dude, primer is really good. i also bought the DVD. i first rented it on netflix, then bought it and still watch it occasionally. Good film. Very good film and very well done.
When the Sci Fi channel first got their movie budgets - I thought this was the kind of film they'd do. But they're doing really shitty B-flicks.
the $7000 figure is a bit misleading though. Carruth got the transfer for free - he shot on film - and edited digitally on his home computer. The transfer is expensive; but he got a film to HD transfer grant or something to that effect in order to edit on a digital substrate. The value of that transfer, mostly labor costs, can be anywhere from $25,000 to $100,000 depending on what company's doing the transfer and what kind of film.
although, I'm still perplexed as to Abe's apparent fixation with Aaron's wife.
I think the major flaw in the reach for smarter than human AI - is that humans would have to be doing the programming. Everyone always discusses Moore's law, but we accede that the species collective programming prowess has not kept pace with exponential advances in processing power.
I also watch movies on my IPAQ, compressed to a 1 gig sd card. I for one like the fact that my IPAQ serves my music, video, pic, and PDA needs, but can imagine that the market for a video ipod exists.
Consumer electronics are trend dependent now - fashionable devices. In the fashion industry, companies are known to "strike while the iron is hot" - if designer X is on a roll - he/she continues to release new lines and line subsets to try to prolong the amount of time the consumer critical mass stays interested. Apple is prudent to do this, even if it doesn't sell on a par with previous models.
Those numbers are right. In fact, Hollywood uses the box office merely as a springboard for the way more lucrative home entertainment market. But, with varying exceptions, box office success translates into DVD success, which translates into favorable rates when the film hits pay cable, basic cable, and network revenue streams. In other words, if a film doesn't do particularly well, it tends not to do well on DVD, which in turn drives down the realistic asking price when the film is pushed down the pipeline.
I don't doubt that the film will be a success. Geeks are loyal DVD purchasers. DVD alone will push this into the black. I'm sure that's what the argument was in order to get hte studio to put up the cash, especially to a first time feature director.
nobody watched the show. networks don't care how good a show is. they care that they program something that people want to watch. it's why american idol is still on. People actually get fired for championing shows that are good but no one watches. This is actually the more likely scenario.
Serenity is a movie with a $40 million budget (which means that its advertising budget was probably around $20-25 million) - this means that they spent $60-65 million on a film that earned $10 million its opening weekend.
there are some who say the reason we haven't seen signs of any intelligent life is that evolved life CANNOT survive its own technology.
Then the next argument would be: where is that tech? How come we've not been contacted by sentient machine descendants of civilizations? I can imagine that surviving a singularity is as uncommon as sentience arising from primordial soup.
The other thing that's marginally interesting to me is the idea of sweet spots. The earth is a sweet spot, our solar system is a sweet spot. The temp gradients on earth are a sweet spot. I contend that our range of intelligence is a sweet spot.
Studies have shown, in general, and across cultural lines, that suicide rates increased with IQ. Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. I think it's possible that we as a species occupy a sweet spot in terms of intelligence. It could be the reason why savants (forgive me if I should be using a more politically correct term) tend to be "limited" in terms of personality and emotional development... in consciousness... they tend to be "less self-aware".
The point of the aforementioned is thus: thinking that SMH (smarter than human AI) would be inherently stable or benevolent is not necessarily assured. I have no reason to think that AI would react differently than humans, especially because AI would probably model itself after humans.
I don't doubt a singularity is on the way. I don't think it'll be in my lifetime though. I think we should fear it though as much as we embrace it.
More like your teens, buddy. GH levels peak and flatten during your teens, and the decline in GH levels in general corresponds to how hard and fast you live. Vigorous athletes tend to have a later, longer peak and flattening period. But by high school commencement, it's all downhill buddy.
