POR brought the whole dual character utility thing. Lament brought 3d and mind numbingly reptative combat. Neither really brought all that much that was new, they both brought somethign "new" to the series. I own all of them. I keep hoping for SOTN greatness and I almost get it in the GBA/DS titles but the "3d" ones have all been let downs.
I agree, 2d has died prematurely. And I'm glad the GBA/DS keeps the 2d platformer alive. 3d has it's place buts sometimes it kills a good thing. Metriod on the DS is less fun then metroid ont he GBA. It just feels better as a 2d title.
There have been other titles that were great. Starting with Zork and arching over Ultima to titles like Quake and the whole Mario franchise. Titles and games that sold just 'cause they had a certain name. It usually works until the developers start relying solely on the name and stop investing time to add new tricks, gadgets and twists to it.
In every franchise, there comes a time when all that's added is new graphics and some eye candy while leaving the game essentially unchanged. And that's when the title becomes stale and starts to erode.
And this puzzles me to no end. You have a title that you only have to ANNOUNCE to sell it. You don't even have to advertise. The game is already selling because people remember the other titles, and remember them fondly. Why do studios simply throw away great names just for a quick buck? Yes, you can sell that crappy game, but after that the name is destroyed, a name with a value that is usually by magnitudes greater than the meager reward you can reap.
All for the allmighty quarter report.
Innovation is great. However most innovation sucks. For every katamari damacy we get 4 Daikatana, whose innovations suck.
Myself, and apparently millions of other would prefer a well put together SOTN clone then a more "innovative" game like lament of innocence or a lesser name "innovative" game like rub rabbits. Sometimes a good but well worn genre/game style is fun. No matter how many iterations. So long as they add little changes and quality it works. castlevania: POR is a good example. The game is basically the same as Castlevania: DS or Aria of sorrow. But throws in enough variation to keep it fun and doesn't seem liek a budget game. Thus it sells well and everyone has fun.
That's funny, G.W.Bush speaks very openly about his religion, yet I've never heard him speak a thing about the apocalypse. You seem to be under the influence of the anti-Bush propaganda machine.
that problably because Bush is aware that anyone who refers to the rapture as a real and upcoming vent will be seen as a nutter except by fundementalist christians. Althought the number of fundies are large, they are not large enough to vote him in. He is also likely not a fundie himself. Chances are he's only pandering to the fundies for votes and pays lip service to their nutter ideas.
Really, there is a MUCH easier way to do this, it's called cash. You buy the move (on a physical medium) for cash and don't give the teller your name and address. Now this won't work for downloads, but it's probably easier/less expensive than downloading multiple copies.
Don't underestimate the ingenuity of a poor teenager or a Asian/European pirate.
But I still keep my cell phone picks. Pictures are mementoes for most people. That crazy night when me and the girls snuck into the basement of bio-sci just as it closed and rode around on carts and chucked dry ice into the toilets.... Those types of memories don't need a 20 megapixel roloflex camera. Thats what I use it for.. and also naughty photos. just too pervy pulling out a SLR to take those pictures. It makes girls a bit nervous.
The real trick is to keep the extraction software secret. Otherwise if is trivial to figure out if you have removed the watermark, by running the extraction software. In this case "security through obscurity" really works, because there literally is no way to figure out if you have broken it or not.
Umm.. did that work for DVD? how about blu-ray? If intelligent people with a vested interest work at it hard enough. One will find it and he will spread it for prestige or profit. Thats the problem they're facings. It's a small team of motivated thinkers against a much larger team of more motivated thinkers. Security through obscurity is what made WWII a foregone conclusion. HAd the Germans and JApanese took information theory and cyptography more seriously. They may have very well dragged WWII on for several decades. possibly invoking the allied powers to sue for peace rather then continue fighting. But the trust in security through obscurity spelled an end to the paranoid thrid reich and the most savagely evil army of the rising sun.
Depending on what exactly they did, you problably could defeat it just by running the larger file into a lossy compression algorithm. If your truly paranoid. Run it once, then upsample it and run a seperate algorithm. Unless these watermark guys are genisus of information theory and can reconstruct their stenography from a twice thrashed video; I doubt the watermark or DRM will be much of a deterent.
