What do you think? Maybe that will help me understand your question. What specific things are you wondering why we're not hearing? What would you suggest we do?
I'm wondering why the systematic torture, death threats, random killing, and all round human rights abuses in Zimbabwe are going largely unnoticed and uncommented upon by the current US regime. I've heard comments from Blair, from Chirac, from Howard, but nothing from Bush. It was a hot topic at the recent Commonwealth conference, and could soon be rearing it's head in the UN. But still we haven't heard a single comment, or suggestion from Bush, or any other US representative of note, about possible actions to be taken. On its own, that would be fine and normal - it's just that as long as the prime justification for taking such swift action with Iraq was to liberate them from a tyrranical dictator, that kind of implies that tyrranical dictators are something the US is worried about. Because of that the lack of comment on Zimbabwe seems odd.
Why do I think we haven't heard anything about Zimbabwe? Because I don't really think that liberating the Iraqi people was the prime goal of the invasion. It was definitely a nice bonus, and I'm glad that Hussein has been deposed, but I don't think it was the reason. What do I think was the reason? That's the problem - I really don't know. None of the publically stated reasons make a lot of sense. WMD - well, where are they? Liberating Iraq - why Iraq and not all the other places in similar need of liberation? I think the "it's all about the oil" people are being horribly simplistic. At best the oil was a convenient bonus. The best explanations I've heard are to do with a desire to impose a certain degree of American power and authority on the area - certainly the middle east in general is the prime breeding ground for anti american terrorism, so managing to stamp some authority there could be percieved as a good thing. But even that doesn't really make that much sense. I'm lacking any understanding of the reason, and that is what troubles me.
By the way, I never stated that the US was "providing worldwide peacekeeping/knock of the evil dictator services."
Nope, I agree, you never claimed that - I was simply doing a hypothetical generalisation of the principle that the US wants to liberate the people out from under oppressive regimes - presuming that that was the reason for their invasion of Iraq. That was my generalisation, not yours.
I am in no way claiming that seeing Hussein deposed is a bad thing. Neither, to be honest, would I want to see troops marched in Zimbabwe to remove Mugabe - I think a little more backbone in condemning and cutting of his regime from trade and foreign aid would be a good start instead. If that fails to work, then further action could be contemplated. I am merely trying to point out that the reasons given for the invasion of Iraq don't make an awful lot of sense. don't worry, I'm not one of those "it's all about the oil" types. But I don't think the publically stated reasons are very credible.
So, you still haven't really answered my question - if the reason for invading Iraq was to liberate the people and free them from a dictator, why aren't they doing that elsewhere?
Additionally, I remember being taught in grade school that if there were 100% pure gold bricks just lying on the surface of the moon for the taking, it still wouldn't be fiscally worth it to go there and bring them back. It's just too expensive. Or so I was told.:)
Presently, yes, it would be rather expensive. Most of that cost though, is getting up into space from earth. There are some promising looking developments on making that immensely less expensive (the X prize). Were that to pan out then all of a sudden it would be fiscally worth it. Technology can rapidly change the economics of a proposition.
Clearly costs are not reasonable if space research is not economic as you claim. Costs to get into space, currently, are extremely high. Right now you have the odd mad rich space tourist forking over $20 million to go up. If the X prize comes through, we could end up looking at costs closer to $100,000 to $1 million. That sounds a lot more reasonable to me.
We have a space station or will very soon, we have the shuttle which works well enough.
Well enough? Hasn't seemed to have worked well of late. It is extremely expensive to run. The cost of a shuttle launch is around $300 million. That's not "well enough" for most purposes. In fact, it's extremely inefficient.
The total prize money for the X prize is only $10 million. The prize is won if you can go into space and back, with 3 people (or equivalent payload) twice in 2 weeks using the same craft. You can replace at most 10% of the crafts non propellant mass between launches. That means, basically, you have to have a craft that runs at basically just the cost of propellant. I would say getting a reduction from $300 million per launch down to around $1 million or less is pretty damn significant!
imporovements will cost more then they can ever return.
