Yeah. Zecharia Sitchin, the fellow who claims that humanity was genetically engineered from primates, in order to mine gold for their Alien Overlords.
Using the words "truth" and "Zecharia Sitchin" in the same sentence would result in an automatic beating with gym socks filled with dead hamsters if I have any say in the matter.
And in this instance, where I DO have some say in the matter, using the words "truth" and "Zecharia Sitchin" in the same sentence, instantly and forever labels you a credulous and willfully ignorant fool, who has wasted the countless taxpayer dollars that were spent in a demonstrably futile attempt to educate you.
If you would be so kind as to inform me how to differentiate the "sarcasm" I am supposedly missing, from the bog-standard libertarian "Government/NASA can't do anything right/The 'Free Market', W00T!!!1!" B.S. that perodically sprays stupid all over everyone that reads it, I would be very grateful.
is the tons of utter bullshit that Richard Hoagland will then spew about all the fantastic discoveries revealed by the impact, proving that there was an advanced civilization on Mars, that NASA is suppressing.
Dear Jeebus, please let the asteroid hit the "Face On Mars" dead center, just to piss off that con artist Hoagland.
It's not a matter of funding, it's a matter of the asteroid being very small and hard to see. You need the biggest telescopes on the planet to image it and to track it. This requires rather long exposures on scopes that have had their viewing time booked months and years in advance.
And even then, forces such as the effect of the solar "wind", as well as thermal heating from Sunlight can affect the trajectory.
There are variables that no amount of funding can calculate nor account for.
The only thing we can do is continue to track it (viewing will get better later in January, when the relative positions of the asteroid, the Earth and the Sun change enough to permit easier tracking) and refine its trajectory.
This is real life, not Star Trek, where the Vulcan or the Android can get an instant and accurate to ten decimal places calculation of the trajectory of an object that has just been detected by the main technobabble device of the week.
"...what on earth do you pay...when you buy a CD now?"
Why, whatever the local Used CD shops here in Boston choose to charge.
It's ALWAYS LESS than new at any other retail venue.
One of the few "new" CDs I've bought was the MC Hawking "Greatest Hits" CD, and that was a few years ago.
Every other RIAA affiliated record company produced CD I own was bought used, from either a used CD place, Goodwill/Slavation Army/other thrift store, via eBay for a couple of hard to find discs or at yard sales.
It's regrettable that the artist doesn't get a cut of the resale, but then again, the record company doesn't get the lion's share of the resale price, and therefore, RIAA doesn't get a taste, either.
If the record company/artist(s) are not RIAA affilliated, then, and only then, do I buy NEW CDs. If an artist offers MP3 downloads, I.E., an collection/"album", for a set fee, or donation I'll buy the music in that fashion. But only if they're not RIAA affiliated! If they are, it's a USED C for me or nothing!
Finally, if I already own an album on vinyl, and I find the ripped CD on BitTorrent or USENET, I'll grab that and no qualms whatsoever.
So, by choosing carefully, I can support with my money those artists who have rejected the "old way" of doing business, and, by waiting a month or so, still have the latest releases by artists who are still stuck in the RIAA trap, either by contract or choice, and keep my money from supporting the efforts of the RIAA to terrorize and intimidate the people who buy CDs and have the audacity to actually think they have any rights to listen to that music as they see fit.
Considering that the used CDs I buy have very likely only been accessed one time, during the ripping process, well, that amuses me greatly.
"Clue 2:People have already fully embraced Video DRM via the DVD."
Primarily because the DVD DRM does not get in the way. You drop the DVD in the tray, push PLAY and you watch the movie.
iTunes is similar. Click the BUY button, wait a bit, play your music forever. Move it to the iPod and bring it with you.
"But FairPlay means I can't transfer my iTunes music to this piece of crap plastic half gig MP3 player from some slave labor factory in China! WAHHHH!"
Yeah, so? Did you see anything anywhere on the iTunes site that even hinted that you could do that?
"But CSS means I can't transfer my DVD to this piece of crap plastic one gig WMV player from some slave labor factory in China! WAHHHH!"
