Easy joke (though pretty worn thin at this point), but it's a lot like the criticisms leveled at Linux that are 2-3 years stale. It hasn't been a particularly relevent criticism for quite a while.
I have 4 Windows machines running at home (along with a couple of Linux boxes) and an XP Pro system at client site where I am working currently and I haven't seen a blue screen in 3 years on any of them.
Yeah, the "try again in 2 days" happened to me. The big problem was that the transactions were fraudulent as someone apparently got into my account. I woke up one morning to emails saying that they "tried" to take the $12,000 in transactions that "I" tried to send overnight. But, since the accounts and cards didn't go through, they assured me that they'd try again.
I was in the middle of reading those emails when the phone rang from both my bank and my credit cards asking me about the fraud.
Compare the 2 reactions and you'll see why treating Paypal as any sort of real "financial company" is a complete joke. All of the real financial institutions flagged every single one of those transactions pretty much immediately and Paypal was going to try to run the fraud through again. Then, 2 days later, AFTER I HAD CALLED PAYPAL, they did try again. At that point, everyone in the situation knew it was fraud and they still hadn't stopped the automatic followups.
They then locked my Paypal account because it was "involved in fraud" and I had to fight for almost a year to get the remaining real money out of the account.
I tend to approach it with 2 questions rather than 1.
If today is the last day of my life, would my plans change?
AND
If I live another 65 years, will I regret anything included in my plans today?
Between the 2, you get a balance that keeps you from wasting the few years you actually do have, but without the reckless disregard for your future, should you have one (and statistically you will).
The first question keeps you from reaching old age, saying "I wish I had . ..". The second keeps you from asking, "Why oh why did I . ..?" at the same age.
I'm not saying that anyone's entitled to doing only things they like. If that's what you heard, either I miswrote or you misread.
AGAIN, I was merely pointing out that wedding photographers aren't sitting around 310 days of the year sipping champagne, smoking cigars and laughing about all of the suckers they swindled in the wedding photography business.
Sure, there are quite a few things you don't like to do that are a part of your business and your day. However, there's a big difference between a job that's 80% good and one that's 4% good as far as you're concerned. Growing up, my job was working on the family turkey farm. I hated every minute of it.
You may be willing to "accept the things you don't like", but you still sought out a tolerable profession given your likes and dislikes. Most people can't really do otherwise. The fact you talk about having customers indicates that you've chosen a job that probably doesn't involve shoveling and wading through manure, picking up dead birds, powerwashing barns with iodine laced water wearing a rain suit to keep some of it off, etc.
AND, for me (and the not wanting to work with kids thing was only about me), there were too many of those negative things to want to continue. I adjusted my other career alternatives and am happy doing what I do now and living with the few things that bother me about it. I'm in an 80% job. Wedding photography would have been a 40% job. Does that mean I'm not adult enough to deal with the gap between 80% and 100%? Absolutely not. However, am I a big enough idiot to take a 40% over an 80%? No.
Those other events are what most photographers have turned to in order to make a living.
However, for example, I can't stand kids and, as a photographer, I just don't "see" them the same way. Given that, I just left the idea behind as almost ALL of the alternatives involve working with kids.
What you describe about the breakup of pricing is exactly what's starting to happen, but an awful lot of consumers are going to photographers expecting the old "sitting fee $20 for 2 hours" kind of pricing and also not paying for prints. It's going to take a while before it balances.
My post was primarily aimed to balance out the "photographers are RIPPING you off" element in the discussion, where most of the posters are ascribing outright malice to photographers who haven't adjusted their business model to the new technologies yet. It's only been the last 5 years or so where an "average" family had access to a scanner and photo quality printer and much of that in the last 3.
Heck, lots of these photographers are still showing couples images from 1983 in their portfolios and their business model matches. However, it doesn't mean they're out to rip you off.
Lots of other businesses do this as well with the prices clearly not reflecting costs, but rather expectations from the clients. The "free" bread and salad or chips/salsa at many restaurants is clearly being paid for in the $16.95 entree price, but, drop the price of the entree to $12.95 and charge $3 for the salad and $1 for the bread and customers are outraged. The reality is that the food itself is nowhere near any of those prices. Rather, to cover labor and the other non-food costs, and the slim restaurant margin, $16.95 is what they need from a meal.
Every market needs to figure out how those costs are to be structured.
Wedding photography just has a bit more difficulty, because, like music, writing novels, acting etc. there are hundreds of people willing to do the same work for free for every 1 trying to squeeze out a living. It's because these jobs are also hobbies for lots of folks. It's always harder to make your primary living in a field filled with clamoring amateurs. On the other hand, there's usually good money to be made doing the stuff that you won't find people doing voluntarily.
Last time I checked, the dog waste removal companies weren't exactly flooded with applicants.
