It could be done for a lot less than $80 million if fans were willing to accept some changes in the production methods of the show. Here are my ideas:
1. Use a prosumer type videocams to record shows instead of network grade production equipment. 2. Don't use the studio sets to produce the show; build a set on somebody's property elsewhere. 3. Don't use the actors; go to a theatre school and find some actors. You don't need Mr. Quantum Leap to be the captain. In the theatre business, plays are produced over and over with different actors all the time. 4. I'm sure a bunch of slashdotters could scrounge up some CRT's and write some graphics to simulate the computer technology shown on the ship. 5. Use scripts written by fans instead of the schlock that Berman et al have been putting out.
Of course none of this will happen because of the hammerlock on the copyrights that Roddenberry's estate has. I think that is part of the problem with the franchise; Roddenberry's will constrains the types of plots that can be used in these shows.
I like your "oo" companies reference-maybe this will become the next internet fad. "We must include the "oo" in the name of our website because "Google" and "Yahoo" have become so successful." I think I'll start up a new auction website... "OOBay"
I believe that at the time no other extrasolar planets had been found, so the scientific consensus had been "we haven't seen any so they don't exist." Sure, now that other planets that bear more similarity to ones in our solar system have been found a planet orbiting a dead star wouldn't be exciting but back in 1990 this should have been newsworthy.
According to the referenced article, this chip is supposed to be able to transmit data to and from off-chip memory at 100 gigabytes per second.
The same article has this hilarious quote from an Intel Fellow: "One of the big problems with Cell, said Justin Rattner, an Intel Fellow, is that the processing units aren't identical, a situation that increases complexity and the opportunity for bugs."
This from a company whose early microprocessor designs were frequently referred to as "brain-damaged."
"Working Group on Extrasolar Planets Defintion of a "Planet"
POSITION STATEMENT ON THE DEFINITION OF A "PLANET"
WORKING GROUP ON EXTRASOLAR PLANETS (WGESP) OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASTRONOMICAL UNION
Created: February 28, 2001
Last Modified: February 28, 2003
Rather than try to construct a detailed definition of a planet which is designed to cover all future possibilities, the WGESP has agreed to restrict itself to developing a working definition applicable to the cases where there already are claimed detections, e.g., the radial velocity surveys of companions to (mostly) solar-type stars, and the imaging surveys for free-floating objects in young star clusters. As new claims are made in the future, the WGESP will weigh their individual merits and circumstances, and will try to fit the new objects into the WGESP definition of a "planet", revising this definition as necessary. This is a gradualist approach with an evolving definition, guided by the observations that will decide all in the end.
Emphasizing again that this is only a working definition, subject to change as we learn more about the census of low-mass companions, the WGESP has agreed to the following statements:
1) Objects with true masses below the limiting mass for thermonuclear fusion of deuterium (currently calculated to be 13 Jupiter masses for objects of solar metallicity) that orbit stars or stellar remnants are "planets" (no matter how they formed). The minimum mass/size required for an extrasolar object to be considered a planet should be the same as that used in our Solar System.
2) Substellar objects with true masses above the limiting mass for thermonuclear fusion of deuterium are "brown dwarfs", no matter how they formed nor where they are located.
3) Free-floating objects in young star clusters with masses below the limiting mass for thermonuclear fusion of deuterium are not "planets", but are "sub-brown dwarfs" (or whatever name is most appropriate).
These statements are a compromise between definitions based purely on the deuterium-burning mass or on the formation mechanism, and as such do not fully satisfy anyone on the WGESP. However, the WGESP agrees that these statements constitute the basis for a reasonable working definition of a "planet" at this time. We can expect this definition to evolve as our knowledge improves."
It looks like this is as close as we're going to get.
How can this professor not be considered mainstream? He's on the faculty at Penn State! Sounds like he must have ticked off the wrong people at some point in his career. Maybe he needs to hire a PR person. I would say that finding a planet orbiting any star would be significant news, regardless of whether said planet might harbor life.
I believe that there is great value in having unencumbered versions of basic software. The core functionality of word processors, spreadsheets, databases, and email clients have not changed in many years. Without the feature bloat that vendors of commercial versions of the above have included to justify maintaining the prices of their products, the cost of such software would have been driven to zero quite a while ago. This would have saved consumers, governments, and businesses billions of dollars.
