This sounds like a "robot" in the same way we've come to know "robosauraus" (that giant dinosaur car that spits fire at monster truck shows) as a robot or those remote control toys on BattleBots/RobotWars.
This strikes me more as "animatronic" than anything else.
I'm tired of a lot of criminal activities, too. That doesn't mean I support putting everyone that commits a crime that I dislike in a prison cell. I can't stand pot-heads, but I don't want to send them to prison. I can't stand dead-beat dads, but I don't support putting them behind bars. Zero-tolerance style policies are an excuse to avoid excercising common sense and engaging in some very important critical thinking. Of course each situation is different and applying some brain-dead mandate is itself a miscarriage of justice and, I would suggest, robs citizens of their right to due process.
And if you feel that a spammer deserves a decade or two behind bars, then how can anyone possibly justify any other sentance for people like Kenneth Lay and the criminal bastards behind Enron, MCI, Martha Stewart and other corporations short of life in prison? Is some schmuck who sent out a few million spams - even if it's part of a pyramid scheme - deserving of a punishment that is ten-fold that of people who defraud thousands of life-long employees of their retirement?
Putting people in jail for spamming is just stupid. Reserve jail for people who commit violent crimes. Robbery, murder, rape, child molestation, assault and battery, burglary, hit and run and drunk driving.
Stop putting people in jail for smoking a joint or sending spam.
Does someone, regardless of the amount of spam they send, really deserve a decade or two in prison? Take out the "I hate spam" part of it. Just based on crime versus punishment. Does this punishment really fit that crime? Considering 80% of the spam was probably filtered directly to/dev/null and even if the remaining 20% took one second from each person's life to handle, is taking one second of time from a few million people's lives worth sending someone to prison for 20% of *their* life?
If so, I want to start sticking advertisers and door to door solicitors in prison, right now.
Prison sentences for the heavy-handed fraud which was mentioned, makes sense. That's an existing crime that deserves punishment. But not for faking a damn SMTP header and sending it to people who didn't want it.
When I'm comfortable or not to cough up my driver's license is not at all relevant. What I'm comfortable with is unimportant when people's lives and property are at stake.
My grandfather built multi-million dollar houses for the rich thrugh his 70s and continued carpentry and yard work through his 80s, until he died. He finally stopped driving a few years after he began to have a habit of driving the wrong way down a street, failing to pull over when a fire truck was racing down the street with sirens blaring and so forth.
My grandmother's eyesight was slowly failing and while she isn't blind, she finally decided that she was too dangerous to be on the road. This, after a life of flawless driving with an absolutely clean and perfect record - beginning when she was only fourteen years old in the 1930s.
The fact is, people need to be held accountable and meet higher levels of competancy to be able to drive at any age. Especially if you're part of an age group that is six or seven times more likely to cause fatal accidents than every other age group.
And yes, being elderly and losing the independance your car gives you may be inconvenient, but it's also inconvenient for a child to lose the independance being alive gives or the independance a young girl may have in being able to use her legs and have a functioning spine.
As for myself, I don't even drive. I don't know if I ever will. I don't really have a need for it and it bores me. Not to mention, I don't have the greatest eyesight in the world and would hate to smash into someone.
In 1997, I was walking across a three lane street. Midle of the crosswalk and there is only one car on the road. It's across the intersection, on the other side, far enough away to stop. So I continue walking. Not thinking anything unusual.
But the guy doesn't stop! He drives through the crosswalk, through the intersection and smashes right through me! I fly up unto the hood of his car and he keeps driving. I roll up onto his windshield and the impact is so hard that the force of me landing crushes his windshield and roof. It takes almost two full blocks before he stops. He doesn't even consider putting on the break for the first block. He hit me with full driving force. Fortunatelly, I somehow made it without any serious injuries although I still suffer sore joints and muscle problems almost a decade later (at times). But at least I didn't break any bones or lose conciousness.
After he finally realized that he had hit something, slammed on the breaks and stopped - I went flying through the air and landed hard on the aslphalt about 50 feet down the road from his car. He had hit me so hard that his car had to be towed and totaled.
He didn't really have any excuse other than he just didn't see me. In the road. In the crosswalk. On an empty street.
Drivers, 75 years old and more, are more dangerous than every other group except teenagers (who also shouldn't be allowed to drive so young). They are 400% to 600% more deadly than every other age group.
I guess you'd rather let a group of innocent toddlers and young children playing on a soccer field be killed by an elderly driver who went up a curb, through a field and plowed into them be killed than dare take a license away from from those holiest of holy "The Greatest Generation".