The X prize is costing $10 million in prize money put up for it. That's around 3% of the cost of a single shuttle launch. The results would start to make space travel available on mass scale. Run that by me again?
As for the rest, well, you're an obvious troll so I won't bother. Thanks for providing me a nice platform to springboard some arguments off though.
I meant publically draw up the plans. Wasn't that how news of the possible Iraq invasion started. Sketch invasion plans being aired in public. And where is the push to have the UN sanction an invasion. I haven't seen much of that going on.
You seem to be dodging the point here, which is:
(1) You could probably get a fair amount of international support to remove Mugabe. If you throw in the sort of level of effort that went into trying to convince the UN to invade Iraq you could probably get full UN support. That means international retaliation is going to be minimal.
(2) It's not like the feared Zimbabwe military are going to provide much in the way of retaliation. It might be reasonable to tread a little softly with North korea because they could do some serious damage on the way down, but I don't think Zimbabwe is really much threat to anyone.
So, the question is, if the US really is providing worldwide peacekeeping/knock of the evil dictator services, why haven't we heard anything about Zimbabwe, because it seems like a pretty ripe target?
I mean flying - it's boolean - you fly or you don't fly. Once you've conquered that you can improve on it.
Maybe that hints that the X prize winner might be where we ought to be looking - theres something that has a nice boolena value: You get into space cheaply in a resusable vehicle, or you don't... and there's plenty of room for improvement once someone wins the X prize challenge: Higher (LEO would be nice), and with more payload.
Cheap and easy spaceflight could well be the teach that really reshapes the next century.
Given how the recent Commonwealth conference went, and the fact that there was only neligible regional support for Mugabe, I suspect there would be little retaliation.
Besides, I'm not suggesting you INVADE next week, merely that you start drawing up the invasion plans. Look at the nice long campaign from when invasion of Iraq was first countenanced, till it was executed. I imagine we could have a similar deal here. Certainly it wouldn't be hard to swing the support of a great many commonwealth countries behind you. You could probably even manage to get UN approval if you threw as much effort into the campaign to gather support as you did for Iraq.
So, tell me again, exactly who are you expecting to have retaliate?
i know of several countries where thousends and thousends of people are being 'deprived of their heads' by vicious leaders. when can i expect US to intervene?
Whenever we can do so without facing major retaliation.
Excellent. So we can expect to see the Zimbabwe invasion plans drawn up next week then?
My preferred technique for making presentations is as follows: when writing up my report in LaTeX (I'm a math person, so LaTeX is the natural choice) I include an extra \summary{summary of paragraph} at the start of every paragraph, long equation array, etc. It's very little work to do this while writing the full report. My standard document class simply ignores summary content. I have another document class, however, that ignores the paragraph content and simply renders the section headings etc. and summary content to prettily rendered pdf slides. It takes some work setting up the document classes so that both versions look as elegant in each form, but once that's done you run LaTeX once and get your full report, then run it again, and get your presentation. Very easy, and it keeps the content much better.
Typically, politicians in NZ care very little about what the public thinks, if they personally think it's in our best interests. There have been several examples of this over the past year or so, where public opinion polls showed 90% against policy changes but the politicians bought the new bills in anyway. It's not really democracy, it's a 3 year term of autonomy where if we don't like the results we vote in someone else. Unfortunately, few parties have the will to reverse unpopular decisions.
Very true - although the harsher penalties referendum was very badly worded, and remarkably ambiguous. What you have to hold on to is that, as bad as it may be, it is way better than, for instance, the US political system. In New Zealand right now you guys have some real choice. Everything from ACT with their "20% flat rate Tax Rate", through to whatever Jim Anderton's latest party is called with their hardcore socialism, and everything in between: Luddites, Populists, the religious right, National, and Labour.
What matters is that it is still possible to effect real change in New Zealand politics because the country is still small enough. Look how effective the Greens and the anti-GM lobby has been: Regardless of whether you like their stand or not (I don't personally) they have had some influence. If enough people make digital copyright an issue, and manage to get at least one of the parties to champion it (though I'm at a loss as to which party that might be!) it will have some influence over final policy.
