. So if hardware stops getting faster, people will start optimizing software (which is currently extremely inefficient), until we get a better HW/SW tech at some point later in the future. There's a very nice comment on the Amazon page of the book by JPS, give it a read.
>That's like saying you'll never go back to Vivaldi after hearing Mozart...
No, because both were good. In my case, I can't say that Rihanna, who sells millions of records, is better than Washed Out. She's not.
> Music is all about taste
Sure, but there's also a common denominator threshold. When you cross it, things sound kitsch.
It's like watching "Lost in Space", and then you started watching "Babylon 5", after someone transported the tapes back to 1967 for you. After you go Babylon 5, and see how much DEPTH there's there, you will find the rest of 1967's TV boring as hell.
Same with music. Yes, there are tastes, but what I tried to communicate goes beyond tastes. For example, the "taste" paradigm would work for me when thinking that I like "Surfer blood", but I don't like "Toro Y Moi" -- both pretty hipster artists otherwise. But when it comes to Rihanna and Surfer Blood, then that's not a matter of taste anymore, because we're talking about two different WORLDS. Two different products: one's music, the other one's not!
I have 140 GBs of legal music, and I will not stop buying or legally downloading free new music, not because I'm a consumer drone, but because the music changes over the years, and I want to keep up with it. I like the new stuff more than I like the old stuff. Music evolves and becomes more complex, and requires more time to get accustomed to it, and I like that because the payout is better. Of course I'm talking about underground indie music, I don't listen to mainstream artists. Either way, RIAA won't get my money, since they don't support the kind of artists I listen to.
You said it!
This is true for metal, but not for indie rock music. Started in 2006, and exploded in 2009, almost all indie hipster bands given away from 1 to 3 free legal downloads per album, as promotion. That's how I got into indie music myself. This helped creating the so many indie music blogs out there, these legal free downloads. The metal scene doesn't have as many blogs, and therefore not as many free samples -- it's a bit chicken and egg problem. Plus older mentality I guess, from the bands and these older labels that run metal bands.
Anyways, Amazon has almost 10 free metal albums, with various artists in it, check them out. Email me if you need URLs.
It's all about the people and how much free time they have. For example, I grew up in the '80s, with Madonna. As any teenage girl of the time, I loved her look and music. I liked only a bit of actual rock, and mostly pop. The '90s were eurodance for me, and 2000s were adult, popularized, alternative rock. Everything I listened until 2009 was under the monicker of "popular" and "mainstream".
In 2009 I started listening to underground indie bands, and today I mostly listen to artists that record music at home, and not only don't even have a contract with an indie label (let alone a major one), but they don't think they will ever sell a single digital unit, so they give their album for free on Bandcamp.
When all that took place in my head, within the last 2 years, I'm now INCAPABLE of listening to pop music. I hate it. I hate 95% of mainstream music. I feel that the bedroom artists, that don't have to answer to anyone, are the true heroes who PUSH the boundaries to explore new kinds of music.
I'm a 37 years old. I don't look like a hipster at all (more like a fat computer-stricken geek). But because I had the time and will (no kids you see), I took the time to educate myself about new kinds of music. In the beginning it felt like random notes, completely hookless, but as the time goes by and you get accustomed to the sound, a new musical world will show up in front of you. After that tipping point (it took me over a year to get sonically there), you can never go back to the old style of music. It will sound too little, too cheesy, too kitch, too unintelligent.
Agreed. Last year I paid *over* $2000 for music, so that puts me probably not just on the top-14% of consumers, but probably on the top-1%. But like you do, I always check what I buy, I don't buy whatever random stuff are around. Youtube has neither good or bad effect, because it neutralizes its position by helping me decide to buy something or not. If youtube didn't exist, I would probably buy LESS.
What's the killer though is that 80% of my new music these days is downloaded for free from BandCamp rather than bought. Not because I don't want to buy (I've can prove that I do to anyone who would check my iTunes and Amazon receipts), but because the KIND of music I listen these days very rarely can be found on iTunes, and to much less extend, on Amazon. I started listening to obscure indie bands that record at home, and these people just do music for fun, and so they often don't charge any money for it.
More importantly, it's that THESE musicians are pushing the boundaries of music, since they don't have to answer to any music exec. 95% of popular music will never win me back, so for these execs mentioned in the article, I'm already a dead customer. Even if I spend so much money for music (since it's mostly for indie labels' music, and the rest is music I get legally for free).
V *is* bad. Very bad television. Laughable. Trying to look for this thing called "soul" at a MILF's cleavage.