Evolution only protects you until you can make babies, then you're on your own.
dude, my gmail crashes all the time. i often cannot log on. i also get email from some other accounts forwarded to gmail, and i receive my forwards very inconsistently if at all in many cases. I've forwarded from my work accounts to other webmails to test, and gmail by far performs on a par with hotmail in that regard, which is pretty badly.
secondly, google does not run an OS. third, I have three properly patched MSFT XP Pro boxes that NEVER crash.
thirdly, most people really do care about privacy. It's why blinds, curtains, and firewalls are good businesses to be in.
dude, I totally agree with you. I'm actually flummoxed by Slashdot's support of both Google and Apple, because they exhibit Microsoft tendencies in the areas in which they are dominant.
Ask all the OEMs getting squeezed out of the DAP market. Everyone complains about DRM, but not Apple's DRM. They get the pass. Everyone REQUIRES innovation, yet Apple merely repeatedly releases slightly modified models of the same product in order to bolster quarterly earnings. Again, they get the pass.
Because they dominate the market, they suppress innovation. Disagree? Please show me how the IPOD nano is an innovative product.
This isn't trolling or flaming; I merely don't see how or why Apple and Google hold coveted geek status, other than the fact that they are not Microsoft, and that they do compete with the behemoth in certain respects.
Moral value is ascribed to Microsoft's tactics. I contend that all similarly successful companies are as ruthless and "amoral", Google and Apple notwithstanding. By that meter, Google and Apple would seem to be similarly ruthless. Google, especially, because they play both sides against the middle.
And parent is right: Hollywood, the industry, had little to do with Episode III. George lucas finances his own films and has final cut. Hollywood merely distributes the films and takes up advertising costs, which, because of ancillary marketing strategies, can be surprisingly inexpensive (relative to marketing other films).
In that regard, George Lucas is not part of the hollywood machine. He hasn't been for a long time. He's more like his own studio.
Which isn't to say that Star Wars didn't reek. It did, but then, I'm one of the few who thought the originals were bad as well.
lol. lame. to go HIGHER and with more payload to do what??????? What is it that we can DO by going high and with more payload??????????? What is it that SSO can do now, or in scaling it upwards, that will allow it to do something that we CAN'T ALREADY DO.... without significant redesign? Wasn't that the exact same point of the space shuttle... pointlessly reinventing the wheel? lol. I think so dude.
The only innovative aspects of Spaceship One exist precisely because of the large failure that the space shuttle is turning out to be. Reusable craft that can be launched frequently and inexpensively. That was the dream of the space shutle. Instead, NASA decided to build a big erect penis. Too big - too complex. The pendulum swings, and spaceship one revives an OLD IDEA.
We can already go high. The Russians can already go high (lol, as you put it) and for relatively cheap and relatively safely. More payload - the Russians scale well. SSO still can't achieve orbit. It will need a major redesign and avionics to do so. Guess what that means. Back to the drawing board, buddy - just like with the space shuttle - an evolutionary cul de sac.
The space threshold is arbitrary. The only people who get wet over passing this threshold are SSO fanboys.
"For that, we have an arbitrary definition to blame. In the 1950s an informal group of aeronautical scientists, led by Theodore von Karman, sought to define an altitude at which space began for the purposes of, among other things, ensuring that existing aviation records for speed and altitude would not be shattered by spacecraft. That group calculated an altitude below which "significant" thrust would be required to keep an object in orbit. Those calculations were done in units of nautical miles, and the resulting figure was, according to one scientist, a "very uneasy number to remember." Von Karman then suggested a nice round number, 100 kilometers, which was near the number they calculated, as an alternative. This was eventually accepted by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, and is sometimes called the Karman Line in his honor. The X Prize later accepted this figure for its competition; prize founder Peter Diamandis noted that they had considered setting an altitude requirement of 100 miles, but rejected that after potential contenders noted that this higher altitude would be much more difficult to achieve.