Yeah, so? Did you see anything anywhere on the DVD box that even hinted that you could do that?
And the less said about the smelly Linux hippies and their Ogg Vorbis this and their Matroska that, the better!
Where was I? Oh, yes.
DRM that doesn't get in the way and doesn't inconvenience the target audience, I.E., the average shmoe with iTunes and a DVD player in the living room, is DRM that, as far as the average shmoe is concerned, doesn't exist. The average shmoe has no interest in copying a DVD. Why would he want to do that? He already HAS the DVD.
In fact, the average shmoe has no real interest in owning most DVDs. That's why Blockbuster and Netflix work.
"I haven't watched Raiders of the Lost Ark in ages! Let me add it to my Netflix queue/stop at Blockbuster on the way home and get it."
So, if Apple does the smart thing, and makes it as fast and as easy to rent a movie, with essentially invisible DRM, they, and the studios, will do just fine, as long as the studios can refrain from just being dicks about the whole thing.
"Now you're talking about an encryption that's significantly more of a PITA than CSS ever was. Apple will probably be updating it every two weeks to keep people out, so if I wanted to rip my rental stream I'd have to bugger around trying to find the latest version of whatever would remove that DRM."
Exactly. I, for one, am not going to rip films rented from iTunes. Not worth the hassle for those movies I am, in all honesty, only going to watch once, because it's easier and potentially cheaper than seeing it in the theater.
If I really want to see a film in the theaters right now, I go and see it. I'll continue to do that until the total cost (subway fare to and from the theater & ticket price) significantly exceed the cost of the DVD from Amazon or Deep Discount. Then, I'll just say, "Screw it!", download it, and THEN buy the DVD when it's released.
My point in the original message was both that there will be ripping apps for iTunes rental movies, no matter what I or anyone else thinks about the morality of them and that, eventually, Fox will decide that the megatons of money they will make from such a deal is not enough. They wanted gigatons.
"The iTunes music store was easy enough, cheap enough, and the DRM was unobtrusive enough, to convince a *lot* of people already "doing that RIGHT NOW" to actually *buy* music again. Then they did the same with TV shows (until NBC/Universal decided they'd rather have people "pirate" their shows instead of buy them through Apple). There's no reason to expect the iTunes movie rentals will somehow fail to do the same thing, again granted acceptable pricing and usage terms."
Very perceptive. I use the iTunes store frequently for music, and I have bought one or two TV episodes. IF the price is right, and the other factors being easy enough to live with, I might rent those few films I only want to see once. If I want them permenently, I'll then wait for the DVD.
However, the vast majority of stuff I grab from TPB and USENET is U.K. television.
Doctor Who, Torchwood, lots of BBC science programming, Scrapheap Challenge, The IT Crowd, et al.
Sure, EVENTUALLY, Doctor Who and Torchwood will make their way to the US, but edited and censored and chopped up to make room for commercials. Will The IT Crowd EVER make it here to the US? It's doubtful.
I also use BitTorrent and USENET as my personal DVR that automatically removes commercials. Mainly for The Boondocks, South Park, MythBusters, Eureka and a few others. This lets me watch them when I want to watch them. Not a whole lot of difference from TiVo, actually.
Have I grabbed movies? Sure! Even though it was preordered via Amazon, I grabbed Bender's Big Score before the DVD officially shipped. Aside from BBS, I've also grabbed THEM, The Monolith Monsters, The Creeping Terror, The Giant Claw, Attack of the Crab Monsters, The Star Wars Holiday Special, Order of the Phoenix (also preordered), HAXAN (to replace the VHS copy taped from Independent Film Channel/stopgap until I order it from the Criterion Collection), and a few others of the same type.
Now, if UNIVERSAL had released Monolith Monsters on DVD, I'd have bought it years ago. I have THEM on a licensed VHS tape. Lucas will never issue SWHS on DVD, and frankly, my VHS copy is pretty crappy.
