Would the question in this forum be more accurately titled, who doesn't want a Gmail invitation?? Seems like just about everyone either has one already, or at least wants to get one for their spam respository..
But I for one would like to check it out and apparently I am not geeky enough to have gotten an invitation already...
Symbol makes a CCD based bar code scanner. Basically it takes pictures and firmware/software digitally detect the barcode thru image processing. Great thing about it is that you can barcode something, AND take pictures of it. EG if the product is damaged er whatever.
Same concept here, but you use OCR processing here, instead of detecting lines.
--Matthew Schiller
Previous Symbol Electrical Engineer
I think you missed a fundamental point. The United States didn't contribute massively to the head count of soldiers etc [ at least not early on!]. The United States contribution was in a fully functional industrial and research base. Well before the United States officially entered the war we were supplying massive quantities of War equipment and technology secretly to the Allied war effort [England and France]. We couldn't do much more due to the political situation at home, but what we did was quite substantial! After Japan made the massive mistake of attacking Pearl Harbor [I hasten to add that early radar SHOULD have prevented that, so there is evidence to suggest the Military/Government LET it happen to manipulate the political situation], the political situation changed and we were able to help in a more definitive way.
While the USSR was a massive help in containing Nazi Germany, I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that the allies would have LOST without their support. If they had stayed neutral and only protected their own borders, the allies may still have won due to the development of nuclear weapons and Radar. Admitedly Germany wasn't far behind, so the outcome would not of been certain. What is for certain without the attack from two fronts, the war would have been messier for the U.S. and Europe alike.
But remember folks the fundamental help America gave to the War effort in Europe wasn't men, but equipment and technology from our fully functional technological base. [When America joined the war in Earnest December 7th, 1943, England and France were already in shambles!].
After the war, there is no denying the US contribution to rebuilding Western Europe. Of course Eastern Europe recieved no such help, but that's another story.... And the greedy bastards we are, took full advantage of the situation as we became the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world [As the only truly industrialized nation in the world after WWII, we had a certain number of years before Western Europe rebuilt their industrial base, while Russia lagged behind due to their economic policies].
Of course the real success story was Japan, who used the situation to MODERNIZE their factories......
I used Damn Small Linux for my picture frame. I took his debian package list and liberal use of the rm command to strip it down to a command line only version. Then I found a frame buffer picture viewer [with slideshow mode]. The os weighed in at about 20MB, so even a 64MB or 128MB CF card was plenty for a decent amount of pictures (remember to prescale them to screensize to save space). The OS also implements Wireless support for a Symbol CF card Wireless card. Since my target had a two CF slots (one of which was bootable).. With Samba client installed. I made everything work off a FAT filesystem so if I was being lazy I could pop it directly into my WinXP computer or even my digital camera (see note about prescaling the images to size though, saves processor time and disk space!)
I could probably scrounge up the disk image if you wanted to start from my work... Though not sure I have the image with the development tools installed still to add/remove stuff. So if you wanted full flexibility you'd want to start from Damnsmall and work back..
Knoppix is definitely your friend here, but I'd start with something already on the small size, so you aren't removing Openoffice etc...
-- Matthew
Ok.. I think you've been reading too much Paul. Why don't you take a look at the Gospels and James a little bit more and keep an open mind.
Sometimes certain denominations [uh conservative Lutheranism comes to mind...] focus on one topic without looking at the bigger picture. While faith is of supreme importance [you can't BUY your way into heaven, see the rich man and heaven parable], you fail to mention that if you have Faith, you also have works, since they interelate. As James says: Faith without works is DEAD. [James 2:14-18]. A person of faith, does more then believe in God, s/he lets God work through him. You could say that the works are not his they are God's... But in anycase to an outsider you are doing good works. No those works don't go down as points towards heaven, but they do help to reinforce your faith which does! Without them, in my opinion, your faith begins to wither and die.
In my humble opinion, this distinction is of supreme importance... You can't mention Justification by Faith alone, without recognizing that Faith involves doing good works.
