Under this system, there would only be one choice: make $150K. Presumably those people would only work 40 hours a week from then on. We would thus lose the extra work from these people.
If there are 40 hours of unassigned work at $150K going, I'm sure the company will be able to find an additional employee.
Another example: I happened to read on IMDB that Jennifer Garner was paid $3 million to make 13 Going on 30 and is paid $150K an episode to be on Alias. Given that, why wouldn't she take her payment for the movie over the course of twenty years and give up the TV show entirely?
Because she wants to act, presumably. She could retire right now with the money she has, but I bet she won't. Look at Seinfeld and Ray Romano, and The Simpsons; they just kept cranking out episodes at millions a pop, long after the money ceased to have any influence on their quality of life. Look at Bill Gates for that matter; he's got enough money that he need never lift a finger again, but for some reason he wants to keep working and producing the software we love to hate.
Also, see my answer to your first point -- there are plenty of actors who would do happily do a TV series for $150K / yr.
Thus, that tax would hurt me, even though I am not close to having to pay it myself.
Alias leaving your TV screen would not hurt you in any meaningful sense, really. Blake's 7 hasn't been on TV in 20 years, but I still manage to get out of bed in the morning.
Anyway, think about the intention of the policy. The idea (IMO) is to get that capital currently accumulating in the bank account of Bill Gates or Jennifer Garner or Seinfeld or whoever spread about more evenly. If Bill got paid less, the surplus would have to be either re-invested (which creates jobs, hopefully in the QA dept), or paid out as dividends (more buying power for shareholders, who then re-invest etc).
I don't know too many people who would agree with "US $150K after tax" as the definition of slavery. Think about the people who make your sneakers and get a bit of context.
They used to make them for laptops in the 90s, and as monochrome desktop displays for early graphics stuff. They were known as gas plasma displays. In laptop land they were quickly superceded by LCDs, which had improved battery life. In desktop land they were replaced by colour CRTs which were cheaper and refreshed faster.
I use captchas, a 48 hour cooling off period for new accounts (they can read, but not post), and no anonymous posting. These take care of 90% of the spam and trolls. I was concerned about turning off anonymous posting at first, but the benefits really outweigh the costs.
But isn't this why they came up with Magic Gate encryption? Memory sticks would lock customers in just as much as the current cards do, as long as Sony insisted on the Magic Gate version. They could even make a PS2 branded Magic Gate stick and charge an extra five bucks for it.
I'll never understand why they didn't go with the memory stick for the PS2 memory card. They'd have an instant user base of millions, who would then feel comfortable buying a memory stick mp3 player or digital camera or whatever. And I'm sure Sony could've flogged some overpriced PS1 memory card adapter in order to keep the backwards compatibility with the original playstation.
I've never even heard of half of these "prominent science fiction writers." Guess I've been living under a rock!
Yup. You might want to grab a copy of the Encylopedia of Science Fiction and catch up with the rest of us. My guess is that you're a hard SF / space opera fan, and you haven't heard of the authors listed because they write new wave / cyberpunk SF rather than the stuff you're into.
Pat Murphy has been around for a while. She mostly writes science-fantasy stuff... kind of like a midway between LeGuin and Cherryh, if you've heard of them.
Kim Stanley Robinson writes hugely popular airport newsstand bestsellers. Y'know, those big thumping books with gold leaf on the front. You've probably read his Mars books.
Norman Spinrad is one of my all time favourite writers. He is often compared to Norman Mailer (also a favourite), a comparison I find apt. You'd probably hate him, as he presents a strong criticism of psychology space opera fans in his novel The Iron Dream.
How would you have liked to see the RIAA police their content?
I would like to see them primarily going after infringement for the purposes of financial gain, i.e. people who mass produce and sell pirate CDs.
Instead they went after people who downloaded low quality versions of songs for personal use, which is equivalent IMO to swapping tapes with your friends or taping something from the radio. Home taping has never stopped them turning a profit, whereas illegal physical CDs compete directly with their main revenue stream.
OK, I admit that I'm not a fan of the the current "mix" and "sampled" genre of music, but to me, it seems like there's not a whole lot of artistic innovation in mixing together stuff that's already been created.
I don't think you understand what people use samplers for on a day to day basis. My favourite sampler has less than a second of sampling time, and is limited to six unbalanced analogue channels of 12-bit mono.