I actually see the same thing even in software. I've had several programmers on projects I'm on want to leave after a month or 2 because we're not doing anything "exciting" or "cutting edge". However, much of this programming is exactly where there's a solid amount of work to do. I do far better building inventory systems than if I was to try to build any of the tools that everyone wants to build on their own time.
The problem people buying wedding photography don't usually get is that, for most photographers, there's only 1-2 weddings per week they can shoot. That's because almost everyone gets married on Saturday afternoon. That'd be OK, except that a wedding's worth of photos need to be gone through, touched up, organized, proofs or other comparison method made up, sent out, process the incoming order and otherwise take up much more time afterward, all tied to the wedding on Saturday. Not to mention spending time at bridal shows, meeting with potential customers that don't sign, working on marketing and the rest of the non-billable portions of running a business. Combine that with couples that want the photographer to shoot the rehersal dinner and rehersal itself the night before and want that included in the package and you're left having to charge an entire week's worth of labor and materials to a single customer.
Then, as a self-employed person, they need to effectively double the money they want to pay themselves to cover their own payroll taxes, unemployment insurance (mandatory in my state), etc. you have to charge the equivalent of $40/hour, just to make $40,000. But, almost no one gets married in Nov-March, so you have to compress it further if you want to make your living doing just weddings. Throw in another couple of weeks here and there where the couple breaks up and cancels and you don't get another booking and you're left only able to get billable clients for about 26 weeks per year.
The end result is that you'd have to charge $3200 a wedding just to break even on the LABOR and still only make $40,000/yr, working weekends in addition to weekdays, dealing with people on one of the most stressful days possible, working without a safety net (just waiting to get sued because you "ruined" their once-in-a-lifetime-day and caused them major emotional distress).
I started down this road a couple of years ago and, after running the numbers and doing about 4 weddings, I decided that to be worth the hassle, the expense in redundant equipment (the bride doesn't want to hear that your *only* 135mm portrait lens cracked on HER SPECIAL DAY) and extra crap like multiple tuxedos in your closet because couples insist that the photographer wear one too, I'd have to charge well over $5000 a wedding to do it. And, since "anyone can take pictures" and "you're only working 3 hours a week", no one except the really high end clients wants to pay $5000-$7500 for a basic wedding photo package. If it were in that price range, work for hire would be fine.
However, quote $5000-$7500 for a wedding on a work-for hire basis, and you'll hear the whole working for 2-6 hours thing and they'll quickly do their own math and say, "No one's worth $2500/hr".
So, photographers have relied on print purchases to spread that cost around a big. After all, if the album's "worth" $1400, if the proofs are $400, if the digital photos on DVD are $250 etc. then the remaining money doesn't seem as bad.
Yeah, but Lucas fell prey to what a lot of people who've written stuff do.
In 2-3 of my short story classes in college, we would write a short story, turn it in unnamed and the class would discuss the story. We, as the author were not to speak at all during the discussion of our writing. So, you got to sit back and watch a group of 15 or so people discuss something you'd written.
It was amazing the crap people thought you'd "meant" to include. At the same time, a lot of neat insights came out. However, the vast majority of the importance attributed to "themes", story arcs, etc. was complete bull. Several of us discussed this outside class. Most of my stories were just me following the characters through the interesting things that sort of just appeared. It was a common enough theme to be apparent that the vast majority of us were doing something similar.
How does this relate? There were a couple of people in these classes that started buying into their own "hype". They started actually trying to claim that they'd intentionally put that stuff in there. I think Lucas has done the same thing. He's had 30 years of people analyzing Star Wars and giving all kinds of insights and he's noticed how deep and complex those insights can be and started passing them off as though he came up with them and intended them from the beginning.
Unfortunately, not all of the insights and "plans" can all be true simultaneously, so he's been walking a tightwire all along.
Exactly. People are always asking me if I download movies (because they know I'm a movie junkie). When I say that I can run 35 of so movies a month through Netflix for less than $50 (the price of 2 or so trips to the theater), there's no rational reason to wait days to download a crappy rip or screener when I can see the official DVD.
If 35 isn't enough, add another service like Blockbuster with a seperate queue and for $100 a month (what the big satellite TV packages cost), you're in the balpark of 2-3 DVD's a day (4+ hours a day, 7 days a week and more if the DVD's are part of TV sets). All of that for no more effort than making a list of what you want to see and going to the mailbox once a day.
Similarly, why would I want to take 6+ hours to re-encode a movie to DIVX or another format, when I want to watch 2-3 movies in a night? I'd rather spend all of the time and effort on other things or even actually watching the movies than on obtaining and manipulating them.
Maybe I've been spoiled by having $50 a month in movie budget, but you can easily spend that on a single nice dinner for 2 and a crappy dinner for 4. In other words, most people are spending the $50-$100 *somewhere* that's not necessary.
