Yeah well thost Babylon 5 sets cost just pennies to manufacture. The shows were already produced, so no production costs went into making them for the DVD. A few special features cost very little: a cameraman might cost $20/hour and the interviewees are probably not paid at all, or maybe a couple hundred bucks. There is more profit to be made on TV show sets because production costs are nearly zero and costs are still high.
So, tell me again why DVDs cost as much as they do? Ah yes, what the market will bare. Looks like a significant portion of the market has decided that prices are too high.
Ignoring your ignorance about what things in the real world cost, if it's too expensive then just don't buy the shit.
Every non-commodity item is sold at a price-point of what the market will bear. Do you think your salary should be based upon the minimum it costs you to pay rent, buy a few articles of clothing, and pay for some food? Maybe you're happy with subsisting through life, but most people want to get paid what the going market rate is. If the market will bear a $100K a year salary, I doubt you'll find people saying "Well, I can really get by on only $30K, so I'll cut my employer a deal."
Let some other store buy DVDs and you can rent it on the cheap. Or get some friends together and split the cost. Next you'll be whining about how cologne and perfume is just a chemical solution in an alcohol base and that it shouldn't cost more than $2 for a bottle of that new Calvin Klein "Pretension" cologne.
The misspelling is intentional, but it's not a word on its own. As for what to make of it all, the one guy who posted in my journal wrote a clue for you.
I've always wondered why the classified and confidential stuff is always in black and white - never in any other color.
Because most photocopiers don't support color? When a document is redacted, the original is first photocopied, then a big black felt is used to redact the sensitive information, then it gets photocopied again before being distributed so that you can't see the original text under the ink. That's also why the declassified documents look so terrible -- the document that results after being degraded by multiple photocopies is the one which gets printed.
Every time I try to save an email, it ends up getting deleted anyway when I'm throwing out the spam 100's of emails at a time. Email is useless as it is and nothing important should ever be done with an email.
It sucks and blows, but the only way to manage it is to first go through the pain of changing your email address and notifying everybody you've ever dealt with that your email address is different. Also, implement some spam filtering such as SpamAssassin. Kill it before it even reaches your eyeballs. You might get a few false positives and it'll discard a few important emails, but since you don't seem to value your email much these days I can't see it being any worse.
I've even contemplated having a yearly rotating email address, such as myname-2005@domain.com which I'll update every January 1 to reflect the new year. That way, anyone sending personal email can figure it out but I'll likely still need to go through the effort of updating various online accounts.
Until we get to the point where you have to explicitly authorize any new person contacting you, spam will continue to ruin email.
On a slightly related topic... He said he's using the $10k to pay for his daughters weddings. I want to know where they are getting married and how I can afford a wedding for 5k or less:)
one flight for two from UK to Las Vegas: $1600 two disposable cameras with processing: $30 two bottles of champagne: $200 shotgun wedding from Elvis with the works: $350
pocketing the leftover money to spend on geek toys: priceless
Honestly, I'd rather just continue to download the free content while giving them the finger, grinning as they can't do SHIT to me;)
While we're on the topic, this is called the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act. Would it therefore be proper to call it the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act Legislation, aka FECAL?
See my other post on this -- I went into a bunch of detail there. In a nutshell, science is fundamentally not based upon faith. We don't have mathematical principles just because someone has faith that it feels right. I'll do a bit of handwaving here, but as I'm sure you know the general principle is that if there's enough proof, it's a law/principle/whatever. If there isn't enough proof then the data is examined and the most likely conclusion is determined based upon the evidence and it's a theory, subject to more evidence which will further refine, validate, or invalidate that theory.
Given that Christianity is founded upon faith, the exact opposite of what science is founded upon, I consider the phrase "Christian Science" to be an oxymoron. As my other post says, this doesn't mean that all Christians are unscientific -- I'm sure you can do physics with great rigour and discipline -- only that Christianity itself isn't based upon the scientific method.
I mean try explaining gravity otherwise, or "the big bang". We have NO idea how to explain it.
We have some ideas, some theories. However, why does not having an explanation automatically imply the existence of a higher being? This is the whole god-of-the-gaps approach. Anything we can't explain is attributed to some god. As time goes on, we find that we can actually explain more and more things, so less and less gets attributed to god. If we ever do find the perfect explanation for gravity and the big bang, does this mean that you'll no longer believe in a god? And you then have to consider the natural progression of your faith: if you can't explain it, you attribute it to evidence of a god. Can you explain god? If not, what do you attribute god to? Is there an infinite hierarchy of gods because you're unable to explain each one and must therefore relegate the explanation to something higher?
I'll assume you're an atheist... isn't agnosticism the only really scientific viewpoint. Anything else requires faith.