With less than a second of shitty, crunchy audio, I obviously can't sample pop choruses with it, so what do I use it for? Individual drum hits, mainly, sampled from old funk drum solos or whatever. It's like a drum machine where I can choose the sounds, providing I don't mind them playing back with an evil crunchy patina.
I can understand the law wanting to stop people sampling recognisable choruses, basslines etc. That's fair enough, and there's no creativity being trampled on there IMO. But what about people like me who want to sample an unrecognisable distorted version of a half second kick drum hit for an original arrangement?
Have a listen to some of the original drum arrangements here that have been built out of literally two seconds of James Brown and a reonant filterbank and you'll get the idea. A good example on that page is Equinox - Acid Rain (Breakage Mix), at about 1:30 through the mp3.
LA has half the pollution and four time more cars then it had in 1970's.
Sounds a bit counter-intuitive, unless the cars & fuel have improved a huge amount in the last thirty years (which may be the case). Got a source for this?
Since the source is still available for free, I fail to see how Zed is in violation.
The Windows source is not available for free, only the *nix source. The Windows version is binary only shareware built from GPL code, and thus in violation.
The theatrical release dub of Akira was pretty incoherent, but the new 5.1 dub on the special edition DVD actually makes a lot more sense. The offical subbed version is pretty good too, and there are some decent fansubs floating around.
Akira blew me away when I first saw it. It came out at the theatre at a time when anime in the west (at least in Australia, where I live) was pretty much limited to Astroboy and Kimba the White Lion. I remember sitting in the cinema surrounded by parents with their small children -- the idea of animation for grownups just didn't exist in my area before Akira. (Most of the children started crying and screaming when the dogs were shot early in the film).
At the time, I was really affected by the realism of the opening scenes (the flickering neon light etc), the power of the soundtrack, the dark palette; it was a revelation for me. And the fact that the plot was so difficult just made me want to watch it again and again until I could figure it out.
I guess it was just a matter of being in the righ place at the right time, a witnessing the birth of what for the west was a new medium. Like the other movies on my list, it was a landmark that influenced a lot of subsequent cinema.
Ghost in the Shell I saw later on, on video, and it just seemed like a regular action movie with tits and guns and a tacked on sci-fi plot. I should probably give it another go. I don't watch a huge amount of anime, but when I do I like the longer format stuff like Spirited Away, Patlabor, Grave of the Fireflies etc.
La Jettee (the short film that 12 Monkeys is based on)
The Day The Earth Stood Still
Farenheit 451
Alien
Akira
Things To Come
I urge you to check out some foreign-language and / or black and white stuff... most of the great SF movies are from the 70s or earlier, in my opinion.
It's like an all-electric car... sure it uses no gas but that power has to come from somewhere to begin with. You've only moved the problem to someone else's back yard.
That's the whole point: one problem to solve (at the power plant) instead of many to solve (at the cars). If you run many electric cars from a single power station, then you have:
one point to filter for emissions (in the case of fossil fuels)
no car pollution in cities(!)
an easy upgrade path when you replace your coal plant with biodiesel or solar or fusion or whatever
possible economies of scale (subject to electrical transmission losses)
Yah, good point. Anyway, it's only an 0.2 release at this point, so anything that works at all is a huge bonus. I'm sure it'll mature with time as the other SuperThunderStingCar etc packages have.
Remember, if the the court finds the GPL to be invalid, regular copyright law takes effect and IBM can sue SCO for copyright infringement over the IBM-written code in Linux. The court may not have a position on the GPL yet, but it certainly understands copyright.
According to the FAQ, Sunbird gets the date format from your OS. To use the ISO format, go to the Windows Start Menu, then Settings > Control Panel > Regional Options (not Date/time) > Date tab.
Slashdot Mirror
Under this system, there would only be one choice: make $150K. Presumably those people would only work 40 hours a week from then on. We would thus lose the extra work from these people.
If there are 40 hours of unassigned work at $150K going, I'm sure the company will be able to find an additional employee.
Another example: I happened to read on IMDB that Jennifer Garner was paid $3 million to make 13 Going on 30 and is paid $150K an episode to be on Alias. Given that, why wouldn't she take her payment for the movie over the course of twenty years and give up the TV show entirely?