"Apparently you've never been to California where some movie theatre prices can be $18.00+ per person!"
Nah. He's just doing what people from California and New York have done to the rest of the country for decades: ignore that the other portion exists.
See, in a "normal" American conversation about movie prices *only* the CA and NY prices would count and anyone who only pays $5 for a 6:00pm showing on a weekend must live in the boondocks.
Re:Use formaldehyde?
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Makers of MAKE
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Here's a quote:
9.4.5 Make plastic from milk casein Casein is a phosphoprotein thermoplastic polymer that may be used to make insulators, buttons, handles, adhesives and artist's priming paint. We can make casein from the reaction of skimmed milk with ethanoic acid (acetic acid). Calcium caseinate + 2H+ ---> casein + Ca2+ (i) To prepare an approximately 10% ethanoic acid (acetic acid) solution, add 1 mL of glacial acetic acid to 10 mL of water. Separate cream from milk or directly use skimmed milk. Pour 200 mL of skimmed milk into a 500 mL beaker. Heat the milk to 50oC and then maintain the temperature at 40 to 50oC. Add drops of the prepared acetic acid solution to the warmed milk with constant stirring. After all the acetic acid solution is added, continue stirring for five minutes and then leave the mixture standing until the liquid becomes clear and the separation of the casein curd from the whey is complete. Filter the lump of casein by suction, squeeze it with a teaspoon, wash it with water, wipe it dry with a piece of filter paper, mould it into shapes and then expose it to the air for 1-2 days. Harden the plastic by immersing the dried casein in formalin (formaldehyde solution, methanal solution.) for one day. Finally, polish the hard casein plastic with sandpaper. Addition of aqueous ammonia solution to the casein can make glue.
Given that it didn't always work like that (note my user number), and I haven't visited the site under anything other than this account since 1998 or so, there's no reason I should have known that setting existed.
Given that the Clinton administration brought deficits under control, oversaw a huge increase in GDP, etc. and the current Republican administration has introduced some of the largest military spending increases in US history (new levels are higher than at ANY point during the Cold War),
"Conservative" as a political label used to mean (among other things), that "the way things are" is good. That meant that conservatives tended to reject radical changes in policy, spending habits, etc. Combined with some of the only tax cuts EVER put forth during a "time of war" (during previous wars, like WWII, the upper tax bracket was increased to 90%, not dropped), the current set of conservatives in power are hard to describe as traditionally conservative. I've even heard some of these conservatives complain that people who are concerned about the current war aren't making the sacrifices needed during a time of war. Maybe if they hadn't exempted the wealthy from sacrifice, those folks would be complaining too.
Over time, the meaning of conservative has morphed into "morally uptight" and has more to do with a politician's stance on 2-3 social issues than on any sort of fiscal conservation.
I had that site in my list to go through, but last night was getting a DNS error. Not sure if I mistyped or there geniunely was a problem, but I'll look again.
If I'd known 3 weeks ago that there'd be an article about MAKE, maybe I would have registered the domain more than a couple of days ago and would have started my work on the site earlier.
I'm sorry that it isn't yet ready. I stated pretty clearly in my post that it was a *new* site and, given that my aim is to have people help out in making it (part of the "making stuff" idea, you see), that not posting at all for fear of the not-yet-finished-site offending some seemed like a wasted opportunity.
Remember, the open source mantra of release early and release often? It fits here too. If I held the site back and worked on it only by myself until it was ready for the public, it probably wouldn't be worth doing. However, I set up the framework and am working through it myself, but am opening it up for others to help out as well.
See, rather than just criticizing MAKE (and if you read carefully, I indicated that it looks like things are improving with regard to my complaint after only 2 issues), I had already started out with what I see as part of the solution.
It may be a throwback
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Makers of MAKE
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· Score: 4, Interesting
It may be a throwback, but the issues so far have still had a heavy bias toward the whole casemod/ipod/gaming end of the "making stuff" spectrum despite the fact that there are TONS of other topics that still embody the DIY attitude, many of which are actually the same ones that were part of the earlier era of DIY. A lot of those have never gone away. Heck, the whole hippie/commune/energy conservation crowd has been doing-it-themselves for a long time, building practically everything they need.
As I've been digging to find resources for my new site (listed in my sig), I've been thrilled to discover just how many projects are out there fully-documented in arenas I've never messed in myself.
Last night, I made a batch of plastic in my kitchen to put a USB memory key back together. I found the recipe for casein plastic online, didn't have to leave the house because all of the ingredients were already there and I had never even heard of casein plastic until I stumbled across it for site research.
Projects like that, the little laser tripwire kit I found that can be combined with mirrors to give you the security grid shown in every bad heist movie, etc. are all over the place.
Fortunately, it looks like, via their blog and more recent web content (like their contest to start a dead car in the middle of nowhere) that their topics may become more diverse.
