I don't know how much this is a part of it but the last few times I went out dancing there really wasn't any recognizable music. There was essentially just a beat-- this started 2-3 years ago. Everyone gets out and wiggles and jumps up and down to the beat and that's about it.
I wonder if clubs are playing less music since it either 1) what people dance to isn't what they listen to 2) riaa and others have gotten pretty aggressive about wanting royalties from everyplace- even barbershops. Okay- so they -might- get a few dimes out of that but they lose a lot of mind share when most of those elevators, stores, barber shops, etc. just flat out stop playing their music.
If racecar a is on a straight racetrack with racecar b they will stop and smash at the end of the track. One can be ahead or behind the other one.They are limited to remaining on the line of the track so they are moving in 1 dimensions.
If racecar a is on a racetrack with racecar b, then each racecar is both ahead of and behind each other. They are limited to remaining on the line of the track but can turn so they are moving in 2 dimensions.
Now-- instead of a racetrack, make them the inside of a sphere so they are whizzing around inside it. Instead of moving in a line (1d), they can move in 3 dimensions on the inside of the sphere but would percieve it as if they were moving in 2 dimensions (since they couldn't go down into the ground or up into the air). They can drive as far as they want with complete freedom forward, backwards, left and right, and still never get out of the sphere. Sort of like us on earth.
Now-- cover the earth mentally with cars very close together and start them driving around at a maximum speed of 20 mph. Now... expand the earth to 10 times its size like a balloon (by blowing a lot of air or rock into it). The cars are suddenly 10 times as far apart-- some of them are now so far apart that at a maximum speed of 20 mph, they won't ever see all the earth or other cars if the earth keeps expanding.
Finally- Add one more dimension (like going from a circle to a sphere only go to a.. er.. hyper? sphere) so the cars can move in 3 dimensions (left, right, up, down, forward, backwards) and yet still never get outside of the hypersphere. (if it helps, picture it as a normal sphere but if a beam of light would penetrate the surface, instead re-enters the sphere at a spot on the opposite side but really I think that there is no "surface" to penetrate.)
That's the universe and that's light- it can go in all directions and never get out.
Apologies to real scientists out there. B) Best i can do.
Educating them will not do a thing- you will just have a lot of highly educated people with bad cultural values. There is a lot of education which is very helpful if you have a working society but pointless until then. There is no point in getting a master's degree in education when having one means you will be killed.
I don't know if it is christian values or greek values or chinese values or hindi values- but they need a new set of values and they are going to be stuck in a morass until they get them. You can be very uneducated and have good values of:
Honesty. Rule of Law. Honoring Contracts. Protecting the weak. Using condoms (and having sex with only one sex partner). Feeling good about giving back to society and helping others. Limiting yourselves to smaller families.
Right now the dominant portion of their societies do not have these values. These values are not really tied to education- they are typically transmitted by your family and clan.
There is nothing inherently wrong with having large families and being promiscuous and not using physical STD protection. They only become wrong when you have more people than the land can support and STD's are rampant in the population.
---
We either disagree or you don't get my point about education. When there is a glut of people with master's degrees in a particular field, your odds of getting a job with one is zero. There is a -very- limited market for people with a college education. Right now- large amounts of college educated indians are flooding many markets and the result is stagnant or declining wages, and an absolute decline in the number of positions.
If everyone in the world gets a college degree, there will somehow still be the same breakdown of wages- 50% will be below average and 50% will be above average. 10% will be very far below average and 10% will be way above average. Regardless of how you measure it, the bottom 10% will feel poor and impoverished and the top 10% are going to feel rich. Money is a very -relative- thing. If the average wage was 50 grand, it's going to -feel- average. If the average wage was 50 million, it's going to -feel- average.
A college degree has been a great way to differentiate yourself and to show you can finish big projects and learn lots of material quickly. But if everyone has a college degree- then it just becomes the new high school degree and you have to differentiate yourself in some new way to make more than "average". If you dont' make more than average, then you don't get the nice beachfront house, the cool house - the better looking than average spouse, the better quality food, etc.
---
Would education help in some absolute sense tho? Perhaps that is what you mean- and of course it will. It takes a certain minimum amount of education to be self aware and in control of your life.
