I could live with a 30+30 rule, as in 30 years of protection plus an additional 30 years if you make the effort to formally renew the copyright (verifiable and can be confirmed with the Library of Congress). That was the law at the beginning of the 20th Century. Under such a law, most of PKD's books would still be under copyright although there would be a huge pile of stuff that would be in the public domain that would be useful.
I believe the Copyright Act of 1790 had a term of 17 years plus 17 years for renewal.
It's also worth pointing out that Total Recall stops being based on the PKD story fifteen minutes into the movie or so. (The rest is still based on a mix of Dick's themes, though. I like it.)
As an action adventure film to enjoy, I'd agree. I do have to put my brain into neutral when watching movies like this, particularly movies like "The Net" that attempt to depict computer technology that I happen to know a thing or two about on a more intimate level. My wife sometimes has to hit me to settle me down when I see a glaring technical flaw that is being used as a major plot device to help "save the hero".
I can handle FTL spaceflight as it sort of suspends reality, but at least stay somewhat consistent if you stray away from the physics of the real world. Sort of like cartoon physics, which is a completely different universe with its own physical laws of reality like how gravity is selective if you aren't aware that you just ran off a cliff or the existence of a portable hole. Some movies (and script writers) do a pretty good job that way.
Then again, I am into movies like 2001, 2010, or "docudramas" like October Sky and Apollo 13. Technical accuracy can happen if you put some effort into it, something that most Hollywood directors seldom even try to do. Total Recall in particular is one movie that really had problems with technical accuracy, and yes I blame the director/producers of that show much more so than Phillip K. Dick on that point.
As for the fact that "most people" watch movies for entertainment rather than technical accuracy.... I guess that explains why members of congress can't seem to separate out movie physics from reality most of the time, much less the voters who put them into office. It does make a difference in our culture if you show something more realistic even if it isn't a Hollywood convention like hearing explosions in space.
The question here is.... where is the pressure on Mars at 10 millibars? At the bottom of Hellas Basin and Valles Marineris it can certainly approach a couple hundred millibar of pressure. At the top of Olympus Mons? Yeah, that is almost out of the Martian atmosphere. The elevation differences on Mars are much more pronounced than even on the Earth. Even on the Earth there are pressure differences... like say the air pressure is approaching 1000 millibars at sea level with even higher average pressure in places like Death Valley and the Dead Sea.
That is hardly the only scientifically inaccurate thing in the Movie, and besides your eyes won't jump out of the eye sockets like was depicted in the movie. It gets worse still. If you want to see a fairly accurate depiction of what you can do in a vacuum in terms of human physiology and human reactions while exposed briefly to space, Titan AE does a much better job in the scene where the hero cracks the cockpit window and propels himself with a fire extinguisher into the cargo hold of another spacecraft. It is something survivable.
Seriously, Mars is much more exotic than depicted in this movie and there were a great many other things that were simply idiotic like how the group of Martians had their "air cut off" by simply shutting down some fans. Let's get real here. You might suffer from CO2 toxicity but passing out after a minute of having the O2 supply cut off? Let's get real.
My point is that the scientific accuracy in the movie is simply non-existent in this movie, including that wild scene attempting to depict human physiology in a vacuum. It wouldn't happen that way and was done deliberately with dramatic license to heighten the impact. I'm not saying that being exposed to a vacuum would be a bed of roses either, but Arnold screaming his head off for a minute is not something that would be happening on the surface of Mars if he were shoved out of an airlock without a pressure suit or spacesuit.
For myself, I loved Blade Runner. It was a little ahead of its time and is much more cerebral than a typical "SciFi" movie, but it certainly is at the top of nearly any list of best movies I can cite. The groundbreaking effects and ideas expressed in the movie have been copied by many subsequent films enough that some things look cliche because you've seen those other movies that came after Blade Runner. IMHO it was also one of Harrison Ford's better roles, but I suppose that you can form your own opinion about that actor and his work. Harrison Ford has been one of Hollywood's most "bankable" actors as he is in films that have a combined gross take in the billions of dollars. Perhaps that is why he is hated but the roughly billion or so people who have seen at least one of his movies might beg to differ on that point. This film is certainly more "hard SF" than "SciFi", which perhaps is the problem with the above reviewer.
As for Total Recall, I thought it was a fun diversion, but as for realism I thought it was absolutely stupid and highly inaccurate. "Scientifically accurate depiction of exposure to the Martian atmosphere".... hardly. It looked cool on film I suppose but it really didn't work very well. FYI, you can survive on Mars with mostly a pressure suit and an oxygen mask. Parts of the surface of Mars have the same atmospheric pressure as the top of Everest. Really, it isn't nearly as bad as depicted in the movie. The lead actor is the now governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you know his work, it sums it up pretty well. Perhaps one of the more cerebral roles for the governator, but there is still a pretty high body count by the time the movie is done. He also has more dialog in this movie than Terminator, but almost any movie would qualify in that regard and doesn't say much and is perhaps one of its flaws too. It is a movie to watch with your brain put into neutral merely to enjoy the film as an action thriller, not for any scientific accuracy if you really know anything about this stuff.
Minority Report stars Tom Cruise as the lead. If you've seen "Mission Impossible" (1 or 2, it doesn't matter), it is essentially the same movie in a slightly different setting. Tom Cruise portrays the cocky punk that he has been in most of his movies and this isn't even really his best role either. There is more that is redeeming than just the data search user interface with the computers that he is using (running Hollywood OS, of course). The stuff that Phillip K. Dick wrote in is certainly thought provoking including the whole concept of arresting people who merely show the potential of committing a crime. If the Wikipedia entry is to be believed, it was originally supposed to be a sequel of Total Recall, to be also starring the Governator as the lead actor instead of Tom Cruise. Thank goodness that script was lost and that plan abandoned. While not a horrible film, this film doesn't really inspire me either so I wouldn't say to avoid this film but also don't go out of your way to watch it either. If it comes up as something on TV or you have a friend who has it on DVD and you have a couple hours to kill with nothing better to do, there are worse ways to spend those two hours of your life.