It isn't only used in browsers. I used it all of the time for other things. Granted, most of my use is on Windows workstations (such is the life of a web development consultant in Fortune 500 companies) as that's what I spend most of my day on. However, there are other alternatives out there for other OS's as well.
On Windows (if you have a workstation or server), however, you probably already have the WSH accessible containers and the cscript.exe and wscript.exe interpreters. Simply making a script.js file (remember you can't use any browser objects, so search for "Javascript WSH" to get some more info) and running "cscript.exe script.js" will run your script from the command prompt.
Beyond that, you can build WSC (Windows Scripting Components) that are Windows COM DLL's written in scripting languages. HTA's (HTML Applications) are HTML files outside the browser container. Just rename an HTML file to.hta and double-click it. HTA's have gotten a bad rap as they're ofen used in virus attacks. However, so are EXE's. With power comes the potential of abuse. HTA's leave the local access restrictions behind which means your Javascript can access local files, etc. When combined with the WSH Shell object, you can run local executables to process whatever you like. I've done little scripted apps that are HTA's that collect data via a form, save the form data to a temp file, run a commandline processor (which dumps out a resulting file), read in the results and delete the temp files. What you end up with is something like the current AJAX rage without a web server and acting like a local app, all while still using Javascript/HTML.
If you're looking for more "real" applications, JScript is a full-fledged, if not well documented, language for.NET. You can compile to DLL's and EXE's directly and they are exactly the same resulting output as if they'd been written in C# or VB.NET. JScript.NET does bring some restrictions you may not be used to, including enforcing variable declarations, etc. However, it still retains a looser backward compatibility mode, resulting in many WSH scripts compiling as-is. All the tools for working with JScript.NET are free. The.NET SDK is free and contains all of the compilers. You do NOT need VisualStudio.NET to work with.NET languages.
The difference between the Javascript language and the browser objects themselves has become more and more clear to me as I've worked heavily with both more complex Javascript like AJAX (where you aren't spending much time directly interacting with browser objects, but rather staying "inside" Javascript), working with JScript.NET for commandline programs, JScript in WSH and HTA as well as Photoshop scripting.
Many of the things that bother me about "Javascript" turn out to be problems with IE or Mozilla's objects and not the language itself. Don't get me wrong, things like the Javascript date objects still bug me, but I'm growing to like the language itself much more than I used to.
If you've only ever used Javascript in a browser, you may not realize that much of what you're working with is really the browser's object model. All of the window., document., document.form, etc. interaction form.submit(), etc. are all browser object properties and methods.
I noticed before posting some questions about scripting outside the browser. In those environments, you just get a different set of objects instead of document.form, you get objects for the filesystem or an active image, just like in any other programming language that uses objects from outside (COM objects,.NET assemblies etc.)
I've found the same. Between bluetooth, wifi, microwaves, cordless phones, audio-video senders, these non-bluetooth wireless peripherals, etc. I just don't see how a "wireless future" is any more likely (near term) than the "paperless office". That's not even talking about the shared nature of the wifi itself. Ever transfer a DVD ISO file between to 802.11g laptops? That 54Mbps plummets REALLY fast into unusability.
There's just too much going on and we haven't really hit complete widespread adoption yet for most of these technologies.
I had a blog posting about this very thing a couple of days ago.
I use VNC all the time, and, while RDP has its issues with sharing the session, it at least is usable over a distance. VNC (yes even the Ultra and Tight varieties) is painful to do real work over DSL, while RDP is just like sitting in front of the real machine. We're not even talking about dialup. I've got a 768k upload link that has SERIOUS issues working with VNC, but RDP is smooth and works well.
Personally, I actually wish VNC worked a little worse so there'd be an incentive for something more like RDP without needing the MS RDP server (for XP Home machines, etc.). As it stands VNC is just good enough to prevent an RDP-killer from being worthwhile. Anyone who starts one will be asked, "Why don't you just use VNC?"
Well, there's your problem. I can't remember the last time I used a public computer. Between my laptop and Palm, wireless and cellphone dialup over bluetooth, I just never need to use a machine that I don't have control over.
I would also never actually log into a site using a cybercafe for just these kinds of reasons.
Incidentally, it's quite possible that Bezos/Amazon wasn't exactly the one to enable it. You did, after all, leave an open session to your Amazon profile on a public computer, right? It's not like someone couldn't have turned it on for you just before placing the order, or 2 someones, one turning it on and another a day later buying the CD.
Slashdot Mirror
Easy joke (though pretty worn thin at this point), but it's a lot like the criticisms leveled at Linux that are 2-3 years stale. It hasn't been a particularly relevent criticism for quite a while.
I have 4 Windows machines running at home (along with a couple of Linux boxes) and an XP Pro system at client site where I am working currently and I haven't seen a blue screen in 3 years on any of them.