My vision is 20/20 and the difference between dvd and hd is tiny- worth maybe 50 to 60 bucks- not 500 bucks plus 20 dollars for every movie I buy. a lot of hd just let's you see the film grain better.
Education only breaks the bonds of poverty when most people are not educated.
When everyone has a master's degree, they are almost worthless.
The reason these people are starving and in poverty is their culture. Until their culture changes, they are likely to remain starving and in poverty. They are just as smart as the rest of the world but they have values and beliefs which are destroying them.
McCain is the one republican I could see voting for right now.
I voted against bush both elections (can't say that I really voted "for" the dems).
I want a libertarian party.
Small government, small taxes, and small benefits. Large social freedoms. Since no benefits- personal responsibility for the social freedoms you decide to act on.
But libertarian philosophy doesn't work in an age of billionaires- it is to easy for them to warp libertarian into "give all rights to the billionaires and their lawyers".
I'll probably end up voting against the republicans again--- unless it's mccain.
There are very few songs and music that I like to listen to that were first released after 1978. Most of the music i like was written and/or performed by artists who are dead or about to be dead. Most of those artists who are still living don't get a penny for their songs because the music establishment bought all rights to their songs for a pittance-- the same music establishment that is now trying to even further extend copyrights on those performances.
I agree with most on the side of the music business that -new- creations should be protected for a reasonable period of time (previously agreed to be 28 years) before being returned to the public tomain. I also think that creators should be able to sell their music for whatever they want to sell it for-- if they want to charge a million dollars a copy - that's cool.
But I also think creators should be protected from large corporations by having a limited amount of time they can sell away their rights. That way if a song turns out to be worth ten million bucks a week because the NFL picks it up as a theme song that the artist can get a fair share of that money. Right now the system rips off both the artists AND the consumers.
I look forward to the end of the current system as the cost of producing and distributing creations continues to drop.
You know the four hours I've spent watching Star Wreck so far were four hours that I didn't spend consuming hollywood entertainment too.
Star Wreck is uneven- some of it is professional level. Some of it is professional level six or seven years ago. Some of it is "low-budget". None of it feels like a home movie tho.
The action was pretty good- there were some choices they made as a comedy that I could do without. I guess the tone switches from drama to farce too quickly at times so it is a bit jarring.
On the other hand- the battle scenes are the kind I've been waiting for hollywood to put out for the last decade but they never did. ExTREMEly satisfying battle scenes. Likewise- the character conflict in Star Wreck between Pirk and Cherrypie? (sheridan) exceeded the amount of character conflict in starwars I,II, and III combined.
And that is where the meat comes from- getting you to identify with characters- then setting them against each other now that you care about them. Showing a bunch of battles before you care about anyone involved in them is worthless (aka recent star wars again).
I would happily pay 6 bucks for Star Wreck at the theatre.
No- you were moderated down because you said it was stealing.
The use of the word "stealing" and "theft" in this case are industry propaganda which is being vigorously resisted.
I agree with you to some extent. I think creators should be able to try to sell their work for whatever price they desire.
However, any content which has been sold that is over 28 years has no protection in my opinion. We agreed to give creators a 28 year monopoly on their creations. They have successfully increased that period to effectively "forever" legally-- but not morally.
They have placed restrictions on their product which require us to purchase them multiple times for each form of media. I disagree here as well.
If I own the DVD set for friends- I have no moral problem downloading the IPOD format episodes instead of buying them again.
If I own the CD to the beatles white album, I have no moral problem downloading it in another format.
For the most part- this is a very artificial situation and it -is- collapsing on its own. When there are a million good bands- and a million good television shows, then their monopoly will be over and they will have to compete on price again. The creators distribution companies have had a monopoly on tools to create content and on distribution to audiences but that day is ending.
Copyright has a purpose- to encourage creators to create new content. As such we should respect that for a reasonable period of time. Since our legal system is so corrupt however, we should strongly resist by any means possible, anyone who attempts to extend that copyright monopoly to an indefinate period.