For every cheap sod happy with a cammed version of "Book of Secrets" and will never buy the DVD, there's people like myself, who see the film in the theater and download it afterwards to watch a few more times until the DVD is released. (Still waiting for a decent not cammed version of "Book of Secrets" to hold me over until the DVD in 2008.)
And, again, like myself, there are people who will download a film, even though they already own the DVD, simply because it's easier to download and burn a few films at one go as.avi files onto a DVD, rather than screw around wasting time ripping those same films from the DVDs we already own, converting to.avi and burning them manually. Between Automator, AppleScript and the two DVD drives in my Mac, I'll let the machine make the viewing copies for me while I sleep.
The MPAA/Digital Copyright Act make it a crime to rip my DVDs to backup discs, home server or to make a viewing copy of just the movie, so screw it. I might as well download those films I already own and save the wear and tear on the DVD, as well as not wasting time doing it myself.
Frankly, I have yet to see any rational explanation as how taping/DVR-ing an episode of Smallville off the air or a movie from a premium cable channel is legal and "moral" (to quote a dimwitted sactimonious 'tard upthread) and yet, downloading that same episode or movie via BT/USENET is an immoral crime.
...on iTunes, there will be at least 2 applications that will intercept or otherwise access the data and convert it to a more permanent format.
Almost certainly it'll be Windows only at first, but very soon thereafter, the Mac OS version will appear.
And then the race will be on! First QuickTime will be patched, then the intercept applications will be patched to defeat the QT patch. The subsequent QT patches will break all sorts of things, like iPhoto and Garage Band and anything else that uses the QT engine.
Hilarity ensues for a year or so until Fox says "Screw it! We're not making enough money off this."
Rest of world pays no real attention, as they're too busy watching all the movies and TV programs they've downloaded via The Pirate Bay and from USENET.
A previous poster noted that Bender's Big Score is a major hunk of fan service.
Why not, already?
We kept the interest alive via the high ratings on [adult swim] and by buying the DVD sets, not to mention all the fansites.
I think that one aspect of BBS is that it is a "thank you!" to, and recognition of, all the FUTURAMA fans who kept the faith and kept the interest in the series so high.
Re:The Secret to Futurama's success
on
Futurama Returns!
·
· Score: 3, Funny
My all time favorite example of this is in the were-car episode.
One of the portraits is of a robot with a decidedly 19th Century British naval officer look to it.
The nameplaque on the portrait is:
Commodore LXIV
Truly, I all but fell out of the chair when I saw that.
If by some chance, the writer who came up with that sees this, THANK YOU for the compliment, that people watching FUTURAMA would be intelligent enough to get something as subtle as that, and would appreciate it.
First off, stop buying NEW CDs. Wait a few weeks and buy them used at your local used CD joint. You get get music in an ethical and legal manner that both screws the RIAA companies out of more money and at a discount for you.
You can then rip the CD at your leisure and stash the CD in a box somewhere. Preferably with the receipt in the jewel case, just in case you need to prove that you indeed DO own the source CD for all those tracks on your iPod. (Who knows how insane the RIAA will get in the in the coming years. Considering they've sued people who don't even own a computer, what's the next step, suing people who own iPods or other MP3 players? Suing people who have iTunes or WinAmp installed on their computers?)
Obviously, using iTunes or other legit online retailers will save you even more money by buying the one or two good tunes on a CD. Yes, it does funnel money back to the RIAA companies, resulting in a pittance in the hands of the actual artist who made the music.
Personally, I'd like to see the Radiohead model become widespread as more and more bands opt out of the current RIAA company business model. I do think that directly selling to the public is likely to be far more profitable to a band.
Fry: Back in the 20th century we had no idea there was a university on Mars. Professor Farnsworth: Well, in those days Mars was a dreary uninhabitable wasteland much like Utah; but unlike Utah, Mars was eventually made livable.
"There was also nothing stopping NASA from building a smaller one first had they so desired."
"Hello, Congress, NASA here. Hey, look. We're gonna go ahead and build a smaller Shuttle than what DOD wants and use the money appropriated for the bigger Shuttle to do that. That's cool with you guys, right? You're cool with that, right?"