If this was pushed back or delayed, that speaks volumes about the engineering management involved here that also doesn't care about their customers or is doing anything on software maintenance. Companies that ignore the need to at least keep a developer on existing projects fixing bugs and staying fresh on the code base are going to find in the long run that their software will simply suck. It is also a good indication that you need to flee a company selling such software that has been abandoned.
I've had managers who thought that owning a software company implied that they had a license to print money. In other words, once the software was written that you could fire the developers and keep copying the software laughing all of the way to the bank for each copy you sold. I'm suggesting that is never true except for very trivial pieces of software that aren't worth much in the first place.
Still, the complaint about how intelligently the software architecture was put together is seriously put into question as those who designed the system really didn't think through how long their software would last or what kinds of records were being put into the system. I understand how IPv4 had unanticipated problems with billions of computers on a network originally designed to handle merely hundreds and when v4 came out it was still in the mere thousands of computers being connected. In this design, it sounds like it was almost by design going to eat up a whole bunch of records.
Besides, people have been bitching about IPv4 running out for decades and have anticipated the problem by introducing IPv6 quite some time ago. Any competent software engineer should have seen something like this coming years ago, so when I see something like "running out of space" I can only assert either:
The software developers on the software were incredibly incompetent and deserve to be fired.
The management of the company involved doesn't know jack about what it is that they are doing, likely hiring the developers on a short-term contract or they fired the competent engineers somehow along the way.
Either way, it certainly doesn't inspire confidence in this company, and they certainly seem to be in way over their head here. If you hire a bunch of developers from Waziristan because they low bid on the development contract, you get what you pay for. This certainly isn't going to be the only problem with the software coming from this company as rookie mistakes like this are likely to be the tip of the iceberg.
Yes, this is a rookie mistake I would expect out of a freshman CS student, not somebody trying to sell a supposed professional service.
How many lives were impacted by the medical testing and how many lives were impacted by the spamming? I think $100 per person sounds pretty reasonable, and the spammer made a conscious decision to send the messages out to the other million or so people that received the spam. It was his fault, the spammer, that so many messages went out.
At the very least, this ought to make major companies shy away from potential spamming as I'm sure the shareholders would notice a billion dollars leaving the company.
What I wonder here is if or how somebody can bankrupt their way out of a legal obligation like this?
The difference between the aircraft fighters of the past and what we have now is maneuverability. Modern fighters can take some wicked corners and maneuver circles around some of those old aircraft like the classic U-2 or even the SR-71. Yeah, they can haul some wicked speed, but they need the entire western USA in order to do a 180 degree turn (or Siberia if they are doing recon missions).
The current limiting factor right now is merely the ability of the pilot to withstand those turns. Acceleration is the key now, not raw speed.
If there is going to be a need for speed, it will happen in space. Acceleration is still going to be key, but any new technologies are going to be worrying about how to sustain a large acceleration over a prolonged period of time. I presume that will imply something like nuclear rocketry (fission or fusion, take your pick) throwing mass out at a healthy fraction of the speed of light to give a very high ISP number. Such a rocket could in theory make it from Earth to Mars in a matter of weeks without having to invent new physics or having to discover a new scientific principle. All it would take is merely some tough engineering to pull off a ship like that and of course a huge pile of money.
In terms of military craft on the Earth, where do you want to go at Mach 6 anyway? Sure, you can go from New York to London in less than an hour with an SR-71, but what are you going to do in the hour after you get to London? Fly on to Moscow in the next hour? It doesn't serve any purpose to get to a target that quickly as once you get to that target you can't do anything before you literally move on and out of any strike zone to be useful in a dogfight or to support other military activities in that target area.
Yes, it is an extraordinary claim. I get that and perhaps these guys are full of it. BTW, they aren't claiming to put people on the Moon, but rather a small package about the size of a suitcase on the Moon, but none the less it is something that does take a bit of a leap of logic.
They are involved with the Google Lunar X-Prize as one of the registered teams, which shows at least the ambition of its participants. This most recent flight only went to 40km of altitude, but that was but a single 1-stage (two stages if you count the balloons) rocket. It is noteworthy too that they were one of the original Ansari X-Prize teams with Armadillo Aerospace, Scaled Composites, and several other groups that have long since disbanded. It is the persistence of these guys that impresses me as much as anything else.
All I know is that ARCA is bending metal and throwing hardware in the sky. That to me sounds like a good thing and generally those who are launching stuff eventually get their designs to work with some persistence or discover in a real hurry that they are chasing a dead end. If the situation is going to flop, I expect that it will flop soon and they will be forced to come up with a more traditional launcher plan.
The only reason I'm bringing this spacecraft up in this way is because it is an example of a balloon-based launcher concept showing that you might be able to apply balloons for something useful in spaceflight, that it was something very newsworthy (the ARCA flight happened just before I posted the reply), and due to the fact that ARCA is at least trying something different that other aerospace engineers aren't doing. You can doubt that a particular system will work, but how do you know until the approach is tried?
Yes, remain skeptical. What makes me excited is that ARCA isn't the "only game in town" and that there are dozens of different launch approaches now being tried in many different countries. One of them is going to work out eventually, but there are a whole lot of people trying really wild and crazy ideas here. I think ARCA is just about as extreme on originality as can be had and being in Romania also gives them some freedom where they aren't fighting so many skeptics.
You can always set up a true holographic projector... like the stuff imagined in Star Wars.
The problem with true 3-D of this nature is that it takes a completely different filming process, and of course the bandwidth on such a system is simply insane. And you thought HD video was bandwidth intensive.
How you accomplish a system like that is not trivial either but it can be done. Some of the systems that have been explored are found with various kinds of volumetric displays. Bandwidth really has been the big obstacle and that is something that due to Moore's Law is now getting within the realm of something doable.
Otherwise, most other systems are psuedo 3-D and really ought to be called stereographic, not something three dimensional. Stereographic systems date back to the 19th Century, and at least as long as there has been photography of any kind.
No matter how hard you try, no matter what you do you can't fly a Boeing 747 to Mars. There is most certainly an upper altitude past which the flight control surfaces simply cease to function. That certainly gets well above 10m, sort of disproving your statement here. Mid-air refueling is possible for a 747 (used on the VC-25 variant) giving it essentially an unlimited fuel supply too. In theory it doesn't ever have to land except to pick up food or for repairs.