It is even more galling since many of the people extending these copyrights are -not even the creators of the materials-. When people sold their rights to these materials- they sold them under terms of a limited copyright- so these companies are trying an endrun around our legal system. And our corrupt government officers are selling their votes and letting them do it.
Excuse me? If I buy a vacuum cleaner, lawnmower, weed eater, blender, power drill, I can do any damn thing I want to them including making new devices using parts from them, upgrading them with aftermarket parts to work better, rent them to other people, and resell them later when I'm done with them.
If they break during normal use, in the warranty period, they are repaired free by the company- sometimes with a small shipping fee.
I don't think you know what you are talking about. I think you've been brainwashed.
Or you can skip on supporting two children and indiscriminately have 20 to 30 children.
There's pretty good evidence that a college education is anti-selective. Most college educated people do not even replace their numbers these days (the perfect family is 2 kids and less than 2 reproduce- so you lose ground population wise every generation).
And the studios -and- the theatres must understand that customers will stop paying. Everyone can make lots of money- or they can stop making money. It's their choice. By reaching for that last dime, they are starting to lose dollars.
I agree with your basic point. It could be a lot longer than a month.
It's a bit hard to store and hide a year's worth of food (or two as you elude to). And if we truly did go a year without food- well we'd probably mostly be dead anyway (talking end of civilization type stuff there). We are way more concentrated away from farms than back then.
But having a month's worth of food- carefully hidden, would help a lot of no one else had those resources at all.
Definately recommend a gun, bullets, and a willingness to use them too.
Some cities (not towns) lost 10% of their population in the last big flu pandemic.
Think what that means--
No food Maybe no water Definately not a lot of traveling about. Hospitals completely overloaded
So if you are -really- worried about this... Make sure you have 2-4 weeks of dry and canned food (pasta is decent). Have some kind of power that doesn't depend on gasoline (don't need a lot- just some for radio). Make sure you have 2-4 weeks of water (that's a lot- so maybe just have 25 gallons and be ready to fill extra containers if the water gets erratic).
The food is most critical- quarantines are possible- loss of food transportation is possible. Water and power are less likely to be disrupted.
Mostly- just hope this doesn't happen- we run a lot closer to the edge than they did inventory wise. Even a mild disruption and there is no food on the shelves.
After one time of denying service, businesses can not afford to commit to them again because now there is a risk they will do it again. You have a fiscal obligation to avoid/mitigate such risks when you run a business.
Even movies I like are so LOUD now that I get a headache while wearing ear plugs.
I don't mind audience noise related to the movie. I do mind cell phone conversations, crying babies, and teens messing around making noise unrelated to the movie.
I went to a movie about 3 months ago- there were maybe four of us in the theatre and it was super loud- I asked the manager to turn down the sound and she -refused- and gave me back my money rather than turn it down to a reasonable level.
Finally- the commercial load is absurd. I'm paying good money and if I want a decent seat I -must- sit through 15 to 20 minutes of commercials. It irritates the hell out of me. Even worse is obvious product placement. The second I see them, it breaks me out of my suspension of disbelief and pisses me off unless the movie is poking fun at product placement.
The combination of these are why my movie going has dropped from 20-30 movies a year to 3 to 4 movies a year. It's just not worth it- there is too much other entertainment to engage in vs getting pissed off at being treated so poorly by Hollywood's grasping after every last dime of revenue.
Slashdot Mirror
I put the living forever thing with flying cars.
While I would love to live forever- I do not think it is going to happen during the lifetimes of anyone alive today. I do think it will happen tho.
I don't know how much this is a part of it but the last few times I went out dancing there really wasn't any recognizable music. There was essentially just a beat-- this started 2-3 years ago. Everyone gets out and wiggles and jumps up and down to the beat and that's about it.
I wonder if clubs are playing less music since it either
1) what people dance to isn't what they listen to
2) riaa and others have gotten pretty aggressive about wanting royalties from everyplace- even barbershops. Okay- so they -might- get a few dimes out of that but they lose a lot of mind share when most of those elevators, stores, barber shops, etc. just flat out stop playing their music.
In the simplest terms I can put it...
