Remember that Gaiman is now doing the mysterious "1602" series for Marvel. The $ from this are meant to pay Gaiman's legal expenses in the case, and many assume that this means that once Gaiman clears the rights to Miracleman, it will be published by Marvel (which could also mean a return to the original "Marvelman").
Wouldn't Apple benefit financially from putting serial numbers, or WPA type regulation into their OS? The difficulties of pirating copies of Windows XP has certainly increased MS's coffers. If Apple is all about making as much profit as you suggest, why no protection?
85% of the market? How long will that take? Seriously, a majority of the Windows market is still using 98, and intends to keep on using it for years. To run Palladium, that means you're going to need to purchase an entirely new set of hardware. How many people are going to be willing to do this? Will Hollywood/the RIAA be willing to put out a product that can only be used by a tiny percent of the general public? I think their greed will win out over their stupidity.
Remember that most of the embryos in question are leftovers from in vitro fertilization clinics. These clinics routinely run redundant procedures in case of failure, so you end up with a lot of fertilized eggs that aren't going to be used. What happens to those fertilized eggs that (according to some) have a soul? Some get stored for a period of time, but in general, they get discarded.
So you've got this heinous crime happening anyway--fertilized eggs being destroyed. The question is whether it's better to simply destroy them and gain nothing, or to destroy them and get something useful from that action.
Isn't it better if sick, suffering people can be healed? Why just throw that chance away?
As someone else pointed out, this should be available as a stand-alone download. As part of the service pack, the only way to install it is to accept MS's new EULA.
"If a larger label makes a killing it is probably on a runaway hit that sells hundreds of thousands, or millions, not ten thousand or less like the vast majority of releases do. Most labels lose money most of the time, and the ones that steadily make money generally do so on a scale that doesn't even register on the radar of the major-label wonks."
As I understand them, most major label contracts charge the artist for every single expense involved in recording, pressing and promoting a cd. The artists are given an advance, and all the company's expenses (including the advance) are then taken out of the artist's royalties (more on this at http://www.negativland.com/albini.html ). The labels even continue to charge artists a certain percentage for "breakage" of vinyl records, even though the music only comes out on cd or tape.
So how can they lose money? Is it just a case of the records failing to sell and the artists ending up in debt, bankrupt and unable to pay back the labels?
Seriously, I don't see the money loss for the labels in their business model (although lobbying congress must be taking a chunk of cash).
More on the reality of record contracts from Steve Albini, member of Big Black and producer of Nirvana (among others):
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
Not sure that I buy this either. We don't even know how many genes there are in the human genome, so how can we know that our coding DNA is 98% identical to chimp DNA (how well sequenced is the chimp genome anyway?). Beyond this, the published human genome is just a draft, littered with sequencing errors (one estimate stated that if the first draft got 50% of the code correct, they'd consider that a major victory). One codon difference in a long sequence can lead to a very different protein structure and a very different protein function. Changing 2 out of every 100 nucleotides can lead you to a massively different set of functional and structural proteins.
That said, of course the genomes are very similar. All genomes of every organism on earth should be similar. A lesson of evolution is to continually re-use the same genes for new functions. But just throwing out a number like 98% is misleading, if not completely meaningless.
I keep reading this statistic, and it is highly misleading. Remember that only about 1.5% of the human genome codes for proteins. The rest is what is called "junk DNA", regulatory regions, spacers, and repeats.
So if human and chimp DNA are 98% identical, that still leaves a massive amount of room for variation, including the entire coding portion of the genome. Not that this is the case, but the statistic doesn't really tell you anything useful.
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Remember that Gaiman is now doing the mysterious "1602" series for Marvel. The $ from this are meant to pay Gaiman's legal expenses in the case, and many assume that this means that once Gaiman clears the rights to Miracleman, it will be published by Marvel (which could also mean a return to the original "Marvelman").
Wouldn't Apple benefit financially from putting serial numbers, or WPA type regulation into their OS? The difficulties of pirating copies of Windows XP has certainly increased MS's coffers. If Apple is all about making as much profit as you suggest, why no protection?
85% of the market? How long will that take? Seriously, a majority of the Windows market is still using 98, and intends to keep on using it for years. To run Palladium, that means you're going to need to purchase an entirely new set of hardware. How many people are going to be willing to do this? Will Hollywood/the RIAA be willing to put out a product that can only be used by a tiny percent of the general public? I think their greed will win out over their stupidity.
Remember that most of the embryos in question are leftovers from in vitro fertilization clinics. These clinics routinely run redundant procedures in case of failure, so you end up with a lot of fertilized eggs that aren't going to be used. What happens to those fertilized eggs that (according to some) have a soul? Some get stored for a period of time, but in general, they get discarded.
So you've got this heinous crime happening anyway--fertilized eggs being destroyed. The question is whether it's better to simply destroy them and gain nothing, or to destroy them and get something useful from that action.
Isn't it better if sick, suffering people can be healed? Why just throw that chance away?
As someone else pointed out, this should be available as a stand-alone download. As part of the service pack, the only way to install it is to accept MS's new EULA.
Curious about this statement:
"If a larger label makes a killing it is probably on a runaway hit that sells hundreds of thousands, or millions, not ten thousand or less like the vast majority of releases do. Most labels lose money most of the time, and the ones that steadily make money generally do so on a scale that doesn't even register on the radar of the major-label wonks."
As I understand them, most major label contracts charge the artist for every single expense involved in recording, pressing and promoting a cd. The artists are given an advance, and all the company's expenses (including the advance) are then taken out of the artist's royalties (more on this at http://www.negativland.com/albini.html ). The labels even continue to charge artists a certain percentage for "breakage" of vinyl records, even though the music only comes out on cd or tape.
So how can they lose money? Is it just a case of the records failing to sell and the artists ending up in debt, bankrupt and unable to pay back the labels?
Seriously, I don't see the money loss for the labels in their business model (although lobbying congress must be taking a chunk of cash).
More on the reality of record contracts from Steve Albini, member of Big Black and producer of Nirvana (among others): http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
What do more "popular artists think"? Here's what Prince has to say:
n ta ries/20020807nationofthieves.html
v e/ index.html
http://www.npgmusicclub.com/npgmc/freedom/comme
Here's Courtney Love's take:
http://dir.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/lo
Not sure that I buy this either. We don't even know how many genes there are in the human genome, so how can we know that our coding DNA is 98% identical to chimp DNA (how well sequenced is the chimp genome anyway?). Beyond this, the published human genome is just a draft, littered with sequencing errors (one estimate stated that if the first draft got 50% of the code correct, they'd consider that a major victory). One codon difference in a long sequence can lead to a very different protein structure and a very different protein function. Changing 2 out of every 100 nucleotides can lead you to a massively different set of functional and structural proteins.
That said, of course the genomes are very similar. All genomes of every organism on earth should be similar. A lesson of evolution is to continually re-use the same genes for new functions. But just throwing out a number like 98% is misleading, if not completely meaningless.
I keep reading this statistic, and it is highly misleading. Remember that only about 1.5% of the human genome codes for proteins. The rest is what is called "junk DNA", regulatory regions, spacers, and repeats. So if human and chimp DNA are 98% identical, that still leaves a massive amount of room for variation, including the entire coding portion of the genome. Not that this is the case, but the statistic doesn't really tell you anything useful.