DVD sales add on to box office sales for a movie, however music sales are almost strictly CD purchases.
Yeah, that's true, but it must be a pretty lucrative sweetener. Some movies can afford to lose out on box office because the studios know they'll make enough from VHS/DVD/cable/overseas etc.
Still, I agree, it is amazing that CDs cost so much more (relatively) than DVDs and books and computer games (I'm assuming it doesn't take 1-2 years to make a music CD like it does to make a game).
Books are pretty overpriced too (they take a while to produce, but not nearly as many people as some of the other pursuits). I guess in most cases we're paying to support the distribution system as well, something that may well be marginalised in the future with CD/DVD burning, custom book printing & binding (& e-paper?), etc. Not the near future, of course...
(Commercial games these days seem to be equivalent to small films (short films?) in terms of production resources. Not something I would have predicted when playing games on my C64.:)
Makes me wonder why DVDs cost about the same as, or only a little more than, CDs. Surely the average Hollywood blockbuster costs more to make than the latest [insert teen band] disc... what are the average profits for each?
I guess you're usually guaranteed a minimum return on your expenses with movies, unless you've made an absolute dog. Music is also a heavily marketed and merchandised commodity, though, so it might be amenable to similar spreadsheet predictions for top-40 stuff...
Can $250 billion in market capitalization be wrong?
With the sort of resources Microsoft has, they can afford many inexpensive mistakes, maybe even a few years of outright technical and financial buffoonry, before they would even begin to feel any pain. Yes, they can be wrong, but no, they are unlikely to suffer any consequences for their errors.
Tell that to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tell that to the Jewish people who died in the holocaust. Tell that to the people, Israeli and Palestinian, who die daily in the middle east. Tell that to all the people who have died in Northern Ireland. etc. etc.
Terrorism is war with indiscriminate targets, and terror is often used as a weapon of war, with armies being none too choosy about their targets either.
Martin Luther and the Reformation basically rejected the Pope, but not all the perversions of Catholicism in all the various denominations. To find a true New Testament church, there are several distinctives. First, it should be locally governed, not a part of a larger organization that has any control over it. That lets out all the denominations by definition. Second, it should hold to the Bible as literal truth.
I can understand the intention, but surely 1600 years after Christ, and maybe 1200 to 800 years after the change (depending on where you measure it from) was too late to really know if what the Protestants were establishing was the same as the pre-corporate Church.:/
(But yes, Catholicism did get very ornate and pagan as a consequence of muting people's desires for same from other sources, and abuse of the power people had within the Church was pretty bad on a number of levels.)
The Lord Jesus returns "in the clouds" (not coming to Earth all the way) and collects believers. This does not include "nominal" Christians, such as some/many in Catholicism and other denominations.
Now, I'm not Christian, but surely the Catholic Church is the original church, not merely a 'nominal' denomination. All of the various Protestant sects forked from it quite late, didn't they?
Or are you using non-believers to refer to all those whose faith is not strong enough in all the various forms of Xtian belief, Catholic or otherwise? It's a bit ambiguous...
(Back on topic, Heinlein's Job is an amusing take on Revelations.:)
In the trailers for the movie, AI, Steven Spielberg talks about how he and Kubric communicated to each other through fax machines kept in locked closets.
There's a good chance that Stanley stipulated that that be the case; he was a private person, to the point where some people might consider him to have certain psychiatric problems. Still, poor == crazy, rich == eccentric, hey?
I never got four of my adult teeth... and I've only had one wisdom tooth out (I'm 29, BTW).
Most of the study participants lack the maxillary and mandibular molars, the back three teeth on each side of the mouth, including the wisdom teeth.
I'm lacking the molars directly behind the canine on the top and bottom, both sides of the mouth (not sure which that one is:) and the wisdom teeth inside my gums x-ray as very small (almost unformed).
Two of the deciduous teeth in the top of my mouth lasted up until a couple of years ago, though they were dying in my mouth by the end.:/
This visa worker may or may not be guilty, but they are not going to give a non-citizen the rights of a citizen.
Detention without charge or trial is not only against the Constitution, it violates the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights (articles 5, 9, 10 & 11, among others)
Yes, that same document the US was waving around as justification a few days ago when they released their annual global human rights report.