There's fairly minimal responsibility there. What America decided to do to (American Idol is a very different format and concept to what the NZ show did), and with the concept is hardly our fault. Besides, it was Americans doing the voting, so they can only really blame themselves, yes?
Fair call. Does it help it all that the band has ceased to exist and most (yeah, yeah, the annoying few linger) have disappeared into justified obscurity?
Theres no proof that piracy contributes to higher sales. Infact the reason behind higher sales is because of all these stupid teeny music shows on like $Country Idol, and Popstars and all the other "young talent time"/"micky mouse club" wannabees.
Interestingly the original version of "Popstars" was in New Zealand. I can't even recall what the band was called. They have long since passed into obscurity - though several of the members managed to work their way into spots as VJs on local TV shows. Certainly such shows didn't have anything much to do with the rise in local content in NZ. Rather there has been a push on local content via local radio (government mandated quotas), such things as "New Zealand Music Month", and show like the (now defunct) M2 which heavily promoted local music. It is all about the exposure - it's a question of how you choose to give it. Simply playing whatever the latest local release is (as M2 used to do) is not a bad way (though, of course, not feasible for a large country!).
The real question is how to get past money marketing. I tend to dig for content, but no everyone is willing to go to that effort. In New Zealand the government has basically tried to rally some patriotism toward promoting NZ music. That doesn't scale though. Music downloads are a good way, but that potentially cuts into CD sales. Selling the music cheaply online as in iTMS may well be the answer - but that just shifts the marketing burden, and the money still has the control. I'm open to suggestions...
But it all comes back down to think like American Idol etc!
Interestingly American Idol is based on a TV show that originally began in New Zealand. The show was called "Popstars" and was selecting a group of girls to sing as a girl band type group. It was successful in NZ, and was then run in Australia. From there it moved to getting runs in England, and elsewhere in Europe where the idea morphed a little. Finally it was picked up and converted into American Idol.
BS. Ask the average Kazaa downloader why they download music. Because it's there and it's easy! It has nothing to do with some sort of revolutionary movement. It's all about convenience, nothing more.
Which raises an interesting point - if the New Zealand Government really wanted to help boost New Zealand music (which they have said they wish to so, including mandating airtime for NZ music on local radio) then perhaps they could help set up a nice, easily searchable, repository of local music for download. Local bands could submit a track or two for download. It increases exposure, and provides the convenience factor. Why not go the whole hog and include music videos too?
Yes, it means the artist won't sell that track as a single, but it may well significantly boost their album sales. Plus the download rate rankings could give local radio stations a nice gauge on the popularity of local bands.
As many have pointed out - there's no good causality link here. It's equally likely that local music is more pirated _because_ it is more popular.
If I was to try and pin some causality to the rise in popularity of local music in NZ, I would say that the Governments request (with threats of legislation) that NZ radio stations fulfill a certain quota of airtime to local music has been a huge boost. And it links in timewise quite closely with some of the rise of popularity of local music. Mostly though, that is simply down to exposure. As noted in another post, local music gets lost amidst the larger marketing budgets of major overseas labels. I'm also not a fan of the government mandating local content quotas - I would prefer the radio stations choose to do that themselves.
My point is, simply, that greater exposure is what has boosted local music sales. Internet sharing of music is another way to increase exposure. That doesn't mean, of course, that I would advocate piracy - but perhaps local artists who would like to get known should release some tracks under a license that allows copying. Hopefully they already do.
I think the boost in local NZ music by copying is not that surprising. There is a lot of very good New Zealand music, but a lot of it stays relatively unknown, even to the local market, as we tend to get swamped by the more affluent overseas marketing. A little exposure can take you a long way.
As to New Zealand copyright laws - that's an interesting one, as they are currently under review. I haven't checked recently (but made plenty of submissions while they were taking them) but I believe that while they aren't doing a DMCA (because enough people spoke up) they aren't doing the right thing either.
This article by the IT editor of one of the major NZ newspapers goes so far as to suggest that they ought to be trying to enshrine Copyleft and Creative Commons in the copyright laws, so there is a movement towards this at a reasonably public level - how much sway that actually has over politicians is hard to say.