Yeah Yeah, I'm not a very good Lutheran, Episcopal or Catholic.... [Various denominations I've attended in my spiritual life, currently attending a Catholic parish]. But the above is my number one concern with some Lutheran congregations, they get so tied around the Justification by Faith doctrine, that they don't do anything but talk about that. Shoot my youth group leader growing up got thrown out of my Lutheran Parish for spending a few weeks on the James quote above. So needless to say this is a touchy subject for me. In my eyes, and of course I shouldn't be judging anyway since that's God's job, the congregations faith withered and died well before they were capable of doing that...
-- Matthew
Yeah Yeah I don't like HTML and didn't use the freaking See my other comment on feelings about textboxes that accept carriage returns and then don't use them, and yeah I could have used the preview button... But I'm lame ok?... Now here's a better formatted program:
---------
10 Print "How old were you when you wrote your first basic program?"
20 Print "A) 0-5 years old"
30 Print "B) 5-7 years old"
40 Print "C) 8-10 years old"
50 Print "D) 11-13 years old"
60 Print "E) 14-16 years old"
70 Print "F) >16 years old"
80 Print "G) Basic, What's Basic?"
90 Input x ....
I for one would fit into catagory A, on a commodore 64.. Knew how to format a floppy at age 5, much to my brothers' chargrin when I wiped out their saved games and papers.... Got in BIG trouble for that one... But hey it was fun proving I could format a disk!
Slashdot shouldn't required HTML f*cking tags for comments to look right... Why does the textbox accept carraige returns if they aren't going to be used... Many many websites do this and it's stupid..
(Yeah, Yeah the real problem may be the browser, in this case FireFox, but still!)
READ MY LIPS: For simple formating (i.e. Carraige returns!) I shouldn't need to know or use HTML tags!
10 Print "How old were you when you wrote your first basic program?"
20 Print "A) 0-5 years old"
30 Print "B) 5-7 years old"
40 Print "C) 8-10 years old"
50 Print "D) 11-13 years old"
60 Print "E) 14-16 years old"
70 Print "F) >16 years old"
80 Print "G) Basic, What's Basic?"
90 Input x....
I for one would fit into catagory A, on a commodore 64.. Knew how to format a floppy at age 5, much to my brother chargrin when I wiped out their saved games and papers.... Got in BIG trouble for that one...
Being an original Arpanet site hath it's privledges.
Of course it also helps to have a major internet routing site on campus as well....
I guess the folks running the network back when just had the forsight to realize that holding ON to their class A would be worth something someday [either to sell portions of it for added endowment or to just have plenty of IP addressess.. At MIT every building has it's own class B! Nothing like have fixed IP's for every one of your computers...]
Matthew Schiller
Class of 2002 Course 6.2
Question #1: Do you use your mp3's while driving a car or while Jogging?
I'd guess you don't if you can honestly say you can tell the difference between 320kbps and 128 or even 96. Sure you can in a nice quier environment, with mid to high level equipment.. But jogging??? or with Highway speed road noise???
Sheesh I'd hasten to guess the average mp3 player + headphones doesn't even have clean enough audio to really get much benefit from 320kbps in a quiet environment, but you add in outside noise???
Sheesh people, when choosing a bitrate consider how your going to use your music. For a portable MP3 Player (being used while jogging, walking, driving a card etc!), I'd guess 95% of the population is going to be perfectly happy with 128kbps audio, perhaps even 64kbps for some songs. [Trust me your not missing much on about 50% of the top 40 songs out there, so way not record those songs at an appopriate bit rate?]
I for one don't need a high bitrate for my MP3 listening habits... 90% of time I'm listening on $10 headphones or laptop speakers.. In those circumstances who cares the bit rate!!!
Agreed I am biased.. But see my other posts abouts more useful ways to use the technology...
Summary:
Implement Motion blur (instead of letting the monitor/eye do it for you)
Focus on a minimum frame rate (Drop frames or detail only as a last resort!!)