Hypocritical? You be the judge.
(Two of my country's citizens are currently locked up in Guantanamo Bay "until the end of the war on terror", which could mean a life sentence, despite the fact that at least one of them has been assessed to have had no links or contact with Al-Qaeda. No, he hasn't been charged. (I haven't heard *anything* about the other one, he could be dead for all I know... a couple of Afghani captives have already died in US captivity after heavy beatings.)
That period of being an orphan, in spite of the beauty and the speed, held enough heartbreak and frustration for a lifetime.
Yup, I held on too long as well out of my love of the platform. I still prefer the way I had my Amiga set up for certain things (e.g. first click to focus, a second click to actually bring the window to the front) and how *easy* it was to change so many things about the system, without making life confusing for people who didn't want that level of control.
You're wasting your life on a high maintenance distro
Huh? How is Debian high maintenance? It's been pretty much "set and forget" for me... (I don't have any experience with Gentoo, so I won't speak about that.)
People seem to be getting used to having everything provided for them by large companies and/or governments. What's wrong with amateur & local content? What it lacks in polish, it makes up for in fostering a sense of community. Really, it comes down to where people want to spend their money (i.e. the market is always right). I think you're correct, if people are willing to accept the current model, they'd pay through the nose for the same subsidized crap they already get, rather than invest less money in deveoping someone with a bit of potential outside the current whorish media system.
I've never bought a Britney Spears CD or watched an episode of Survivor, so why should I have to fund these activities with my supermarket purchases? Ah well, grumble grumble grumble...:/
And the next step will be the comprehensive disposal of your favorite websites unless you pay significant amounts of money per month to view them.
I'd rather pay the artists than the cereal makers and car salesmen for the artistic content I experience -- surely I can't be alone...? Yes, I know this will mean less content in volume, but I think what's there won't mean any less to people.
p.s. Taliban controlled areas? I thought the Taliban had been defeated.
Sure, in the sense that their most powerful supporters were all bought off by the US. Hamid Karzai is little more than the Mayor of Kabul at the moment...:/
The Linux InstallShield license would probably cost BioWare more money than they would make on the Linux port.
Sure, but Bioware were promising multiplatform out-of-the-box for quite a while before the release of the game, and a number of people probably pre-ordered based on that advertised feature.
They've probably lost money on the port(s?) anyway, and they've lost the goodwill that they abused by saying one thing and doing another (they were coding the game all the way through with little to no consideration of other platforms, as demonstrated by the farce when they were looking for audio systems to port to, not knowing that Miles had had a Linux port out for quite a while).
Maybe they could buy back a bit of goodwill by not also requiring that purchasers have access to a Windows box -- and it would make them think twice about making promises they can't live up to.
Sound government policy can provide this stability to the economy of any nation.
That's a very 19th century perspective, I think. Now that money is so fluid, those with lots of it can do an end run around any laws relating to tax, workplace safety, etc. Any government that tried to stand against the rest would see its unit of currency drop like a stone as speculators went to town on it... George Soros and his like have been responsible for more than a few catastrophic economic implosions in the last two decades or so.
When people can't rely on anything more than a day-to-day future, the economy suffers badly because people don't feel secure. This is part of the problem we are facing in the US today.
You're very right about this -- but it's a self-peretuating state. Economies depend on confidence, from investors, producers and consumers alike -- if any of those feels bad about things, it impacts badly on the whole system.
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I break laws every day. I ride my bicycle through a red light. I jay-walk. I cross the speed limit.
Terrorist!
DVD sales add on to box office sales for a movie, however music sales are almost strictly CD purchases.
:)
Yeah, that's true, but it must be a pretty lucrative sweetener. Some movies can afford to lose out on box office because the studios know they'll make enough from VHS/DVD/cable/overseas etc.
Still, I agree, it is amazing that CDs cost so much more (relatively) than DVDs and books and computer games (I'm assuming it doesn't take 1-2 years to make a music CD like it does to make a game).
Books are pretty overpriced too (they take a while to produce, but not nearly as many people as some of the other pursuits). I guess in most cases we're paying to support the distribution system as well, something that may well be marginalised in the future with CD/DVD burning, custom book printing & binding (& e-paper?), etc. Not the near future, of course...