It might be larger and obvious errors like a whole region being slightly off color. This would survive lossy algorithms. But you could then devise your own algorithm that randomly modify colors to just outside human notice. If it was that noticable thena bit compare would flag the whole region and then we'd know exactly which method their using.
In any kind of serial number, the majority of all of the digits will be common. eg. 10011 10012 10013 etc. In that senario, you'll only see the last digit as a difference, and they can narrow it down to 10 customers. Of course, sequential numbers isn't the best method.
If they can store a few Kbytes over the course of a film (no doubt they can), and designed a good signature algorithm, they could pinpoint the exact 2 copies of the movie that the diff was performed on.
Ahh but by the fact it does lead to the posibility of 10 possible customers makes the mark useless now. A simple and easy to run bit comparison will get you a table. Grab another one and your much more likely to find the spots your looking for. Unless they intentionally put in noise to make the job harder, and even then the original priate can scramble the noise too so it's likely he resets the ID. Frame difference is another way but more troublesome, a linear bit comparison is a fairly lazy way to do it but frame comparison may work too.
So how long did it take for bacteria to go multicellular (actual questions, I don't knnw). How many generations did that take? To properly calculate how many tries it took you should probably count all of the direct clones of anything along the successful branch.
Is that what you would call a big number?
I'm not exactly sure what your asking. A multi cellular change can happen fairly quickly. A large predatory bacteria engulfs but does not fully digest a prey and we now have a pseudo multicellular organism. Or we have a bacteria that developes a outer shell and the outer shell grows into other bacteria of the same type. (diatoms) ect.. The calculation of how likely that is and how many generaltions are all probability. In bacteria, if it happens once, thats enough. So like the lottery it may take only 1 try might tak 49 choose 6 tries. For things like trying to induce the point mutation for a change in the structure of cell walls that allow bacteria to ignore certain anti-biotics. It's about 1/1,000,000 (really rough figure). Basically it often occurs once every culture disk we used and tested; and that bacteria strain would then be the only survivor. So basically a single generation on a standard petri dish. The rate of mutation in animals is pretty finite. Anythign thats not instantly fatal or inhibits reproduction egts passed on. Any specific mutation is unlikely but we are very veyr highly likely to mutate. So every person carry some set of minor mutation.
I think your trying to lead into the blind watch maker fallacy. Just to let you know there is no end point of desired features. It's just code mutations that lead to altered enzymes/protiens ect... They may have phenotipic effects. These are then selected for. We all have altered code. depending on what it is, that determins if we show the mutation.
As a former genetics students working with bacteria. I can safely say evolution is fast. The problem is peoples intuition have troubles with things beyond or below our normal scales of size and multitude. The real problem is creationists tend to have a vanishngly small ability to grasps things outside of their immediate enviroment and size factor, not evolution "supporters" ability to imagine how slow evolution is. Take 1/1 million multiple by a million units = hightly likely.
Electric" does not mean "electronic." EMPs will affect ICs, but if I were to build the same thing with a crapload of vacuum tubes, it would survive a blast without a problem.
Or you could wrap a faradays cage and connect some sort of voltage / charge limiter around all the sensitive bits.
That's true, the sequel definitely should not revolve around the main character from Torment. But then that begs the question, how do you adopt the immortal mechanic without making it seems a trite replay?
With a universe as odd as planescape, immortality wouldn't be a unique feature to characters. Besides even coping out and havign some demigod with a vested interest revive ya could work too. I manage to grin through torment without needing to die. I enjoyed it a lot just due to having charisma and wisdom play a critical roll as opposed to most DND VG's which becoem power player scenarios. optimizing STr, dex, con.
I think it's great that research is being undertaken since this could be useful for other applications, but am I the only one scratching their head as to why the military is making a big push for these?
I assume a gun like this would go onto a destroyer. I can't think of the last time a destroyer was used in any meaningful way in combat since WW2. If I remember correctly, the only reason the navy even keeps destroyers is because congress forces them to. I guess you could put it on a tank or something, but most conflicts that are fought now are on the ground and are more guerilla tactics than formal engagements. It's being shown in Iraq and Afghanistan that all the fancy new technology that the military keeps buying doesn't really mean squat when it comes to fighting a war.