Stick a can of pork and beans in a fire and it won't get to Mars. It will get up to 10m in altitude though. Stick a rocket under it.... yeah it might get there but that isn't the vehicle, the can is merely payload.
I've also made some automobiles go airborne and I don't think any quantity of gasoline will ever get them up to 100km, much less to Mars.
I found this bit of the Bill of Rights interesting: "Monopolies are odious, contrary to the spirit of a free government and the principles of commerce, and ought not to be suffered." And yet the BGE and Comcast monopolies exist. Perhaps the Maryland government should buy-out the wires and lease the lines to any company that wished to use them (BGE, PPL, comcast, cox, appletv, etc). i.e. Consumer choice is a right.
{{citation needed}}
Where in the bill of rights is the concept of a monopoly even discussed?
While I happen to agree with the sentiment, it isn't a part of the constitution, unless it is a state constitution that I'm not familiar with (easily possible as I haven't read and certainly haven't memorized all 50+ state constitutions in the USA). There is the Sherman Anti-Trust Act which regulates competitive business practices, but that certainly isn't in the Constitution.
The issue is mainly one of concern about the safety of the airplanes themselves, not so much the altitude. If you are standing on a mountain peak (not even "above" the ground technically), it can cause problems for some cell phone towers as you are still in "line of sight" with the tower but can be at some considerable distance.
IMHO it is something completely unfounded and don't tell me that everybody who has a cell phone remembers to turn their cell phone off when they make a flight. I've forgotten to turn mine off where after a flight I looked in the bag that I threw into the overhead bin and the cell phone was still on when I pulled the thing down. I think my kids even tried to call me while the plane was in the air.
There may be a complaint from the cell phone service provider as the tower has to crank up the power if you are a distance away from the tower, but that is the only FCC issue as there might be a maximum power past which the tower may not be licensed to transmit.
The regs for cell phones are FAA requirements instead, related directly to operational safety of the vehicle. If you are the engineer in charge and perhaps have a waiver from the FAA for your flight, I don't think there is a problem. I don't think there are cell phone restrictions on helium balloons and in particular unmanned balloons like this although a flight plan is advised to be filed with your local airport if you attempt a flight like this.
A few thousand launches, when including unmanned spacecraft and sounding rocket, perhaps. A million launches? No way at all. There have been more than a million commercial aircraft take-offs and landings at airports, but not with NASA.
And NASA doesn't do this "hundreds of times every day of the year". A couple per month perhaps, depending on the season and how ready various missions are to get into space, but it certainly isn't even a daily thing either. NASA even stopped their sounding rocket program, although they may be starting back up with more "routine" missions in the reusable sub-orbital spacecraft like Spaceship Two.
Even just to get to 100km is going to take either some very exotic engines or something akin to rockets. The X-15 was able to get above 100 km (which is how Chuck Yeager got his astronaut wings). Not much else can get up to that altitude. Balloons simply can't get there because they need atmosphere for lift, as do airplanes. You end up in the Coffin corner as airplanes get up to increasingly high altitudes where there is a hard physical ceiling past which a standard airplane simply can't get to. Attempts to go above that altitude can result in the destruction of the aircraft as it will stall out and potentially lose lift completely (hence the "coffin" you just put yourself into for trying). Yes, back before the concept was very well understood, there were several test pilots who unfortunately did discover this altitude on some aircraft the hard way creating some widows in the process.
More to the point, any vehicle which is capable of getting to 100km of altitude could in theory get to any other arbitrary altitude including say getting to Mars if only you had enough fuel. It is a spacecraft at that point, hence why astronaut wings are granted for those who get up that high.
While the number is rather arbitrary, the altitude is something that does reflect a physical phenomena.
What is so awesome about the photo is that you can clearly identify the various layers of the atmosphere, with the Troposphere having clouds (a storm is visible), the Stratosphere with even the various "stratification" showing up as bands in different colors, and the Mesosphere gradually thinning out into nothingness. Essentially you can draw the Kármán line right on this photo as it is pretty clearly identified.
And no, the Space Shuttle silhouette is not photoshopped into this image. That was a photograph from the ISS after STS-130 was preparing for landing and had just separated from the station. From that vantage point during "sunset" you could pull out the various layers of the atmosphere. Unfortunately, they didn't use a Celestron to make the photo but then again I don't think it was really needed either.
They are using balloons as a means to avoid having to build an expensive launch tower with all of the necessary features that can cause death and destruction to ground personnel. It isn't being used for altitude so much but rather as a means to get the thing launched in the first place.
As I mentioned before you posted this, another purpose for this is to have the engines tuned with the bell performance so it will operate more efficiently in a near vacuum. Some of the fancier rockets have adjustable nozzle bells that expand as they gain altitude (with a variety of systems including pure mechanical systems). The reason this is a big deal is because the approach that ARCA is doing here is mainly a cost-savings approach where they aren't necessarily pushing the performance envelope like a drag racer but going more for a Volkswagen Beetle type of standard performance that is easy to mass produce and gets the job done.
ARCA is certainly pushing for economies of scale where they are going to be building rockets by the dozens or even hundreds once they settle down with the final design. Unlike other staged rockets, the ARCA design is going to be using multiple stages that are all mostly identical. The balloons enable that design to work. Seriously, it is worth at least looking at the site and watching a couple of the videos to see how they are pulling this concept off.
Considering that they are trying to land a vehicle on the Moon, the "15k mph tangent to the Earth" is at least going to be exceeded by a little bit more velocity. I think they are well aware of the difficulties involved. In the case of ARCA, they aren't even really pushing to get to the Stratosphere so much as simply getting to the upper Troposphere. If the remote sensors determine that something is amiss and they need to scrub the launch, the balloons can also bring the rockets back down again as well.
The innovative part isn't merely getting the rockets up, and the JP Aerospace concept is fundamentally different. You need to dig around with some of the stuff that ARCA is doing before you knock what it is that they are doing, particularly with the "pulling" stages that
BTW, I'm not knocking JP Aerospace as their system of a high altitude launches is also something very unique and innovative. I especially love the DarkStar approach that JP Aerospace is using as a sort of semi-permanent platform in the stratosphere. I wish them luck and there is certainly some room for innovation in this area. Both companies are doing stuff that is real cutting edge and pushing the envelope, and more importantly they are both flying stuff and "bending metal".