Yeah, the "try again in 2 days" happened to me. The big problem was that the transactions were fraudulent as someone apparently got into my account. I woke up one morning to emails saying that they "tried" to take the $12,000 in transactions that "I" tried to send overnight. But, since the accounts and cards didn't go through, they assured me that they'd try again.
I was in the middle of reading those emails when the phone rang from both my bank and my credit cards asking me about the fraud.
Compare the 2 reactions and you'll see why treating Paypal as any sort of real "financial company" is a complete joke. All of the real financial institutions flagged every single one of those transactions pretty much immediately and Paypal was going to try to run the fraud through again. Then, 2 days later, AFTER I HAD CALLED PAYPAL, they did try again. At that point, everyone in the situation knew it was fraud and they still hadn't stopped the automatic followups.
They then locked my Paypal account because it was "involved in fraud" and I had to fight for almost a year to get the remaining real money out of the account.
I tend to approach it with 2 questions rather than 1.
.". The second keeps you from asking, "Why oh why did I . . .?" at the same age.
If today is the last day of my life, would my plans change?
AND
If I live another 65 years, will I regret anything included in my plans today?
Between the 2, you get a balance that keeps you from wasting the few years you actually do have, but without the reckless disregard for your future, should you have one (and statistically you will).
The first question keeps you from reaching old age, saying "I wish I had . .
I'm not saying that anyone's entitled to doing only things they like. If that's what you heard, either I miswrote or you misread.
AGAIN, I was merely pointing out that wedding photographers aren't sitting around 310 days of the year sipping champagne, smoking cigars and laughing about all of the suckers they swindled in the wedding photography business.
Sure, there are quite a few things you don't like to do that are a part of your business and your day. However, there's a big difference between a job that's 80% good and one that's 4% good as far as you're concerned. Growing up, my job was working on the family turkey farm. I hated every minute of it.
You may be willing to "accept the things you don't like", but you still sought out a tolerable profession given your likes and dislikes. Most people can't really do otherwise. The fact you talk about having customers indicates that you've chosen a job that probably doesn't involve shoveling and wading through manure, picking up dead birds, powerwashing barns with iodine laced water wearing a rain suit to keep some of it off, etc.
AND, for me (and the not wanting to work with kids thing was only about me), there were too many of those negative things to want to continue. I adjusted my other career alternatives and am happy doing what I do now and living with the few things that bother me about it. I'm in an 80% job. Wedding photography would have been a 40% job. Does that mean I'm not adult enough to deal with the gap between 80% and 100%? Absolutely not. However, am I a big enough idiot to take a 40% over an 80%? No.
Those other events are what most photographers have turned to in order to make a living.
However, for example, I can't stand kids and, as a photographer, I just don't "see" them the same way. Given that, I just left the idea behind as almost ALL of the alternatives involve working with kids.
What you describe about the breakup of pricing is exactly what's starting to happen, but an awful lot of consumers are going to photographers expecting the old "sitting fee $20 for 2 hours" kind of pricing and also not paying for prints. It's going to take a while before it balances.
My post was primarily aimed to balance out the "photographers are RIPPING you off" element in the discussion, where most of the posters are ascribing outright malice to photographers who haven't adjusted their business model to the new technologies yet. It's only been the last 5 years or so where an "average" family had access to a scanner and photo quality printer and much of that in the last 3.
Heck, lots of these photographers are still showing couples images from 1983 in their portfolios and their business model matches. However, it doesn't mean they're out to rip you off.
Lots of other businesses do this as well with the prices clearly not reflecting costs, but rather expectations from the clients. The "free" bread and salad or chips/salsa at many restaurants is clearly being paid for in the $16.95 entree price, but, drop the price of the entree to $12.95 and charge $3 for the salad and $1 for the bread and customers are outraged. The reality is that the food itself is nowhere near any of those prices. Rather, to cover labor and the other non-food costs, and the slim restaurant margin, $16.95 is what they need from a meal.
Every market needs to figure out how those costs are to be structured.
Wedding photography just has a bit more difficulty, because, like music, writing novels, acting etc. there are hundreds of people willing to do the same work for free for every 1 trying to squeeze out a living. It's because these jobs are also hobbies for lots of folks. It's always harder to make your primary living in a field filled with clamoring amateurs. On the other hand, there's usually good money to be made doing the stuff that you won't find people doing voluntarily.
Last time I checked, the dog waste removal companies weren't exactly flooded with applicants.
I actually see the same thing even in software. I've had several programmers on projects I'm on want to leave after a month or 2 because we're not doing anything "exciting" or "cutting edge". However, much of this programming is exactly where there's a solid amount of work to do. I do far better building inventory systems than if I was to try to build any of the tools that everyone wants to build on their own time.