At the same time, MS products still have value because they fill niches that are created by software vendors in other markets. For example, many people in the business world use Excel extensively because the reporting functionality of ERP programs is so lousy. Having Excel allows me to manipulate data dumped out of an ERP to generate analyses and reports that I need. Otherwise I would have to send requests to the IT department to have reports written and I'd have to wait weeks or months to get them.
I totally agree that Hubble has generated an enormous amount of data; however I believe that the majority of the data generated has yet to be thoroughly analyzed. I would like to see federal dollars spent wringing every ounce of knowledge possible out of the data already obtained before maintaining an expensive telescope.
Also, given that the majority of US taxpayers don't give a rip about the more arcane topics in astronomy, said taxpayers are much more likely to support spending money on missions to the Moon and Mars since these are more exciting. If NASA wants to remain viable it has to engage in projects that have widespread public support.
If we had killed the shuttle program years ago and devoted those operational dollars to improving systems for reaching the moon, I believe that we would now have regular, relatively cost efficient missions to the moon on a regular basis now.
If the price of killing the space shuttle is losing Hubble then I am willing to support that.
If I recall correctly the antitrust settlements against IBM didn't necessarily hurt their overall market dominance in the mainframe area that much. I think it was the rise of mini and micro computers along with complacency that drove IBM down so that it was near death until Gerstner was hired. I think the same thing is happening with MS. The rise of Linux and other open source software will eventually reduce MS from its monopolistic perch in the consumer OS area. I think that it's important to recognize that part of the reason for MS's dominance at this point has been the incompetence of it's competitors. In my view, Apple was much more greedy in the period 1985-1995 in that their hardware and OS were proprietary and priced much higher than Wintel product. Granted, the Mac GUI was initially superior but of course MS got away with copying that patented interface. How ironic. Then there was OS/2 which was poorly marketed in my view.
MS's behavior is no different than IBM's was at its peak. Look at the history of IBM's antitrust problems with the US government, and the lock-in that IBM achieved with its customers.
Walmart is an excellent company. They have single handedly kept the prices for basic products at affordable levels. The companies that they've run out of business were either inefficient or incompetent. One of the best things about Walmart is that they have gotten the upper hand on consumer products companies like Procter and Gamble that would slap "New and improved" on stuff like bottles of shampoo and raise the price 5% every year.
How about moving all of the low cost factories that supply cheap goods to the developed world from the countries that these factories are in now to the countries in question and let the populace work their way up the economic ladder like Japan, Korea, Thailand and so forth and let the people pay a market price for a computer?
This seems to be a case where location based web services would be useful. A blind person with a GPS equipped cell phone and a guide dog could speak the destination into the cell phone and get spoken directions back and then the dog would just make sure the person stays on the sidewalk, doesn't walk into a closed door, etc.. Theoretically the cellphone system could tell the blind person to stop when they got to the edge of a sidewalk, for example, but you wouldn't want to be totally dependent on the phone(viruses, call dropping).
If NASA is considering far-out proposals like this mecury telescope. why don't we all send in our own ideas for technologies that are totally infeasible currently. I'd rather NASA spent money researching Star Trek style transporters than this telescope. The level of practicality and feasibility are about the same.
Very nice analysis...I have been looking closely at Apple's products recently and to me right now the Powerbook G4 a fairly priced alternative to Wintel high end notebooks. Unless something changes radically in the next year or two my next computer will be a Powerbook.
It seems that an alternative combination to Wintel is emerging where IBM and Apple form the alternative. I could see a large corporation run its servers and databases on IBM hardware(of course using PowerPC chips) and issuing Apple machines to employees for desktop use(Mini's for those who don't need laptops and Powerbooks for those who do). Given the superiority of the PowerPC architecture and the OS X/Linux software I could see this as a serious threat to Wintel.
I think you would be better off getting your financial institutions to send you all of your bank statements, bills, etc via the internet. My bank just sends me an email telling me that my statement is available and I can log in to my account and look at it. Nothing comes through the mail. They also have a service where some of my utility bills go electronically to my bank and nothing is physically mailed to me.
I have been using Lotus Notes as an email client for about seven months now since I came to a new job and as far as I am concerned it is a steaming pile of horse manure. I'll have four or five other programs running just fine and as soon as I fire up Lotus the whole works slows down to a crawl
Slashdot Mirror
The show could be scheduled to run at 2:00 AM instead of some infomercial...I'm sure a lot of people would stay up to watch it or Tivo it.