Am I missing something here?
In open engagements, tech matters. Having armour that is light and can stop small arms fire forces the other side to carry rifles. Having a higher rate of fire, higher tolerance for enviromental factors and lighter rifles of the same cilibre also help. Having good camo, being well provisioned and simpyl being well fed matter. All of that means tech. Where it fails is ambushes. Even then it forces ambushes to use mroe firepower. The kill rate between insurgents and US forces is still lop sided. If the US was commited as a society to this war, the insurgents would have no hope regaurdless of their gurilla tactics. But since the US is so splintered and anti-war to start. The Maoist gurilla tactis work.
Just a note: I'm canadian and thought the US stepping into Iraq was a mistake. They didn't have enough home grown support nor sent enough troops. They also should have been more upfront with their motives and the importance of what their doing. Their not fighting terrorism, their trying to establish control of the last remaining megatons of oil in the middle east to keep economic supuriority over the other emerging world powers. Or so it seemss from here.
How does it mean it's not running OS X in any meaningful sense? I'd say having Cocoa/AppKit (and therefore an Objective-C runtime), Core Animation, and other OS X technologies constitutes being OS X.
Win CE 5.0 looks like and behaves like XP (but more stable), the API is different but similiar to the Windows API. There is an explorer, notepad and it's programmed mostly in C. So does that mean I have windows XP on my Motorola Q? It's a silly anology sure, but the kernel is what makes OS X, OSX. The frilly bits around it really help define the apple experience but what you call OSX is the kernel, not the extras.
The temptation of the ring was so blatant it led to Boromir's demise. By making Faramir resist the temptation to take it back to Gondor from the get-go, Tolkien sharply contrasted the two brothers, something that was largely missing from the movie. Jackson could have played up that contrast even more with some dialogue that showed that while Faramir desired it as much as everyone else, he was willing to make that sacrifice for the greater good because he was a truly honorable person. The connection between boromirs temptation and his death seem unrelated. Since it's his redeption that gets him killed. That and being ambushed by a dozen orcs. The arguement could be made that he wouldn't have been there had he not gone off for frodo but I think the link is non exsistant in the film and tenious in the actual book. They made a decision, I can see his point and so be it. You need ot be far more blatant in film then in writing. Perhaps they over did it, they might have been able to show the same "conflict" without dragging the two hobbits to osgiliath. But I felt the alteration wasn't that bad.
You do realize that they want the question of "global warming" to exist because it will eventually make the question of "evolution" easier to slam the kids with and dilute the "smoking is bad for you" theory. It's no coincidence that the same individuals that peddle ID/creationism/smoking are the same ones who peddle anti-global warming. The attempt to create confusion on scientific matter helps obscure any concensus and enables companies like phillip morris to make other claims if they weaken peoples perception of science. Ironically many of the new climate experts, who say global warming is not caused by man are the same shills and their employee who claimed smoking doesn't not cancer. And the fool in TFA is an example of the fundementalists taking their battle to new fronts.
I felt that it didn't really change anything with faramir. You do have to consider that the film was going to be seen by mostly those who did read the book. So the temptation of the ring needs to be more blatant. Consider that out of a cast of about a dozen protagonists we already have 2 resisting the ring. As well as 2 other incidental characters who ignore it's charms. Now shows a third who isn't power or special who also resists it and you kind of seriously deluted it's danger.
Actually, the main advantage of a referal system is that you *don't* need upfront cash for it -- you pay out of your takings.
You haven't done any work in this industry I see. Most pay for click or positions on the blogs/agregators. Paying directly for a sale is uncommon. There might be bonuses for a customer who signed up where it can be directly referenced back. But all the pay schemes involves verifiable/undeniable data like click throughs, impressions and unique referals.
I,>porn: 12-15 billion annually (US) movies (theatrical): 8-11 billion annually (US) dvds (non-porn/rental and purchase): 21-25 billion annually (US) music: anyones guess. numbers range from 5-15 billion depending on who is doing the telling. the music industry is notorious for lying about sales though - perceived popularity of music makes people buy more music. This number is probably high.
