Correctly applied force is the only way to bring peace. Words only work when backed up with clear evidence you will use force. In some cases, you are only left with the option of completely eradicating the enemy. In most, you only need to remove 10-15% of the population before the rest alter their beliefs to be compatible with you.
To me, if a piece of work creates a desired emotional response in the part of some of the viewers- then it is art.
So I do not see code as art. I like stallman's view of it as a craft.
However, I think people are saying it in the sense of "more art than science" which means that you can do it in a nifty way which is elegant, smaller, tighter- or in a "machine" way which gets the job done but is ugly, repetative, less efficient but maybe easier to maintain or generate.
In this sense, coding will always have the art aspect. The question is- are people willing to pay for artful code. Remember the assem screen saver a couple years ago that took 93k (yes- K). it was art.
People choose "what everyone else chooses". It is a well documented fact of human nature. A lot of advertising is directed at making you believe everyone else wants something or will think well of you if you choose that thing.
Apple is much slicker than Windows in terms of things working- I must have blown close to a grand trying to get video editing working on Windows and suffered various problems like the sound slowly drifting out of sync (Pinnacle) which were never fixed while Apple just worked.
Linux (and open source) continue to improve every day. And they are free- and free is a good thing.
Microsoft repeatedly engages in unethical behavior using their ownership of the operating system to break competing products. You really had to live through the whole Word95 fiasco to see how blatant they could get (certifying their own product as ready when it violated API call standards for performance while refusing to certify competitors as "ready for windows 95").
I still use Windows- for gaming. However, I have stopped trying to install it. At $399, it is just much easier to buy a cheap box which works properly and install a couple additions.
Linux needs to be a lot easier to install- but part of the reason for that is that the manufacturers are not writing proper drivers for it. So it is the manufacturers- not windows. As soon as Linux reaches a tipping point, you will start to see some cool devices that work there but -not- on windows. There is already linux software that doesn't run on windows so it is just a matter of time.
Linux has a lot of governmental support because Microsoft is perceived as a "lock-in" and an "american" product. So the number of people using it will continue to grow and it will have a much more international base than windows which is america-centric.
There are currently more hours of entertainment available than I can consume.
So I filter based on price, quality, and availability.
If I'm going to keep it, I want it high quality and easy to show at friend's houses, Cons (also technically illegal), etc. So I go to the Fry's (because they get big discounts).
If the series is 90 dollars or more for a single season or movie- I pretty much pass at that point. There are other series I can spend less money on- and there is a huge glut of available material (more than I can possibly watch).
Now- like the previous poster- if I can't even see the series to begin with- I'm not even going to pay 50 bucks for it. I might buy a single disk to sample it at most. In my experience- fansubs have resulted in several sales. I've also seen some series that were highly rated (Orange Road) which I just can't force myself past a couple episodes.
Series need to cost about $30-$50 a season in the U.S. if they want to sell in numbers.
My most recent purchase was Millenium Actress. I read it was good- downloaded it- watched it- and then bought it on DVD. I would -never- have purchased it without fansubs.
Re:Then how is the production funded?
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Boston Blackie is a series of movies slightly over an hour long (like 70 minutes). So you might remember it as a series. But there were only 6 of them which is a great run for movies but a short run for TV.
Bringing up Baby is a Hepburn/Grant movie with a leapord. Painfully funny.
Re:Then how is the production funded?
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I'm 43- Not sure if that is ancient or not. But I really enjoyed Boston Blackie (and "Bringing up Baby").
Short- well written and acted- lots of interesting character actors (and since actors and extras were cheaper back then (in absolute terms, adjusted for inflation), they could put a lot more people on a screen at no cost.
Re:Then how is the production funded? (Corrected)
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I think I understand where you are coming from but I think you misunderstand a couple points that I am making.
You say...
Okay- consider the article and read my post again. There IS NO STUDIO. There is NO $6 going to a studio.
So like I said, the programme just appears out of thin air? Presumably, someone will be MAKING the programmes.
This is the key point. Refer to Star Wreck, The new voyages of Star Trek, and other shows referenced by others in this thread. Once the cost of production drops enough- you do NOT NEED a production company to make a show.
We also had this bid.
Because they have astronomical profits. The costs have grown to match the profits.
You're a fucking conspiracy theorist. Costs don't go down just because you're not making much money. It just means you're bankrupted.