There is nothing that significant about 100 km; conditions there are little different than at 95 or 105 km. Indeed, it is not the only definition for space: the Air Force (and now the FAA) award astronaut wings for those who exceed an altitude of 50 miles (80.5 km). However, thanks in large part to the X Prize, 100 km is now perceived by the media and the public as the boundary of space, an imaginary line where the final frontier begins."
Your KISS argument. No.... rutan acknowledged that simple WOULD NOT SCALE WELL and that they stripped out to keep costs down. The avionics were designed to SOLVE THIS SPECIFIC PROBLEM. That will not scale as this solution solves no current spacefaring problem. How do you plan to GO HIGHER and be MADE LARGER (your words, lol) with a human piloted "spacecraft"?
Oh dude, you kill me in so many ways, the least of which is your inability to parse your sentences and your apparent susceptibility to PR releases and propaganda.
He also acknowledged that SSO was proof of concept and would NOT SCALE WELL. NO SPACECRAFT THAT DEPENDS ON HUMAN PILOTING WILL SCALE WELL. NONE. LOLOLOLOL.
Lol... and the innovative hybrid rocket engine. The fuel mixture is new, but the Dolphin hybrid first flew in 1984. It was innovative tech then. The company that built it folded because no one would fund their subsequent research.
Then, guess what. in 1988, SPACEDEV... the company that designed the SSO "innovative" engines, ACQUIRED ALL THE DOLPHIN TECH for pennies on the dollar. The engine in the Spaceship one is based on a 25 year old design, dude. lol. lol.
There's a thing called overspecialization. Ever heard of it? Sure it works, but will it scale well? lol... and from a company called scaled composites no less.
The fact that there are no avionics means that much will have to be redesigned from scratch. lol
And like I said, much of this "testing" was done in the 50s. lol.
And like I said, it's not "their" tech. The air force did it in the 50s. Ever heard of the cold war? lots of good tech came from it. check it out.
I honestly think that I'd like the US to become sophisticated enough to admit that any manned mission to mars would be a one way trip.
my trip to mars would be one way. we pepper the landing site with enough resources beforehand - redundant resources actually, in discrete packages. Drop the astronauts in the field and deploy living environments. Let them live there and conduct science until they die. Sounds harsh. But I'd take such a trip. That way, we don't have to bring stuff back.
My first concern isn't contaminating Mars. It's contaminating earth. If a comet collision produced us, what the fuck will a handful of teeming martian dirt do? Eh, I'd rather not risk it. Let's do the science on-site; send back data. Anything that goes to another terrestrial body is strictly one way - until we can determine that we won't be bringing extinction home. that seems only prudent to me. Send astronauts one way with rovers. Remote control of rovers in real Martian time makes them extremely efficient. Astronauts do field science in pertinent places. Recycle moon rover tech; upgrade it to increase range.
why do people always refer to spaceship one when space shuttle articles come up.
space ship one wasn't designed as an orbital vehicle. in the fact that it was designed to do one thing and one thing only, it actually mirrors the short term thinking that went into the space shuttle.
therein lies the issue. and it isn't just with NASA. All of our governmental goals are short term. So there is no natural evolution of our technological process in regards to space.
just our whole governmental process is screwy. How is it that George Bush promises no tax increases in light of the recent meteorological disasters. How is this fucking possible? Would I have a problem with a slight tax increase to cover shortfall and to finance the rebuilding of an american city? No. Would I have a problem with the slightly increased cost of what we learn of protecting our coastal cities because this is a country built on the economic might of its coastal urban centers, especially because I live in one? No. Who are these people in our country that favor these reduced tax rates; it's like the governmental equivalent of anorexia. How is this possible, Mr. Bush? Regardless of whether there are billions of dollars wasted on other things, and I assume they are, they've already been allocated. Where is this cash coming from? And who the fuck cares about Mars when we can't get back to ORBIT. Orbit, Mr. Bush. We can't get to orbit.