(Commercial games these days seem to be equivalent to small films (short films?) in terms of production resources. Not something I would have predicted when playing games on my C64.
Makes me wonder why DVDs cost about the same as, or only a little more than, CDs. Surely the average Hollywood blockbuster costs more to make than the latest [insert teen band] disc... what are the average profits for each?
I guess you're usually guaranteed a minimum return on your expenses with movies, unless you've made an absolute dog. Music is also a heavily marketed and merchandised commodity, though, so it might be amenable to similar spreadsheet predictions for top-40 stuff...
Can $250 billion in market capitalization be wrong?
With the sort of resources Microsoft has, they can afford many inexpensive mistakes, maybe even a few years of outright technical and financial buffoonry, before they would even begin to feel any pain. Yes, they can be wrong, but no, they are unlikely to suffer any consequences for their errors.
War is not terrorism
Tell that to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tell that to the Jewish people who died in the holocaust. Tell that to the people, Israeli and Palestinian, who die daily in the middle east. Tell that to all the people who have died in Northern Ireland. etc. etc.
Terrorism is war with indiscriminate targets, and terror is often used as a weapon of war, with armies being none too choosy about their targets either.
Martin Luther and the Reformation basically rejected the Pope, but not all the perversions of Catholicism in all the various denominations. To find a true New Testament church, there are several distinctives. First, it should be locally governed, not a part of a larger organization that has any control over it. That lets out all the denominations by definition. Second, it should hold to the Bible as literal truth.
:/
I can understand the intention, but surely 1600 years after Christ, and maybe 1200 to 800 years after the change (depending on where you measure it from) was too late to really know if what the Protestants were establishing was the same as the pre-corporate Church.
(But yes, Catholicism did get very ornate and pagan as a consequence of muting people's desires for same from other sources, and abuse of the power people had within the Church was pretty bad on a number of levels.)
The Lord Jesus returns "in the clouds" (not coming to Earth all the way) and collects believers. This does not include "nominal" Christians, such as some/many in Catholicism and other denominations.
:)
Now, I'm not Christian, but surely the Catholic Church is the original church, not merely a 'nominal' denomination. All of the various Protestant sects forked from it quite late, didn't they?
Or are you using non-believers to refer to all those whose faith is not strong enough in all the various forms of Xtian belief, Catholic or otherwise? It's a bit ambiguous...
(Back on topic, Heinlein's Job is an amusing take on Revelations.
A corporation is preventing you from doing something, which is their right according to law.
When common sense is outlawed, only outlaws will have common sense.
Slashback tonight brings updates and clarifications on ... the Evil Bit RFC
Nooooooo! Make it stop!
The main point about this quote is that it was made some time before the 'raves' of the 1990's became popular
The Ecstasy 'Summer of Love' was in the UK in 1988, wasn't it?
I grew up on good ol' PBS. Monty Python didn't turn me into a drag racing nun. Or a nude pianist.
:)
Let me tell you, you're really missing out.
In the trailers for the movie, AI, Steven Spielberg talks about how he and Kubric communicated to each other through fax machines kept in locked closets.
There's a good chance that Stanley stipulated that that be the case; he was a private person, to the point where some people might consider him to have certain psychiatric problems. Still, poor == crazy, rich == eccentric, hey?
I never got four of my adult teeth... and I've only had one wisdom tooth out (I'm 29, BTW).
:) and the wisdom teeth inside my gums x-ray as very small (almost unformed).
:/
Most of the study participants lack the maxillary and mandibular molars, the back three teeth on each side of the mouth, including the wisdom teeth.
I'm lacking the molars directly behind the canine on the top and bottom, both sides of the mouth (not sure which that one is
Two of the deciduous teeth in the top of my mouth lasted up until a couple of years ago, though they were dying in my mouth by the end.
Weird, huh?
This visa worker may or may not be guilty,
but they are not going to give a non-citizen
the rights of a citizen.
Detention without charge or trial is not only against the Constitution, it violates the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights (articles 5, 9, 10 & 11, among others)
Yes, that same document the US was waving around as justification a few days ago when they released their annual global human rights report.
Hypocritical? You be the judge.