Never waste GPU time rendering frames above the minimum in your display chain: (Monitor Refresh rate, Human Eye's ability to see, etc)
So the question becomes... Why don't the 3D designers etc, implement a motion blur. It should actually make things easier to render since by definition there isn't as much detail... I guess you'd need to calculate the direction of the blur, and such, but you don't need the full 3d render to get a pretty good blur....
Agreed.. If your GPU only gets 30 fps standing still with no action on the screen your screwed.. But the important thing here is you should never drop below 30fps (say 60fps for a typical LCD).. Having 100 fps at maximum complexity is wasteful. And insisting on having your detail/resolution set to high and complaining the game is slow is silly too.. Do you need pretty graphics to kill people? not really so shouldn't games dynamically decrease detail to unsure playable game conditions (>30hz, preferably >=60hz)... And actually your wrong..
A monitor that refreshes at 60hz can not show frames that change faster then 60 times per a second. So if your "frame rate" is 100fps your skipping [on average] 40 frames on the display. Thus your EYE has no chance to see those frames. Therefore there was no reason to RENDER those frames. Should have just skipped them.... Thus, with a properly designed GPU and Game, you didn't need as fast of a GPU.. [Granted gamers typically don't like LCD's!)
I guess for the fanatic gamer they have a CRT that may sync at 120hz, so it MAY benefit them to have 100 fps...
Last time I played a video Game? Yesterday..
Master of Orion I (a real video game!)
Last time I played a First Person Shooter? about 2 weeks ago. First Person Shooter played? Descent II.
Difference between older First Person Shooters and new ones? Pretty Graphics...
Sufficent to drop $$$ on game? NOPE!
Reason your games look better at 100? You used the monitor/LCD/your eye to blur fast moving things. Simple solution: Decrease your detail level or Resolution. Effect is the same...
The point is you DON'T NEED to render at 70 fps to look good.. Why don't you focus on getting a MINIMUM of 30? I mean it shouldn't be too hard to drop detail on fast moving sections if the hardware doesn't keep up, I highly doubt the player is really going to notice a detail drop when ACTUALLY running through the game and Killing stuff. When they slow down more detail makes sense. Instead the games just demand fast hardware to run and the gamers brag about how "fast" their hardware is, instead of saying yeah I can play the game. That's good enough. Yes pretty games look nice, but there should be more to the game then pretty graphics. And for what it's worth I played First person shooters till DoomII / Descent II. Then I gave them up as a waste of time... After all they really are all the same....
Sheesh with a "GPU" that big why don't we just use it as a second processor!. I guess their target market is teenagers and college students who spend 90+% of their time playing first person shooters and think that 100fps in Q3A or the vaporware DoomIII means anything.. I hate to say it but what's the good of 100fps when the human eye only sees about 30 fps? There's a reason TV and Movies run at about 30 [tv's are 60 but interlaced!].... Shoot your average LCD or even CRT can't even refresh that fast. [Most LCD's run at 60hz, since they can't turn the LCD on and off faster then that anyway. Granted CRT's can run a bit faster, but to a large extent even the phosphers don't respond at 100hz, even if the input circuitry syncs that fast].
I wonder how many people buy this and then spend the majority of their time Surfing the web where it makes very little difference.. A cheap ass $60 video card works fine for 90% of what I do. The only time I needed anything fancy was for 3-d modeling of my house.... Of course I play games that actually make you think... Turn Based Strategy all the way man....
We waste money on bragging rights instead of focusing on things that actually matter....
So what if I'm a Taxachusetts's resident, who typically pays 5% sales tax. I visit California, see a great buy on a laptop at Fry's and pay the 8.5% sales tax.. Do I get a credit for the 3.5% of say $2000? (I want my $70!) I doubt it...
Actually the logic here works the other way.. If the Average Joe rejected the cult nature of Pro Sports (also applies to Movies etc) and refused to pay the high ticket prices, the sports teams would be forced to charge less for tickets.. WIth less money available to the owners the players would be paid less...