Our government is like a macrocosmic MTV. Short attention span.... much ado... about nothing. Everyone knows that overspecialization breeds inherent weakness, but we keep making task specific ships.... we keep overspecializing over and over, which forces us to throw out designs when administrations and priorities and mission requirements change.
and please, lets not even refer to space-ship one - it's a glorified bottle rocket. It's not even innovative; the air force pioneered all the research in the 50s. It doesn't even have avionics; which is why it pitched wildly (catastrophically!) during one of its "record" setting flights. We shouldn't be "piloting" spaceships; shit, as a species, we can barely drive.
probably because i don't want a company using proprietary algorithms to build a profile of me based on my email usage and preferences, data that is a subpoena away from being publically available.
That said, in gmail, I just move to trash. Then go the trash bin and click delete forever.
Apple has it right for a company that sells consumer electronics. they don't make any money off song sales. Therefore, this model is not appropriate for a music company.
Ringtones sell for 3-5 bucks and sell pretty well. this suggests that songs are underpriced, or at least priced significantly less than the market will bear. To that end, it seems that Apple is artificially depressing the cost of music, to the detriment of music companies.
I can't speak for allofmp3.com, but ITMS is probably a loss leader as opposed to a viable revenue generation model for sales of music.
Record companies can't make money at a dollar a song. Peer networks would help because they kill bandwidth costs and presumably pass saving on to the consumer.
Artists enslave themselves by signing poor contracts. There are many smaller labels that are giving artists really good fucking deals. Koch Records is one of them. I know a couple of artists signed there, and they get shitty marketing budgets but a 50/50 split on revenue. sweet.
Prices that the market will bear (especially considering that free music has been shared for like ten years) are probably not considered inflated. I'd charge the highest price my consumers are willing to pay. This isn't stealing, as you put it, but common sense and good busines practice.
Attempting to protect their "property" from being stolen or pirated is their right as a corporation. You would protect your property from being stolen, or actively work to prevent your manner of generating capital from being illegally undermined; you might resort to some measures others would disagree with. This is your right.
I'm not flaming or trolling... just trying to put forth the other side of the argument.
The RIAA has an archaic business model. This is a given. They still have the right to defend their current revenue model until someone puts them out of business. The issue here is that everyone gripes about the RIAA and old-school music practices, but a new-school model has yet to arise. I'm not convinced a decentralized model is the way. It's just not how humans are wired.
ITUNES definitely isn't the way. I'm not sure what is though.
I think a huge factor is generational. My nephew is nine, and even he prefers reading paper books to ebooks on my IPAQ.
Books are integral to human learning and we're extremely familiar with them; our earliest memories have books in them.
When we start reading bedtime stories to our nieces and nephews from tablets and electronic paper, then children will grow up knowing that as the way to be.
Because children growing up now are still being taught from and are used to reading books, it's going to take a long time. Maybe their children, or their grandchildren.
The paradigm changes when your kid reads from an online textbook via a ruggedized tablet at school that allows him totake notes that are stored online. The same tablet allows him to record the entire lecture so that he can listen to it over and over, answering any questions he might have in absentia. That same textbook, with the same notes, is available to him everywhere and anywhere on the web... so he doesn't need a paper copy of the book.
Again, it sounds like its a couple of generations down.
That's one of the really cool things about Japan. They're on new tech yesterday. I think that's where we're headed.
Slashdot Mirror
dude, primer is really good. i also bought the DVD. i first rented it on netflix, then bought it and still watch it occasionally. Good film. Very good film and very well done.
When the Sci Fi channel first got their movie budgets - I thought this was the kind of film they'd do. But they're doing really shitty B-flicks.
the $7000 figure is a bit misleading though. Carruth got the transfer for free - he shot on film - and edited digitally on his home computer. The transfer is expensive; but he got a film to HD transfer grant or something to that effect in order to edit on a digital substrate. The value of that transfer, mostly labor costs, can be anywhere from $25,000 to $100,000 depending on what company's doing the transfer and what kind of film.
although, I'm still perplexed as to Abe's apparent fixation with Aaron's wife.