All the New Zealanders reading this: Write in to your local MP and ask them for their stance on Copyright law, and explain the benefits of having Copyleft and Creative Commons as a firmly enshrined concept under law. The more they think people are paying attention, the better the chance thet something good will come in the copyright review.
I agree entirely. I don't know why the extra Osgiliath scene with Boromir and denethor was ever cut. It sets up some potentially fantastic scenes where we see Faramir come into his own via conflict with Denethor in the 3rd film - I'm hoping Jackson uses that springboard as much as I hope he will. I'm guessing yes.
At one stage I was given the task of writing a some data collection software for a casino. They had a very old program, that they didn't want to change, that could spew the data in raw format down a socket. My company was going to take the casino data and pump it into our software to do pretty visualisations. That meant we had to read that raw format coming of the socket, and process it into something useful that we could visualise.
I knocked up a quick program to read the raw data off the socket and just log it so we could get a wfew days sample of data to make sure it was conforming to the format they specified and check for unforseen glitches (of which there were, in the end, many). I left that running, but when I came back the next day the "constant stream" had cut out at 6am. I had only written a very simple logging program to collect, so I hadn't bothered t o handle the case that the server was going to close the socket connection on me, so I had no data after 6am. So much for a days worth of collection. The reason, I found, was the the "very old program" that they were using was a DOS program, which didn't run properly on Win2k (so they claimed) so it was on Win98. The reason I kept getting holes in the stream at 6am (I fixed the logger to handle socket closures, wait till it was back up and start logging again) was that they had to reboot the box every morning at 6am. Well, not had to - but they felt a regular scheduled reboot was a lot better than the slightly less regular unscheduled reboots they used to get.
In the end We wrote our proper socket collection code to just shut down at 6am, which was when we fired up our data processing on the nightly collection, then picked up again at 6:02 when the reboot was done.
Jedidiah
Re:Paramount ain't gonna like this...
on
Star Wreck Trailer
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· Score: 1
They did indeed render them CGI themselves. With Lightwave 7. And IMNSHO, it actually looks BETTER than the Nemesis.
Really I have to agree. Certainly way better than anything Babylon 5 ever did, or any of the Star Trek Series. I would have to see the film to see some extended scenes (rather than trailer fast cutting) to say how well it stacks up against movie quality Star Trek, but it would at the very least sit comfortably along side.
Finnish girls are very definitely very attractive. The fact that my girlfriend is Finnish in no way biases my opinion.
Jedidiah
Re:Paramount ain't gonna like this...
on
Star Wreck Trailer
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I think they rendered all that themselves actually - given that there are plenty of scenes with Babylon 5 ships and Star Trek ships together - so either they are stupendously good at splicing stuff together frame by frame (highly unlikely) or they did all the CG themselves. In which case, good on them - 'cause those are pretty nice effects considering the general look of the budget. Of course, that won't stop Paramount suing their ass into next week...
Well, if you tell me what exactly it is that you want to be able to configure I can tell you how you can do that in Enlightenment. Kwin, or KWM, or whatever they are calling the KDE window manager currently is NOT all that configurable.
If you're willing to take a little time to understand FVWM configuration files you'll soon find that you can actually make that window manager do pretty anything you want.
As I say, tell me what you want to configure, and I assure you I can tell you some way to do it in Enlightenment. Then think of the things you wish you could configure, and I'll try and tell you how you might be able to configure those too.
When I'm using Linux, I use KDE, and I assume you do too given that it's the only remotely customizeable WM.
[cough]Enlightenment[cough]
KWin customisable? What else have you tried?! Sit down and spend some time with FVWM or Enlightenment (no, it isn't dead) and learn what customisation actually means. And you can use either of those within both KDE and GNOME, so choosing based on window managers is, well, dumb.
Slashdot Mirror
What do you think? Maybe that will help me understand your question. What specific things are you wondering why we're not hearing? What would you suggest we do?