The Pongsat program of JP Aerospace is something I've wanted to personally get involved with but keep putting off for really lame and stupid reasons. One of these days I might get inspired or at least get my kids to help submit one.
A difference though: ARCA has actually launched stuff and Copenhagen Suborbitals hasn't. Don't get me wrong here, I love Copenhagen Suborbitals too and they are on my short list of very cool organizations that has a chance to make a huge change in how manned spaceflight works, but they do need to get some stuff "up there".
I watched them do their launch in the Baltic and it was disappointing that they weren't able to get that test launch to work.
And there is no improvement that can possibly be made to a helium balloon that can make it actually go any higher than Earth's atmosphere.
Yes there is. Attach rockets.
What is so sad is that joke of a "spacecraft" this gets a strong mention in the press (and on Slashdot) while a real spacecraft... using a helium balloons as a 1st stage to get altitude is being used in a genuinely innovative fashion for something new with rocketry. See:
ARCA was successful with their last launch attempt.... which was launched yesterday. No video links yet, but the official page says that the launch attempt was successful. Yeah, attaching rockets to a balloon is something being considered.
FYI, ARCA (Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association) is using this flight as a part of the testing regime in order to get TO THE MOON! They are a Google Lunar X-Prize team who is making some real progress and sending stuff up. They are also doing it on a budget of a mostly volunteer team in Eastern Europe. The main reason for using the balloons is not really the altitude issue, but that does simplify the rocket nozzle designs as it can be tuned to a near vacuum rather than having to deal with atmospheric flight (it makes a difference). Also, if something goes "boom", that explosion happens high up in the sky and over the Black Sea instead of over a populated area, making the issues of a launch pad much less of a problem.
If you want to get technical, Pixar started as a branch of LucasFilm and related to Industrial Light and Magic. So arguably they started by trying to get the Millennium Falcon to fly (on film). Is this some of the "hardware" you are talking about?
Pixar still does software development work, but that has admittedly become a side business.
The other key thing to remember about the Pixar/Disney relationship and the influence over Disney that Pixar acquired is that it's largely due to one man - John Lasseter, who was formerly a Disney animator, truly understands the Disney corporate culture, and frankly is on the level of Walt Disney himself when it comes to storytelling and having an innate understanding of what people will respond to. Pixar's technical prowess likely wouldn't have meant much without Lasseter's raw talent to guide it, IMO.
On this point I'd have to agree. Pixar was able to get some of the top level talent necessary to pull of some of the movies that they've produced. I also wouldn't say that it was only John Lasseter, as there are several incredibly creative and talented people at Pixar that they've recruited over the years even if John Lasseter has been acting as a mentor to many of them to create an arguably stronger creative culture at Pixar than the Disney Animation studio had prior to the merger.
Some of the non-Pixar films coming from Disney certainly have the stamp of Lasseter right now even if they are of a lesser quality than what I expect from Pixar... they are certainly better than the garbage that was produced previously.
My main point is that if you are going to be producing stuff, you might as well keep quality high in everything you are doing. That is the one thing that I admire about Pixar where quality was always the #1 priority over even necessarily making a profit. Pixar used the film development to drive the software development team, which in turn gave some incredible tools for the film development team. It was a very useful mutual feedback loop that was really the key to being able to make the films that were made even though the software produced by Pixar was also of a similar caliber.
I am suggesting that a similar type of synergy could develop between independent filmmakers using Blender and those who are working the software development side of Blender where the needs of one group could certainly be filled by the needs of the other. BTW, in terms of software development, I've seen where developing software tools for a specific project can accelerate the development of that project tremendously when the product team "alpha testing" the software simultaneously with the developers of that major project using those tools. Compiler developers have known this for decades where the compilers are self-compiling and need to have the bugs worked out by very development team creating the compiler in order to get the software to work. It also allows the software development team to avoid making the software work only for "toy" projects that are sometimes used in a testing process.
The concern here isn't that you lack the copyright license to show a movie like this in a movie theater, the concern is more that the MPAA and its associated companies will put into film distribution contract a clause that explicitly prohibits showing "open source" movies in their theater simultaneously (or ever) with films from the major studios. Yes, you could get the FTC and the DOJ involved as a restraint of trade and other sort of legal action, but that doesn't stop the major studios from making your life hell in the meantime if you want to publicly show a film of this nature.
Otherwise, you are square on here that the CC-by-SA license certainly permits commercial projection of this film before a mass audience without renumeration or prior written permission. Heck, kids can take their cameras into a movie theater (given permission of the theater owner as it is likely private property) to "copy" the film.... as if that would be a major problem with the source files already plastered all over the internet.
As for removing the credits, I'm curious about how far you can go there, particularly if you re-render the film. The production credits themselves would seem like something that would be IMHO the ethical thing to do, but do you have to keep the 1+ minutes of "DVD presales contributors" who did nothing to help with the film other than give their credit cards to help support the release of the film? I'm not saying that is a bad thing, but I'm not sure it must stay in all subsequent versions of the film if it is ever modified. That also doesn't even begin to deal with re-mixes and other things that the CC licensing would seemingly permit.
Considering that Pixar started off as a software development company who wanted to do some demonstration projects to show off their tools, that is certainly a valid point after a fashion. That they somehow were able to hire some excellent talent (after George Lucas dumped them.... thank goodness for that) and after a bit of shrewd business dealings were able to get a CEO of a major entertainment company fired (Michale Eisner) and take over a sizable chunk of the Walt Disney Corporation in the process of merely "demonstrating" their technical capabilities.... yeah I guess you could say that producing something with the tools can make a bit of a difference.
I don't know how much Pixar makes off of their "RenderMan" software suite, but the movies that they've made have pulled in a couple billion dollars over the history of the company. The argument that making demonstration projects as a way to push the software certainly has been proven true even if the "demonstrations" end up being successful in their own right. It also helps to show that you shouldn't be willing to settle for 2nd rate quality when the best is available.