If NASA decided to do something of which Congress disapproved, how much longer would the NASA budget be funded?
Bush says, "YEEHAW! We's goin' to MARS!", NASA says, "Yassah, master George!" Bush tells Congress, "Yew boys don't spend too much on thishere Mars thing, hear?" and Congress says, "Yassah, master George!".
Or, more to the point. DOD told NASA EXACTLY what the dimensions of the cargo bay were going to be, and what the lift capacity of the Shuttle would be.
So much for being a civilian agancy.
I stand by my previous statement. They do what Congress tells them to do. Congress tells them what to do via the budget.
Slashdot Mirror
"That means that the Hubble over its entire lifespan cost every man, woman and child in the United States $21.67 each."
So, that works out to what? 4 Big Macs, give or take?
Yeah. you know what? The beauty of the Hubble images, seeing the glories of the Universe, revelling in the knowledge revealed.
Beats the goddamn HELL out of having a paper bag with 4 hamburgers in it. I can eat those burgers, and a day later, I'm hungry again.
The Hubble images will satisfy my soul for decades to come.
Hell, I'll happily send NASA another US$20 or so, to help pay for the servicing mission.
And to the original parent commenter, if you can't understand what Hubble has meant to the people of the US and of the Earth, you'll never understand.
"We're all of us in the gutter, but some of us look at the stars."
Enjoy your grubbing about in your gutter, I have better things to do than reply to you further.
I have stars to look at.
Yeah. Zecharia Sitchin, the fellow who claims that humanity was genetically engineered from primates, in order to mine gold for their Alien Overlords.
Using the words "truth" and "Zecharia Sitchin" in the same sentence would result in an automatic beating with gym socks filled with dead hamsters if I have any say in the matter.
And in this instance, where I DO have some say in the matter, using the words "truth" and "Zecharia Sitchin" in the same sentence, instantly and forever labels you a credulous and willfully ignorant fool, who has wasted the countless taxpayer dollars that were spent in a demonstrably futile attempt to educate you.
I seriously regret that I cannot mod this up a point or two.
If you would be so kind as to inform me how to differentiate the "sarcasm" I am supposedly missing, from the bog-standard libertarian "Government/NASA can't do anything right/The 'Free Market', W00T!!!1!" B.S. that perodically sprays stupid all over everyone that reads it, I would be very grateful.
Thank you!
is the tons of utter bullshit that Richard Hoagland will then spew about all the fantastic discoveries revealed by the impact, proving that there was an advanced civilization on Mars, that NASA is suppressing.
Dear Jeebus, please let the asteroid hit the "Face On Mars" dead center, just to piss off that con artist Hoagland.
Thanks!
It's not a matter of funding, it's a matter of the asteroid being very small and hard to see. You need the biggest telescopes on the planet to image it and to track it. This requires rather long exposures on scopes that have had their viewing time booked months and years in advance.
And even then, forces such as the effect of the solar "wind", as well as thermal heating from Sunlight can affect the trajectory.
There are variables that no amount of funding can calculate nor account for.
The only thing we can do is continue to track it (viewing will get better later in January, when the relative positions of the asteroid, the Earth and the Sun change enough to permit easier tracking) and refine its trajectory.
This is real life, not Star Trek, where the Vulcan or the Android can get an instant and accurate to ten decimal places calculation of the trajectory of an object that has just been detected by the main technobabble device of the week.
Actually, the rovers were only guaranteed to function for 90 days. Everyone assumed they would get another few months of science out of them.
Three years later, one of the "problems" being addressed is continued funding for a program that wasn't really expected to last more than a year.
So, the expected lifetime of the rovers wasn't "botched".
"...what on earth do you pay...when you buy a CD now?"
Why, whatever the local Used CD shops here in Boston choose to charge.
It's ALWAYS LESS than new at any other retail venue.
One of the few "new" CDs I've bought was the MC Hawking "Greatest Hits" CD, and that was a few years ago.