No conspiracy is needed. You're being rude so I'm not sure why I'm bothering explaining this further but perhaps someone else will understand and make it worth the time.
1) Movies and Television made phenomonal amounts of money in the 50's to the 80's. Everybody got rich. But it wasn't enough to make a million dollars each for a movie. They wanted to manage the yield to make the maximum dollars possible. This means they will push the price to the point where the profits start to drop.
If that means they cut out 40% of their audience- that's not a problem for them. If 60% of people will put up with watching 22 minutes of commercials and that's 1% more profitable than 90% of people watching with 12 minutes of commercials- then they are going to put in 22 minutes of commercials per hour.
Everyone along the way wants a part of the action. The television affiliate that was initially happy to be making $20,000 is going to ask for more. The show or movie's editors are going to charge more. Not because they need more- but because they CAN.
They will push it to the point of turning the experience unpleasant to maximise profits. And that's their right of course.
But it does create opportunities for people who are willing to work for modest profits. You can create a reasonable quality show with 15 grand, average to low actors and a dedicated crew. So what can you do with 2 million per episode? I say if you have good writing- you can create something people will pay money for.
Last point...
You say
And when you do that, you end up with star wars. But without the marketing and huge special effects budget, it would crash and burn. Horribly
I agree the recent 3 movies sucked (and the last half of the original #3). The original which was created on a tiny budget (and probably wouldn't be made with that small a budget - even adjusted for inflation- these days was good. The issue was not the budget- but the quality of the script and acting.
Re:Then how is the production funded? (Corrected)
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Man - I hate it when I forget to preview.
And i wish I didnt have to put in [br]'s and it would just listen to my carriage returns.
Here is my post correctly formatted.
It's hard to come by accurate sales figures but
here are some at:
http://www.thefutoncritic.com/cgi/newswire.cgi?id= 5806
In a recent report, Daily Variety has obtained sales figures for the most popular TV-related DVD sets. The results are surprising, as at least six boxed sets have topped one million copies sold:
"The Simpsons: The Complete First Season" - 1.6 million
"Band of Brothers" - 1.4 million
"The Sopranos: The Complete First Season" - 1.3 million
"Friends: The Complete First Season" - 1.3 million
"The Simpsons: The Complete Second Season" - 1.25 million
"Sex and the City: The Complete First Season" - 1.1 million
The results are surprising considering many items on the list retail between $75-$150. That means HBO has pocketed in the neighborhood of $97-$195 for the first season of "The Sopranos" alone.
You say..
That 'ten bucks' isn't your revenue.
I think I laid out some of the major costs in my post. I wasn't assuming it wasn't revenue in the first place. It's reasonable to assume that where you had to pay taxes, that would be on top of the $10. In the States, you usually don't have to pay taxes if you do not have a physical location in that state.
Where do you get your numbers for costs from?
Purely conjecture. I do know what starts make when a series starts (usually about 50-60k if they are an unknown) and when a series is successful (a million an episode per star for friends).
But costs depend on supply and demand. Actors wave their salaries for some projects. Unions make things so costly that series get filmed non-union. There are probably a lot of decent actors out there who would be glad to find work for 10,000 an episode for 5 episodes. No- not jennifer aniston's or brad pitts- but that's a false choice.
Plus- costs tend to rise towards revenues. Star trek doesn't -have- to cost as much as it does. The more a show makes- the more everyone working on it wants. Unions lock in high base prices which make it hard to start a show cheap.
It's part of why actors used to make 6-9 films a year and now they only make a film every 2-3 years. Watch the old Boston Blackies and you will find good acting, good writing, and they made them much less expensively without credits that ran for 15 minutes at the end. India makes almost a thousand films a year which they show (presumably at a profit since they keep making them) to an audience who can probably pay 10 to 25 cents to see them. Modern movies and television are artificially expensive to make-- too many hands in the til.
So out of your $8.25 per DVD, you need $6 of that going to the studio.
Okay- consider the article and read my post again. There IS NO STUDIO. There is NO $6 going to a studio.
Making TV shows ALWAYS requires overhead. How do you distribute your DVDs?
Direct distribution to the end customer by mail or electronic image (like magnatune who I have purchased music from). Amazon only comes into the picture after the show becomes popular enough. TV does not ALWAYS require overhead. It only requires overhead if you are broadcasting it on TV. The folks making Star Wreck are making and distributing the movie without Amazon just fine.