Complete fabrication. Porn is a large industry but not larger then the Theatric movie release industry. The 12-15 number is based on interviews AVN did then re-enforced in Frobes for mentioning it. It's not based on hard numbers. Let me ask you this, how many porn produces are as WEALTHY as Speilberg. Or how about the head of any major studio? According to those numbers, under a similiar distribution system there should be at least 1/3 as many WEALTHY porn makers as there are film makers. But it's not supported. Even well known industry icons like Seymour Butts is only "rich."
Porn is a little more democratic then hollywood since any person wiht a camera can make it, but distribution (digital* or old school) still requires money. So we may have 100,000 producers but only several large distribution houses and online pushers. More conservative "studies" peg the amount to be 2-3 billion per year within the US.
*for online distibution, you still need to attract traffic which require money. The most successful online porn retailers use some pretty complex referral systems and networks of sites to generate cash. You need cash for this.
Mi>What about the original Playstation? From what I remember, it had a slow start, in an environment where there were lots of competitors using CD media, but gradually won out.
The SNES int he US as well. It lagged behind initially playign catch up to the genesis. But once certain key games came otu it started stomping the genesis.
Same witht he Ps2. the Dreamcast had a year head start, a fair game lineup and a good launch onyl to see the PS2 come from behind.
And you would take a massive tax hit because of it. Bill gives money because he gets to claim the deductions. If he was -really- concerned about making the world a better place he would stop trying to import human sewage, radioactive medical waste untreated blood into American landfills (the company involved, Republic Services Inc NYSE:RSG has received non-trivial investments from Bill). Umm... Giving away 30 billion dollars when you make a few hundred million in that year on investments isnt' a good tax dodge. If your accantant tries this I'd maybe try to change accountants.
First, since he is clearly more interested in third-world disease and poverty than he is with the home-grown (and comparatively less miserable) variety, we'd be talking about a few billion checks, not a couple hundred million. Which means the foundation's endowment would only be like $20 per recipient. But even if it was a hundred...you think everybody having a small bit of cash (which won't last) would be better than curing HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, and working on better ways to get clean water and food to the third world? That's dumb as hell; the value of the foundation is having such a big pile of cash in one place where it can be spent in really big chunks on research and large-scale health projects. The benefit of these initiatives to the people they serve are many, many times greater than the per-capita amount spent to pursue them. Another issue is inflation. If someone likes gates gave everyone in a poor country $100 USD and in some magical way they all recived it without some party stealing large portions of it. All it would do is temporarily inflate all prices. It would fix nothing. Giving specific good or funding programs that give low resale value goods (like immunization. Whats the resale/black market for that like?) is better then givign money directly or attempting to dsitribute common trade goods.
Right, and when it (or any charity, for that matter) runs out of money...? It should run out. The Gate foundation has a timeline in which to spend all that money. A certain number of years after Bill and Malinda join the great billionaire club in the sky/center fo the earth.
Look at the initial sign up rates, the re-sign up rates after the promotional period is over, and how many active players there are. You'll quickly find that Xbox Live is a not a motivating feature in the competition between the three.
Slashdot Mirror
POR brought the whole dual character utility thing. Lament brought 3d and mind numbingly reptative combat. Neither really brought all that much that was new, they both brought somethign "new" to the series. I own all of them. I keep hoping for SOTN greatness and I almost get it in the GBA/DS titles but the "3d" ones have all been let downs.
I agree, 2d has died prematurely. And I'm glad the GBA/DS keeps the 2d platformer alive. 3d has it's place buts sometimes it kills a good thing. Metriod on the DS is less fun then metroid ont he GBA. It just feels better as a 2d title.
There have been other titles that were great. Starting with Zork and arching over Ultima to titles like Quake and the whole Mario franchise. Titles and games that sold just 'cause they had a certain name. It usually works until the developers start relying solely on the name and stop investing time to add new tricks, gadgets and twists to it.
In every franchise, there comes a time when all that's added is new graphics and some eye candy while leaving the game essentially unchanged. And that's when the title becomes stale and starts to erode.
