It's not Trump, this idea has been floated as early as 2015. Which shouldn't surprise anyone, the ISS was going to be decommissioned in 2016 originally, but they got an extension for 10 more years or so.
At $50k or maybe even $100k for a real trip (i.e. a brief stay in orbit, not Virgin's kiddie ride), hell, even li'l old me would consider it. Before I'm too old to go. Even if I could just barely afford it, it would be worth it.
I doubt that we'll be seeing tourist trips at those prices in my lifetime though. It might be possible to offer them at that price soon, but small capacity and a huge demand likely means that they can get away with asking a multiple of that sum for a good while, and sadly that's beyond my reach.
Most crowd funding projects appear to pour most of their development effort into the site rather than the product. Can't win them dollars without parallax scrolling and cool animated infographics, right? Bigelow do have a rather spartan website. I suppose they do not have to woo the crowd to get funding; their investors know what they are up to.
It’s called the uncanny valley. When the robot walked up to de door, its movements seemed decidedly robot-like and procedural, exactly what we’d expect from a robot. But when the guy pulled on its leash, it reacted with what looks like instinct, its movements becoming eerily similar to a real animal. It doesn’t look like an actual dog but at that moment it’s too close for comfort.
That part of the video was cut. But that cyber-bully with the hockey stick will have some trouble sitting down for a few weeks. And Boston Dynamics is going to have to get a new hockey stick.
I hope that by “thoughtful subtle” you don’t mean “dark”. A lot of today’s directors seem to think they are the same. And some directors seem to think “dark” in this case pertains to lighting.
That’s fine, many SF stories have political undertones and are often written as a comment on politics here on Earth. But what GP rightly worries about is whether the writers adapting this material for TV are going to stay true to the material. Or will they twist the political ideas in it into something that suits their own world view (Starship Troopers)? Or perhaps adding some rather unsubtle cues to map the story’s political factions and ideas to those of Earth? Making those connections is best left as an exercise for the viewer.
Politics belong in SF stories, and the best ones often hold up a mirror to our own world. But Hollywood often turns that mirror into a parody narrated by a preacher.
That’s where a judge would come in. Which of course the publishers would not mind, to them lawyers are part of everyday business. For hobbyists running free servers, not so much. But that’s a problem with the legal system (the one in the US, over here going to court isn’t that expensive and not a big deal), not with my interpretation of the intent of copyright law.
Copyright was introduced to allow authors a temporary monopoly on their works (something pretty much unheard of before then), in order to encourage creation and the proliferation of creative works. The point was not to give authors complete control over their works.
So it seems only fair that a cultural work is free for all if the author chooses to no longer sell it. And that would include running servers for discontinued games. Offer the server or let others. And in that light, the argument that people running servers for older games would compete with newer similar games offered by the studio, is interesting. If there is a lot of interest in the older game, would it not be profitable for the company to keep its servers up? And if there is only interest in the older game because it would be free, wouldn’t that mean that most of those players would not pony up the cash to play the new one, with only a small resulting loss of sales?
Of course I know that copyright has been perverted far beyond its original intent. But whatever.
The walled garden isn't so bad; if you're using your smart phone or tablet or computer like most people, you usually can't even see the wall. But where Apple seems to do rather poorly is with products that thrive on interoperability. For instance, things like HomeKit, Siri, and HomePods would be awesome if they worked well with whatever other stuff I had lying around the house, and whatever services I made use of, being able to use 3rd party software to tie everything together. Samsung, Amazon and Google seem to get this, but Apple wants to keep the ecosystem all theirs. They still haven't opened Siri up for developers for crying out loud (unless you're Uber, Yelp or Whatsapp).
And conversely, no mouse support on iOS, which I'd also like to see. An iPad with a keyboard cover would make a pretty neat small "laptop", but without a mouse you can forget about doing anything seriously productive.
What just happened in that scenario is that taking X-Rays has become a good deal cheaper. Instead of employing less doctors, perhaps we'd just be taking more X-Rays (and CTs, MRIs and what have you). Banged on the head? Get a quick and cheap scan to check for damage, instead of having the doctor tell you to take a pill and see if the pain gets any worse in the next 2 weeks. The same happened a couple of decades ago when a couple of (newly allowed) specialised private clinics opened: they showed how to greatly cut costs by working effciciently, but instead of that resulting in less doctors being employed, it meant more procedures being performed.