Every other RIAA affiliated record company produced CD I own was bought used, from either a used CD place, Goodwill/Slavation Army/other thrift store, via eBay for a couple of hard to find discs or at yard sales.
It's regrettable that the artist doesn't get a cut of the resale, but then again, the record company doesn't get the lion's share of the resale price, and therefore, RIAA doesn't get a taste, either.
If the record company/artist(s) are not RIAA affilliated, then, and only then, do I buy NEW CDs. If an artist offers MP3 downloads, I.E., an collection/"album", for a set fee, or donation I'll buy the music in that fashion. But only if they're not RIAA affiliated! If they are, it's a USED C for me or nothing!
Finally, if I already own an album on vinyl, and I find the ripped CD on BitTorrent or USENET, I'll grab that and no qualms whatsoever.
So, by choosing carefully, I can support with my money those artists who have rejected the "old way" of doing business, and, by waiting a month or so, still have the latest releases by artists who are still stuck in the RIAA trap, either by contract or choice, and keep my money from supporting the efforts of the RIAA to terrorize and intimidate the people who buy CDs and have the audacity to actually think they have any rights to listen to that music as they see fit.
Considering that the used CDs I buy have very likely only been accessed one time, during the ripping process, well, that amuses me greatly.
"Clue 2:People have already fully embraced Video DRM via the DVD."
Primarily because the DVD DRM does not get in the way. You drop the DVD in the tray, push PLAY and you watch the movie.
iTunes is similar. Click the BUY button, wait a bit, play your music forever. Move it to the iPod and bring it with you.
"But FairPlay means I can't transfer my iTunes music to this piece of crap plastic half gig MP3 player from some slave labor factory in China! WAHHHH!"
Yeah, so? Did you see anything anywhere on the iTunes site that even hinted that you could do that?
"But CSS means I can't transfer my DVD to this piece of crap plastic one gig WMV player from some slave labor factory in China! WAHHHH!"
Yeah, so? Did you see anything anywhere on the DVD box that even hinted that you could do that?
And the less said about the smelly Linux hippies and their Ogg Vorbis this and their Matroska that, the better!
Where was I? Oh, yes.
DRM that doesn't get in the way and doesn't inconvenience the target audience, I.E., the average shmoe with iTunes and a DVD player in the living room, is DRM that, as far as the average shmoe is concerned, doesn't exist. The average shmoe has no interest in copying a DVD. Why would he want to do that? He already HAS the DVD.
In fact, the average shmoe has no real interest in owning most DVDs. That's why Blockbuster and Netflix work.
"I haven't watched Raiders of the Lost Ark in ages! Let me add it to my Netflix queue/stop at Blockbuster on the way home and get it."
So, if Apple does the smart thing, and makes it as fast and as easy to rent a movie, with essentially invisible DRM, they, and the studios, will do just fine, as long as the studios can refrain from just being dicks about the whole thing.
"Now you're talking about an encryption that's significantly more of a PITA than CSS ever was. Apple will probably be updating it every two weeks to keep people out, so if I wanted to rip my rental stream I'd have to bugger around trying to find the latest version of whatever would remove that DRM."
Exactly. I, for one, am not going to rip films rented from iTunes. Not worth the hassle for those movies I am, in all honesty, only going to watch once, because it's easier and potentially cheaper than seeing it in the theater.
If I really want to see a film in the theaters right now, I go and see it. I'll continue to do that until the total cost (subway fare to and from the theater & ticket price) significantly exceed the cost of the DVD from Amazon or Deep Discount. Then, I'll just say, "Screw it!", download it, and THEN buy the DVD when it's released.
My point in the original message was both that there will be ripping apps for iTunes rental movies, no matter what I or anyone else thinks about the morality of them and that, eventually, Fox will decide that the megatons of money they will make from such a deal is not enough. They wanted gigatons.
Unlike NBC, who are just brainhurtingly stupid.