The problem people buying wedding photography don't usually get is that, for most photographers, there's only 1-2 weddings per week they can shoot. That's because almost everyone gets married on Saturday afternoon. That'd be OK, except that a wedding's worth of photos need to be gone through, touched up, organized, proofs or other comparison method made up, sent out, process the incoming order and otherwise take up much more time afterward, all tied to the wedding on Saturday. Not to mention spending time at bridal shows, meeting with potential customers that don't sign, working on marketing and the rest of the non-billable portions of running a business. Combine that with couples that want the photographer to shoot the rehersal dinner and rehersal itself the night before and want that included in the package and you're left having to charge an entire week's worth of labor and materials to a single customer.
Then, as a self-employed person, they need to effectively double the money they want to pay themselves to cover their own payroll taxes, unemployment insurance (mandatory in my state), etc. you have to charge the equivalent of $40/hour, just to make $40,000. But, almost no one gets married in Nov-March, so you have to compress it further if you want to make your living doing just weddings. Throw in another couple of weeks here and there where the couple breaks up and cancels and you don't get another booking and you're left only able to get billable clients for about 26 weeks per year.
The end result is that you'd have to charge $3200 a wedding just to break even on the LABOR and still only make $40,000/yr, working weekends in addition to weekdays, dealing with people on one of the most stressful days possible, working without a safety net (just waiting to get sued because you "ruined" their once-in-a-lifetime-day and caused them major emotional distress).
I started down this road a couple of years ago and, after running the numbers and doing about 4 weddings, I decided that to be worth the hassle, the expense in redundant equipment (the bride doesn't want to hear that your *only* 135mm portrait lens cracked on HER SPECIAL DAY) and extra crap like multiple tuxedos in your closet because couples insist that the photographer wear one too, I'd have to charge well over $5000 a wedding to do it. And, since "anyone can take pictures" and "you're only working 3 hours a week", no one except the really high end clients wants to pay $5000-$7500 for a basic wedding photo package. If it were in that price range, work for hire would be fine.
However, quote $5000-$7500 for a wedding on a work-for hire basis, and you'll hear the whole working for 2-6 hours thing and they'll quickly do their own math and say, "No one's worth $2500/hr".
So, photographers have relied on print purchases to spread that cost around a big. After all, if the album's "worth" $1400, if the proofs are $400, if the digital photos on DVD are $250 etc. then the remaining money doesn't seem as bad.
Yeah, but Lucas fell prey to what a lot of people who've written stuff do.
In 2-3 of my short story classes in college, we would write a short story, turn it in unnamed and the class would discuss the story. We, as the author were not to speak at all during the discussion of our writing. So, you got to sit back and watch a group of 15 or so people discuss something you'd written.
It was amazing the crap people thought you'd "meant" to include. At the same time, a lot of neat insights came out. However, the vast majority of the importance attributed to "themes", story arcs, etc. was complete bull. Several of us discussed this outside class. Most of my stories were just me following the characters through the interesting things that sort of just appeared. It was a common enough theme to be apparent that the vast majority of us were doing something similar.
How does this relate? There were a couple of people in these classes that started buying into their own "hype". They started actually trying to claim that they'd intentionally put that stuff in there. I think Lucas has done the same thing. He's had 30 years of people analyzing Star Wars and giving all kinds of insights and he's noticed how deep and complex those insights can be and started passing them off as though he came up with them and intended them from the beginning.
Unfortunately, not all of the insights and "plans" can all be true simultaneously, so he's been walking a tightwire all along.
Exactly. People are always asking me if I download movies (because they know I'm a movie junkie). When I say that I can run 35 of so movies a month through Netflix for less than $50 (the price of 2 or so trips to the theater), there's no rational reason to wait days to download a crappy rip or screener when I can see the official DVD.
If 35 isn't enough, add another service like Blockbuster with a seperate queue and for $100 a month (what the big satellite TV packages cost), you're in the balpark of 2-3 DVD's a day (4+ hours a day, 7 days a week and more if the DVD's are part of TV sets). All of that for no more effort than making a list of what you want to see and going to the mailbox once a day.
Similarly, why would I want to take 6+ hours to re-encode a movie to DIVX or another format, when I want to watch 2-3 movies in a night? I'd rather spend all of the time and effort on other things or even actually watching the movies than on obtaining and manipulating them.
Maybe I've been spoiled by having $50 a month in movie budget, but you can easily spend that on a single nice dinner for 2 and a crappy dinner for 4. In other words, most people are spending the $50-$100 *somewhere* that's not necessary.
"Apparently you've never been to California where some movie theatre prices can be $18.00+ per person!"
Nah. He's just doing what people from California and New York have done to the rest of the country for decades: ignore that the other portion exists.
See, in a "normal" American conversation about movie prices *only* the CA and NY prices would count and anyone who only pays $5 for a 6:00pm showing on a weekend must live in the boondocks.