.. er.. hyper? sphere) so the cars can move in 3 dimensions (left, right, up, down, forward, backwards) and yet still never get outside of the hypersphere. (if it helps, picture it as a normal sphere but if a beam of light would penetrate the surface, instead re-enters the sphere at a spot on the opposite side but really I think that there is no "surface" to penetrate.)
If racecar a is on a straight racetrack with racecar b they will stop and smash at the end of the track. One can be ahead or behind the other one.They are limited to remaining on the line of the track so they are moving in 1 dimensions.
If racecar a is on a racetrack with racecar b, then each racecar is both ahead of and behind each other. They are limited to remaining on the line of the track but can turn so they are moving in 2 dimensions.
Now-- instead of a racetrack, make them the inside of a sphere so they are whizzing around inside it. Instead of moving in a line (1d), they can move in 3 dimensions on the inside of the sphere but would percieve it as if they were moving in 2 dimensions (since they couldn't go down into the ground or up into the air). They can drive as far as they want with complete freedom forward, backwards, left and right, and still never get out of the sphere. Sort of like us on earth.
Now-- cover the earth mentally with cars very close together and start them driving around at a maximum speed of 20 mph. Now... expand the earth to 10 times its size like a balloon (by blowing a lot of air or rock into it). The cars are suddenly 10 times as far apart-- some of them are now so far apart that at a maximum speed of 20 mph, they won't ever see all the earth or other cars if the earth keeps expanding.
Finally- Add one more dimension (like going from a circle to a sphere only go to a
That's the universe and that's light- it can go in all directions and never get out.
Apologies to real scientists out there. B) Best i can do.
We agree that culture is the problem in africa.
Educating them will not do a thing- you will just have a lot of highly educated people with bad cultural values. There is a lot of education which is very helpful if you have a working society but pointless until then. There is no point in getting a master's degree in education when having one means you will be killed.
I don't know if it is christian values or greek values or chinese values or hindi values- but they need a new set of values and they are going to be stuck in a morass until they get them. You can be very uneducated and have good values of:
Honesty.
Rule of Law.
Honoring Contracts.
Protecting the weak.
Using condoms (and having sex with only one sex partner).
Feeling good about giving back to society and helping others.
Limiting yourselves to smaller families.
Right now the dominant portion of their societies do not have these values. These values are not really tied to education- they are typically transmitted by your family and clan.
There is nothing inherently wrong with having large families and being promiscuous and not using physical STD protection. They only become wrong when you have more people than the land can support and STD's are rampant in the population.
---
We either disagree or you don't get my point about education. When there is a glut of people with master's degrees in a particular field, your odds of getting a job with one is zero. There is a -very- limited market for people with a college education. Right now- large amounts of college educated indians are flooding many markets and the result is stagnant or declining wages, and an absolute decline in the number of positions.
If everyone in the world gets a college degree, there will somehow still be the same breakdown of wages- 50% will be below average and 50% will be above average. 10% will be very far below average and 10% will be way above average. Regardless of how you measure it, the bottom 10% will feel poor and impoverished and the top 10% are going to feel rich. Money is a very -relative- thing. If the average wage was 50 grand, it's going to -feel- average. If the average wage was 50 million, it's going to -feel- average.
A college degree has been a great way to differentiate yourself and to show you can finish big projects and learn lots of material quickly. But if everyone has a college degree- then it just becomes the new high school degree and you have to differentiate yourself in some new way to make more than "average". If you dont' make more than average, then you don't get the nice beachfront house, the cool house - the better looking than average spouse, the better quality food, etc.
---
Would education help in some absolute sense tho? Perhaps that is what you mean- and of course it will. It takes a certain minimum amount of education to be self aware and in control of your life.
My vision is 20/20 and the difference between dvd and hd is tiny- worth maybe 50 to 60 bucks- not 500 bucks plus 20 dollars for every movie I buy. a lot of hd just let's you see the film grain better.
Education only breaks the bonds of poverty when most people are not educated.
When everyone has a master's degree, they are almost worthless.
The reason these people are starving and in poverty is their culture. Until their culture changes, they are likely to remain starving and in poverty. They are just as smart as the rest of the world but they have values and beliefs which are destroying them.
Yes.. and then they'll somehow lock down the songs by album and single and want you to pay for each one to "activate" it.