Doesn't that law allow warranty to be voided if the user does not carry out reasonable maintenance? Such as having the SIM in place so the firmware can be updated and data on wear & tear can be sent to the dealer for preventive maintenance?
Well, he mentions "blockchain" which these days is almost never related to any form of common sense. Blockchain technology can be used to do this sort of decentralisation, but if there's a coin of some sort attached to it, you know you're probably being scammed.
That's the case for a lot of these so called "rare earth metals" as well. They aren't particularly rare, but mining them can sometimes be a nasty business and isn't easy to do profitably, especially in nations that actually enforce environmental regulations. But if demand drives up prices, more mines are bound to be reopened.
There's degrees. Sharing some mp3s is not the same thing as running a torrent website, especially if you make money doing so. The problem is that the industry would *love* to apply "men with guns" to all instances of piracy, even poor old granny downloading a song to mix with her funny cat video.
I don't feel they are attacking me directly, but they are attacking the idea of open debate and free exchange of viewpoints, and that affects me in a big way. This is not a rally against racisme, but against "those who are racist", i.e. specific people and parties. But by what standard? These days it doesn't take much to be labeled as racist or sexist: stating that you are against open borders and free immigration is sufficient, for instance. Or take Jordan Peterson, who came under fire for speaking up against political correctness and refusing to use gender-neutral pronouns. The so called anti-fascists think it is ok to brand any person they disagree with as "racists", making it ok to slash their tires, call their employer and try to get them fired, prevent them from speaking in public, "punch a nazi", and so on. The anti-fascists have truly become the new fascists.
I love how advertising agencies talk about "improving the reader experience" and "serve ads that are relevant to you", yet the result inavriably seems to be ads that are harder to ignore and annoy the reader to the point where they will leave the site.
Dear advertisers: if you are serious about improving the reader experience, think about how your ad impresses on a reader who is not interested in whatever it is you're selling. Good ads provide info to people who are interested in your products, entice people who might be interested, and are easily ignored by people who have no interest. Of course many advertisers seem to think that there is no such thing as bad publicity, and believe that the population of people who are not and will never be interested in the product is zero. The result of that thinking is the immense popularity of ad blockers, and declining readership of sites who successfully lock out people using such blockers. If people go out of their way to avoid looking at your ad, that should be telling you something...
The money isn’t looted, though. The movie studios aren’t poorer by one penny for the act of pirating a movie alone. They do suffer from lost sales, which are harder to calculate. Pirates aren’t robbers; they are more like the guys who open the fire escape in a movie theatre to let their pals in.
The studios would have us believe that every pirated copy of Time Cop constitutes a lost sale to the tune of the retail value of the physical DVD. At one point the movie and music industry tried to attribute all of the decline in revenue to piracy. They also argue that every downloader (using BitTorrent) is also a distributor of pirated content, with potential damages assessed accordingly. To the point where the total damage due to piracy, by their method of calculation, exceeded the GDP of the entire world. The reality is quite different of course. Piracy should be a crime, but the punishment should fit that crime, without the perpetrator being made “an example”, nor being punished for the crimes of others. In your example, the guy who unlocked the door would not be punished for the theft of $10M, because that’s on the heads of those who actually took the money. To punish him for that, you have to show that he’s an accomplice in a planned heist.
Heh, “refugee pride party”. Same happened to the Pirate Party in the Netherlands, which started out pretty decent. They weren’t so much about piracy but they did advocate a thorough revision of copyright law to return it to its original purpose, as well as being strong proponents of free speech and sensible digital rights. They got taken over by a new lefty chairperson as well. They are co-organisers of a march against racism (more like a hate campaign against the right) together with questionable groups like Antifa, which made even the other left wing parties - usually all too eager to signal their virtue - distance themselves from this demonstration. It’s sad what this movement has come to.
How’s the pirates in Germany doing these days? Last time I looked they still seemed like a sensible bunch.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not Trump, this idea has been floated as early as 2015. Which shouldn't surprise anyone, the ISS was going to be decommissioned in 2016 originally, but they got an extension for 10 more years or so.