It could be done for a lot less than $80 million if fans were willing to accept some changes in the production methods of the show. Here are my ideas:
1. Use a prosumer type videocams to record shows instead of network grade production equipment.
2. Don't use the studio sets to produce the show; build a set on somebody's property elsewhere.
3. Don't use the actors; go to a theatre school and find some actors. You don't need Mr. Quantum Leap to be the captain. In the theatre business, plays are produced over and over with different actors all the time.
4. I'm sure a bunch of slashdotters could scrounge up some CRT's and write some graphics to simulate the computer technology shown on the ship.
5. Use scripts written by fans instead of the schlock that Berman et al have been putting out.
Of course none of this will happen because of the hammerlock on the copyrights that Roddenberry's estate has. I think that is part of the problem with the franchise; Roddenberry's will constrains the types of plots that can be used in these shows.
Just my two cents...
I like your "oo" companies reference-maybe this will become the next internet fad. "We must include the "oo" in the name of our website because "Google" and "Yahoo" have become so successful."
I think I'll start up a new auction website...
"OOBay"
I switched to StarOffice but at work I just save my docs as RTF files..saves about 50% on space.
It seems that the moral to this particular story is always buy the business model...
I believe that at the time no other extrasolar planets had been found, so the scientific consensus had been "we haven't seen any so they don't exist."
Sure, now that other planets that bear more similarity to ones in our solar system have been found a planet orbiting a dead star wouldn't be exciting but back in 1990 this should have been newsworthy.
According to the referenced article, this chip is supposed to be able to transmit data to and from off-chip memory at 100 gigabytes per second.
The same article has this hilarious quote from an Intel Fellow: "One of the big problems with Cell, said Justin Rattner, an Intel Fellow, is that the processing units aren't identical, a situation that increases complexity and the opportunity for bugs."
This from a company whose early microprocessor designs were frequently referred to as "brain-damaged."
If IBM attorneys are the Nazgul, that must make Microsoft attorneys Balrogs...
As far as a definition I found this:
"Working Group on Extrasolar Planets
Defintion of a "Planet"
POSITION STATEMENT ON THE DEFINITION OF A "PLANET"
WORKING GROUP ON EXTRASOLAR PLANETS (WGESP) OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASTRONOMICAL UNION
Created: February 28, 2001
Last Modified: February 28, 2003
Rather than try to construct a detailed definition of a planet which is designed to cover all future possibilities, the WGESP has agreed to restrict itself to developing a working definition applicable to the cases where there already are claimed detections, e.g., the radial velocity surveys of companions to (mostly) solar-type stars, and the imaging surveys for free-floating objects in young star clusters. As new claims are made in the future, the WGESP will weigh their individual merits and circumstances, and will try to fit the new objects into the WGESP definition of a "planet", revising this definition as necessary. This is a gradualist approach with an evolving definition, guided by the observations that will decide all in the end.
Emphasizing again that this is only a working definition, subject to change as we learn more about the census of low-mass companions, the WGESP has agreed to the following statements:
1) Objects with true masses below the limiting mass for thermonuclear fusion of deuterium (currently calculated to be 13 Jupiter masses for objects of solar metallicity) that orbit stars or stellar remnants are "planets" (no matter how they formed). The minimum mass/size required for an extrasolar object to be considered a planet should be the same as that used in our Solar System.
2) Substellar objects with true masses above the limiting mass for thermonuclear fusion of deuterium are "brown dwarfs", no matter how they formed nor where they are located.
3) Free-floating objects in young star clusters with masses below the limiting mass for thermonuclear fusion of deuterium are not "planets", but are "sub-brown dwarfs" (or whatever name is most appropriate).
These statements are a compromise between definitions based purely on the deuterium-burning mass or on the formation mechanism, and as such do not fully satisfy anyone on the WGESP. However, the WGESP agrees that these statements constitute the basis for a reasonable working definition of a "planet" at this time. We can expect this definition to evolve as our knowledge improves."
It looks like this is as close as we're going to get.
How can this professor not be considered mainstream?
He's on the faculty at Penn State! Sounds like he must have ticked off the wrong people at some point in his career. Maybe he needs to hire a PR person.
I would say that finding a planet orbiting any star would be significant news, regardless of whether said planet might harbor life.
I believe that there is great value in having unencumbered versions of basic software. The core functionality of word processors, spreadsheets, databases, and email clients have not changed in many years. Without the feature bloat that vendors of commercial versions of the above have included to justify maintaining the prices of their products, the cost of such software would have been driven to zero quite a while ago. This would have saved consumers, governments, and businesses billions of dollars.