The media has made Sports and certain other media formats to be Cult-Like. People pay outrageous amounts of money because it's the "in" thing to do...
What would happen if people rejected paying $12 dollars to see a movie and instead only saw the movies in the discount second run theatre for $3.50?
Well frankly that doesn't make it any better. The Simpsons and 95% of what is on TV these days is an utter waste of time. It's bad enough that people watch that crap, but they pay good money for T-Shirts Toys, etc. Let see what is the number one influence Simpsons has on society... Adding the word DOH! to the English language.. Great, just what we need... More mind numbing stupidfying media... The isn't to say that Simpsons isn't amusing, but it's crude humor depicting a dysfunctional family is what draws in the crowds, not it's cultural references which actually make the show halfway worthwhile for those of us that use our brains. I wouldn't mind Simpsons so much if it wasn't that they throw into so much crudity for the 5 minutes or so of worthwileness.. Sheesh....
Sure the actors themselves perhaps aren't at fault for wanting their own fair share, but the industry as a whole as let things get out of hand. The result? The little guy with no real bargaining power in the industry pays the price. The average Joe actually, for reasons beyond me, enjoy the crude humor and thus like the show, but they are at the mercy of the Media source since it's not like there is a large number of similar products on the market. (Simpsons is rather unique, although Futurama and King of the Hill fall in the same Genre, those I believe are ALSO FOX shows.) The result? The Average Joe, enjoying the general show content, is at the mercy of the Media. They like the show, they want the clothes, toys, etc so must pay the price....
The fundamental problem here is that we as a society has become addicted to Television. Then greed has led to the current state of affairs.
Just my 2 cents...
Slashdot Mirror
Would the question in this forum be more accurately titled, who doesn't want a Gmail invitation?? Seems like just about everyone either has one already, or at least wants to get one for their spam respository..
But I for one would like to check it out and apparently I am not geeky enough to have gotten an invitation already...
-- Matthew Schiller
mschiller at alum.mit.edu
Your probably right about it using a CCD. But that doesn't mean it's not like "the Optical Scanners used to read bar codes"
a rcode_handheld_vs4000.html
See:
http://www.symbol.com/products/barcode_scanners/b
Symbol makes a CCD based bar code scanner. Basically it takes pictures and firmware/software digitally detect the barcode thru image processing. Great thing about it is that you can barcode something, AND take pictures of it. EG if the product is damaged er whatever.
Same concept here, but you use OCR processing here, instead of detecting lines.
--Matthew Schiller Previous Symbol Electrical Engineer
Sue me... My memory sucks and I got the year wrong... Let's try Japan bombing pearl harbor December 7th, 1941 -- Matthew
I think you missed a fundamental point. The United States didn't contribute massively to the head count of soldiers etc [ at least not early on!]. The United States contribution was in a fully functional industrial and research base. Well before the United States officially entered the war we were supplying massive quantities of War equipment and technology secretly to the Allied war effort [England and France]. We couldn't do much more due to the political situation at home, but what we did was quite substantial! After Japan made the massive mistake of attacking Pearl Harbor [I hasten to add that early radar SHOULD have prevented that, so there is evidence to suggest the Military/Government LET it happen to manipulate the political situation], the political situation changed and we were able to help in a more definitive way.
While the USSR was a massive help in containing Nazi Germany, I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that the allies would have LOST without their support. If they had stayed neutral and only protected their own borders, the allies may still have won due to the development of nuclear weapons and Radar. Admitedly Germany wasn't far behind, so the outcome would not of been certain. What is for certain without the attack from two fronts, the war would have been messier for the U.S. and Europe alike.
But remember folks the fundamental help America gave to the War effort in Europe wasn't men, but equipment and technology from our fully functional technological base. [When America joined the war in Earnest December 7th, 1943, England and France were already in shambles!].
After the war, there is no denying the US contribution to rebuilding Western Europe. Of course Eastern Europe recieved no such help, but that's another story.... And the greedy bastards we are, took full advantage of the situation as we became the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world [As the only truly industrialized nation in the world after WWII, we had a certain number of years before Western Europe rebuilt their industrial base, while Russia lagged behind due to their economic policies].