And this puzzles me to no end. You have a title that you only have to ANNOUNCE to sell it. You don't even have to advertise. The game is already selling because people remember the other titles, and remember them fondly. Why do studios simply throw away great names just for a quick buck? Yes, you can sell that crappy game, but after that the name is destroyed, a name with a value that is usually by magnitudes greater than the meager reward you can reap.
All for the allmighty quarter report.
Innovation is great. However most innovation sucks. For every katamari damacy we get 4 Daikatana, whose innovations suck.
Myself, and apparently millions of other would prefer a well put together SOTN clone then a more "innovative" game like lament of innocence or a lesser name "innovative" game like rub rabbits. Sometimes a good but well worn genre/game style is fun. No matter how many iterations. So long as they add little changes and quality it works. castlevania: POR is a good example. The game is basically the same as Castlevania: DS or Aria of sorrow. But throws in enough variation to keep it fun and doesn't seem liek a budget game. Thus it sells well and everyone has fun.
That's funny, G.W.Bush speaks very openly about his religion, yet I've never heard him speak a thing about the apocalypse. You seem to be under the influence of the anti-Bush propaganda machine.
that problably because Bush is aware that anyone who refers to the rapture as a real and upcoming vent will be seen as a nutter except by fundementalist christians. Althought the number of fundies are large, they are not large enough to vote him in. He is also likely not a fundie himself. Chances are he's only pandering to the fundies for votes and pays lip service to their nutter ideas.
Really, there is a MUCH easier way to do this, it's called cash. You buy the move (on a physical medium) for cash and don't give the teller your name and address. Now this won't work for downloads, but it's probably easier/less expensive than downloading multiple copies.
Don't underestimate the ingenuity of a poor teenager or a Asian/European pirate.
But I still keep my cell phone picks. Pictures are mementoes for most people. That crazy night when me and the girls snuck into the basement of bio-sci just as it closed and rode around on carts and chucked dry ice into the toilets.... Those types of memories don't need a 20 megapixel roloflex camera. Thats what I use it for.. and also naughty photos. just too pervy pulling out a SLR to take those pictures. It makes girls a bit nervous.
The real trick is to keep the extraction software secret. Otherwise if is trivial to figure out if you have removed the watermark, by running the extraction software. In this case "security through obscurity" really works, because there literally is no way to figure out if you have broken it or not.
Umm.. did that work for DVD? how about blu-ray? If intelligent people with a vested interest work at it hard enough. One will find it and he will spread it for prestige or profit. Thats the problem they're facings. It's a small team of motivated thinkers against a much larger team of more motivated thinkers. Security through obscurity is what made WWII a foregone conclusion. HAd the Germans and JApanese took information theory and cyptography more seriously. They may have very well dragged WWII on for several decades. possibly invoking the allied powers to sue for peace rather then continue fighting. But the trust in security through obscurity spelled an end to the paranoid thrid reich and the most savagely evil army of the rising sun.
Depending on what exactly they did, you problably could defeat it just by running the larger file into a lossy compression algorithm. If your truly paranoid. Run it once, then upsample it and run a seperate algorithm. Unless these watermark guys are genisus of information theory and can reconstruct their stenography from a twice thrashed video; I doubt the watermark or DRM will be much of a deterent.
It might be larger and obvious errors like a whole region being slightly off color. This would survive lossy algorithms. But you could then devise your own algorithm that randomly modify colors to just outside human notice. If it was that noticable thena bit compare would flag the whole region and then we'd know exactly which method their using.
In any kind of serial number, the majority of all of the digits will be common. eg. 10011 10012 10013 etc. In that senario, you'll only see the last digit as a difference, and they can narrow it down to 10 customers. Of course, sequential numbers isn't the best method.
If they can store a few Kbytes over the course of a film (no doubt they can), and designed a good signature algorithm, they could pinpoint the exact 2 copies of the movie that the diff was performed on.