Actually the checkouts are getting smarter these days.
.307 pounds. .794 pounds.
Say that the ipod headphones weighs
And that the ipod weigths
An increasing number of checkouts will catch that. I don't know how sensitive they are but my gut feeling is that it is fractions of an ounce based.
McCain is the one republican I could see voting for right now.
I voted against bush both elections (can't say that I really voted "for" the dems).
I want a libertarian party.
Small government, small taxes, and small benefits.
Large social freedoms. Since no benefits- personal responsibility for the social freedoms you decide to act on.
But libertarian philosophy doesn't work in an age of billionaires- it is to easy for them to warp libertarian into "give all rights to the billionaires and their lawyers".
I'll probably end up voting against the republicans again--- unless it's mccain.
You say tamacco, I say tamakeo
There are very few songs and music that I like to listen to that were first released after 1978. Most of the music i like was written and/or performed by artists who are dead or about to be dead. Most of those artists who are still living don't get a penny for their songs because the music establishment bought all rights to their songs for a pittance-- the same music establishment that is now trying to even further extend copyrights on those performances.
I agree with most on the side of the music business that -new- creations should be protected for a reasonable period of time (previously agreed to be 28 years) before being returned to the public tomain. I also think that creators should be able to sell their music for whatever they want to sell it for-- if they want to charge a million dollars a copy - that's cool.
But I also think creators should be protected from large corporations by having a limited amount of time they can sell away their rights. That way if a song turns out to be worth ten million bucks a week because the NFL picks it up as a theme song that the artist can get a fair share of that money. Right now the system rips off both the artists AND the consumers.
I look forward to the end of the current system as the cost of producing and distributing creations continues to drop.
You know the four hours I've spent watching Star Wreck so far were four hours that I didn't spend consuming hollywood entertainment too.
Star Wreck is uneven- some of it is professional level. Some of it is professional level six or seven years ago. Some of it is "low-budget". None of it feels like a home movie tho.
The action was pretty good- there were some choices they made as a comedy that I could do without. I guess the tone switches from drama to farce too quickly at times so it is a bit jarring.
On the other hand- the battle scenes are the kind I've been waiting for hollywood to put out for the last decade but they never did. ExTREMEly satisfying battle scenes. Likewise- the character conflict in Star Wreck between Pirk and Cherrypie? (sheridan) exceeded the amount of character conflict in starwars I,II, and III combined.
And that is where the meat comes from- getting you to identify with characters- then setting them against each other now that you care about them. Showing a bunch of battles before you care about anyone involved in them is worthless (aka recent star wars again).
I would happily pay 6 bucks for Star Wreck at the theatre.
No- you were moderated down because you said it was stealing.
The use of the word "stealing" and "theft" in this case are industry propaganda which is being vigorously resisted.
I agree with you to some extent. I think creators should be able to try to sell their work for whatever price they desire.
However, any content which has been sold that is over 28 years has no protection in my opinion. We agreed to give creators a 28 year monopoly on their creations. They have successfully increased that period to effectively "forever" legally-- but not morally.
They have placed restrictions on their product which require us to purchase them multiple times for each form of media. I disagree here as well.
If I own the DVD set for friends- I have no moral problem downloading the IPOD format episodes instead of buying them again.
If I own the CD to the beatles white album, I have no moral problem downloading it in another format.
For the most part- this is a very artificial situation and it -is- collapsing on its own. When there are a million good bands- and a million good television shows, then their monopoly will be over and they will have to compete on price again. The creators distribution companies have had a monopoly on tools to create content and on distribution to audiences but that day is ending.
Copyright has a purpose- to encourage creators to create new content. As such we should respect that for a reasonable period of time. Since our legal system is so corrupt however, we should strongly resist by any means possible, anyone who attempts to extend that copyright monopoly to an indefinate period.
It is even more galling since many of the people extending these copyrights are -not even the creators of the materials-. When people sold their rights to these materials- they sold them under terms of a limited copyright- so these companies are trying an endrun around our legal system. And our corrupt government officers are selling their votes and letting them do it.