Depends. Some people call themselves atheists because they actively believe that there is no god. In other words, they haven't considered much in the way of evidence and they base their decision upon faith. In the traditional meaning, atheist is a combination of the prefix a- (meaning "not") and theist. So an atheist literally means "one who is not a theist". It's subtle, but it's the difference between "I believe on faith that your religion isn't correct" vs. "I just don't have beliefs one way or the other concerning your religion". It's as if someone asked you "Do you believe in Glork?" Given that you know nothing about whatever Glork is (a theory? a religion? a method of cooking?) you would be considered an aglorkist. Of course, not believing that something is true is different from believing that something is false.
To me, agnosticism is simply "I need more data", which is a perfectly valid position to take. Based on the evidence I've seen, I have come to the conclusion that first of all there is enough data to make a determination, and secondly that there is no god based upon that data. I didn't make that decision based upon faith. I considered the data, determined that it was overwhelmingly on the side of "there is no god" and arrived at a conclusion.
On the other hand, Christianity doesn't follow the scientific method. You can't examine the evidence and arrive at a conclusion. The majority of the evidence is that some people wrote something down and other people collected the parts that agree and assembled it into a book called the bible. This is much like all the other religious texts which claim to know the truth. Now, you could go out into the natural world and look around you and consider that one possible hypothesis is that this world and universe was created by someone, and that many current religions attempt to explain who that someone is. But I fail to see how one can logically deduce that the god of Christianity is that someone. Even if you could, you would have to judge the likelihood that that particular hypothesis is the most reasonable one. And if you could do all that, would belief in a god still require faith?
At any rate, you say you had a faith experience which for you constitutes sufficient evidence to determine that god exists. Actually, I think that's wonderful -- the notion of a higher being looking out for your best interests must be very fulfilling. My experiences have all been overwhelmingly in the negative, and what I consider to be biblical nonsense and contradictions are too numerous for me to consider it seriously. Buddhism actually makes more sense, but that too doesn't really have any evidence other than the teachings are often based upon sound principles, as are some Christian teachings, Muslim teachings, native Indian teachings, etc.
Anyway, my point in all that is not to say that some Christians aren't scientific in their line of work -- just that Christianity itself is not scientific for the simple reason that proper science doesn't operate on faith. So the name "Christian Science" is an oxymoron, though the contents of the publication would appear to be generally solid and factual.
Unless you're really fast at shorthand and are taking dictation, handwritten notes aren't a verbatim copy of what was said but rather the important points that you think you ought to remember.
It's different because it generates publicity. Looks like their plan to dominate the media with iPod stories is working. Speaking of a generic recording device is completely uninteresting... but an iPod? Start the hype engine! Create controversy where none exists! Get it posted on slashdot! This is the Marketing 202 course that Apple and other media outlets excel in. How many people would click through to a Christian Science Monitor (hah, what an oxymoron) article about analog tape recorders? But if CSM spins it as an "iPod against the machine" story, it gets impressions which generates ad revenues for them.
In context, it sounds like one pretty fucked up drug trip:
4 I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north-an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, 5 and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was that of a man, 6 but each of them had four faces and four wings. 7 Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. 8 Under their wings on their four sides they had the hands of a man. All four of them had faces and wings, 9 and their wings touched one another. Each one went straight ahead; they did not turn as they moved.
10 Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a man, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. 11 Such were their faces. Their wings were spread out upward; each had two wings, one touching the wing of another creature on either side, and two wings covering its body. 12 Each one went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, without turning as they went. 13 The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it. 14 The creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning.
15 As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. 16 This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like chrysolite, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. 17 As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not turn about [d] as the creatures went. 18 Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around.
19 When the living creatures moved, the wheels beside them moved; and when the living creatures rose from the ground, the wheels also rose. 20 Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, and the wheels would rise along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. 21 When the creatures moved, they also moved; when the creatures stood still, they also stood still; and when the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.
This is a non-story. These two paragraphs FTA sum it up well:
About 300 commercial Web sites, including popular destinations such as Yahoo, AOL and MSN, already have been buying AP content, said Jane Seagrave, the news cooperative's director of new media markets.
But price increases are often a prickly issue for the AP because it's a not-for-profit cooperative that is owned by its customers _ the traditional media that form its membership.
So it's like the RIAA charging member bands a bit more to allow websites to post sound clips. What's the big deal here? Hundreds of websites already pay to have it online. All this does is end the free ride for traditional print publications to stick it on their site as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah well thost Babylon 5 sets cost just pennies to manufacture. The shows were already produced, so no production costs went into making them for the DVD. A few special features cost very little: a cameraman might cost $20/hour and the interviewees are probably not paid at all, or maybe a couple hundred bucks. There is more profit to be made on TV show sets because production costs are nearly zero and costs are still high.