And why was it that they could no longer write?
dude, i think you hit an interesting point.
I think the major flaw in the reach for smarter than human AI - is that humans would have to be doing the programming. Everyone always discusses Moore's law, but we accede that the species collective programming prowess has not kept pace with exponential advances in processing power.
I also watch movies on my IPAQ, compressed to a 1 gig sd card. I for one like the fact that my IPAQ serves my music, video, pic, and PDA needs, but can imagine that the market for a video ipod exists.
Consumer electronics are trend dependent now - fashionable devices. In the fashion industry, companies are known to "strike while the iron is hot" - if designer X is on a roll - he/she continues to release new lines and line subsets to try to prolong the amount of time the consumer critical mass stays interested. Apple is prudent to do this, even if it doesn't sell on a par with previous models.
Those numbers are right. In fact, Hollywood uses the box office merely as a springboard for the way more lucrative home entertainment market. But, with varying exceptions, box office success translates into DVD success, which translates into favorable rates when the film hits pay cable, basic cable, and network revenue streams. In other words, if a film doesn't do particularly well, it tends not to do well on DVD, which in turn drives down the realistic asking price when the film is pushed down the pipeline.
I don't doubt that the film will be a success. Geeks are loyal DVD purchasers. DVD alone will push this into the black. I'm sure that's what the argument was in order to get hte studio to put up the cash, especially to a first time feature director.
nobody watched the show. networks don't care how good a show is. they care that they program something that people want to watch. it's why american idol is still on. People actually get fired for championing shows that are good but no one watches. This is actually the more likely scenario.
Serenity is a movie with a $40 million budget (which means that its advertising budget was probably around $20-25 million) - this means that they spent $60-65 million on a film that earned $10 million its opening weekend.
You guys better buy that DVD.
that's it. exactly.
there are some who say the reason we haven't seen signs of any intelligent life is that evolved life CANNOT survive its own technology.
Then the next argument would be: where is that tech? How come we've not been contacted by sentient machine descendants of civilizations? I can imagine that surviving a singularity is as uncommon as sentience arising from primordial soup.
The other thing that's marginally interesting to me is the idea of sweet spots. The earth is a sweet spot, our solar system is a sweet spot. The temp gradients on earth are a sweet spot. I contend that our range of intelligence is a sweet spot.
Studies have shown, in general, and across cultural lines, that suicide rates increased with IQ. Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. I think it's possible that we as a species occupy a sweet spot in terms of intelligence. It could be the reason why savants (forgive me if I should be using a more politically correct term) tend to be "limited" in terms of personality and emotional development... in consciousness... they tend to be "less self-aware".
The point of the aforementioned is thus: thinking that SMH (smarter than human AI) would be inherently stable or benevolent is not necessarily assured. I have no reason to think that AI would react differently than humans, especially because AI would probably model itself after humans.
I don't doubt a singularity is on the way. I don't think it'll be in my lifetime though. I think we should fear it though as much as we embrace it.
We already tend to go downhill after our 20's
More like your teens, buddy. GH levels peak and flatten during your teens, and the decline in GH levels in general corresponds to how hard and fast you live. Vigorous athletes tend to have a later, longer peak and flattening period. But by high school commencement, it's all downhill buddy.
Evolution only protects you until you can make babies, then you're on your own.
yeah - cosign. I LIKE living. every day is wondrous. The capacity of humanity is wondrous. I'd like to take part as long as I can.
dude, my gmail crashes all the time. i often cannot log on. i also get email from some other accounts forwarded to gmail, and i receive my forwards very inconsistently if at all in many cases. I've forwarded from my work accounts to other webmails to test, and gmail by far performs on a par with hotmail in that regard, which is pretty badly.
secondly, google does not run an OS. third, I have three properly patched MSFT XP Pro boxes that NEVER crash.
thirdly, most people really do care about privacy. It's why blinds, curtains, and firewalls are good businesses to be in.
dude, I totally agree with you. I'm actually flummoxed by Slashdot's support of both Google and Apple, because they exhibit Microsoft tendencies in the areas in which they are dominant.