Because she wants to act, presumably. She could retire right now with the money she has, but I bet she won't. Look at Seinfeld and Ray Romano, and The Simpsons; they just kept cranking out episodes at millions a pop, long after the money ceased to have any influence on their quality of life. Look at Bill Gates for that matter; he's got enough money that he need never lift a finger again, but for some reason he wants to keep working and producing the software we love to hate.
Also, see my answer to your first point -- there are plenty of actors who would do happily do a TV series for $150K / yr.
Thus, that tax would hurt me, even though I am not close to having to pay it myself.
Alias leaving your TV screen would not hurt you in any meaningful sense, really. Blake's 7 hasn't been on TV in 20 years, but I still manage to get out of bed in the morning.
Anyway, think about the intention of the policy. The idea (IMO) is to get that capital currently accumulating in the bank account of Bill Gates or Jennifer Garner or Seinfeld or whoever spread about more evenly. If Bill got paid less, the surplus would have to be either re-invested (which creates jobs, hopefully in the QA dept), or paid out as dividends (more buying power for shareholders, who then re-invest etc).
I don't know too many people who would agree with "US $150K after tax" as the definition of slavery. Think about the people who make your sneakers and get a bit of context.
Why don't they make plasma computer monitors?
They used to make them for laptops in the 90s, and as monochrome desktop displays for early graphics stuff. They were known as gas plasma displays. In laptop land they were quickly superceded by LCDs, which had improved battery life. In desktop land they were replaced by colour CRTs which were cheaper and refreshed faster.
I use captchas, a 48 hour cooling off period for new accounts (they can read, but not post), and no anonymous posting. These take care of 90% of the spam and trolls. I was concerned about turning off anonymous posting at first, but the benefits really outweigh the costs.
TFA is Slashdotted, but there's a small news article at HardOCP if you're interested.
But isn't this why they came up with Magic Gate encryption? Memory sticks would lock customers in just as much as the current cards do, as long as Sony insisted on the Magic Gate version. They could even make a PS2 branded Magic Gate stick and charge an extra five bucks for it.
And he was probably wearing leather shoes at the time as well : )
I'll never understand why they didn't go with the memory stick for the PS2 memory card. They'd have an instant user base of millions, who would then feel comfortable buying a memory stick mp3 player or digital camera or whatever. And I'm sure Sony could've flogged some overpriced PS1 memory card adapter in order to keep the backwards compatibility with the original playstation.
I've never even heard of half of these "prominent science fiction writers." Guess I've been living under a rock!
Yup. You might want to grab a copy of the Encylopedia of Science Fiction and catch up with the rest of us. My guess is that you're a hard SF / space opera fan, and you haven't heard of the authors listed because they write new wave / cyberpunk SF rather than the stuff you're into.
Cory Doctorow is a new author who has had success giving away his books under the creative commons licence. You might know him better as a blogger.
Pat Murphy has been around for a while. She mostly writes science-fantasy stuff... kind of like a midway between LeGuin and Cherryh, if you've heard of them.
Kim Stanley Robinson writes hugely popular airport newsstand bestsellers. Y'know, those big thumping books with gold leaf on the front. You've probably read his Mars books.
Norman Spinrad is one of my all time favourite writers. He is often compared to Norman Mailer (also a favourite), a comparison I find apt. You'd probably hate him, as he presents a strong criticism of psychology space opera fans in his novel The Iron Dream.
Bruce Sterling is probably best known to Slashdotters as the author of The Hacker Crackdown (full text here) and my sig. He's also a blogger for Wired and the Pope Emperor of the Virdian movement.
Ken Wharton is a relatively new writer, but a long time physicist. He's probably the most convention hard SF type writer of the lot.
How would you have liked to see the RIAA police their content?
I would like to see them primarily going after infringement for the purposes of financial gain, i.e. people who mass produce and sell pirate CDs.
Instead they went after people who downloaded low quality versions of songs for personal use, which is equivalent IMO to swapping tapes with your friends or taping something from the radio. Home taping has never stopped them turning a profit, whereas illegal physical CDs compete directly with their main revenue stream.
MSNBC is saying that it probably was the battery. Also, the capsule isn't as badly damaged as they feared, due to rain softening up the impact site.
OK, I admit that I'm not a fan of the the current "mix" and "sampled" genre of music, but to me, it seems like there's not a whole lot of artistic innovation in mixing together stuff that's already been created.