I'm wondering why the systematic torture, death threats, random killing, and all round human rights abuses in Zimbabwe are going largely unnoticed and uncommented upon by the current US regime. I've heard comments from Blair, from Chirac, from Howard, but nothing from Bush. It was a hot topic at the recent Commonwealth conference, and could soon be rearing it's head in the UN. But still we haven't heard a single comment, or suggestion from Bush, or any other US representative of note, about possible actions to be taken. On its own, that would be fine and normal - it's just that as long as the prime justification for taking such swift action with Iraq was to liberate them from a tyrranical dictator, that kind of implies that tyrranical dictators are something the US is worried about. Because of that the lack of comment on Zimbabwe seems odd.
Why do I think we haven't heard anything about Zimbabwe? Because I don't really think that liberating the Iraqi people was the prime goal of the invasion. It was definitely a nice bonus, and I'm glad that Hussein has been deposed, but I don't think it was the reason. What do I think was the reason? That's the problem - I really don't know. None of the publically stated reasons make a lot of sense. WMD - well, where are they? Liberating Iraq - why Iraq and not all the other places in similar need of liberation? I think the "it's all about the oil" people are being horribly simplistic. At best the oil was a convenient bonus. The best explanations I've heard are to do with a desire to impose a certain degree of American power and authority on the area - certainly the middle east in general is the prime breeding ground for anti american terrorism, so managing to stamp some authority there could be percieved as a good thing. But even that doesn't really make that much sense. I'm lacking any understanding of the reason, and that is what troubles me.
By the way, I never stated that the US was "providing worldwide peacekeeping/knock of the evil dictator services."
Nope, I agree, you never claimed that - I was simply doing a hypothetical generalisation of the principle that the US wants to liberate the people out from under oppressive regimes - presuming that that was the reason for their invasion of Iraq. That was my generalisation, not yours.
Jedidiah.
I am in no way claiming that seeing Hussein deposed is a bad thing. Neither, to be honest, would I want to see troops marched in Zimbabwe to remove Mugabe - I think a little more backbone in condemning and cutting of his regime from trade and foreign aid would be a good start instead. If that fails to work, then further action could be contemplated. I am merely trying to point out that the reasons given for the invasion of Iraq don't make an awful lot of sense. don't worry, I'm not one of those "it's all about the oil" types. But I don't think the publically stated reasons are very credible.
So, you still haven't really answered my question - if the reason for invading Iraq was to liberate the people and free them from a dictator, why aren't they doing that elsewhere?
Jedidiah.
Additionally, I remember being taught in grade school that if there were 100% pure gold bricks just lying on the surface of the moon for the taking, it still wouldn't be fiscally worth it to go there and bring them back. It's just too expensive. Or so I was told.:)
Presently, yes, it would be rather expensive. Most of that cost though, is getting up into space from earth. There are some promising looking developments on making that immensely less expensive (the X prize). Were that to pan out then all of a sudden it would be fiscally worth it. Technology can rapidly change the economics of a proposition.
Jedidiah.
We have basic space filight now.
Well yes, but it is pretty basic.
Its fairly safe and the costs are resonable.
Clearly costs are not reasonable if space research is not economic as you claim. Costs to get into space, currently, are extremely high. Right now you have the odd mad rich space tourist forking over $20 million to go up. If the X prize comes through, we could end up looking at costs closer to $100,000 to $1 million. That sounds a lot more reasonable to me.
We have a space station or will very soon, we have the shuttle which works well enough.
Well enough? Hasn't seemed to have worked well of late. It is extremely expensive to run. The cost of a shuttle launch is around $300 million. That's not "well enough" for most purposes. In fact, it's extremely inefficient.
The total prize money for the X prize is only $10 million. The prize is won if you can go into space and back, with 3 people (or equivalent payload) twice in 2 weeks using the same craft. You can replace at most 10% of the crafts non propellant mass between launches. That means, basically, you have to have a craft that runs at basically just the cost of propellant. I would say getting a reduction from $300 million per launch down to around $1 million or less is pretty damn significant!
imporovements will cost more then they can ever return.
The X prize is costing $10 million in prize money put up for it. That's around 3% of the cost of a single shuttle launch. The results would start to make space travel available on mass scale. Run that by me again?