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I could live with a 30+30 rule, as in 30 years of protection plus an additional 30 years if you make the effort to formally renew the copyright (verifiable and can be confirmed with the Library of Congress). That was the law at the beginning of the 20th Century. Under such a law, most of PKD's books would still be under copyright although there would be a huge pile of stuff that would be in the public domain that would be useful.
I believe the Copyright Act of 1790 had a term of 17 years plus 17 years for renewal.
It's also worth pointing out that Total Recall stops being based on the PKD story fifteen minutes into the movie or so.
(The rest is still based on a mix of Dick's themes, though. I like it.)
As an action adventure film to enjoy, I'd agree. I do have to put my brain into neutral when watching movies like this, particularly movies like "The Net" that attempt to depict computer technology that I happen to know a thing or two about on a more intimate level. My wife sometimes has to hit me to settle me down when I see a glaring technical flaw that is being used as a major plot device to help "save the hero".
I can handle FTL spaceflight as it sort of suspends reality, but at least stay somewhat consistent if you stray away from the physics of the real world. Sort of like cartoon physics, which is a completely different universe with its own physical laws of reality like how gravity is selective if you aren't aware that you just ran off a cliff or the existence of a portable hole. Some movies (and script writers) do a pretty good job that way.
Then again, I am into movies like 2001, 2010, or "docudramas" like October Sky and Apollo 13. Technical accuracy can happen if you put some effort into it, something that most Hollywood directors seldom even try to do. Total Recall in particular is one movie that really had problems with technical accuracy, and yes I blame the director/producers of that show much more so than Phillip K. Dick on that point.
As for the fact that "most people" watch movies for entertainment rather than technical accuracy.... I guess that explains why members of congress can't seem to separate out movie physics from reality most of the time, much less the voters who put them into office. It does make a difference in our culture if you show something more realistic even if it isn't a Hollywood convention like hearing explosions in space.
The question here is.... where is the pressure on Mars at 10 millibars? At the bottom of Hellas Basin and Valles Marineris it can certainly approach a couple hundred millibar of pressure. At the top of Olympus Mons? Yeah, that is almost out of the Martian atmosphere. The elevation differences on Mars are much more pronounced than even on the Earth. Even on the Earth there are pressure differences... like say the air pressure is approaching 1000 millibars at sea level with even higher average pressure in places like Death Valley and the Dead Sea.
That is hardly the only scientifically inaccurate thing in the Movie, and besides your eyes won't jump out of the eye sockets like was depicted in the movie. It gets worse still. If you want to see a fairly accurate depiction of what you can do in a vacuum in terms of human physiology and human reactions while exposed briefly to space, Titan AE does a much better job in the scene where the hero cracks the cockpit window and propels himself with a fire extinguisher into the cargo hold of another spacecraft. It is something survivable.
Seriously, Mars is much more exotic than depicted in this movie and there were a great many other things that were simply idiotic like how the group of Martians had their "air cut off" by simply shutting down some fans. Let's get real here. You might suffer from CO2 toxicity but passing out after a minute of having the O2 supply cut off? Let's get real.
My point is that the scientific accuracy in the movie is simply non-existent in this movie, including that wild scene attempting to depict human physiology in a vacuum. It wouldn't happen that way and was done deliberately with dramatic license to heighten the impact. I'm not saying that being exposed to a vacuum would be a bed of roses either, but Arnold screaming his head off for a minute is not something that would be happening on the surface of Mars if he were shoved out of an airlock without a pressure suit or spacesuit.
For myself, I loved Blade Runner. It was a little ahead of its time and is much more cerebral than a typical "SciFi" movie, but it certainly is at the top of nearly any list of best movies I can cite. The groundbreaking effects and ideas expressed in the movie have been copied by many subsequent films enough that some things look cliche because you've seen those other movies that came after Blade Runner. IMHO it was also one of Harrison Ford's better roles, but I suppose that you can form your own opinion about that actor and his work. Harrison Ford has been one of Hollywood's most "bankable" actors as he is in films that have a combined gross take in the billions of dollars. Perhaps that is why he is hated but the roughly billion or so people who have seen at least one of his movies might beg to differ on that point. This film is certainly more "hard SF" than "SciFi", which perhaps is the problem with the above reviewer.
As for Total Recall, I thought it was a fun diversion, but as for realism I thought it was absolutely stupid and highly inaccurate. "Scientifically accurate depiction of exposure to the Martian atmosphere".... hardly. It looked cool on film I suppose but it really didn't work very well. FYI, you can survive on Mars with mostly a pressure suit and an oxygen mask. Parts of the surface of Mars have the same atmospheric pressure as the top of Everest. Really, it isn't nearly as bad as depicted in the movie. The lead actor is the now governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you know his work, it sums it up pretty well. Perhaps one of the more cerebral roles for the governator, but there is still a pretty high body count by the time the movie is done. He also has more dialog in this movie than Terminator, but almost any movie would qualify in that regard and doesn't say much and is perhaps one of its flaws too. It is a movie to watch with your brain put into neutral merely to enjoy the film as an action thriller, not for any scientific accuracy if you really know anything about this stuff.
Minority Report stars Tom Cruise as the lead. If you've seen "Mission Impossible" (1 or 2, it doesn't matter), it is essentially the same movie in a slightly different setting. Tom Cruise portrays the cocky punk that he has been in most of his movies and this isn't even really his best role either. There is more that is redeeming than just the data search user interface with the computers that he is using (running Hollywood OS, of course). The stuff that Phillip K. Dick wrote in is certainly thought provoking including the whole concept of arresting people who merely show the potential of committing a crime. If the Wikipedia entry is to be believed, it was originally supposed to be a sequel of Total Recall, to be also starring the Governator as the lead actor instead of Tom Cruise. Thank goodness that script was lost and that plan abandoned. While not a horrible film, this film doesn't really inspire me either so I wouldn't say to avoid this film but also don't go out of your way to watch it either. If it comes up as something on TV or you have a friend who has it on DVD and you have a couple hours to kill with nothing better to do, there are worse ways to spend those two hours of your life.
If this was pushed back or delayed, that speaks volumes about the engineering management involved here that also doesn't care about their customers or is doing anything on software maintenance. Companies that ignore the need to at least keep a developer on existing projects fixing bugs and staying fresh on the code base are going to find in the long run that their software will simply suck. It is also a good indication that you need to flee a company selling such software that has been abandoned.