I'm also assuming there is a lot of money to be made selling DVDs in 'brick and mortar' stores
That's true in the past- I'm still uncomfortable about making major purchases over the internet- but I'm up to about $200 items and I get more used to it every day. The stuff arrives- I don't have to waste time or gas going to stores that don't carry the items I want (which happens more and more as time goes on- stores selection compared to what is ava
Re:Then how is the production funded?
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It's hard to come by accurate sales figures but here are some at:
http://www.thefutoncritic.com/cgi/newswire.cgi?id= 5806
In a recent report, Daily Variety has obtained sales figures for the most popular TV-related DVD sets. The results are surprising, as at least six boxed sets have topped one million copies sold:
"The Simpsons: The Complete First Season" - 1.6 million
"Band of Brothers" - 1.4 million
"The Sopranos: The Complete First Season" - 1.3 million
"Friends: The Complete First Season" - 1.3 million
"The Simpsons: The Complete Second Season" - 1.25 million
"Sex and the City: The Complete First Season" - 1.1 million
The results are surprising considering many items on the list retail between $75-$150. That means HBO has pocketed in the neighborhood of $97-$195 for the first season of "The Sopranos" alone.
You say..
That 'ten bucks' isn't your revenue.
I think I laid out some of the major costs in my post. I wasn't assuming it wasn't revenue in the first place. It's reasonable to assume that where you had to pay taxes, that would be on top of the $10. In the States, you usually don't have to pay taxes if you do not have a physical location in that state.
Where do you get your numbers for costs from?
Purely conjecture. I do know what starts make when a series starts (usually about 50-60k if they are an unknown) and when a series is successful (a million an episode per star for friends).
But costs depend on supply and demand. Actors wave their salaries for some projects. Unions make things so costly that series get filmed non-union. There are probably a lot of decent actors out there who would be glad to find work for 10,000 an episode for 5 episodes. No- not jennifer aniston's or brad pitts- but that's a false choice.
Plus- costs tend to rise towards revenues. Star trek doesn't -have- to cost as much as it does. The more a show makes- the more everyone working on it wants. Unions lock in high base prices which make it hard to start a show cheap.
It's part of why actors used to make 6-9 films a year and now they only make a film every 2-3 years. Watch the old Boston Blackies and you will find good acting, good writing, and they made them much less expensively without credits that ran for 15 minutes at the end. India makes almost a thousand films a year which they show (presumably at a profit since they keep making them) to an audience who can probably pay 10 to 25 cents to see them. Modern movies and television are artificially expensive to make-- too many hands in the til.
So out of your $8.25 per DVD, you need $6 of that going to the studio.
Okay- consider the article and read my post again. There IS NO STUDIO. There is NO $6 going to a studio.
Making TV shows ALWAYS requires overhead. How do you distribute your DVDs?
Direct distribution to the end customer by mail or electronic image (like magnatune who I have purchased music from). Amazon only comes into the picture after the show becomes popular enough. TV does not ALWAYS require overhead. It only requires overhead if you are broadcasting it on TV. The folks making Star Wreck are making and distributing the movie without Amazon just fine.
I'm also assuming there is a lot of money to be made selling DVDs in 'brick and mortar' stores
That's true in the past- I'm still uncomfortable about making major purchases over the internet- but I'm up to about $200 items and I get more used to it every day. The stuff arrives- I don't have to waste time or gas going to stores that don't carry the items I want (which happens more and more as time goes on- stores selection compared to what is available to buy on the internet sucks- Circuit City.com carries items that Circuit City stores do not carry).
Yeah you could use bittorrent, but then a lot of these people who use bittorrent think that 'information wants to be free', and that copyright law is evil a
Re:Broadcast TV Cares Not For Quality
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Plus- they only care about certain eyeballs.
If you are too old, too young, or the wrong sex, race, or religion then you won't get a program made for your demographic.
The question isn't -will you watch TV but "will you buy select products that can pay the most for advertising."
Re:Then how is the production funded?
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Assume just a million people pay 10 bucks a piece for your DVD set of 5 shows (i.e. 1 DVD).
You are looking at a gross of 10 million dollars.
You only pay taxes on the profits.
So first take off your costs.
Actors- Figure 50k per episode for the Stars and 10k per episode for all bit actors. But they might go for a percentage of the gross.