I don't think you understand what people use samplers for on a day to day basis. My favourite sampler has less than a second of sampling time, and is limited to six unbalanced analogue channels of 12-bit mono.
With less than a second of shitty, crunchy audio, I obviously can't sample pop choruses with it, so what do I use it for? Individual drum hits, mainly, sampled from old funk drum solos or whatever. It's like a drum machine where I can choose the sounds, providing I don't mind them playing back with an evil crunchy patina.
I can understand the law wanting to stop people sampling recognisable choruses, basslines etc. That's fair enough, and there's no creativity being trampled on there IMO. But what about people like me who want to sample an unrecognisable distorted version of a half second kick drum hit for an original arrangement?
Have a listen to some of the original drum arrangements here that have been built out of literally two seconds of James Brown and a reonant filterbank and you'll get the idea. A good example on that page is Equinox - Acid Rain (Breakage Mix), at about 1:30 through the mp3.
You need to see this.
LA has half the pollution and four time more cars then it had in 1970's.
Sounds a bit counter-intuitive, unless the cars & fuel have improved a huge amount in the last thirty years (which may be the case). Got a source for this?
Since the source is still available for free, I fail to see how Zed is in violation.
The Windows source is not available for free, only the *nix source. The Windows version is binary only shareware built from GPL code, and thus in violation.
The theatrical release dub of Akira was pretty incoherent, but the new 5.1 dub on the special edition DVD actually makes a lot more sense. The offical subbed version is pretty good too, and there are some decent fansubs floating around.
Akira blew me away when I first saw it. It came out at the theatre at a time when anime in the west (at least in Australia, where I live) was pretty much limited to Astroboy and Kimba the White Lion. I remember sitting in the cinema surrounded by parents with their small children -- the idea of animation for grownups just didn't exist in my area before Akira. (Most of the children started crying and screaming when the dogs were shot early in the film).
At the time, I was really affected by the realism of the opening scenes (the flickering neon light etc), the power of the soundtrack, the dark palette; it was a revelation for me. And the fact that the plot was so difficult just made me want to watch it again and again until I could figure it out.
I guess it was just a matter of being in the righ place at the right time, a witnessing the birth of what for the west was a new medium. Like the other movies on my list, it was a landmark that influenced a lot of subsequent cinema.
Ghost in the Shell I saw later on, on video, and it just seemed like a regular action movie with tits and guns and a tacked on sci-fi plot. I should probably give it another go. I don't watch a huge amount of anime, but when I do I like the longer format stuff like Spirited Away, Patlabor, Grave of the Fireflies etc.
- 2001
- Blade Runner
- Solaris (original version)
- Metropolis (original version)
- La Jettee (the short film that 12 Monkeys is based on)
- The Day The Earth Stood Still
- Farenheit 451
- Alien
- Akira
- Things To Come
I urge you to check out some foreign-language and / or black and white stuff... most of the great SF movies are from the 70s or earlier, in my opinion.Also, the Slashdot submitter appears to be the buckle-maker, but hasn't bothered to mention this.
That's the whole point: one problem to solve (at the power plant) instead of many to solve (at the cars). If you run many electric cars from a single power station, then you have:
The people in the Chronicles of Narnia worship a Lion God named Aslan. This is no different than making "I am who am" be represented by a Golden Calf.
I know this is gonna sound crazy, but, get this, the lion... represents... Jebus.
Big up Simon, you will be sorely missed. Thanks for posting my half-baked submissions : )
Yah, good point. Anyway, it's only an 0.2 release at this point, so anything that works at all is a huge bonus. I'm sure it'll mature with time as the other SuperThunderStingCar etc packages have.
Remember, if the the court finds the GPL to be invalid, regular copyright law takes effect and IBM can sue SCO for copyright infringement over the IBM-written code in Linux. The court may not have a position on the GPL yet, but it certainly understands copyright.
According to the FAQ, Sunbird gets the date format from your OS. To use the ISO format, go to the Windows Start Menu, then Settings > Control Panel > Regional Options (not Date/time) > Date tab.
Well what can you expect when the entire project is apparently named after a giant, fire breathing lizard?
Intarweb folk history has it that the word Mozilla is a contraction of Mosaic-Killer (with a nod to Godzilla, of course).