I've had managers who thought that owning a software company implied that they had a license to print money. In other words, once the software was written that you could fire the developers and keep copying the software laughing all of the way to the bank for each copy you sold. I'm suggesting that is never true except for very trivial pieces of software that aren't worth much in the first place.
Still, the complaint about how intelligently the software architecture was put together is seriously put into question as those who designed the system really didn't think through how long their software would last or what kinds of records were being put into the system. I understand how IPv4 had unanticipated problems with billions of computers on a network originally designed to handle merely hundreds and when v4 came out it was still in the mere thousands of computers being connected. In this design, it sounds like it was almost by design going to eat up a whole bunch of records.
Besides, people have been bitching about IPv4 running out for decades and have anticipated the problem by introducing IPv6 quite some time ago. Any competent software engineer should have seen something like this coming years ago, so when I see something like "running out of space" I can only assert either:
Either way, it certainly doesn't inspire confidence in this company, and they certainly seem to be in way over their head here. If you hire a bunch of developers from Waziristan because they low bid on the development contract, you get what you pay for. This certainly isn't going to be the only problem with the software coming from this company as rookie mistakes like this are likely to be the tip of the iceberg.
Yes, this is a rookie mistake I would expect out of a freshman CS student, not somebody trying to sell a supposed professional service.
How many lives were impacted by the medical testing and how many lives were impacted by the spamming? I think $100 per person sounds pretty reasonable, and the spammer made a conscious decision to send the messages out to the other million or so people that received the spam. It was his fault, the spammer, that so many messages went out.
At the very least, this ought to make major companies shy away from potential spamming as I'm sure the shareholders would notice a billion dollars leaving the company.
What I wonder here is if or how somebody can bankrupt their way out of a legal obligation like this?
To get your prophylactics, of course. And a couple other munchies to eat. Geez, have you never heard of a corner chemist selling stuff before?
(Hint: In America they are call drug stores.... as the AC here feels the wind rushing by)
The difference between the aircraft fighters of the past and what we have now is maneuverability. Modern fighters can take some wicked corners and maneuver circles around some of those old aircraft like the classic U-2 or even the SR-71. Yeah, they can haul some wicked speed, but they need the entire western USA in order to do a 180 degree turn (or Siberia if they are doing recon missions).
The current limiting factor right now is merely the ability of the pilot to withstand those turns. Acceleration is the key now, not raw speed.
If there is going to be a need for speed, it will happen in space. Acceleration is still going to be key, but any new technologies are going to be worrying about how to sustain a large acceleration over a prolonged period of time. I presume that will imply something like nuclear rocketry (fission or fusion, take your pick) throwing mass out at a healthy fraction of the speed of light to give a very high ISP number. Such a rocket could in theory make it from Earth to Mars in a matter of weeks without having to invent new physics or having to discover a new scientific principle. All it would take is merely some tough engineering to pull off a ship like that and of course a huge pile of money.
In terms of military craft on the Earth, where do you want to go at Mach 6 anyway? Sure, you can go from New York to London in less than an hour with an SR-71, but what are you going to do in the hour after you get to London? Fly on to Moscow in the next hour? It doesn't serve any purpose to get to a target that quickly as once you get to that target you can't do anything before you literally move on and out of any strike zone to be useful in a dogfight or to support other military activities in that target area.
Yes, it is an extraordinary claim. I get that and perhaps these guys are full of it. BTW, they aren't claiming to put people on the Moon, but rather a small package about the size of a suitcase on the Moon, but none the less it is something that does take a bit of a leap of logic.
They are involved with the Google Lunar X-Prize as one of the registered teams, which shows at least the ambition of its participants. This most recent flight only went to 40km of altitude, but that was but a single 1-stage (two stages if you count the balloons) rocket. It is noteworthy too that they were one of the original Ansari X-Prize teams with Armadillo Aerospace, Scaled Composites, and several other groups that have long since disbanded. It is the persistence of these guys that impresses me as much as anything else.
All I know is that ARCA is bending metal and throwing hardware in the sky. That to me sounds like a good thing and generally those who are launching stuff eventually get their designs to work with some persistence or discover in a real hurry that they are chasing a dead end. If the situation is going to flop, I expect that it will flop soon and they will be forced to come up with a more traditional launcher plan.
The only reason I'm bringing this spacecraft up in this way is because it is an example of a balloon-based launcher concept showing that you might be able to apply balloons for something useful in spaceflight, that it was something very newsworthy (the ARCA flight happened just before I posted the reply), and due to the fact that ARCA is at least trying something different that other aerospace engineers aren't doing. You can doubt that a particular system will work, but how do you know until the approach is tried?
Yes, remain skeptical. What makes me excited is that ARCA isn't the "only game in town" and that there are dozens of different launch approaches now being tried in many different countries. One of them is going to work out eventually, but there are a whole lot of people trying really wild and crazy ideas here. I think ARCA is just about as extreme on originality as can be had and being in Romania also gives them some freedom where they aren't fighting so many skeptics.
You can always set up a true holographic projector... like the stuff imagined in Star Wars.
The problem with true 3-D of this nature is that it takes a completely different filming process, and of course the bandwidth on such a system is simply insane. And you thought HD video was bandwidth intensive.
How you accomplish a system like that is not trivial either but it can be done. Some of the systems that have been explored are found with various kinds of volumetric displays. Bandwidth really has been the big obstacle and that is something that due to Moore's Law is now getting within the realm of something doable.
Otherwise, most other systems are psuedo 3-D and really ought to be called stereographic, not something three dimensional. Stereographic systems date back to the 19th Century, and at least as long as there has been photography of any kind.
No matter how hard you try, no matter what you do you can't fly a Boeing 747 to Mars. There is most certainly an upper altitude past which the flight control surfaces simply cease to function. That certainly gets well above 10m, sort of disproving your statement here. Mid-air refueling is possible for a 747 (used on the VC-25 variant) giving it essentially an unlimited fuel supply too. In theory it doesn't ever have to land except to pick up food or for repairs.