At the same time, MS products still have value because they fill niches that are created by software vendors in other markets. For example, many people in the business world use Excel extensively because the reporting functionality of ERP programs is so lousy. Having Excel allows me to manipulate data dumped out of an ERP to generate analyses and reports that I need. Otherwise I would have to send requests to the IT department to have reports written and I'd have to wait weeks or months to get them.
I totally agree that Hubble has generated an enormous amount of data; however I believe that the majority of the data generated has yet to be thoroughly analyzed. I would like to see federal dollars spent wringing every ounce of knowledge possible out of the data already obtained before maintaining an expensive telescope.
Also, given that the majority of US taxpayers don't give a rip about the more arcane topics in astronomy, said taxpayers are much more likely to support spending money on missions to the Moon and Mars since these are more exciting. If NASA wants to remain viable it has to engage in projects that have widespread public support.
If we had killed the shuttle program years ago and devoted those operational dollars to improving systems for reaching the moon, I believe that we would now have regular, relatively cost efficient missions to the moon on a regular basis now.
If the price of killing the space shuttle is losing Hubble then I am willing to support that.
If I recall correctly the antitrust settlements against IBM didn't necessarily hurt their overall market dominance in the mainframe area that much. I think it was the rise of mini and micro computers along with complacency that drove IBM down so that it was near death until Gerstner was hired.
I think the same thing is happening with MS. The rise of Linux and other open source software will eventually reduce MS from its monopolistic perch in the consumer OS area.
I think that it's important to recognize that part of the reason for MS's dominance at this point has been the incompetence of it's competitors. In my view, Apple was much more greedy in the period 1985-1995 in that their hardware and OS were proprietary and priced much higher than Wintel product. Granted, the Mac GUI was initially superior but of course MS got away with copying that patented interface. How ironic.
Then there was OS/2 which was poorly marketed in my view.
MS's behavior is no different than IBM's was at its peak. Look at the history of IBM's antitrust problems with the US government, and the lock-in that IBM achieved with its customers.
Walmart is an excellent company. They have single handedly kept the prices for basic products at affordable levels. The companies that they've run out of business were either inefficient or incompetent. One of the best things about Walmart is that they have gotten the upper hand on consumer products companies like Procter and Gamble that would slap "New and improved" on stuff like bottles of shampoo and raise the price 5% every year.
You can't be serious about UNC only allowing one type of OS on the school's network: if so that is a retarded decision.
I think you meant to say "made up for by their evil" rather than cunning. I totally agree with you....
How about moving all of the low cost factories that supply cheap goods to the developed world from the countries that these factories are in now to the countries in question and let the populace work their way up the economic ladder like Japan, Korea, Thailand and so forth and let the people pay a market price for a computer?
This seems to be a case where location based web services would be useful. A blind person with a GPS equipped cell phone and a guide dog could speak the destination into the cell phone and get spoken directions back and then the dog would just make sure the person stays on the sidewalk, doesn't walk into a closed door, etc.. Theoretically the cellphone system could tell the blind person to stop when they got to the edge of a sidewalk, for example, but you wouldn't want to be totally dependent on the phone(viruses, call dropping).
If NASA is considering far-out proposals like this mecury telescope. why don't we all send in our own ideas for technologies that are totally infeasible currently. I'd rather NASA spent money researching Star Trek style transporters than this telescope. The level of practicality and feasibility are about the same.
Very nice analysis...I have been looking closely at Apple's products recently and to me right now the Powerbook G4 a fairly priced alternative to Wintel high end notebooks. Unless something changes radically in the next year or two my next computer will be a Powerbook.
It seems that an alternative combination to Wintel is emerging where IBM and Apple form the alternative. I could see a large corporation run its servers and databases on IBM hardware(of course using PowerPC chips) and issuing Apple machines to employees for desktop use(Mini's for those who don't need laptops and Powerbooks for those who do). Given the superiority of the PowerPC architecture and the OS X/Linux software I could see this as a serious threat to Wintel.
I think you would be better off getting your financial institutions to send you all of your bank statements, bills, etc via the internet. My bank just sends me an email telling me that my statement is available and I can log in to my account and look at it. Nothing comes through the mail. They also have a service where some of my utility bills go electronically to my bank and nothing is physically mailed to me.
I have been using Lotus Notes as an email client for about seven months now since I came to a new job and as far as I am concerned it is a steaming pile of horse manure. I'll have four or five other programs running just fine and as soon as I fire up Lotus the whole works slows down to a crawl
Also, kudos for a nice simply laid out website. Easy on the eyes.....
"This is CNN!"