As for the rest, well, you're an obvious troll so I won't bother. Thanks for providing me a nice platform to springboard some arguments off though.
Jedidiah.
I meant publically draw up the plans. Wasn't that how news of the possible Iraq invasion started. Sketch invasion plans being aired in public. And where is the push to have the UN sanction an invasion. I haven't seen much of that going on.
You seem to be dodging the point here, which is:
(1) You could probably get a fair amount of international support to remove Mugabe. If you throw in the sort of level of effort that went into trying to convince the UN to invade Iraq you could probably get full UN support. That means international retaliation is going to be minimal.
(2) It's not like the feared Zimbabwe military are going to provide much in the way of retaliation. It might be reasonable to tread a little softly with North korea because they could do some serious damage on the way down, but I don't think Zimbabwe is really much threat to anyone.
So, the question is, if the US really is providing worldwide peacekeeping/knock of the evil dictator services, why haven't we heard anything about Zimbabwe, because it seems like a pretty ripe target?
Jedidiah.
I mean flying - it's boolean - you fly or you don't fly. Once you've conquered that you can improve on it.
Maybe that hints that the X prize winner might be where we ought to be looking - theres something that has a nice boolena value: You get into space cheaply in a resusable vehicle, or you don't... and there's plenty of room for improvement once someone wins the X prize challenge: Higher (LEO would be nice), and with more payload.
Cheap and easy spaceflight could well be the teach that really reshapes the next century.
Jedidiah.
Given how the recent Commonwealth conference went, and the fact that there was only neligible regional support for Mugabe, I suspect there would be little retaliation.
Besides, I'm not suggesting you INVADE next week, merely that you start drawing up the invasion plans. Look at the nice long campaign from when invasion of Iraq was first countenanced, till it was executed. I imagine we could have a similar deal here. Certainly it wouldn't be hard to swing the support of a great many commonwealth countries behind you. You could probably even manage to get UN approval if you threw as much effort into the campaign to gather support as you did for Iraq.
So, tell me again, exactly who are you expecting to have retaliate?
Jedidiah.
Excellent. So we can expect to see the Zimbabwe invasion plans drawn up next week then?
Jedidiah.
My preferred technique for making presentations is as follows: when writing up my report in LaTeX (I'm a math person, so LaTeX is the natural choice) I include an extra \summary{ summary of paragraph } at the start of every paragraph, long equation array, etc. It's very little work to do this while writing the full report. My standard document class simply ignores summary content. I have another document class, however, that ignores the paragraph content and simply renders the section headings etc. and summary content to prettily rendered pdf slides. It takes some work setting up the document classes so that both versions look as elegant in each form, but once that's done you run LaTeX once and get your full report, then run it again, and get your presentation. Very easy, and it keeps the content much better.
Jedidiah.
Typically, politicians in NZ care very little about what the public thinks, if they personally think it's in our best interests. There have been several examples of this over the past year or so, where public opinion polls showed 90% against policy changes but the politicians bought the new bills in anyway. It's not really democracy, it's a 3 year term of autonomy where if we don't like the results we vote in someone else. Unfortunately, few parties have the will to reverse unpopular decisions.
Very true - although the harsher penalties referendum was very badly worded, and remarkably ambiguous. What you have to hold on to is that, as bad as it may be, it is way better than, for instance, the US political system. In New Zealand right now you guys have some real choice. Everything from ACT with their "20% flat rate Tax Rate", through to whatever Jim Anderton's latest party is called with their hardcore socialism, and everything in between: Luddites, Populists, the religious right, National, and Labour.
What matters is that it is still possible to effect real change in New Zealand politics because the country is still small enough. Look how effective the Greens and the anti-GM lobby has been: Regardless of whether you like their stand or not (I don't personally) they have had some influence. If enough people make digital copyright an issue, and manage to get at least one of the parties to champion it (though I'm at a loss as to which party that might be!) it will have some influence over final policy.
Jedidiah.
There's fairly minimal responsibility there. What America decided to do to (American Idol is a very different format and concept to what the NZ show did), and with the concept is hardly our fault. Besides, it was Americans doing the voting, so they can only really blame themselves, yes?