Ask all the OEMs getting squeezed out of the DAP market. Everyone complains about DRM, but not Apple's DRM. They get the pass. Everyone REQUIRES innovation, yet Apple merely repeatedly releases slightly modified models of the same product in order to bolster quarterly earnings. Again, they get the pass.
Because they dominate the market, they suppress innovation. Disagree? Please show me how the IPOD nano is an innovative product.
This isn't trolling or flaming; I merely don't see how or why Apple and Google hold coveted geek status, other than the fact that they are not Microsoft, and that they do compete with the behemoth in certain respects.
Moral value is ascribed to Microsoft's tactics. I contend that all similarly successful companies are as ruthless and "amoral", Google and Apple notwithstanding. By that meter, Google and Apple would seem to be similarly ruthless. Google, especially, because they play both sides against the middle.
You're a subpoena away from persecution in a Googleplex world, buddy.
Tags are in clothes in retail stores that set off alarms and sometimes jettison ink so the garment is ruined. Forget about RFID.
Owners of property have the right to defend it.
Worldwide: $847,193,856 (www.boxofficemojo.com)
Episode III is right in line with expectations.
And parent is right: Hollywood, the industry, had little to do with Episode III. George lucas finances his own films and has final cut. Hollywood merely distributes the films and takes up advertising costs, which, because of ancillary marketing strategies, can be surprisingly inexpensive (relative to marketing other films).
In that regard, George Lucas is not part of the hollywood machine. He hasn't been for a long time. He's more like his own studio.
Which isn't to say that Star Wars didn't reek. It did, but then, I'm one of the few who thought the originals were bad as well.
lol. lame. to go HIGHER and with more payload to do what??????? What is it that we can DO by going high and with more payload??????????? What is it that SSO can do now, or in scaling it upwards, that will allow it to do something that we CAN'T ALREADY DO.... without significant redesign? Wasn't that the exact same point of the space shuttle... pointlessly reinventing the wheel? lol. I think so dude.
The only innovative aspects of Spaceship One exist precisely because of the large failure that the space shuttle is turning out to be. Reusable craft that can be launched frequently and inexpensively. That was the dream of the space shutle. Instead, NASA decided to build a big erect penis. Too big - too complex. The pendulum swings, and spaceship one revives an OLD IDEA.
We can already go high. The Russians can already go high (lol, as you put it) and for relatively cheap and relatively safely. More payload - the Russians scale well. SSO still can't achieve orbit. It will need a major redesign and avionics to do so. Guess what that means. Back to the drawing board, buddy - just like with the space shuttle - an evolutionary cul de sac.
The space threshold is arbitrary. The only people who get wet over passing this threshold are SSO fanboys.
"For that, we have an arbitrary definition to blame. In the 1950s an informal group of aeronautical scientists, led by Theodore von Karman, sought to define an altitude at which space began for the purposes of, among other things, ensuring that existing aviation records for speed and altitude would not be shattered by spacecraft. That group calculated an altitude below which "significant" thrust would be required to keep an object in orbit. Those calculations were done in units of nautical miles, and the resulting figure was, according to one scientist, a "very uneasy number to remember." Von Karman then suggested a nice round number, 100 kilometers, which was near the number they calculated, as an alternative. This was eventually accepted by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, and is sometimes called the Karman Line in his honor. The X Prize later accepted this figure for its competition; prize founder Peter Diamandis noted that they had considered setting an altitude requirement of 100 miles, but rejected that after potential contenders noted that this higher altitude would be much more difficult to achieve.