If there is something on the road that is a danger and the driver doesn't see, the car alerts the driver.
Now, if only they can devise a way to keep 85 year olds who think that it's their god given right to drive until the day they die, from slamming on the gas and destroying buildings and killing pedestrians because they thought it was the break pedal - or driving into THROUGH AN AIRPORT because they thought you return your car at the Hertz inside the airport.
My understanding (this was broken down to me by a radio guy, so he might not know quite as much as a label guy) is that artists almost aways get at least one point and sometimes two. But the artist still has their own expenses that have to come out of that $.80 to $1.60.
If you're an average band and you pull 1 point (80 cents) per album, you are still going to have to pay your lawyer, travel expenses, equipment, studio time and sometimes even your own videos out of that. But from the standpoint of the album points, it's one or two points.
Stealing music is stealing music, and we're all adults here. We don't need to sugar coat that. But at the same time, when an artist walks away with a dime out of every $16-$20 album (or even ends up broke in some instances after all expenses) - it's hard to call that anything but theft and strong-arming, either.
There are a lot of similarities between the mafia and record labels.
A guy I know in the industry broke it down for me the other day. 50% of all points go to advertising and promotion. Big labels do their own promotion and while they certainly employ advertising agencies, much of the expense is for their own internally generated work.
This makes sense for some albums. I'm sure that, for something like Ashlee Simpson, they roll out such a media blitz to convince teenage girls to buy her CDs that they easily spend 50% on advertising out of that $16 to $20.
However, what about the random smaller band that you never see on MTV? That you never hear played on the radio? That you never hear advertised or promoted in any way whatsoever? It seems like they probably don't spend 50% of their money on promotion.
Anyway, the main point is that very little expense comes from the cost of the physical product *or* the artist's cut. Most of the money goes to the label and toward brainwashing little kids on TRL.
Did I say $20 was too much for a date? Did I say $20 was too much for a good movie? No, as you will understand if you read my comment a second time (perhaps slower this time?) - I said that there are very rarely any good movies worth going to see anymore. I would neither want to waste a date in front of a screen staring at a crappy movie like Eurotrip nor waste $20 on it.
I am quite open-handed with my cash and spare little expense on things that are worth it. The point is that today's movies are not worth it. There are more enjoyable things to spend $20 on.
Anyway, if you're going to spend a bunch of money on a date, it should be something interactive that you can get to know someone through. Not something passive and anti-social like vegetating at your local multi-plex.
I've always thought movies were a lame way to spend a date. You both go and sit and stare at a screen for two hours and walk out knowing nothing more about the person than you went in knowing.
Dinners are fine. Walks are fine. Going to a concert is fine. Going for a drive is fine. Going to the coast or a bookstore is fine. But going and staring at a movie? Not very interactive. Quite antisocial. And not very original.
I'm not sure what portion of a DVD's cost goes to cover promotion, but 50% of the cost of a CD does. So $10 of that $20 CD you might have just bought will go to cover things like apperances on MTV's TRL, appearances, radio play and other forms of advertising, which are usually handled by the record labels. In addition to that, the labels take cuts in other direct and indirect ways so that something like 70% of the points (a point is about 80 cents) on an album go to the label. The artist themselves usually get one or two points - so from that expensive album, they're getting 80 cents to $1.60. The cost to manufacture the CD and put the music on it and print the sleeve and wrap it is about 1 point.
The reason they can afford to make DVDs for so cheap is probably because they've already factored the cost of promotion and other expenses into the movie itself and that is usually recovered in the box office long before it hits store shelves.
That and the fact that I'm sure they've conducted expensive research that has surely shown consumers are willing to spend six hours worth of pay on a CD or DVD, but not anything more than that. $20 for a CD and $30 for a DVD might be the price break after which people begin to stop and think "wait, do I really want to dish out this much of my income for a movie I'll only watch one time?".
I would find the cost of both DVD an CD to be acceptable if you were paying for the right to posess and view the content whenever you wanted for the rest of your life. But if your media is lost, stolen, damaged or wears out (or there hardware to play it is no longer made), then it's a rip off to have to pay for it all over again.
Just imagine you're some Star Wars dork and you payd $30 for three star wars movies on VHS. Then you spend $30 on each for laser disc. Then you spend $30 each for DVD. Then someone stole those DVDs or they were damaged while you were moving out of your dorm and you had to spend another $30. That's $480 on just three star wars movies over time - and your life isn't even half over year. Just wait until the next "big amazing format" comes out and you have to upgrade again if you ever want to watch those movies.:)
The best thing I've ever done is just give up buying DVDs and CDs and going to the theater. I have far more money in my pocket and can get more entertainment for the buck by purchasing used books at half the price.