Here's a quote:
9.4.5 Make plastic from milk casein
Casein is a phosphoprotein thermoplastic polymer that may be used to make insulators, buttons, handles, adhesives and artist's priming paint. We can make casein from the reaction of skimmed milk with ethanoic acid (acetic acid).
Calcium caseinate + 2H+ ---> casein + Ca2+
(i) To prepare an approximately 10% ethanoic acid (acetic acid) solution, add 1 mL of glacial acetic acid to 10 mL of water. Separate cream from milk or directly use skimmed milk.
Pour 200 mL of skimmed milk into a 500 mL beaker.
Heat the milk to 50oC and then maintain the temperature at 40 to 50oC.
Add drops of the prepared acetic acid solution to the warmed milk with constant stirring.
After all the acetic acid solution is added, continue stirring for five minutes and then leave the mixture standing until the liquid becomes clear and the separation of the casein curd from the whey is complete.
Filter the lump of casein by suction, squeeze it with a teaspoon, wash it with water, wipe it dry with a piece of filter paper, mould it into shapes and then expose it to the air for 1-2 days.
Harden the plastic by immersing the dried casein in formalin (formaldehyde solution, methanal solution.) for one day.
Finally, polish the hard casein plastic with sandpaper.
Addition of aqueous ammonia solution to the casein can make glue.
Given that it didn't always work like that (note my user number), and I haven't visited the site under anything other than this account since 1998 or so, there's no reason I should have known that setting existed.
And I have several for you:
"Eighteen months of litigation and downtime."
Given that the Clinton administration brought deficits under control, oversaw a huge increase in GDP, etc. and the current Republican administration has introduced some of the largest military spending increases in US history (new levels are higher than at ANY point during the Cold War),
"Conservative" as a political label used to mean (among other things), that "the way things are" is good. That meant that conservatives tended to reject radical changes in policy, spending habits, etc. Combined with some of the only tax cuts EVER put forth during a "time of war" (during previous wars, like WWII, the upper tax bracket was increased to 90%, not dropped), the current set of conservatives in power are hard to describe as traditionally conservative. I've even heard some of these conservatives complain that people who are concerned about the current war aren't making the sacrifices needed during a time of war. Maybe if they hadn't exempted the wealthy from sacrifice, those folks would be complaining too.
Over time, the meaning of conservative has morphed into "morally uptight" and has more to do with a politician's stance on 2-3 social issues than on any sort of fiscal conservation.
It's right there under every post of mine:
Tinker, hack, DIY...you know, making stuff. [makingstuff.net]
Don't know if they're visible to Anonymous Cowards or not, as I haven't visited the site that way in years.
"What the fuck does your iPod have anything to do with "making stuff"?"
I'm not saying it does. However, MAKE and tons of "hacking" sites spend 25%-50% of their time on modifying iPods or making things for them.
And, there is no "my" iPod as I don't have one.
I had that site in my list to go through, but last night was getting a DNS error. Not sure if I mistyped or there geniunely was a problem, but I'll look again.
If I'd known 3 weeks ago that there'd be an article about MAKE, maybe I would have registered the domain more than a couple of days ago and would have started my work on the site earlier.
I'm sorry that it isn't yet ready. I stated pretty clearly in my post that it was a *new* site and, given that my aim is to have people help out in making it (part of the "making stuff" idea, you see), that not posting at all for fear of the not-yet-finished-site offending some seemed like a wasted opportunity.
Remember, the open source mantra of release early and release often? It fits here too. If I held the site back and worked on it only by myself until it was ready for the public, it probably wouldn't be worth doing. However, I set up the framework and am working through it myself, but am opening it up for others to help out as well.
See, rather than just criticizing MAKE (and if you read carefully, I indicated that it looks like things are improving with regard to my complaint after only 2 issues), I had already started out with what I see as part of the solution.
It may be a throwback, but the issues so far have still had a heavy bias toward the whole casemod/ipod/gaming end of the "making stuff" spectrum despite the fact that there are TONS of other topics that still embody the DIY attitude, many of which are actually the same ones that were part of the earlier era of DIY. A lot of those have never gone away. Heck, the whole hippie/commune/energy conservation crowd has been doing-it-themselves for a long time, building practically everything they need.
As I've been digging to find resources for my new site (listed in my sig), I've been thrilled to discover just how many projects are out there fully-documented in arenas I've never messed in myself.
Last night, I made a batch of plastic in my kitchen to put a USB memory key back together. I found the recipe for casein plastic online, didn't have to leave the house because all of the ingredients were already there and I had never even heard of casein plastic until I stumbled across it for site research.
Projects like that, the little laser tripwire kit I found that can be combined with mirrors to give you the security grid shown in every bad heist movie, etc. are all over the place.