Of course the real success story was Japan, who used the situation to MODERNIZE their factories......
I used Damn Small Linux for my picture frame. I took his debian package list and liberal use of the rm command to strip it down to a command line only version. Then I found a frame buffer picture viewer [with slideshow mode]. The os weighed in at about 20MB, so even a 64MB or 128MB CF card was plenty for a decent amount of pictures (remember to prescale them to screensize to save space). The OS also implements Wireless support for a Symbol CF card Wireless card. Since my target had a two CF slots (one of which was bootable).. With Samba client installed. I made everything work off a FAT filesystem so if I was being lazy I could pop it directly into my WinXP computer or even my digital camera (see note about prescaling the images to size though, saves processor time and disk space!) I could probably scrounge up the disk image if you wanted to start from my work... Though not sure I have the image with the development tools installed still to add/remove stuff. So if you wanted full flexibility you'd want to start from Damnsmall and work back.. Knoppix is definitely your friend here, but I'd start with something already on the small size, so you aren't removing Openoffice etc... -- Matthew
Ok.. I think you've been reading too much Paul. Why don't you take a look at the Gospels and James a little bit more and keep an open mind.
Sometimes certain denominations [uh conservative Lutheranism comes to mind...] focus on one topic without looking at the bigger picture. While faith is of supreme importance [you can't BUY your way into heaven, see the rich man and heaven parable], you fail to mention that if you have Faith, you also have works, since they interelate. As James says: Faith without works is DEAD. [James 2:14-18]. A person of faith, does more then believe in God, s/he lets God work through him. You could say that the works are not his they are God's... But in anycase to an outsider you are doing good works. No those works don't go down as points towards heaven, but they do help to reinforce your faith which does! Without them, in my opinion, your faith begins to wither and die.
In my humble opinion, this distinction is of supreme importance... You can't mention Justification by Faith alone, without recognizing that Faith involves doing good works.
Yeah Yeah, I'm not a very good Lutheran, Episcopal or Catholic.... [Various denominations I've attended in my spiritual life, currently attending a Catholic parish]. But the above is my number one concern with some Lutheran congregations, they get so tied around the Justification by Faith doctrine, that they don't do anything but talk about that. Shoot my youth group leader growing up got thrown out of my Lutheran Parish for spending a few weeks on the James quote above. So needless to say this is a touchy subject for me. In my eyes, and of course I shouldn't be judging anyway since that's God's job, the congregations faith withered and died well before they were capable of doing that... -- Matthew
Yeah Yeah I don't like HTML and didn't use the freaking
....
See my other comment on feelings about textboxes that accept carriage returns and then don't use them, and yeah I could have used the preview button... But I'm lame ok?... Now here's a better formatted program: --------- 10 Print "How old were you when you wrote your first basic program?"
20 Print "A) 0-5 years old"
30 Print "B) 5-7 years old"
40 Print "C) 8-10 years old"
50 Print "D) 11-13 years old"
60 Print "E) 14-16 years old"
70 Print "F) >16 years old"
80 Print "G) Basic, What's Basic?"
90 Input x
I for one would fit into catagory A, on a commodore 64.. Knew how to format a floppy at age 5, much to my brothers' chargrin when I wiped out their saved games and papers.... Got in BIG trouble for that one... But hey it was fun proving I could format a disk!
Slashdot shouldn't required HTML f*cking tags for comments to look right... Why does the textbox accept carraige returns if they aren't going to be used... Many many websites do this and it's stupid..
(Yeah, Yeah the real problem may be the browser, in this case FireFox, but still!)
READ MY LIPS: For simple formating (i.e. Carraige returns!) I shouldn't need to know or use HTML tags!
10 Print "How old were you when you wrote your first basic program?" 20 Print "A) 0-5 years old" 30 Print "B) 5-7 years old" 40 Print "C) 8-10 years old" 50 Print "D) 11-13 years old" 60 Print "E) 14-16 years old" 70 Print "F) >16 years old" 80 Print "G) Basic, What's Basic?" 90 Input x ....