Accidentally posted anon (and want to be able to see replies):
It's hard to justify the cost of a CD (or DVD, etc) to anyone in any country, if they've done the math and figured out where the $16 to $20 from each CD is going. Break it down and you'll find that about 75% of the points are going to the label in one way or another. Worse, as much goes to pay for advertising and promotion of the CD as goes to all other places (artist, representation, printing and pressing, shipping) *COMBINED*.
I found the best way to deal with this is just to avoid paying. I don't have cable anymore. I ditched it because the terrible programming wasn't worth $110/mo. I also don't buy DVDs or CDs and I don't go to the theater. Few movies are worth $10 per person these days. What, am I going to blow $20 so myself and a date can go watch Eurotrip? Get real.
I've taken the money I would have spent on the MPAA/RIAA/BSA goons and redirected it toward buying USED books. Instead of $30 to buy the latest ridiculous Spielberg rehash (ooh, this time he added three lighting effects in this one scene that weren't there before!) - I can use that $30 to buy half a dozen good reads. I've been working my way through the Top 100 Science Fiction Books of All Time (excluding the ones I'd previously read). Much better value. And when I'm through, I can hand them off to someone else without worrying about the MPAA/RIAA/BSA sending the FBI to break down my door and put me in prison for four years without due process.
If IP based networks are exempt from regulation, how is it that Powell and the FCC are planning to regulate IP based networks?
The government WILL NOT let the telcoms or the big movie and television industries go out of business. They will welfare and legislate them into the new world, to keep out the small competetive guys and keep their iron fist around it.
Just be glad your mind is still your own. For now.
Meh. I posted this anonymously on accident, the first time. That'll teach me to post from someone else's computer.:(
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I can't speak for StreetFighter, but I know a girl in Lake Oswego that could probably hand you your ass in a few rounds of Counter Strike. Some guys at the UofO and I used to run a popular CS server (before I stopped playing most video games) and this girl named 'Val' was always on. She was probably around 18 at the time and she learned quickly. Oh, I actually knew another girl too on the same server from the same area, now that I think about it. She was pretty good, too.
Other than those two, the only females I've known who did much gaming played things like Sims, EverQuest and Ultima Online. There's clearly a distinction between the interests of both sexes, for the most part. Generally, it seems that females tend to avoid hard-core puzzle, strategy and action games. Even in MMORPGs, the 'action' and the 'fighting' tends to be a secondary or tertiary requisit for them. That's a broad description based on the women I've been around and people I've talked to, but it probably isn't too far off the mark, in general.
I'm ashamed to admit it, but I played The Sims Online for about a week. It wasn't for me. Boring and pointless. I gave it a chance, but it fell short (just like a lot of more male-oriented games did, like Anarchy Online, Shadowbane, ATITD, Rubies of Eventide...) The one thing that did stand out about The Sims Online, however, was the social interaction among players. Especially females. Within a few minutes of entering the game, I was invited to join a group of women who showed me the ropes, helped me out, gave me tips and eventually invited me to join their "house" (or whatever you call it in the game). The game play was painfully dull to me, but the community was unique. In most games, you won't see that kind of treatment. With most MMORPGs or FPS games, you join a server, create a character, figure out what the hell you are doing and start hacking stuff to bits all the while dodging the offcolor racist, homophobic and sexist remarks of pre-pubescent boys.
I wouldn't try to read some social theory or explanation into why there aren't many female gamers and why they're attracted to certain areas. Men and women are very different creatures and some things come more natural and are more appealing to one sex over the other (with interesting exceptions). The important thing is to welcome those people who do cross the boundaries and find enjoyment in it.
What bothers me more is the reaction of males any time someone with a female voice is playing (using the mic) or even just a female name logs into a server. You have three typical responses, such as those below:
The person who doubts that it's a female and makes a point of doubting it.
The person who goes out of their way to be a jerk to the female just to be a jerk.
The person who can't stop talking about the girl and sucks up to her and flirts with her and can't shut up about how hot he thinks it is that a person with breasts is playing his favorite game.
It would be nice if a female could join a server and we could all continue to play as normal without regressing into a pack of slobbering penises.
I also have a sister who has always played videogames. Not addictively like myself, my brother or any other male I know, but quite a bit nevertheless. She doesn't play online games, but has played almost everythign else on PS2/X-Box that she's come across. The frustrating thing is that it comes so natural to her. She's almost 20 now and as long as I can remember, she could walk into a room while my younger brother and I are playing and pick up a controller... and breeze right through things that we'd spent hours trying to beat. We'd take days or weeks to beat a game and she could do it in a couple sittings. ARGH! She's a bit of a tom-boy, but not much. She's just very *very* adept at the videogame thing, I guess.