There is nothing that significant about 100 km; conditions there are little different than at 95 or 105 km. Indeed, it is not the only definition for space: the Air Force (and now the FAA) award astronaut wings for those who exceed an altitude of 50 miles (80.5 km). However, thanks in large part to the X Prize, 100 km is now perceived by the media and the public as the boundary of space, an imaginary line where the final frontier begins."
Your KISS argument. No.... rutan acknowledged that simple WOULD NOT SCALE WELL and that they stripped out to keep costs down. The avionics were designed to SOLVE THIS SPECIFIC PROBLEM. That will not scale as this solution solves no current spacefaring problem. How do you plan to GO HIGHER and be MADE LARGER (your words, lol) with a human piloted "spacecraft"?
Oh dude, you kill me in so many ways, the least of which is your inability to parse your sentences and your apparent susceptibility to PR releases and propaganda.
He also acknowledged that SSO was proof of concept and would NOT SCALE WELL. NO SPACECRAFT THAT DEPENDS ON HUMAN PILOTING WILL SCALE WELL. NONE. LOLOLOLOL.
Lol... and the innovative hybrid rocket engine. The fuel mixture is new, but the Dolphin hybrid first flew in 1984. It was innovative tech then. The company that built it folded because no one would fund their subsequent research.
Then, guess what. in 1988, SPACEDEV... the company that designed the SSO "innovative" engines, ACQUIRED ALL THE DOLPHIN TECH for pennies on the dollar. The engine in the Spaceship one is based on a 25 year old design, dude. lol. lol.
Lame.
somebody please mod this guy up.
There's a thing called overspecialization. Ever heard of it? Sure it works, but will it scale well? lol... and from a company called scaled composites no less.
The fact that there are no avionics means that much will have to be redesigned from scratch. lol
And like I said, much of this "testing" was done in the 50s. lol.
And like I said, it's not "their" tech. The air force did it in the 50s. Ever heard of the cold war? lots of good tech came from it. check it out.
I honestly think that I'd like the US to become sophisticated enough to admit that any manned mission to mars would be a one way trip.
my trip to mars would be one way. we pepper the landing site with enough resources beforehand - redundant resources actually, in discrete packages. Drop the astronauts in the field and deploy living environments. Let them live there and conduct science until they die. Sounds harsh. But I'd take such a trip. That way, we don't have to bring stuff back.
My first concern isn't contaminating Mars. It's contaminating earth. If a comet collision produced us, what the fuck will a handful of teeming martian dirt do? Eh, I'd rather not risk it. Let's do the science on-site; send back data. Anything that goes to another terrestrial body is strictly one way - until we can determine that we won't be bringing extinction home. that seems only prudent to me. Send astronauts one way with rovers. Remote control of rovers in real Martian time makes them extremely efficient. Astronauts do field science in pertinent places. Recycle moon rover tech; upgrade it to increase range.
why do people always refer to spaceship one when space shuttle articles come up.
space ship one wasn't designed as an orbital vehicle. in the fact that it was designed to do one thing and one thing only, it actually mirrors the short term thinking that went into the space shuttle.
therein lies the issue. and it isn't just with NASA. All of our governmental goals are short term. So there is no natural evolution of our technological process in regards to space.
just our whole governmental process is screwy. How is it that George Bush promises no tax increases in light of the recent meteorological disasters. How is this fucking possible? Would I have a problem with a slight tax increase to cover shortfall and to finance the rebuilding of an american city? No. Would I have a problem with the slightly increased cost of what we learn of protecting our coastal cities because this is a country built on the economic might of its coastal urban centers, especially because I live in one? No. Who are these people in our country that favor these reduced tax rates; it's like the governmental equivalent of anorexia. How is this possible, Mr. Bush? Regardless of whether there are billions of dollars wasted on other things, and I assume they are, they've already been allocated. Where is this cash coming from? And who the fuck cares about Mars when we can't get back to ORBIT. Orbit, Mr. Bush. We can't get to orbit.