Jedidiah.
Fair call. Does it help it all that the band has ceased to exist and most (yeah, yeah, the annoying few linger) have disappeared into justified obscurity?
Jedidiah
Theres no proof that piracy contributes to higher sales. Infact the reason behind higher sales is because of all these stupid teeny music shows on like $Country Idol, and Popstars and all the other "young talent time"/"micky mouse club" wannabees.
Interestingly the original version of "Popstars" was in New Zealand. I can't even recall what the band was called. They have long since passed into obscurity - though several of the members managed to work their way into spots as VJs on local TV shows. Certainly such shows didn't have anything much to do with the rise in local content in NZ. Rather there has been a push on local content via local radio (government mandated quotas), such things as "New Zealand Music Month", and show like the (now defunct) M2 which heavily promoted local music. It is all about the exposure - it's a question of how you choose to give it. Simply playing whatever the latest local release is (as M2 used to do) is not a bad way (though, of course, not feasible for a large country!).
The real question is how to get past money marketing. I tend to dig for content, but no everyone is willing to go to that effort. In New Zealand the government has basically tried to rally some patriotism toward promoting NZ music. That doesn't scale though. Music downloads are a good way, but that potentially cuts into CD sales. Selling the music cheaply online as in iTMS may well be the answer - but that just shifts the marketing burden, and the money still has the control. I'm open to suggestions...
Jedidiah
But it all comes back down to think like American Idol etc!
Interestingly American Idol is based on a TV show that originally began in New Zealand. The show was called "Popstars" and was selecting a group of girls to sing as a girl band type group. It was successful in NZ, and was then run in Australia. From there it moved to getting runs in England, and elsewhere in Europe where the idea morphed a little. Finally it was picked up and converted into American Idol.
Jedidiah.
BS. Ask the average Kazaa downloader why they download music. Because it's there and it's easy! It has nothing to do with some sort of revolutionary movement. It's all about convenience, nothing more.
Which raises an interesting point - if the New Zealand Government really wanted to help boost New Zealand music (which they have said they wish to so, including mandating airtime for NZ music on local radio) then perhaps they could help set up a nice, easily searchable, repository of local music for download. Local bands could submit a track or two for download. It increases exposure, and provides the convenience factor. Why not go the whole hog and include music videos too?
Yes, it means the artist won't sell that track as a single, but it may well significantly boost their album sales. Plus the download rate rankings could give local radio stations a nice gauge on the popularity of local bands.
Worth a try?
Jedidiah
As many have pointed out - there's no good causality link here. It's equally likely that local music is more pirated _because_ it is more popular.
If I was to try and pin some causality to the rise in popularity of local music in NZ, I would say that the Governments request (with threats of legislation) that NZ radio stations fulfill a certain quota of airtime to local music has been a huge boost. And it links in timewise quite closely with some of the rise of popularity of local music. Mostly though, that is simply down to exposure. As noted in another post, local music gets lost amidst the larger marketing budgets of major overseas labels. I'm also not a fan of the government mandating local content quotas - I would prefer the radio stations choose to do that themselves.
My point is, simply, that greater exposure is what has boosted local music sales. Internet sharing of music is another way to increase exposure. That doesn't mean, of course, that I would advocate piracy - but perhaps local artists who would like to get known should release some tracks under a license that allows copying. Hopefully they already do.
Jedidiah.
I think the boost in local NZ music by copying is not that surprising. There is a lot of very good New Zealand music, but a lot of it stays relatively unknown, even to the local market, as we tend to get swamped by the more affluent overseas marketing. A little exposure can take you a long way.
As to New Zealand copyright laws - that's an interesting one, as they are currently under review. I haven't checked recently (but made plenty of submissions while they were taking them) but I believe that while they aren't doing a DMCA (because enough people spoke up) they aren't doing the right thing either.
This article by the IT editor of one of the major NZ newspapers goes so far as to suggest that they ought to be trying to enshrine Copyleft and Creative Commons in the copyright laws, so there is a movement towards this at a reasonably public level - how much sway that actually has over politicians is hard to say.