Another story from the same event. There were three women that were kicked out of the gathering and threatened with being arrested for wearing obscene tee-shirts to tht event. What did the tee-shirts say?
From Bend.com news sources Posted: Thursday, October 14, 2004 10:24 PM Reference Code: PR-18712
October 14 - MEDFORD - President Bush taught three Oregon schoolteachers a new lesson in irony - or tragedy - Thursday night when his campaign removed them from a Bush speech and threatened them with arrest simply for wearing t-shirts that said "Protect Our Civil Liberties," the Democratic Party of Oregon reported.
The women were ticketed to the event, admitted into the event, and were then approached by event officials before the president's speech. They were asked to leave and to turn over their tickets - two of the three tickets were seized, but the third was saved when one of the teachers put it underneath an article of clothing.
"The U.S. Constitution was not available on site for comment, but expressed in a written statement support for "the freedom of speech" and "of the press" among other civil liberties," a Democratic news release said.
The Associated Press and local CBS affiliate KTVL captured Bush's principled stand against civil liberties in news accounts published immediately after the event.
The AP reported:
Three Medford school teachers were threatened with arrest and escorted from the event after they showed up wearing T-shirts with the slogan "Protect our civil liberties." All three said they applied for and received valid tickets from Republican headquarters in Medford.
The women said they did not intend to protest. "I wanted to see if I would be able to make a statement that I feel is important, but not offensive, in a rally for my president," said Janet Voorhies, 48, a teacher in training.
"We chose this phrase specifically because we didn't think it would be offensive or degrading or obscene," said Tania Tong, 34, a special education teacher.
Thursday's event in Oregon sets a new bar for a Bush/Cheney campaign that has taken extraordinary measures to screen the opinions of those who attend Bush and Cheney speeches. For months, the Bush/Cheney campaign has limited event access to those willing to volunteer in Bush/Cheney campaign offices. In recent weeks, the Bush/Cheney campaign has gone so far as to have those who voice dissenting viewpoints at their events arrested and charged as criminals.
Thursday's actions in Oregon set a new standard even for Bush/Cheney - removing and threatening with arrest citizens who in no way disrupt an event and wear clothing that expresses non-disruptive party-neutral viewpoints such as "Protect Our Civil Liberties."
When Vice President Dick Cheney visited Eugene, Oregon on Sept. 17, a 54-Year old woman named Perry Patterson was charged with criminal trespass for blurting the word "No" when Cheney said that George W. Bush has made the world safer.
One day before, Sue Niederer, 55, the mother of a slain American soldier in Iraq was cuffed and arrested for criminal trespass when she interrupted a Laura Bush speech in New Jersey. Both women had tickets to the event.
Well, you can download the entire wikipedia database in SQL and do whatever you want with it. That'd also be a good idea to find out how much space it would take up.
$130 for a 200GB drive? And those are at discount warehouses?
Go to PriceWatch and you can get 200GB drives for $100 including shipping. I've got a bunch of them stacked up for archival of video and audio. My last two batches came from a place on their called US-Depot (or something like that) and I had no problems with them either time.
Although, most people buy tapes and CDs thinking they are now their property, there is a distinction in the law between owning a copy of the CD and owning the songs on the CD. There is also a difference between a private performance of copyrighted music and a public performance. Most people recognize that purchasing a CD doesn't give them the right to make copies of it to give or sell to others. The record company and music publishers retain those rights. Similarly, the music on the CDs and tapes still belongs to the songwriter, composer or music publisher of the work. When you buy a tape or CD the purchase price covers only your private listening use, similar to the "home" use of "home" videos. Once you decide to play these tapes or CDs in your business, it becomes a public performance.
Songwriters, composers, and music publishers have the exclusive right of public performance of their musical works under the U.S. copyright law. Therefore, any public performance requires permission from the copyright owner - or BMI - if it is BMI-affiliated music. With a BMI Music Performance Agreement, you can publicly perform all BMI-affiliated music.
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This sounds like a "robot" in the same way we've come to know "robosauraus" (that giant dinosaur car that spits fire at monster truck shows) as a robot or those remote control toys on BattleBots/RobotWars.
This strikes me more as "animatronic" than anything else.