Ahh but by the fact it does lead to the posibility of 10 possible customers makes the mark useless now. A simple and easy to run bit comparison will get you a table. Grab another one and your much more likely to find the spots your looking for. Unless they intentionally put in noise to make the job harder, and even then the original priate can scramble the noise too so it's likely he resets the ID. Frame difference is another way but more troublesome, a linear bit comparison is a fairly lazy way to do it but frame comparison may work too.
So how long did it take for bacteria to go multicellular (actual questions, I don't knnw). How many generations did that take? To properly calculate how many tries it took you should probably count all of the direct clones of anything along the successful branch.
Is that what you would call a big number?
I'm not exactly sure what your asking. A multi cellular change can happen fairly quickly. A large predatory bacteria engulfs but does not fully digest a prey and we now have a pseudo multicellular organism. Or we have a bacteria that developes a outer shell and the outer shell grows into other bacteria of the same type. (diatoms) ect.. The calculation of how likely that is and how many generaltions are all probability. In bacteria, if it happens once, thats enough. So like the lottery it may take only 1 try might tak 49 choose 6 tries. For things like trying to induce the point mutation for a change in the structure of cell walls that allow bacteria to ignore certain anti-biotics. It's about 1/1,000,000 (really rough figure). Basically it often occurs once every culture disk we used and tested; and that bacteria strain would then be the only survivor. So basically a single generation on a standard petri dish. The rate of mutation in animals is pretty finite. Anythign thats not instantly fatal or inhibits reproduction egts passed on. Any specific mutation is unlikely but we are very veyr highly likely to mutate. So every person carry some set of minor mutation.
I think your trying to lead into the blind watch maker fallacy. Just to let you know there is no end point of desired features. It's just code mutations that lead to altered enzymes/protiens ect... They may have phenotipic effects. These are then selected for. We all have altered code. depending on what it is, that determins if we show the mutation.
1-Buy 2 or more files from them
2-do a bit comparison
3-modify a copy to reflect a random profile of all removed info
this would make any compairson hard.
As a former genetics students working with bacteria. I can safely say evolution is fast. The problem is peoples intuition have troubles with things beyond or below our normal scales of size and multitude. The real problem is creationists tend to have a vanishngly small ability to grasps things outside of their immediate enviroment and size factor, not evolution "supporters" ability to imagine how slow evolution is. Take 1/1 million multiple by a million units = hightly likely.
Electric" does not mean "electronic." EMPs will affect ICs, but if I were to build the same thing with a crapload of vacuum tubes, it would survive a blast without a problem.
Or you could wrap a faradays cage and connect some sort of voltage / charge limiter around all the sensitive bits.
That's true, the sequel definitely should not revolve around the main character from Torment. But then that begs the question, how do you adopt the immortal mechanic without making it seems a trite replay?
With a universe as odd as planescape, immortality wouldn't be a unique feature to characters. Besides even coping out and havign some demigod with a vested interest revive ya could work too. I manage to grin through torment without needing to die. I enjoyed it a lot just due to having charisma and wisdom play a critical roll as opposed to most DND VG's which becoem power player scenarios. optimizing STr, dex, con.
I think it's great that research is being undertaken since this could be useful for other applications, but am I the only one scratching their head as to why the military is making a big push for these?
I assume a gun like this would go onto a destroyer. I can't think of the last time a destroyer was used in any meaningful way in combat since WW2. If I remember correctly, the only reason the navy even keeps destroyers is because congress forces them to. I guess you could put it on a tank or something, but most conflicts that are fought now are on the ground and are more guerilla tactics than formal engagements. It's being shown in Iraq and Afghanistan that all the fancy new technology that the military keeps buying doesn't really mean squat when it comes to fighting a war.
Am I missing something here?
In open engagements, tech matters. Having armour that is light and can stop small arms fire forces the other side to carry rifles. Having a higher rate of fire, higher tolerance for enviromental factors and lighter rifles of the same cilibre also help. Having good camo, being well provisioned and simpyl being well fed matter. All of that means tech. Where it fails is ambushes. Even then it forces ambushes to use mroe firepower. The kill rate between insurgents and US forces is still lop sided. If the US was commited as a society to this war, the insurgents would have no hope regaurdless of their gurilla tactics. But since the US is so splintered and anti-war to start. The Maoist gurilla tactis work.