"The iTunes music store was easy enough, cheap enough, and the DRM was unobtrusive enough, to convince a *lot* of people already "doing that RIGHT NOW" to actually *buy* music again. Then they did the same with TV shows (until NBC/Universal decided they'd rather have people "pirate" their shows instead of buy them through Apple). There's no reason to expect the iTunes movie rentals will somehow fail to do the same thing, again granted acceptable pricing and usage terms."
.avi files onto a DVD, rather than screw around wasting time ripping those same films from the DVDs we already own, converting to .avi and burning them manually. Between Automator, AppleScript and the two DVD drives in my Mac, I'll let the machine make the viewing copies for me while I sleep.
Very perceptive. I use the iTunes store frequently for music, and I have bought one or two TV episodes. IF the price is right, and the other factors being easy enough to live with, I might rent those few films I only want to see once. If I want them permenently, I'll then wait for the DVD.
However, the vast majority of stuff I grab from TPB and USENET is U.K. television.
Doctor Who, Torchwood, lots of BBC science programming, Scrapheap Challenge, The IT Crowd, et al.
Sure, EVENTUALLY, Doctor Who and Torchwood will make their way to the US, but edited and censored and chopped up to make room for commercials. Will The IT Crowd EVER make it here to the US? It's doubtful.
I also use BitTorrent and USENET as my personal DVR that automatically removes commercials. Mainly for The Boondocks, South Park, MythBusters, Eureka and a few others. This lets me watch them when I want to watch them. Not a whole lot of difference from TiVo, actually.
Have I grabbed movies? Sure! Even though it was preordered via Amazon, I grabbed Bender's Big Score before the DVD officially shipped. Aside from BBS, I've also grabbed THEM, The Monolith Monsters, The Creeping Terror, The Giant Claw, Attack of the Crab Monsters, The Star Wars Holiday Special, Order of the Phoenix (also preordered), HAXAN (to replace the VHS copy taped from Independent Film Channel/stopgap until I order it from the Criterion Collection), and a few others of the same type.
Now, if UNIVERSAL had released Monolith Monsters on DVD, I'd have bought it years ago. I have THEM on a licensed VHS tape. Lucas will never issue SWHS on DVD, and frankly, my VHS copy is pretty crappy.
For every cheap sod happy with a cammed version of "Book of Secrets" and will never buy the DVD, there's people like myself, who see the film in the theater and download it afterwards to watch a few more times until the DVD is released. (Still waiting for a decent not cammed version of "Book of Secrets" to hold me over until the DVD in 2008.)
And, again, like myself, there are people who will download a film, even though they already own the DVD, simply because it's easier to download and burn a few films at one go as
The MPAA/Digital Copyright Act make it a crime to rip my DVDs to backup discs, home server or to make a viewing copy of just the movie, so screw it. I might as well download those films I already own and save the wear and tear on the DVD, as well as not wasting time doing it myself.
Frankly, I have yet to see any rational explanation as how taping/DVR-ing an episode of Smallville off the air or a movie from a premium cable channel is legal and "moral" (to quote a dimwitted sactimonious 'tard upthread) and yet, downloading that same episode or movie via BT/USENET is an immoral crime.
"There will also be those moral enough not to break the law."
Yeah, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Ghandi, everyone who signed the Declaration of Independence, et al, etc.
Immoral lawbreaking criminal bastards the lot of them.
Lock 'em all up and throw away the key, that'll learn 'em!
...on iTunes, there will be at least 2 applications that will intercept or otherwise access the data and convert it to a more permanent format.
Almost certainly it'll be Windows only at first, but very soon thereafter, the Mac OS version will appear.
And then the race will be on! First QuickTime will be patched, then the intercept applications will be patched to defeat the QT patch. The subsequent QT patches will break all sorts of things, like iPhoto and Garage Band and anything else that uses the QT engine.
Hilarity ensues for a year or so until Fox says "Screw it! We're not making enough money off this."
Rest of world pays no real attention, as they're too busy watching all the movies and TV programs they've downloaded via The Pirate Bay and from USENET.
In other words, what we're all doing RIGHT NOW.
Google Sketchup is your Egyptian Copyright Infringement Co-Conspirator.