All the New Zealanders reading this: Write in to your local MP and ask them for their stance on Copyright law, and explain the benefits of having Copyleft and Creative Commons as a firmly enshrined concept under law. The more they think people are paying attention, the better the chance thet something good will come in the copyright review.
Jedidiah.
I agree entirely. I don't know why the extra Osgiliath scene with Boromir and denethor was ever cut. It sets up some potentially fantastic scenes where we see Faramir come into his own via conflict with Denethor in the 3rd film - I'm hoping Jackson uses that springboard as much as I hope he will. I'm guessing yes.
Jedidiah
Hopefully Faramir's character is evened out a little as he becomes the more the character from the book in the course of this film.
I do understand Jackson's desire to have some character development for Faramir - I'm just hoping he provides the development that I expect.
I thought many complaints about the change were unjustified until we've seen the other half of that characters development.
Jedidiah
At one stage I was given the task of writing a some data collection software for a casino. They had a very old program, that they didn't want to change, that could spew the data in raw format down a socket. My company was going to take the casino data and pump it into our software to do pretty visualisations. That meant we had to read that raw format coming of the socket, and process it into something useful that we could visualise.
I knocked up a quick program to read the raw data off the socket and just log it so we could get a wfew days sample of data to make sure it was conforming to the format they specified and check for unforseen glitches (of which there were, in the end, many). I left that running, but when I came back the next day the "constant stream" had cut out at 6am. I had only written a very simple logging program to collect, so I hadn't bothered t o handle the case that the server was going to close the socket connection on me, so I had no data after 6am. So much for a days worth of collection. The reason, I found, was the the "very old program" that they were using was a DOS program, which didn't run properly on Win2k (so they claimed) so it was on Win98. The reason I kept getting holes in the stream at 6am (I fixed the logger to handle socket closures, wait till it was back up and start logging again) was that they had to reboot the box every morning at 6am. Well, not had to - but they felt a regular scheduled reboot was a lot better than the slightly less regular unscheduled reboots they used to get.
In the end We wrote our proper socket collection code to just shut down at 6am, which was when we fired up our data processing on the nightly collection, then picked up again at 6:02 when the reboot was done.
Jedidiah
They did indeed render them CGI themselves. With Lightwave 7. And IMNSHO, it actually looks BETTER than the Nemesis.
Really I have to agree. Certainly way better than anything Babylon 5 ever did, or any of the Star Trek Series. I would have to see the film to see some extended scenes (rather than trailer fast cutting) to say how well it stacks up against movie quality Star Trek, but it would at the very least sit comfortably along side.
A fine effort.
Jedidiah
Finnish girls are very definitely very attractive. The fact that my girlfriend is Finnish in no way biases my opinion.
Jedidiah
I think they rendered all that themselves actually - given that there are plenty of scenes with Babylon 5 ships and Star Trek ships together - so either they are stupendously good at splicing stuff together frame by frame (highly unlikely) or they did all the CG themselves. In which case, good on them - 'cause those are pretty nice effects considering the general look of the budget. Of course, that won't stop Paramount suing their ass into next week...
Jedidiah
Well, if you tell me what exactly it is that you want to be able to configure I can tell you how you can do that in Enlightenment. Kwin, or KWM, or whatever they are calling the KDE window manager currently is NOT all that configurable.
If you're willing to take a little time to understand FVWM configuration files you'll soon find that you can actually make that window manager do pretty anything you want.
As I say, tell me what you want to configure, and I assure you I can tell you some way to do it in Enlightenment. Then think of the things you wish you could configure, and I'll try and tell you how you might be able to configure those too.
Jedidiah.
When I'm using Linux, I use KDE, and I assume you do too given that it's the only remotely customizeable WM.
[cough]Enlightenment[cough]
KWin customisable? What else have you tried?! Sit down and spend some time with FVWM or Enlightenment (no, it isn't dead) and learn what customisation actually means. And you can use either of those within both KDE and GNOME, so choosing based on window managers is, well, dumb.
Jedidiah.