Our government is like a macrocosmic MTV. Short attention span.... much ado... about nothing. Everyone knows that overspecialization breeds inherent weakness, but we keep making task specific ships.... we keep overspecializing over and over, which forces us to throw out designs when administrations and priorities and mission requirements change.
and please, lets not even refer to space-ship one - it's a glorified bottle rocket. It's not even innovative; the air force pioneered all the research in the 50s. It doesn't even have avionics; which is why it pitched wildly (catastrophically!) during one of its "record" setting flights. We shouldn't be "piloting" spaceships; shit, as a species, we can barely drive.
This is a good argument. Sound and simple.
The only issue, I can imagine, is the eccentric orbit that Pluto has. but everything else holds water.
probably because i don't want a company using proprietary algorithms to build a profile of me based on my email usage and preferences, data that is a subpoena away from being publically available.
That said, in gmail, I just move to trash. Then go the trash bin and click delete forever.
Lol. My argument is not nonsense. Your analysis is flawed.
I reiterate. Apple, which incurs none of the costs of a record company, MAKES NO MONEY AT A DOLLAR A SONG.
How can a record company then take the same model and make money, especially considering that said music sales would comprise its main business?
That's all academic. Apple, which has no marketing costs for artists, nor padded expense accounts, makes no money from ITMS.
Apple has it right for a company that sells consumer electronics. they don't make any money off song sales. Therefore, this model is not appropriate for a music company.
Ringtones sell for 3-5 bucks and sell pretty well. this suggests that songs are underpriced, or at least priced significantly less than the market will bear. To that end, it seems that Apple is artificially depressing the cost of music, to the detriment of music companies.
I can't speak for allofmp3.com, but ITMS is probably a loss leader as opposed to a viable revenue generation model for sales of music.
Record companies can't make money at a dollar a song. Peer networks would help because they kill bandwidth costs and presumably pass saving on to the consumer.
Artists enslave themselves by signing poor contracts. There are many smaller labels that are giving artists really good fucking deals. Koch Records is one of them. I know a couple of artists signed there, and they get shitty marketing budgets but a 50/50 split on revenue. sweet.
Prices that the market will bear (especially considering that free music has been shared for like ten years) are probably not considered inflated. I'd charge the highest price my consumers are willing to pay. This isn't stealing, as you put it, but common sense and good busines practice.
Attempting to protect their "property" from being stolen or pirated is their right as a corporation. You would protect your property from being stolen, or actively work to prevent your manner of generating capital from being illegally undermined; you might resort to some measures others would disagree with. This is your right.
I'm not flaming or trolling... just trying to put forth the other side of the argument.
The RIAA has an archaic business model. This is a given. They still have the right to defend their current revenue model until someone puts them out of business. The issue here is that everyone gripes about the RIAA and old-school music practices, but a new-school model has yet to arise. I'm not convinced a decentralized model is the way. It's just not how humans are wired.
ITUNES definitely isn't the way. I'm not sure what is though.
I think a huge factor is generational. My nephew is nine, and even he prefers reading paper books to ebooks on my IPAQ.
Books are integral to human learning and we're extremely familiar with them; our earliest memories have books in them.
When we start reading bedtime stories to our nieces and nephews from tablets and electronic paper, then children will grow up knowing that as the way to be.
Because children growing up now are still being taught from and are used to reading books, it's going to take a long time. Maybe their children, or their grandchildren.
The paradigm changes when your kid reads from an online textbook via a ruggedized tablet at school that allows him totake notes that are stored online. The same tablet allows him to record the entire lecture so that he can listen to it over and over, answering any questions he might have in absentia. That same textbook, with the same notes, is available to him everywhere and anywhere on the web... so he doesn't need a paper copy of the book.
Again, it sounds like its a couple of generations down.
That's one of the really cool things about Japan. They're on new tech yesterday. I think that's where we're headed.