I'm tired of a lot of criminal activities, too. That doesn't mean I support putting everyone that commits a crime that I dislike in a prison cell. I can't stand pot-heads, but I don't want to send them to prison. I can't stand dead-beat dads, but I don't support putting them behind bars. Zero-tolerance style policies are an excuse to avoid excercising common sense and engaging in some very important critical thinking. Of course each situation is different and applying some brain-dead mandate is itself a miscarriage of justice and, I would suggest, robs citizens of their right to due process.
And if you feel that a spammer deserves a decade or two behind bars, then how can anyone possibly justify any other sentance for people like Kenneth Lay and the criminal bastards behind Enron, MCI, Martha Stewart and other corporations short of life in prison? Is some schmuck who sent out a few million spams - even if it's part of a pyramid scheme - deserving of a punishment that is ten-fold that of people who defraud thousands of life-long employees of their retirement?
Putting people in jail for spamming is just stupid. Reserve jail for people who commit violent crimes. Robbery, murder, rape, child molestation, assault and battery, burglary, hit and run and drunk driving.
/dev/null and even if the remaining 20% took one second from each person's life to handle, is taking one second of time from a few million people's lives worth sending someone to prison for 20% of *their* life?
Stop putting people in jail for smoking a joint or sending spam.
Does someone, regardless of the amount of spam they send, really deserve a decade or two in prison? Take out the "I hate spam" part of it. Just based on crime versus punishment. Does this punishment really fit that crime? Considering 80% of the spam was probably filtered directly to
If so, I want to start sticking advertisers and door to door solicitors in prison, right now.
Prison sentences for the heavy-handed fraud which was mentioned, makes sense. That's an existing crime that deserves punishment. But not for faking a damn SMTP header and sending it to people who didn't want it.
If we outsource medical care, how will American OBGYNs be able to continue practicing their love on women?
When I'm comfortable or not to cough up my driver's license is not at all relevant. What I'm comfortable with is unimportant when people's lives and property are at stake.
My grandfather built multi-million dollar houses for the rich thrugh his 70s and continued carpentry and yard work through his 80s, until he died. He finally stopped driving a few years after he began to have a habit of driving the wrong way down a street, failing to pull over when a fire truck was racing down the street with sirens blaring and so forth.
My grandmother's eyesight was slowly failing and while she isn't blind, she finally decided that she was too dangerous to be on the road. This, after a life of flawless driving with an absolutely clean and perfect record - beginning when she was only fourteen years old in the 1930s.
The fact is, people need to be held accountable and meet higher levels of competancy to be able to drive at any age. Especially if you're part of an age group that is six or seven times more likely to cause fatal accidents than every other age group.
And yes, being elderly and losing the independance your car gives you may be inconvenient, but it's also inconvenient for a child to lose the independance being alive gives or the independance a young girl may have in being able to use her legs and have a functioning spine.
As for myself, I don't even drive. I don't know if I ever will. I don't really have a need for it and it bores me. Not to mention, I don't have the greatest eyesight in the world and would hate to smash into someone.
Unfortunately, being a French car, it constantly yields to every other car on the road at every intersection, even when it doesn't need to.
In 1997, I was walking across a three lane street. Midle of the crosswalk and there is only one car on the road. It's across the intersection, on the other side, far enough away to stop. So I continue walking. Not thinking anything unusual.
But the guy doesn't stop! He drives through the crosswalk, through the intersection and smashes right through me! I fly up unto the hood of his car and he keeps driving. I roll up onto his windshield and the impact is so hard that the force of me landing crushes his windshield and roof. It takes almost two full blocks before he stops. He doesn't even consider putting on the break for the first block. He hit me with full driving force. Fortunatelly, I somehow made it without any serious injuries although I still suffer sore joints and muscle problems almost a decade later (at times). But at least I didn't break any bones or lose conciousness.
After he finally realized that he had hit something, slammed on the breaks and stopped - I went flying through the air and landed hard on the aslphalt about 50 feet down the road from his car. He had hit me so hard that his car had to be towed and totaled.
He didn't really have any excuse other than he just didn't see me. In the road. In the crosswalk. On an empty street.
*snicker*. I need to read K5 to become better informed? That's like reading Slashdot to improve your social life.
Perhaps YOU need to read and inform yourself a little better.
Drivers, 75 years old and more, are more dangerous than every other group except teenagers (who also shouldn't be allowed to drive so young). They are 400% to 600% more deadly than every other age group.
I guess you'd rather let a group of innocent toddlers and young children playing on a soccer field be killed by an elderly driver who went up a curb, through a field and plowed into them be killed than dare take a license away from from those holiest of holy "The Greatest Generation".
If there is something on the road that is a danger and the driver doesn't see, the car alerts the driver.