Just a note: I'm canadian and thought the US stepping into Iraq was a mistake. They didn't have enough home grown support nor sent enough troops. They also should have been more upfront with their motives and the importance of what their doing. Their not fighting terrorism, their trying to establish control of the last remaining megatons of oil in the middle east to keep economic supuriority over the other emerging world powers. Or so it seemss from here.
How does it mean it's not running OS X in any meaningful sense? I'd say having Cocoa/AppKit (and therefore an Objective-C runtime), Core Animation, and other OS X technologies constitutes being OS X.
Win CE 5.0 looks like and behaves like XP (but more stable), the API is different but similiar to the Windows API. There is an explorer, notepad and it's programmed mostly in C. So does that mean I have windows XP on my Motorola Q? It's a silly anology sure, but the kernel is what makes OS X, OSX. The frilly bits around it really help define the apple experience but what you call OSX is the kernel, not the extras.
You do realize that they want the question of "global warming" to exist because it will eventually make the question of "evolution" easier to slam the kids with and dilute the "smoking is bad for you" theory. It's no coincidence that the same individuals that peddle ID/creationism/smoking are the same ones who peddle anti-global warming. The attempt to create confusion on scientific matter helps obscure any concensus and enables companies like phillip morris to make other claims if they weaken peoples perception of science. Ironically many of the new climate experts, who say global warming is not caused by man are the same shills and their employee who claimed smoking doesn't not cancer. And the fool in TFA is an example of the fundementalists taking their battle to new fronts.
I felt that it didn't really change anything with faramir. You do have to consider that the film was going to be seen by mostly those who did read the book. So the temptation of the ring needs to be more blatant. Consider that out of a cast of about a dozen protagonists we already have 2 resisting the ring. As well as 2 other incidental characters who ignore it's charms. Now shows a third who isn't power or special who also resists it and you kind of seriously deluted it's danger.
Actually, the main advantage of a referal system is that you *don't* need upfront cash for it -- you pay out of your takings.
You haven't done any work in this industry I see. Most pay for click or positions on the blogs/agregators. Paying directly for a sale is uncommon. There might be bonuses for a customer who signed up where it can be directly referenced back. But all the pay schemes involves verifiable/undeniable data like click throughs, impressions and unique referals.
I,>porn: 12-15 billion annually (US)
movies (theatrical): 8-11 billion annually (US)
dvds (non-porn/rental and purchase): 21-25 billion annually (US)
music: anyones guess. numbers range from 5-15 billion depending on who is doing the telling. the music industry is notorious for lying about sales though - perceived popularity of music makes people buy more music. This number is probably high.
Complete fabrication. Porn is a large industry but not larger then the Theatric movie release industry. The 12-15 number is based on interviews AVN did then re-enforced in Frobes for mentioning it. It's not based on hard numbers. Let me ask you this, how many porn produces are as WEALTHY as Speilberg. Or how about the head of any major studio? According to those numbers, under a similiar distribution system there should be at least 1/3 as many WEALTHY porn makers as there are film makers. But it's not supported. Even well known industry icons like Seymour Butts is only "rich."
Porn is a little more democratic then hollywood since any person wiht a camera can make it, but distribution (digital* or old school) still requires money. So we may have 100,000 producers but only several large distribution houses and online pushers. More conservative "studies" peg the amount to be 2-3 billion per year within the US.
*for online distibution, you still need to attract traffic which require money. The most successful online porn retailers use some pretty complex referral systems and networks of sites to generate cash. You need cash for this.
Mi>What about the original Playstation? From what I remember, it had a slow start, in an environment where there were lots of competitors using CD media, but gradually won out.
The SNES int he US as well. It lagged behind initially playign catch up to the genesis. But once certain key games came otu it started stomping the genesis.
Same witht he Ps2. the Dreamcast had a year head start, a fair game lineup and a good launch onyl to see the PS2 come from behind.
Look at the initial sign up rates, the re-sign up rates after the promotional period is over, and how many active players there are. You'll quickly find that Xbox Live is a not a motivating feature in the competition between the three.