Stick a can of pork and beans in a fire and it won't get to Mars. It will get up to 10m in altitude though. Stick a rocket under it.... yeah it might get there but that isn't the vehicle, the can is merely payload.
I've also made some automobiles go airborne and I don't think any quantity of gasoline will ever get them up to 100km, much less to Mars.
I found this bit of the Bill of Rights interesting: "Monopolies are odious, contrary to the spirit of a free government and the principles of commerce, and ought not to be suffered." And yet the BGE and Comcast monopolies exist. Perhaps the Maryland government should buy-out the wires and lease the lines to any company that wished to use them (BGE, PPL, comcast, cox, appletv, etc). i.e. Consumer choice is a right.
{{citation needed}}
Where in the bill of rights is the concept of a monopoly even discussed?
While I happen to agree with the sentiment, it isn't a part of the constitution, unless it is a state constitution that I'm not familiar with (easily possible as I haven't read and certainly haven't memorized all 50+ state constitutions in the USA). There is the Sherman Anti-Trust Act which regulates competitive business practices, but that certainly isn't in the Constitution.
The issue is mainly one of concern about the safety of the airplanes themselves, not so much the altitude. If you are standing on a mountain peak (not even "above" the ground technically), it can cause problems for some cell phone towers as you are still in "line of sight" with the tower but can be at some considerable distance.
IMHO it is something completely unfounded and don't tell me that everybody who has a cell phone remembers to turn their cell phone off when they make a flight. I've forgotten to turn mine off where after a flight I looked in the bag that I threw into the overhead bin and the cell phone was still on when I pulled the thing down. I think my kids even tried to call me while the plane was in the air.
There may be a complaint from the cell phone service provider as the tower has to crank up the power if you are a distance away from the tower, but that is the only FCC issue as there might be a maximum power past which the tower may not be licensed to transmit.
The regs for cell phones are FAA requirements instead, related directly to operational safety of the vehicle. If you are the engineer in charge and perhaps have a waiver from the FAA for your flight, I don't think there is a problem. I don't think there are cell phone restrictions on helium balloons and in particular unmanned balloons like this although a flight plan is advised to be filed with your local airport if you attempt a flight like this.
A few thousand launches, when including unmanned spacecraft and sounding rocket, perhaps. A million launches? No way at all. There have been more than a million commercial aircraft take-offs and landings at airports, but not with NASA.
And NASA doesn't do this "hundreds of times every day of the year". A couple per month perhaps, depending on the season and how ready various missions are to get into space, but it certainly isn't even a daily thing either. NASA even stopped their sounding rocket program, although they may be starting back up with more "routine" missions in the reusable sub-orbital spacecraft like Spaceship Two.
Even just to get to 100km is going to take either some very exotic engines or something akin to rockets. The X-15 was able to get above 100 km (which is how Chuck Yeager got his astronaut wings). Not much else can get up to that altitude. Balloons simply can't get there because they need atmosphere for lift, as do airplanes. You end up in the Coffin corner as airplanes get up to increasingly high altitudes where there is a hard physical ceiling past which a standard airplane simply can't get to. Attempts to go above that altitude can result in the destruction of the aircraft as it will stall out and potentially lose lift completely (hence the "coffin" you just put yourself into for trying). Yes, back before the concept was very well understood, there were several test pilots who unfortunately did discover this altitude on some aircraft the hard way creating some widows in the process.
More to the point, any vehicle which is capable of getting to 100km of altitude could in theory get to any other arbitrary altitude including say getting to Mars if only you had enough fuel. It is a spacecraft at that point, hence why astronaut wings are granted for those who get up that high.
While the number is rather arbitrary, the altitude is something that does reflect a physical phenomena.
I really love this particular Space Shuttle image that shows off the various layers of the atmosphere:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Endeavour_silhouette_STS-130.jpg
What is so awesome about the photo is that you can clearly identify the various layers of the atmosphere, with the Troposphere having clouds (a storm is visible), the Stratosphere with even the various "stratification" showing up as bands in different colors, and the Mesosphere gradually thinning out into nothingness. Essentially you can draw the Kármán line right on this photo as it is pretty clearly identified.
And no, the Space Shuttle silhouette is not photoshopped into this image. That was a photograph from the ISS after STS-130 was preparing for landing and had just separated from the station. From that vantage point during "sunset" you could pull out the various layers of the atmosphere. Unfortunately, they didn't use a Celestron to make the photo but then again I don't think it was really needed either.
They are using balloons as a means to avoid having to build an expensive launch tower with all of the necessary features that can cause death and destruction to ground personnel. It isn't being used for altitude so much but rather as a means to get the thing launched in the first place.
As I mentioned before you posted this, another purpose for this is to have the engines tuned with the bell performance so it will operate more efficiently in a near vacuum. Some of the fancier rockets have adjustable nozzle bells that expand as they gain altitude (with a variety of systems including pure mechanical systems). The reason this is a big deal is because the approach that ARCA is doing here is mainly a cost-savings approach where they aren't necessarily pushing the performance envelope like a drag racer but going more for a Volkswagen Beetle type of standard performance that is easy to mass produce and gets the job done.
ARCA is certainly pushing for economies of scale where they are going to be building rockets by the dozens or even hundreds once they settle down with the final design. Unlike other staged rockets, the ARCA design is going to be using multiple stages that are all mostly identical. The balloons enable that design to work. Seriously, it is worth at least looking at the site and watching a couple of the videos to see how they are pulling this concept off.
Considering that they are trying to land a vehicle on the Moon, the "15k mph tangent to the Earth" is at least going to be exceeded by a little bit more velocity. I think they are well aware of the difficulties involved. In the case of ARCA, they aren't even really pushing to get to the Stratosphere so much as simply getting to the upper Troposphere. If the remote sensors determine that something is amiss and they need to scrub the launch, the balloons can also bring the rockets back down again as well.
The innovative part isn't merely getting the rockets up, and the JP Aerospace concept is fundamentally different. You need to dig around with some of the stuff that ARCA is doing before you knock what it is that they are doing, particularly with the "pulling" stages that
BTW, I'm not knocking JP Aerospace as their system of a high altitude launches is also something very unique and innovative. I especially love the DarkStar approach that JP Aerospace is using as a sort of semi-permanent platform in the stratosphere. I wish them luck and there is certainly some room for innovation in this area. Both companies are doing stuff that is real cutting edge and pushing the envelope, and more importantly they are both flying stuff and "bending metal".