Excuse me? If I buy a vacuum cleaner, lawnmower, weed eater, blender, power drill, I can do any damn thing I want to them including making new devices using parts from them, upgrading them with aftermarket parts to work better, rent them to other people, and resell them later when I'm done with them.
If they break during normal use, in the warranty period, they are repaired free by the company- sometimes with a small shipping fee.
I don't think you know what you are talking about. I think you've been brainwashed.
And oddly enough, all those links go through Kevin Bacon for some reason.
Or you can skip on supporting two children and indiscriminately have 20 to 30 children.
There's pretty good evidence that a college education is anti-selective. Most college educated people do not even replace their numbers these days (the perfect family is 2 kids and less than 2 reproduce- so you lose ground population wise every generation).
And the studios -and- the theatres must understand that customers will stop paying. Everyone can make lots of money- or they can stop making money. It's their choice. By reaching for that last dime, they are starting to lose dollars.
I agree with your basic point. It could be a lot longer than a month.
It's a bit hard to store and hide a year's worth of food (or two as you elude to). And if we truly did go a year without food- well we'd probably mostly be dead anyway (talking end of civilization type stuff there). We are way more concentrated away from farms than back then.
But having a month's worth of food- carefully hidden, would help a lot of no one else had those resources at all.
Definately recommend a gun, bullets, and a willingness to use them too.
This would be the least of our worries.
Some cities (not towns) lost 10% of their population in the last big flu pandemic.
Think what that means--
No food
Maybe no water
Definately not a lot of traveling about.
Hospitals completely overloaded
So if you are -really- worried about this...
Make sure you have 2-4 weeks of dry and canned food (pasta is decent).
Have some kind of power that doesn't depend on gasoline (don't need a lot- just some for radio).
Make sure you have 2-4 weeks of water (that's a lot- so maybe just have 25 gallons and be ready to fill extra containers if the water gets erratic).
The food is most critical- quarantines are possible- loss of food transportation is possible.
Water and power are less likely to be disrupted.
Mostly- just hope this doesn't happen- we run a lot closer to the edge than they did inventory wise. Even a mild disruption and there is no food on the shelves.
They can't even do this once.
After one time of denying service, businesses can not afford to commit to them again because now there is a risk they will do it again. You have a fiscal obligation to avoid/mitigate such risks when you run a business.
where characters are mentally and physically tortured but tennesee proposes that I can not write a video game where the same exact thing happens.
I guess that means no video game adaptions of any kind of film or book involving horror, terrorism, state goons torturing victims, etc.
yea.. this is unconstitutional on the face of it.
When you consider that the disks are locked to the player in one of the formats, your Divx comments are pretty relevant.
Say you buy 20 Blu Ray disks and your player goes belly up-- or you decide to get a new better player.
Depends on the algorithm.
My old set created extra horizontal and vertical lines that were halfway between the surrounding real lines. So if you had
blk|wht|blu
blk|wht|blu
red|wht|blu
it would upsample to
blk|gry|wht|ltb|blu
blk|gry|wht|ltb|blu
blk|gry|wht|ltb|blu
dkr|rgr|wht|ltb|blu
red|pnk|wht|ltb|blu
The result was seamless video that looked excellent.
Even movies I like are so LOUD now that I get a headache while wearing ear plugs.
I don't mind audience noise related to the movie. I do mind cell phone conversations, crying babies, and teens messing around making noise unrelated to the movie.
I went to a movie about 3 months ago- there were maybe four of us in the theatre and it was super loud- I asked the manager to turn down the sound and she -refused- and gave me back my money rather than turn it down to a reasonable level.
Finally- the commercial load is absurd. I'm paying good money and if I want a decent seat I -must- sit through 15 to 20 minutes of commercials. It irritates the hell out of me. Even worse is obvious product placement. The second I see them, it breaks me out of my suspension of disbelief and pisses me off unless the movie is poking fun at product placement.
The combination of these are why my movie going has dropped from 20-30 movies a year to 3 to 4 movies a year. It's just not worth it- there is too much other entertainment to engage in vs getting pissed off at being treated so poorly by Hollywood's grasping after every last dime of revenue.
My cube is like that because I have a column.
I chose it over a window seat with my back to the door hands down.
I have no problems with leg rooms and the cube wall.