Fortunately, it looks like, via their blog and more recent web content (like their contest to start a dead car in the middle of nowhere) that their topics may become more diverse.
It isn't only used in browsers. I used it all of the time for other things. Granted, most of my use is on Windows workstations (such is the life of a web development consultant in Fortune 500 companies) as that's what I spend most of my day on. However, there are other alternatives out there for other OS's as well.
.hta and double-click it. HTA's have gotten a bad rap as they're ofen used in virus attacks. However, so are EXE's. With power comes the potential of abuse. HTA's leave the local access restrictions behind which means your Javascript can access local files, etc. When combined with the WSH Shell object, you can run local executables to process whatever you like. I've done little scripted apps that are HTA's that collect data via a form, save the form data to a temp file, run a commandline processor (which dumps out a resulting file), read in the results and delete the temp files. What you end up with is something like the current AJAX rage without a web server and acting like a local app, all while still using Javascript/HTML.
.NET. You can compile to DLL's and EXE's directly and they are exactly the same resulting output as if they'd been written in C# or VB.NET. JScript.NET does bring some restrictions you may not be used to, including enforcing variable declarations, etc. However, it still retains a looser backward compatibility mode, resulting in many WSH scripts compiling as-is. All the tools for working with JScript.NET are free. The .NET SDK is free and contains all of the compilers. You do NOT need VisualStudio.NET to work with .NET languages.
On Windows (if you have a workstation or server), however, you probably already have the WSH accessible containers and the cscript.exe and wscript.exe interpreters. Simply making a script.js file (remember you can't use any browser objects, so search for "Javascript WSH" to get some more info) and running "cscript.exe script.js" will run your script from the command prompt.
Beyond that, you can build WSC (Windows Scripting Components) that are Windows COM DLL's written in scripting languages. HTA's (HTML Applications) are HTML files outside the browser container. Just rename an HTML file to
If you're looking for more "real" applications, JScript is a full-fledged, if not well documented, language for
PHP->COM->Photoshop is a bit of fun. At least for the few prototypes I've built for the fun of it (yes, that's the kind of sick freak I am).
Most open source scripting languages can access COM objects on Windows. Once the syntax issues are out of the way, most of them work the same way.
The difference between the Javascript language and the browser objects themselves has become more and more clear to me as I've worked heavily with both more complex Javascript like AJAX (where you aren't spending much time directly interacting with browser objects, but rather staying "inside" Javascript), working with JScript.NET for commandline programs, JScript in WSH and HTA as well as Photoshop scripting.
.NET assemblies etc.)
Many of the things that bother me about "Javascript" turn out to be problems with IE or Mozilla's objects and not the language itself. Don't get me wrong, things like the Javascript date objects still bug me, but I'm growing to like the language itself much more than I used to.
If you've only ever used Javascript in a browser, you may not realize that much of what you're working with is really the browser's object model. All of the window., document., document.form, etc. interaction form.submit(), etc. are all browser object properties and methods.
I noticed before posting some questions about scripting outside the browser. In those environments, you just get a different set of objects instead of document.form, you get objects for the filesystem or an active image, just like in any other programming language that uses objects from outside (COM objects,
"Shelf-space is a premium"
Just how many DVD's are you talking about? In stores, sure. The DVD packaging is more bulky than it needs to be. But, at home? Nah.
I have about 500 DVD's and they fit in 2 really big binders, taking up less space than half of one of my front channel speakers.
And, with DVD-R's under $0.25, it's not like cramming episodes onto 1 disc gives me any financial savings.
There's just too much going on and we haven't really hit complete widespread adoption yet for most of these technologies.
I had a blog posting about this very thing a couple of days ago.
http://www.wynia.org/wordpress/?p=100/
I use VNC all the time, and, while RDP has its issues with sharing the session, it at least is usable over a distance. VNC (yes even the Ultra and Tight varieties) is painful to do real work over DSL, while RDP is just like sitting in front of the real machine. We're not even talking about dialup. I've got a 768k upload link that has SERIOUS issues working with VNC, but RDP is smooth and works well.
Personally, I actually wish VNC worked a little worse so there'd be an incentive for something more like RDP without needing the MS RDP server (for XP Home machines, etc.). As it stands VNC is just good enough to prevent an RDP-killer from being worthwhile. Anyone who starts one will be asked, "Why don't you just use VNC?"
Well, there's your problem. I can't remember the last time I used a public computer. Between my laptop and Palm, wireless and cellphone dialup over bluetooth, I just never need to use a machine that I don't have control over.
I would also never actually log into a site using a cybercafe for just these kinds of reasons.
Incidentally, it's quite possible that Bezos/Amazon wasn't exactly the one to enable it. You did, after all, leave an open session to your Amazon profile on a public computer, right? It's not like someone couldn't have turned it on for you just before placing the order, or 2 someones, one turning it on and another a day later buying the CD.