At $50k or maybe even $100k for a real trip (i.e. a brief stay in orbit, not Virgin's kiddie ride), hell, even li'l old me would consider it. Before I'm too old to go. Even if I could just barely afford it, it would be worth it.
I doubt that we'll be seeing tourist trips at those prices in my lifetime though. It might be possible to offer them at that price soon, but small capacity and a huge demand likely means that they can get away with asking a multiple of that sum for a good while, and sadly that's beyond my reach.
Most crowd funding projects appear to pour most of their development effort into the site rather than the product. Can't win them dollars without parallax scrolling and cool animated infographics, right? Bigelow do have a rather spartan website. I suppose they do not have to woo the crowd to get funding; their investors know what they are up to.
But no bump stock, that would be bad.
It’s called the uncanny valley. When the robot walked up to de door, its movements seemed decidedly robot-like and procedural, exactly what we’d expect from a robot. But when the guy pulled on its leash, it reacted with what looks like instinct, its movements becoming eerily similar to a real animal. It doesn’t look like an actual dog but at that moment it’s too close for comfort.
Hence our disappointment.
That part of the video was cut. But that cyber-bully with the hockey stick will have some trouble sitting down for a few weeks. And Boston Dynamics is going to have to get a new hockey stick.
I hope that by “thoughtful subtle” you don’t mean “dark”. A lot of today’s directors seem to think they are the same. And some directors seem to think “dark” in this case pertains to lighting.
That’s fine, many SF stories have political undertones and are often written as a comment on politics here on Earth. But what GP rightly worries about is whether the writers adapting this material for TV are going to stay true to the material. Or will they twist the political ideas in it into something that suits their own world view (Starship Troopers)? Or perhaps adding some rather unsubtle cues to map the story’s political factions and ideas to those of Earth? Making those connections is best left as an exercise for the viewer.
Politics belong in SF stories, and the best ones often hold up a mirror to our own world. But Hollywood often turns that mirror into a parody narrated by a preacher.
That’s where a judge would come in. Which of course the publishers would not mind, to them lawyers are part of everyday business. For hobbyists running free servers, not so much. But that’s a problem with the legal system (the one in the US, over here going to court isn’t that expensive and not a big deal), not with my interpretation of the intent of copyright law.
Copyright was introduced to allow authors a temporary monopoly on their works (something pretty much unheard of before then), in order to encourage creation and the proliferation of creative works. The point was not to give authors complete control over their works.
So it seems only fair that a cultural work is free for all if the author chooses to no longer sell it. And that would include running servers for discontinued games. Offer the server or let others. And in that light, the argument that people running servers for older games would compete with newer similar games offered by the studio, is interesting. If there is a lot of interest in the older game, would it not be profitable for the company to keep its servers up? And if there is only interest in the older game because it would be free, wouldn’t that mean that most of those players would not pony up the cash to play the new one, with only a small resulting loss of sales?
Of course I know that copyright has been perverted far beyond its original intent. But whatever.
The walled garden isn't so bad; if you're using your smart phone or tablet or computer like most people, you usually can't even see the wall. But where Apple seems to do rather poorly is with products that thrive on interoperability. For instance, things like HomeKit, Siri, and HomePods would be awesome if they worked well with whatever other stuff I had lying around the house, and whatever services I made use of, being able to use 3rd party software to tie everything together. Samsung, Amazon and Google seem to get this, but Apple wants to keep the ecosystem all theirs. They still haven't opened Siri up for developers for crying out loud (unless you're Uber, Yelp or Whatsapp).
And conversely, no mouse support on iOS, which I'd also like to see. An iPad with a keyboard cover would make a pretty neat small "laptop", but without a mouse you can forget about doing anything seriously productive.
What just happened in that scenario is that taking X-Rays has become a good deal cheaper. Instead of employing less doctors, perhaps we'd just be taking more X-Rays (and CTs, MRIs and what have you). Banged on the head? Get a quick and cheap scan to check for damage, instead of having the doctor tell you to take a pill and see if the pain gets any worse in the next 2 weeks. The same happened a couple of decades ago when a couple of (newly allowed) specialised private clinics opened: they showed how to greatly cut costs by working effciciently, but instead of that resulting in less doctors being employed, it meant more procedures being performed.