So, tell me again why DVDs cost as much as they do? Ah yes, what the market will bare. Looks like a significant portion of the market has decided that prices are too high.
Ignoring your ignorance about what things in the real world cost, if it's too expensive then just don't buy the shit.
Every non-commodity item is sold at a price-point of what the market will bear. Do you think your salary should be based upon the minimum it costs you to pay rent, buy a few articles of clothing, and pay for some food? Maybe you're happy with subsisting through life, but most people want to get paid what the going market rate is. If the market will bear a $100K a year salary, I doubt you'll find people saying "Well, I can really get by on only $30K, so I'll cut my employer a deal."
Let some other store buy DVDs and you can rent it on the cheap. Or get some friends together and split the cost. Next you'll be whining about how cologne and perfume is just a chemical solution in an alcohol base and that it shouldn't cost more than $2 for a bottle of that new Calvin Klein "Pretension" cologne.
There is another way : increase the perceived value and therefore retail price of the products you are trying to sell.
:)
And the result of that is increased sales. Thanks for playing.
Which SF project is that?
Microsoft initiates legal action against the researchers for numerous violations of patents covering the Windows Hiberation feature.
The misspelling is intentional, but it's not a word on its own. As for what to make of it all, the one guy who posted in my journal wrote a clue for you.
I've always wondered why the classified and confidential stuff is always in black and white - never in any other color.
Because most photocopiers don't support color? When a document is redacted, the original is first photocopied, then a big black felt is used to redact the sensitive information, then it gets photocopied again before being distributed so that you can't see the original text under the ink. That's also why the declassified documents look so terrible -- the document that results after being degraded by multiple photocopies is the one which gets printed.
Every time I try to save an email, it ends up getting deleted anyway when I'm throwing out the spam 100's of emails at a time. Email is useless as it is and nothing important should ever be done with an email.
It sucks and blows, but the only way to manage it is to first go through the pain of changing your email address and notifying everybody you've ever dealt with that your email address is different. Also, implement some spam filtering such as SpamAssassin. Kill it before it even reaches your eyeballs. You might get a few false positives and it'll discard a few important emails, but since you don't seem to value your email much these days I can't see it being any worse.
I've even contemplated having a yearly rotating email address, such as myname-2005@domain.com which I'll update every January 1 to reflect the new year. That way, anyone sending personal email can figure it out but I'll likely still need to go through the effort of updating various online accounts.
Until we get to the point where you have to explicitly authorize any new person contacting you, spam will continue to ruin email.
Thanks to Google's Infinite Improbability Storage Drive, storage space is now at 2.120 GB to 1 and rising.
You are missing something. :) Check my journal.
On a slightly related topic... He said he's using the $10k to pay for his daughters weddings. I want to know where they are getting married and how I can afford a wedding for 5k or less :)
one flight for two from UK to Las Vegas: $1600
two disposable cameras with processing: $30
two bottles of champagne: $200
shotgun wedding from Elvis with the works: $350
pocketing the leftover money to spend on geek toys: priceless
Glen Gould is alive in my heart.
Damn, that must really hurt.
Hell, there are probably conlangers out there who would do something like this for free.
To me, a cost of $2000 over four months sounds like free with a rounding error. Small price to pay for some professional work I think.
Since we're talking about hammers and screwdrivers, I would think this comic would be appropriate. :)
Honestly, I'd rather just continue to download the free content while giving them the finger, grinning as they can't do SHIT to me ;)
While we're on the topic, this is called the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act. Would it therefore be proper to call it the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act Legislation, aka FECAL?
See my other post on this -- I went into a bunch of detail there. In a nutshell, science is fundamentally not based upon faith. We don't have mathematical principles just because someone has faith that it feels right. I'll do a bit of handwaving here, but as I'm sure you know the general principle is that if there's enough proof, it's a law/principle/whatever. If there isn't enough proof then the data is examined and the most likely conclusion is determined based upon the evidence and it's a theory, subject to more evidence which will further refine, validate, or invalidate that theory.
Given that Christianity is founded upon faith, the exact opposite of what science is founded upon, I consider the phrase "Christian Science" to be an oxymoron. As my other post says, this doesn't mean that all Christians are unscientific -- I'm sure you can do physics with great rigour and discipline -- only that Christianity itself isn't based upon the scientific method.
I mean try explaining gravity otherwise, or "the big bang". We have NO idea how to explain it.
We have some ideas, some theories. However, why does not having an explanation automatically imply the existence of a higher being? This is the whole god-of-the-gaps approach. Anything we can't explain is attributed to some god. As time goes on, we find that we can actually explain more and more things, so less and less gets attributed to god. If we ever do find the perfect explanation for gravity and the big bang, does this mean that you'll no longer believe in a god? And you then have to consider the natural progression of your faith: if you can't explain it, you attribute it to evidence of a god. Can you explain god? If not, what do you attribute god to? Is there an infinite hierarchy of gods because you're unable to explain each one and must therefore relegate the explanation to something higher?