Caught that the first time. It's the little geek/nerd things like that, which made FUTURAMA such a favorite with the /. crowd.
"Oh, God! You're killing me!"
Best laugh I've had all week!
Thank you!
Anyone with mod points, I'd appreciate it if you'd mod Mr. Hacks up a few points.
And had it preordered via Amazon.
A previous poster noted that Bender's Big Score is a major hunk of fan service.
Why not, already?
We kept the interest alive via the high ratings on [adult swim] and by buying the DVD sets, not to mention all the fansites.
I think that one aspect of BBS is that it is a "thank you!" to, and recognition of, all the FUTURAMA fans who kept the faith and kept the interest in the series so high.
My all time favorite example of this is in the were-car episode.
One of the portraits is of a robot with a decidedly 19th Century British naval officer look to it.
The nameplaque on the portrait is:
Commodore LXIV
Truly, I all but fell out of the chair when I saw that.
If by some chance, the writer who came up with that sees this, THANK YOU for the compliment, that people watching FUTURAMA would be intelligent enough to get something as subtle as that, and would appreciate it.
In my opinion, that is.
First off, stop buying NEW CDs. Wait a few weeks and buy them used at your local used CD joint. You get get music in an ethical and legal manner that both screws the RIAA companies out of more money and at a discount for you.
You can then rip the CD at your leisure and stash the CD in a box somewhere. Preferably with the receipt in the jewel case, just in case you need to prove that you indeed DO own the source CD for all those tracks on your iPod. (Who knows how insane the RIAA will get in the in the coming years. Considering they've sued people who don't even own a computer, what's the next step, suing people who own iPods or other MP3 players? Suing people who have iTunes or WinAmp installed on their computers?)
Obviously, using iTunes or other legit online retailers will save you even more money by buying the one or two good tunes on a CD. Yes, it does funnel money back to the RIAA companies, resulting in a pittance in the hands of the actual artist who made the music.
Personally, I'd like to see the Radiohead model become widespread as more and more bands opt out of the current RIAA company business model. I do think that directly selling to the public is likely to be far more profitable to a band.
Fry: Back in the 20th century we had no idea there was a university on Mars.
Professor Farnsworth: Well, in those days Mars was a dreary uninhabitable wasteland much like Utah; but unlike Utah, Mars was eventually made livable.
"So jump back, Jack, 'cause I'm Jewish and I'm undead!"
Wait 'till you hear Mark Hamil as the Chanukah Zombie.
As for the film, on the downside, no full frontal Amy Wong or Leela nudity.
On the plus side No Zapp Brannigan nudity of any kind whatsoever! (Oh, thank you, sweet Jeebus!)
"There was also nothing stopping NASA from building a smaller one first had they so desired."
"Hello, Congress, NASA here. Hey, look. We're gonna go ahead and build a smaller Shuttle than what DOD wants and use the money appropriated for the bigger Shuttle to do that. That's cool with you guys, right? You're cool with that, right?"
Yeah, I can see that happening.
So much for their so-called "civilian" status and independence.
Yeah. Sure.
If NASA decided to do something of which Congress disapproved, how much longer would the NASA budget be funded?
Bush says, "YEEHAW! We's goin' to MARS!", NASA says, "Yassah, master George!" Bush tells Congress, "Yew boys don't spend too much on thishere Mars thing, hear?" and Congress says, "Yassah, master George!".
Or, more to the point. DOD told NASA EXACTLY what the dimensions of the cargo bay were going to be, and what the lift capacity of the Shuttle would be.
So much for being a civilian agancy.
I stand by my previous statement. They do what Congress tells them to do. Congress tells them what to do via the budget.
They are doing what they have been tasked to do by Congress, with the monies provided to them by Congress.
They may not be doing it the way YOU want. Tough. Sucks to be you.
Why not run for Congress, win a seat, and work your way up to be the chair of the comittee that funds NASA.
Then they will have to do things YOUR way.
Forgive me if I don't hold my breath waiting for THAT to happen anytime soon.