(Two of my country's citizens are currently locked up in Guantanamo Bay "until the end of the war on terror", which could mean a life sentence, despite the fact that at least one of them has been assessed to have had no links or contact with Al-Qaeda. No, he hasn't been charged. (I haven't heard *anything* about the other one, he could be dead for all I know... a couple of Afghani captives have already died in US captivity after heavy beatings.)
I was an Amiga user in the 1990s.
That period of being an orphan, in spite of the beauty and the speed, held enough heartbreak and frustration for a lifetime.
Yup, I held on too long as well out of my love of the platform. I still prefer the way I had my Amiga set up for certain things (e.g. first click to focus, a second click to actually bring the window to the front) and how *easy* it was to change so many things about the system, without making life confusing for people who didn't want that level of control.
You're wasting your life on a high maintenance distro
Huh? How is Debian high maintenance? It's been pretty much "set and forget" for me... (I don't have any experience with Gentoo, so I won't speak about that.)
People seem to be getting used to having everything provided for them by large companies and/or governments. What's wrong with amateur & local content? What it lacks in polish, it makes up for in fostering a sense of community. Really, it comes down to where people want to spend their money (i.e. the market is always right). I think you're correct, if people are willing to accept the current model, they'd pay through the nose for the same subsidized crap they already get, rather than invest less money in deveoping someone with a bit of potential outside the current whorish media system.
:/
I've never bought a Britney Spears CD or watched an episode of Survivor, so why should I have to fund these activities with my supermarket purchases? Ah well, grumble grumble grumble...
And the next step will be the comprehensive disposal of your favorite websites unless you pay significant amounts of money per month to view them.
I'd rather pay the artists than the cereal makers and car salesmen for the artistic content I experience -- surely I can't be alone...? Yes, I know this will mean less content in volume, but I think what's there won't mean any less to people.
p.s. Taliban controlled areas? I thought the Taliban had been defeated.
:/
Sure, in the sense that their most powerful supporters were all bought off by the US. Hamid Karzai is little more than the Mayor of Kabul at the moment...
The Linux InstallShield license would probably cost BioWare more money than they would make on the Linux port.
Sure, but Bioware were promising multiplatform out-of-the-box for quite a while before the release of the game, and a number of people probably pre-ordered based on that advertised feature.
They've probably lost money on the port(s?) anyway, and they've lost the goodwill that they abused by saying one thing and doing another (they were coding the game all the way through with little to no consideration of other platforms, as demonstrated by the farce when they were looking for audio systems to port to, not knowing that Miles had had a Linux port out for quite a while).
Maybe they could buy back a bit of goodwill by not also requiring that purchasers have access to a Windows box -- and it would make them think twice about making promises they can't live up to.
Slightly diminished by the fact that the source of the Linux kernel re-written in whitespace would take up more than 1000 times its current size :)
If you understand this, the way we act makes more sense.
No, the way the USA is acting at the moment makes no sense at all, except to a misguided bunch of neo-conservatives with the ear of the President.
Understanding insane actions does not mean that those actions somehow "make sense" or "are justified" in any way.
So this criticism you heap on us hardly has the desired effect. If anything it makes us more resolute.
Implying that we should just STFU and get out of the way? Sorry, that's not my usual response to war criminals -- which covers Saddam and GWB both.
Sound government policy can provide this stability to the economy of any nation.
That's a very 19th century perspective, I think. Now that money is so fluid, those with lots of it can do an end run around any laws relating to tax, workplace safety, etc. Any government that tried to stand against the rest would see its unit of currency drop like a stone as speculators went to town on it... George Soros and his like have been responsible for more than a few catastrophic economic implosions in the last two decades or so.
When people can't rely on anything more than a day-to-day future, the economy suffers badly because people don't feel secure. This is part of the problem we are facing in the US today.
You're very right about this -- but it's a self-peretuating state. Economies depend on confidence, from investors, producers and consumers alike -- if any of those feels bad about things, it impacts badly on the whole system.
I'm definitely with you, but mainly for the reasons that David Icke cites.
I should be able to keep a stable job for 5 years without having to worry about the third world catching up and robbing me of my job every 5 years.
Why? Divine right?
This is what globalisation is all about; well, that and ensuring that the people at the very top of the heap don't lose out in the process.
If you're not competitive (or don't want to compete), drop out of the race. Live your life by your own standards, not someone else's.