Now, if only they can devise a way to keep 85 year olds who think that it's their god given right to drive until the day they die, from slamming on the gas and destroying buildings and killing pedestrians because they thought it was the break pedal - or driving into THROUGH AN AIRPORT because they thought you return your car at the Hertz inside the airport.
My understanding (this was broken down to me by a radio guy, so he might not know quite as much as a label guy) is that artists almost aways get at least one point and sometimes two. But the artist still has their own expenses that have to come out of that $.80 to $1.60.
If you're an average band and you pull 1 point (80 cents) per album, you are still going to have to pay your lawyer, travel expenses, equipment, studio time and sometimes even your own videos out of that. But from the standpoint of the album points, it's one or two points.
Stealing music is stealing music, and we're all adults here. We don't need to sugar coat that. But at the same time, when an artist walks away with a dime out of every $16-$20 album (or even ends up broke in some instances after all expenses) - it's hard to call that anything but theft and strong-arming, either.
There are a lot of similarities between the mafia and record labels.
A guy I know in the industry broke it down for me the other day. 50% of all points go to advertising and promotion. Big labels do their own promotion and while they certainly employ advertising agencies, much of the expense is for their own internally generated work.
This makes sense for some albums. I'm sure that, for something like Ashlee Simpson, they roll out such a media blitz to convince teenage girls to buy her CDs that they easily spend 50% on advertising out of that $16 to $20.
However, what about the random smaller band that you never see on MTV? That you never hear played on the radio? That you never hear advertised or promoted in any way whatsoever? It seems like they probably don't spend 50% of their money on promotion.
Anyway, the main point is that very little expense comes from the cost of the physical product *or* the artist's cut. Most of the money goes to the label and toward brainwashing little kids on TRL.
You don't read very well, do you?
Did I say $20 was too much for a date? Did I say $20 was too much for a good movie? No, as you will understand if you read my comment a second time (perhaps slower this time?) - I said that there are very rarely any good movies worth going to see anymore. I would neither want to waste a date in front of a screen staring at a crappy movie like Eurotrip nor waste $20 on it.
I am quite open-handed with my cash and spare little expense on things that are worth it. The point is that today's movies are not worth it. There are more enjoyable things to spend $20 on.
Anyway, if you're going to spend a bunch of money on a date, it should be something interactive that you can get to know someone through. Not something passive and anti-social like vegetating at your local multi-plex.
I've always thought movies were a lame way to spend a date. You both go and sit and stare at a screen for two hours and walk out knowing nothing more about the person than you went in knowing.
Dinners are fine. Walks are fine. Going to a concert is fine. Going for a drive is fine. Going to the coast or a bookstore is fine. But going and staring at a movie? Not very interactive. Quite antisocial. And not very original.
I'm not sure what portion of a DVD's cost goes to cover promotion, but 50% of the cost of a CD does. So $10 of that $20 CD you might have just bought will go to cover things like apperances on MTV's TRL, appearances, radio play and other forms of advertising, which are usually handled by the record labels. In addition to that, the labels take cuts in other direct and indirect ways so that something like 70% of the points (a point is about 80 cents) on an album go to the label. The artist themselves usually get one or two points - so from that expensive album, they're getting 80 cents to $1.60. The cost to manufacture the CD and put the music on it and print the sleeve and wrap it is about 1 point.
:)
The reason they can afford to make DVDs for so cheap is probably because they've already factored the cost of promotion and other expenses into the movie itself and that is usually recovered in the box office long before it hits store shelves.
That and the fact that I'm sure they've conducted expensive research that has surely shown consumers are willing to spend six hours worth of pay on a CD or DVD, but not anything more than that. $20 for a CD and $30 for a DVD might be the price break after which people begin to stop and think "wait, do I really want to dish out this much of my income for a movie I'll only watch one time?".
I would find the cost of both DVD an CD to be acceptable if you were paying for the right to posess and view the content whenever you wanted for the rest of your life. But if your media is lost, stolen, damaged or wears out (or there hardware to play it is no longer made), then it's a rip off to have to pay for it all over again.
Just imagine you're some Star Wars dork and you payd $30 for three star wars movies on VHS. Then you spend $30 on each for laser disc. Then you spend $30 each for DVD. Then someone stole those DVDs or they were damaged while you were moving out of your dorm and you had to spend another $30. That's $480 on just three star wars movies over time - and your life isn't even half over year. Just wait until the next "big amazing format" comes out and you have to upgrade again if you ever want to watch those movies.