Doesn't that law allow warranty to be voided if the user does not carry out reasonable maintenance? Such as having the SIM in place so the firmware can be updated and data on wear & tear can be sent to the dealer for preventive maintenance?
Warranty void. Insurance likewise.
"a map of Tassie". That made my day
Well, he mentions "blockchain" which these days is almost never related to any form of common sense. Blockchain technology can be used to do this sort of decentralisation, but if there's a coin of some sort attached to it, you know you're probably being scammed.
That's the case for a lot of these so called "rare earth metals" as well. They aren't particularly rare, but mining them can sometimes be a nasty business and isn't easy to do profitably, especially in nations that actually enforce environmental regulations. But if demand drives up prices, more mines are bound to be reopened.
I wouldn’t worry about robotic overlords. Not if their conquest depends on Bluetooth.
There's degrees. Sharing some mp3s is not the same thing as running a torrent website, especially if you make money doing so. The problem is that the industry would *love* to apply "men with guns" to all instances of piracy, even poor old granny downloading a song to mix with her funny cat video.
I don't feel they are attacking me directly, but they are attacking the idea of open debate and free exchange of viewpoints, and that affects me in a big way. This is not a rally against racisme, but against "those who are racist", i.e. specific people and parties. But by what standard? These days it doesn't take much to be labeled as racist or sexist: stating that you are against open borders and free immigration is sufficient, for instance. Or take Jordan Peterson, who came under fire for speaking up against political correctness and refusing to use gender-neutral pronouns. The so called anti-fascists think it is ok to brand any person they disagree with as "racists", making it ok to slash their tires, call their employer and try to get them fired, prevent them from speaking in public, "punch a nazi", and so on. The anti-fascists have truly become the new fascists.
I love how advertising agencies talk about "improving the reader experience" and "serve ads that are relevant to you", yet the result inavriably seems to be ads that are harder to ignore and annoy the reader to the point where they will leave the site.
Dear advertisers: if you are serious about improving the reader experience, think about how your ad impresses on a reader who is not interested in whatever it is you're selling. Good ads provide info to people who are interested in your products, entice people who might be interested, and are easily ignored by people who have no interest. Of course many advertisers seem to think that there is no such thing as bad publicity, and believe that the population of people who are not and will never be interested in the product is zero. The result of that thinking is the immense popularity of ad blockers, and declining readership of sites who successfully lock out people using such blockers. If people go out of their way to avoid looking at your ad, that should be telling you something...
The money isn’t looted, though. The movie studios aren’t poorer by one penny for the act of pirating a movie alone. They do suffer from lost sales, which are harder to calculate. Pirates aren’t robbers; they are more like the guys who open the fire escape in a movie theatre to let their pals in.
The studios would have us believe that every pirated copy of Time Cop constitutes a lost sale to the tune of the retail value of the physical DVD. At one point the movie and music industry tried to attribute all of the decline in revenue to piracy. They also argue that every downloader (using BitTorrent) is also a distributor of pirated content, with potential damages assessed accordingly. To the point where the total damage due to piracy, by their method of calculation, exceeded the GDP of the entire world. The reality is quite different of course. Piracy should be a crime, but the punishment should fit that crime, without the perpetrator being made “an example”, nor being punished for the crimes of others. In your example, the guy who unlocked the door would not be punished for the theft of $10M, because that’s on the heads of those who actually took the money. To punish him for that, you have to show that he’s an accomplice in a planned heist.
Heh, “refugee pride party”. Same happened to the Pirate Party in the Netherlands, which started out pretty decent. They weren’t so much about piracy but they did advocate a thorough revision of copyright law to return it to its original purpose, as well as being strong proponents of free speech and sensible digital rights. They got taken over by a new lefty chairperson as well. They are co-organisers of a march against racism (more like a hate campaign against the right) together with questionable groups like Antifa, which made even the other left wing parties - usually all too eager to signal their virtue - distance themselves from this demonstration. It’s sad what this movement has come to.
How’s the pirates in Germany doing these days? Last time I looked they still seemed like a sensible bunch.