I for one would fit into catagory A, on a commodore 64.. Knew how to format a floppy at age 5, much to my brother chargrin when I wiped out their saved games and papers.... Got in BIG trouble for that one...
Being an original Arpanet site hath it's privledges. Of course it also helps to have a major internet routing site on campus as well.... I guess the folks running the network back when just had the forsight to realize that holding ON to their class A would be worth something someday [either to sell portions of it for added endowment or to just have plenty of IP addressess.. At MIT every building has it's own class B! Nothing like have fixed IP's for every one of your computers...] Matthew Schiller Class of 2002 Course 6.2
Question #1: Do you use your mp3's while driving a car or while Jogging? I'd guess you don't if you can honestly say you can tell the difference between 320kbps and 128 or even 96. Sure you can in a nice quier environment, with mid to high level equipment.. But jogging??? or with Highway speed road noise??? Sheesh I'd hasten to guess the average mp3 player + headphones doesn't even have clean enough audio to really get much benefit from 320kbps in a quiet environment, but you add in outside noise??? Sheesh people, when choosing a bitrate consider how your going to use your music. For a portable MP3 Player (being used while jogging, walking, driving a card etc!), I'd guess 95% of the population is going to be perfectly happy with 128kbps audio, perhaps even 64kbps for some songs. [Trust me your not missing much on about 50% of the top 40 songs out there, so way not record those songs at an appopriate bit rate?] I for one don't need a high bitrate for my MP3 listening habits... 90% of time I'm listening on $10 headphones or laptop speakers.. In those circumstances who cares the bit rate!!!
Your Right all the Star Trek movies were better than that...
I'll be see it the first weekend in the theatre: 100%
Potential to suck: 75%
Potential to be Great: 25%
Agreed I am biased.. But see my other posts abouts more useful ways to use the technology... Summary: Implement Motion blur (instead of letting the monitor/eye do it for you) Focus on a minimum frame rate (Drop frames or detail only as a last resort!!) Never waste GPU time rendering frames above the minimum in your display chain: (Monitor Refresh rate, Human Eye's ability to see, etc)
So the question becomes... Why don't the 3D designers etc, implement a motion blur. It should actually make things easier to render since by definition there isn't as much detail... I guess you'd need to calculate the direction of the blur, and such, but you don't need the full 3d render to get a pretty good blur....
Agreed.. If your GPU only gets 30 fps standing still with no action on the screen your screwed.. But the important thing here is you should never drop below 30fps (say 60fps for a typical LCD).. Having 100 fps at maximum complexity is wasteful. And insisting on having your detail/resolution set to high and complaining the game is slow is silly too.. Do you need pretty graphics to kill people? not really so shouldn't games dynamically decrease detail to unsure playable game conditions (>30hz, preferably >=60hz)... And actually your wrong.. A monitor that refreshes at 60hz can not show frames that change faster then 60 times per a second. So if your "frame rate" is 100fps your skipping [on average] 40 frames on the display. Thus your EYE has no chance to see those frames. Therefore there was no reason to RENDER those frames. Should have just skipped them.... Thus, with a properly designed GPU and Game, you didn't need as fast of a GPU.. [Granted gamers typically don't like LCD's!) I guess for the fanatic gamer they have a CRT that may sync at 120hz, so it MAY benefit them to have 100 fps...
Last time I played a video Game? Yesterday.. Master of Orion I (a real video game!) Last time I played a First Person Shooter? about 2 weeks ago. First Person Shooter played? Descent II. Difference between older First Person Shooters and new ones? Pretty Graphics... Sufficent to drop $$$ on game? NOPE! Reason your games look better at 100? You used the monitor/LCD/your eye to blur fast moving things. Simple solution: Decrease your detail level or Resolution. Effect is the same...