The best thing I've ever done is just give up buying DVDs and CDs and going to the theater. I have far more money in my pocket and can get more entertainment for the buck by purchasing used books at half the price.
Wow. Sir, if you ever need a kidney, just ask.... Never heard of this before!
Accidentally posted anon (and want to be able to see replies):
It's hard to justify the cost of a CD (or DVD, etc) to anyone in any country, if they've done the math and figured out where the $16 to $20 from each CD is going. Break it down and you'll find that about 75% of the points are going to the label in one way or another. Worse, as much goes to pay for advertising and promotion of the CD as goes to all other places (artist, representation, printing and pressing, shipping) *COMBINED*.
I found the best way to deal with this is just to avoid paying. I don't have cable anymore. I ditched it because the terrible programming wasn't worth $110/mo. I also don't buy DVDs or CDs and I don't go to the theater. Few movies are worth $10 per person these days. What, am I going to blow $20 so myself and a date can go watch Eurotrip? Get real.
I've taken the money I would have spent on the MPAA/RIAA/BSA goons and redirected it toward buying USED books. Instead of $30 to buy the latest ridiculous Spielberg rehash (ooh, this time he added three lighting effects in this one scene that weren't there before!) - I can use that $30 to buy half a dozen good reads. I've been working my way through the Top 100 Science Fiction Books of All Time (excluding the ones I'd previously read). Much better value. And when I'm through, I can hand them off to someone else without worrying about the MPAA/RIAA/BSA sending the FBI to break down my door and put me in prison for four years without due process.
If IP based networks are exempt from regulation, how is it that Powell and the FCC are planning to regulate IP based networks?
The government WILL NOT let the telcoms or the big movie and television industries go out of business. They will welfare and legislate them into the new world, to keep out the small competetive guys and keep their iron fist around it.
Just be glad your mind is still your own. For now.
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I can't speak for StreetFighter, but I know a girl in Lake Oswego that could probably hand you your ass in a few rounds of Counter Strike. Some guys at the UofO and I used to run a popular CS server (before I stopped playing most video games) and this girl named 'Val' was always on. She was probably around 18 at the time and she learned quickly. Oh, I actually knew another girl too on the same server from the same area, now that I think about it. She was pretty good, too.
Other than those two, the only females I've known who did much gaming played things like Sims, EverQuest and Ultima Online. There's clearly a distinction between the interests of both sexes, for the most part. Generally, it seems that females tend to avoid hard-core puzzle, strategy and action games. Even in MMORPGs, the 'action' and the 'fighting' tends to be a secondary or tertiary requisit for them. That's a broad description based on the women I've been around and people I've talked to, but it probably isn't too far off the mark, in general.
I'm ashamed to admit it, but I played The Sims Online for about a week. It wasn't for me. Boring and pointless. I gave it a chance, but it fell short (just like a lot of more male-oriented games did, like Anarchy Online, Shadowbane, ATITD, Rubies of Eventide...) The one thing that did stand out about The Sims Online, however, was the social interaction among players. Especially females. Within a few minutes of entering the game, I was invited to join a group of women who showed me the ropes, helped me out, gave me tips and eventually invited me to join their "house" (or whatever you call it in the game). The game play was painfully dull to me, but the community was unique. In most games, you won't see that kind of treatment. With most MMORPGs or FPS games, you join a server, create a character, figure out what the hell you are doing and start hacking stuff to bits all the while dodging the offcolor racist, homophobic and sexist remarks of pre-pubescent boys.
I wouldn't try to read some social theory or explanation into why there aren't many female gamers and why they're attracted to certain areas. Men and women are very different creatures and some things come more natural and are more appealing to one sex over the other (with interesting exceptions). The important thing is to welcome those people who do cross the boundaries and find enjoyment in it.
What bothers me more is the reaction of males any time someone with a female voice is playing (using the mic) or even just a female name logs into a server. You have three typical responses, such as those below:
The person who doubts that it's a female and makes a point of doubting it.
The person who goes out of their way to be a jerk to the female just to be a jerk.
The person who can't stop talking about the girl and sucks up to her and flirts with her and can't shut up about how hot he thinks it is that a person with breasts is playing his favorite game.
It would be nice if a female could join a server and we could all continue to play as normal without regressing into a pack of slobbering penises.
I also have a sister who has always played videogames. Not addictively like myself, my brother or any other male I know, but quite a bit nevertheless. She doesn't play online games, but has played almost everythign else on PS2/X-Box that she's come across. The frustrating thing is that it comes so natural to her. She's almost 20 now and as long as I can remember, she could walk into a room while my younger brother and I are playing and pick up a controller... and breeze right through things that we'd spent hours trying to beat. We'd take days or weeks to beat a game and she could do it in a couple sittings. ARGH! She's a bit of a tom-boy, but not much. She's just very *very* adept at the videogame thing, I guess.