The Pongsat program of JP Aerospace is something I've wanted to personally get involved with but keep putting off for really lame and stupid reasons. One of these days I might get inspired or at least get my kids to help submit one.
A difference though: ARCA has actually launched stuff and Copenhagen Suborbitals hasn't. Don't get me wrong here, I love Copenhagen Suborbitals too and they are on my short list of very cool organizations that has a chance to make a huge change in how manned spaceflight works, but they do need to get some stuff "up there".
I watched them do their launch in the Baltic and it was disappointing that they weren't able to get that test launch to work.
And there is no improvement that can possibly be made to a helium balloon that can make it actually go any higher than Earth's atmosphere.
Yes there is. Attach rockets.
What is so sad is that joke of a "spacecraft" this gets a strong mention in the press (and on Slashdot) while a real spacecraft... using a helium balloons as a 1st stage to get altitude is being used in a genuinely innovative fashion for something new with rocketry. See:
http://www.arcaspace.com/en/home.htm
ARCA was successful with their last launch attempt.... which was launched yesterday. No video links yet, but the official page says that the launch attempt was successful. Yeah, attaching rockets to a balloon is something being considered.
FYI, ARCA (Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association) is using this flight as a part of the testing regime in order to get TO THE MOON! They are a Google Lunar X-Prize team who is making some real progress and sending stuff up. They are also doing it on a budget of a mostly volunteer team in Eastern Europe. The main reason for using the balloons is not really the altitude issue, but that does simplify the rocket nozzle designs as it can be tuned to a near vacuum rather than having to deal with atmospheric flight (it makes a difference). Also, if something goes "boom", that explosion happens high up in the sky and over the Black Sea instead of over a populated area, making the issues of a launch pad much less of a problem.
If you want to get technical, Pixar started as a branch of LucasFilm and related to Industrial Light and Magic. So arguably they started by trying to get the Millennium Falcon to fly (on film). Is this some of the "hardware" you are talking about?
Pixar still does software development work, but that has admittedly become a side business.
The other key thing to remember about the Pixar/Disney relationship and the influence over Disney that Pixar acquired is that it's largely due to one man - John Lasseter, who was formerly a Disney animator, truly understands the Disney corporate culture, and frankly is on the level of Walt Disney himself when it comes to storytelling and having an innate understanding of what people will respond to. Pixar's technical prowess likely wouldn't have meant much without Lasseter's raw talent to guide it, IMO.
On this point I'd have to agree. Pixar was able to get some of the top level talent necessary to pull of some of the movies that they've produced. I also wouldn't say that it was only John Lasseter, as there are several incredibly creative and talented people at Pixar that they've recruited over the years even if John Lasseter has been acting as a mentor to many of them to create an arguably stronger creative culture at Pixar than the Disney Animation studio had prior to the merger.
Some of the non-Pixar films coming from Disney certainly have the stamp of Lasseter right now even if they are of a lesser quality than what I expect from Pixar... they are certainly better than the garbage that was produced previously.
My main point is that if you are going to be producing stuff, you might as well keep quality high in everything you are doing. That is the one thing that I admire about Pixar where quality was always the #1 priority over even necessarily making a profit. Pixar used the film development to drive the software development team, which in turn gave some incredible tools for the film development team. It was a very useful mutual feedback loop that was really the key to being able to make the films that were made even though the software produced by Pixar was also of a similar caliber.
I am suggesting that a similar type of synergy could develop between independent filmmakers using Blender and those who are working the software development side of Blender where the needs of one group could certainly be filled by the needs of the other. BTW, in terms of software development, I've seen where developing software tools for a specific project can accelerate the development of that project tremendously when the product team "alpha testing" the software simultaneously with the developers of that major project using those tools. Compiler developers have known this for decades where the compilers are self-compiling and need to have the bugs worked out by very development team creating the compiler in order to get the software to work. It also allows the software development team to avoid making the software work only for "toy" projects that are sometimes used in a testing process.
The concern here isn't that you lack the copyright license to show a movie like this in a movie theater, the concern is more that the MPAA and its associated companies will put into film distribution contract a clause that explicitly prohibits showing "open source" movies in their theater simultaneously (or ever) with films from the major studios. Yes, you could get the FTC and the DOJ involved as a restraint of trade and other sort of legal action, but that doesn't stop the major studios from making your life hell in the meantime if you want to publicly show a film of this nature.
Otherwise, you are square on here that the CC-by-SA license certainly permits commercial projection of this film before a mass audience without renumeration or prior written permission. Heck, kids can take their cameras into a movie theater (given permission of the theater owner as it is likely private property) to "copy" the film.... as if that would be a major problem with the source files already plastered all over the internet.
As for removing the credits, I'm curious about how far you can go there, particularly if you re-render the film. The production credits themselves would seem like something that would be IMHO the ethical thing to do, but do you have to keep the 1+ minutes of "DVD presales contributors" who did nothing to help with the film other than give their credit cards to help support the release of the film? I'm not saying that is a bad thing, but I'm not sure it must stay in all subsequent versions of the film if it is ever modified. That also doesn't even begin to deal with re-mixes and other things that the CC licensing would seemingly permit.
Considering that Pixar started off as a software development company who wanted to do some demonstration projects to show off their tools, that is certainly a valid point after a fashion. That they somehow were able to hire some excellent talent (after George Lucas dumped them.... thank goodness for that) and after a bit of shrewd business dealings were able to get a CEO of a major entertainment company fired (Michale Eisner) and take over a sizable chunk of the Walt Disney Corporation in the process of merely "demonstrating" their technical capabilities.... yeah I guess you could say that producing something with the tools can make a bit of a difference.
I don't know how much Pixar makes off of their "RenderMan" software suite, but the movies that they've made have pulled in a couple billion dollars over the history of the company. The argument that making demonstration projects as a way to push the software certainly has been proven true even if the "demonstrations" end up being successful in their own right. It also helps to show that you shouldn't be willing to settle for 2nd rate quality when the best is available.