The point is you DON'T NEED to render at 70 fps to look good.. Why don't you focus on getting a MINIMUM of 30? I mean it shouldn't be too hard to drop detail on fast moving sections if the hardware doesn't keep up, I highly doubt the player is really going to notice a detail drop when ACTUALLY running through the game and Killing stuff. When they slow down more detail makes sense. Instead the games just demand fast hardware to run and the gamers brag about how "fast" their hardware is, instead of saying yeah I can play the game. That's good enough. Yes pretty games look nice, but there should be more to the game then pretty graphics. And for what it's worth I played First person shooters till DoomII / Descent II. Then I gave them up as a waste of time... After all they really are all the same....
Master of Orion 1 and 2 (3 sucks!!!) Been playing 1 mostly recently.. Actually I'm 23, so I'm making alot more people look old and bitter... Sorry...
Sheesh with a "GPU" that big why don't we just use it as a second processor!. I guess their target market is teenagers and college students who spend 90+% of their time playing first person shooters and think that 100fps in Q3A or the vaporware DoomIII means anything.. I hate to say it but what's the good of 100fps when the human eye only sees about 30 fps? There's a reason TV and Movies run at about 30 [tv's are 60 but interlaced!].... Shoot your average LCD or even CRT can't even refresh that fast. [Most LCD's run at 60hz, since they can't turn the LCD on and off faster then that anyway. Granted CRT's can run a bit faster, but to a large extent even the phosphers don't respond at 100hz, even if the input circuitry syncs that fast]. I wonder how many people buy this and then spend the majority of their time Surfing the web where it makes very little difference.. A cheap ass $60 video card works fine for 90% of what I do. The only time I needed anything fancy was for 3-d modeling of my house.... Of course I play games that actually make you think... Turn Based Strategy all the way man.... We waste money on bragging rights instead of focusing on things that actually matter....
So what if I'm a Taxachusetts's resident, who typically pays 5% sales tax. I visit California, see a great buy on a laptop at Fry's and pay the 8.5% sales tax.. Do I get a credit for the 3.5% of say $2000? (I want my $70!) I doubt it...
Yeah Yeah.. Something about typing in a Web broswer makes my English Skills drop..... Sue Me...
Actually the logic here works the other way.. If the Average Joe rejected the cult nature of Pro Sports (also applies to Movies etc) and refused to pay the high ticket prices, the sports teams would be forced to charge less for tickets.. WIth less money available to the owners the players would be paid less... The media has made Sports and certain other media formats to be Cult-Like. People pay outrageous amounts of money because it's the "in" thing to do... What would happen if people rejected paying $12 dollars to see a movie and instead only saw the movies in the discount second run theatre for $3.50?
Well frankly that doesn't make it any better. The Simpsons and 95% of what is on TV these days is an utter waste of time. It's bad enough that people watch that crap, but they pay good money for T-Shirts Toys, etc. Let see what is the number one influence Simpsons has on society... Adding the word DOH! to the English language.. Great, just what we need... More mind numbing stupidfying media... The isn't to say that Simpsons isn't amusing, but it's crude humor depicting a dysfunctional family is what draws in the crowds, not it's cultural references which actually make the show halfway worthwhile for those of us that use our brains. I wouldn't mind Simpsons so much if it wasn't that they throw into so much crudity for the 5 minutes or so of worthwileness.. Sheesh.... Sure the actors themselves perhaps aren't at fault for wanting their own fair share, but the industry as a whole as let things get out of hand. The result? The little guy with no real bargaining power in the industry pays the price. The average Joe actually, for reasons beyond me, enjoy the crude humor and thus like the show, but they are at the mercy of the Media source since it's not like there is a large number of similar products on the market. (Simpsons is rather unique, although Futurama and King of the Hill fall in the same Genre, those I believe are ALSO FOX shows.) The result? The Average Joe, enjoying the general show content, is at the mercy of the Media. They like the show, they want the clothes, toys, etc so must pay the price.... The fundamental problem here is that we as a society has become addicted to Television. Then greed has led to the current state of affairs. Just my 2 cents...