Another story from the same event. There were three women that were kicked out of the gathering and threatened with being arrested for wearing obscene tee-shirts to tht event. What did the tee-shirts say?
7 12.htm
"Protect our civil liberties"
http://www.bend.com/news/ar_view%5E3Far_id%5E3D18
From Bend.com news sources
Posted: Thursday, October 14, 2004 10:24 PM
Reference Code: PR-18712
October 14 - MEDFORD - President Bush taught three Oregon schoolteachers a new lesson in irony - or tragedy - Thursday night when his campaign removed them from a Bush speech and threatened them with arrest simply for wearing t-shirts that said "Protect Our Civil Liberties," the Democratic Party of Oregon reported.
The women were ticketed to the event, admitted into the event, and were then approached by event officials before the president's speech. They were asked to leave and to turn over their tickets - two of the three tickets were seized, but the third was saved when one of the teachers put it underneath an article of clothing.
"The U.S. Constitution was not available on site for comment, but expressed in a written statement support for "the freedom of speech" and "of the press" among other civil liberties," a Democratic news release said.
The Associated Press and local CBS affiliate KTVL captured Bush's principled stand against civil liberties in news accounts published immediately after the event.
The AP reported:
Three Medford school teachers were threatened with arrest and escorted from the event after they showed up wearing T-shirts with the slogan "Protect our civil liberties." All three said they applied for and received valid tickets from Republican headquarters in Medford.
The women said they did not intend to protest. "I wanted to see if I would be able to make a statement that I feel is important, but not offensive, in a rally for my president," said Janet Voorhies, 48, a teacher in training.
"We chose this phrase specifically because we didn't think it would be offensive or degrading or obscene," said Tania Tong, 34, a special education teacher.
Thursday's event in Oregon sets a new bar for a Bush/Cheney campaign that has taken extraordinary measures to screen the opinions of those who attend Bush and Cheney speeches. For months, the Bush/Cheney campaign has limited event access to those willing to volunteer in Bush/Cheney campaign offices. In recent weeks, the Bush/Cheney campaign has gone so far as to have those who voice dissenting viewpoints at their events arrested and charged as criminals.
Thursday's actions in Oregon set a new standard even for Bush/Cheney - removing and threatening with arrest citizens who in no way disrupt an event and wear clothing that expresses non-disruptive party-neutral viewpoints such as "Protect Our Civil Liberties."
When Vice President Dick Cheney visited Eugene, Oregon on Sept. 17, a 54-Year old woman named Perry Patterson was charged with criminal trespass for blurting the word "No" when Cheney said that George W. Bush has made the world safer.
One day before, Sue Niederer, 55, the mother of a slain American soldier in Iraq was cuffed and arrested for criminal trespass when she interrupted a Laura Bush speech in New Jersey. Both women had tickets to the event.
stupid Pronunciation Key (stpd, sty-)
adj. stupider, stupidest
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Now who's stupid?
Well, you can download the entire wikipedia database in SQL and do whatever you want with it. That'd also be a good idea to find out how much space it would take up.
We already laugh at those 5 digit n00bs for the same reason. ;)
$130 for a 200GB drive? And those are at discount warehouses?
Go to PriceWatch and you can get 200GB drives for $100 including shipping. I've got a bunch of them stacked up for archival of video and audio. My last two batches came from a place on their called US-Depot (or something like that) and I had no problems with them either time.
Yes, you need to license your hold music in America.
BMI Records on Music On Hold
Although, most people buy tapes and CDs thinking they are now their property, there is a distinction in the law between owning a copy of the CD and owning the songs on the CD. There is also a difference between a private performance of copyrighted music and a public performance. Most people recognize that purchasing a CD doesn't give them the right to make copies of it to give or sell to others. The record company and music publishers retain those rights. Similarly, the music on the CDs and tapes still belongs to the songwriter, composer or music publisher of the work. When you buy a tape or CD the purchase price covers only your private listening use, similar to the "home" use of "home" videos. Once you decide to play these tapes or CDs in your business, it becomes a public performance.
Songwriters, composers, and music publishers have the exclusive right of public performance of their musical works under the U.S. copyright law. Therefore, any public performance requires permission from the copyright owner - or BMI - if it is BMI-affiliated music. With a BMI Music Performance Agreement, you can publicly perform all BMI-affiliated music.
TikiWiki and TWiki are not the same wiki engines.