I'll assume you're an atheist ... isn't agnosticism the only really scientific viewpoint. Anything else requires faith.
Depends. Some people call themselves atheists because they actively believe that there is no god. In other words, they haven't considered much in the way of evidence and they base their decision upon faith. In the traditional meaning, atheist is a combination of the prefix a- (meaning "not") and theist. So an atheist literally means "one who is not a theist". It's subtle, but it's the difference between "I believe on faith that your religion isn't correct" vs. "I just don't have beliefs one way or the other concerning your religion". It's as if someone asked you "Do you believe in Glork?" Given that you know nothing about whatever Glork is (a theory? a religion? a method of cooking?) you would be considered an aglorkist. Of course, not believing that something is true is different from believing that something is false.
To me, agnosticism is simply "I need more data", which is a perfectly valid position to take. Based on the evidence I've seen, I have come to the conclusion that first of all there is enough data to make a determination, and secondly that there is no god based upon that data. I didn't make that decision based upon faith. I considered the data, determined that it was overwhelmingly on the side of "there is no god" and arrived at a conclusion.
On the other hand, Christianity doesn't follow the scientific method. You can't examine the evidence and arrive at a conclusion. The majority of the evidence is that some people wrote something down and other people collected the parts that agree and assembled it into a book called the bible. This is much like all the other religious texts which claim to know the truth. Now, you could go out into the natural world and look around you and consider that one possible hypothesis is that this world and universe was created by someone, and that many current religions attempt to explain who that someone is. But I fail to see how one can logically deduce that the god of Christianity is that someone. Even if you could, you would have to judge the likelihood that that particular hypothesis is the most reasonable one. And if you could do all that, would belief in a god still require faith?
At any rate, you say you had a faith experience which for you constitutes sufficient evidence to determine that god exists. Actually, I think that's wonderful -- the notion of a higher being looking out for your best interests must be very fulfilling. My experiences have all been overwhelmingly in the negative, and what I consider to be biblical nonsense and contradictions are too numerous for me to consider it seriously. Buddhism actually makes more sense, but that too doesn't really have any evidence other than the teachings are often based upon sound principles, as are some Christian teachings, Muslim teachings, native Indian teachings, etc.
Anyway, my point in all that is not to say that some Christians aren't scientific in their line of work -- just that Christianity itself is not scientific for the simple reason that proper science doesn't operate on faith. So the name "Christian Science" is an oxymoron, though the contents of the publication would appear to be generally solid and factual.
Yeah, I phrased that poorly. What I meant was media outlets other than Christian Science Monitor.
... from handwritten lecture notes?
Unless you're really fast at shorthand and are taking dictation, handwritten notes aren't a verbatim copy of what was said but rather the important points that you think you ought to remember.
It's different because it generates publicity. Looks like their plan to dominate the media with iPod stories is working. Speaking of a generic recording device is completely uninteresting... but an iPod? Start the hype engine! Create controversy where none exists! Get it posted on slashdot! This is the Marketing 202 course that Apple and other media outlets excel in. How many people would click through to a Christian Science Monitor (hah, what an oxymoron) article about analog tape recorders? But if CSM spins it as an "iPod against the machine" story, it gets impressions which generates ad revenues for them.
I have the right to make a copy to listen to it later (or to share with other students).
:)
Replace "lecture" with "movie" and see if your theory still applies.
In context, it sounds like one pretty fucked up drug trip:
4 I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north-an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, 5 and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was that of a man, 6 but each of them had four faces and four wings. 7 Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. 8 Under their wings on their four sides they had the hands of a man. All four of them had faces and wings, 9 and their wings touched one another. Each one went straight ahead; they did not turn as they moved.
10 Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a man, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. 11 Such were their faces. Their wings were spread out upward; each had two wings, one touching the wing of another creature on either side, and two wings covering its body. 12 Each one went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, without turning as they went. 13 The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it. 14 The creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning.
15 As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. 16 This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like chrysolite, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. 17 As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not turn about [d] as the creatures went. 18 Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around.
19 When the living creatures moved, the wheels beside them moved; and when the living creatures rose from the ground, the wheels also rose. 20 Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, and the wheels would rise along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. 21 When the creatures moved, they also moved; when the creatures stood still, they also stood still; and when the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.
Sheesh... at least you could provide an unbiased source!
Great analysis! Too bad you can't be modded up to +6 as I think you've identified exactly what's going on here.
At the intersection of Robson and Thurlow in Vancouver, BC there are two Starbucks locations right across the intersection from each other.