Techs- Figure another 100k per episode for editors, etc.
Music- Another 100k per episode.
Costumes and Sets- 300k one time setup plus 10k per episode- so say another 60k per episode.
Easily 200k per episode profits after the cost of producing quality dvd's. Take off 50% for the government and you have 500k profits.
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Part of the reason it is expensive now is that you are paying for a HUGE overhead of hollywood, distributers, and local outlets. All of that expense goes away.
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Check out "Star Wreck" or "Star Trek the new Voyages" for an idea of what you can do with merely 15 grand- upscale that by about 500 grand and imagine how much better it would be.
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A lot of junk will be produced- but a lot of good stuff too. Once you build up street cred that you won't rip people off- you produce a "pilot" and put it out. Tell folks "The nut for this is 500,000 viewers at 20 bucks a piece. If we get it- we will produce 5 episodes on DVD for those folks. We'll make another 6 episodes as long as the actors and the audience can agree on a price for more. We'll stop when they can't agree."
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The cost of making things like this is dropping like a stone. You don't need 150 million dollars to do it if you don't go through hollywood.
They can't download it from you unless they buy it in the first place.
Essentially you are selling your bandwidth to the record company for credits to buy other songs with.
You paid for it, except for the first copy, you download it from another person, you stored it for the record company, you used your bandwidth to offer it to others.
Essentially, the record company only has to maintain bandwidth and storage for 1 copy of each song to be downloaded each time. Their costs will be virtually zero.
What do you want to bet that they will still charge a "fair" price of a dollar a track for it?
In UK/US/etc. you are being offered about 1 hour of income per customer you sell or about 25 weeks worth of income. Against this you have a high risk of jail time, lifetime loss of earnings, you may lose a job that is hard to replace given high unemployment, etc.
In India/China/Etc, you are being offered 20 hours of income per customer or roughly 500 weeks worth of income (almost 10 years) and may have substantially lower risk of jail time and since the job market is so hot, you may not even have trouble replacing your job.
To have a similarly effective bribe in the US/UK/etc. they would have to offer you a lot more money.
I'm not neglecting anything in particular.
I was addressing what seemed to be your point that people in general would feel horrible guilt over killing people when it is clearly not true.
People have to be specifically trained NOT to be violent, and even then, in a majority of cases the training doesn't take. Despite huge penalties (going to hell, going to prison, being executed) a lot of people enjoy injuring and hurting others- even to the point of killing them.
Humans repeatedly engage in these activities. It is a lot harder remain peaceful than it is to be violent. In fact, in some cases remaining peaceful will just get you killed. Given power over others, humans routinely abuse it. They don't need to be trained to do so.
The same religious documents relate how god "rewards" the faithful with the young women of the sinners after the faithful kills every male and every woman that is too old or young. (see the section dealing with Mose's flock laying waste to a city - of whom half the population at least (and probably more like 90%- had done nothing to him or his people).
Other religious documents go into exquisite detail on how to torture and kill other human beings as long as they are not among the faithful. (Check out the Koran for nice details).
Religions that have suceeded have done so by murdering large numbers of people who were not among the faithful (yup- even buddism and atheism).
I agree with you on the power point. Inflicting pain was probably merely an expression of having power.
As far as animals go- lots of predatory animals have a great deal of fun playing with their food before they finally kill it. Humans have the potential wired in to enjoy playing with their victims before they finally kill them.
Our ultra-pacifism really is very recent- mostly since the invention of TV where a few people could repeatedly hammer home messages like "animals are equal to humans", "good always wins in the end", "if we protect ourselves, we'll become monsters just like them" and other similar soft-headed notions.
but I'm sure will never forget it, despite that I was justified in defending myself. People who have been through such scenarios will testify to the truth of this.
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You forget or are unaware that in this century people in southern america had parties and celebrated killing negros and whites who sympathised with them. They felt no remorse or guilt and if they never forgot it, it was to remember it with fondness in their advancing years.
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The only reason we are against killing is because we have been trained (very recently) to think of killing other human beings as a bad thing. It is very easy for humans to not only learn to kill but learn to enjoy killing. It is very easy for them to learn to enjoy torturing them too.
Hell, more than a few of the yale students in the Milgrim psych test enjoyed themselves thinking they were really torturing the victims with painful electric shocks. And that was a -really- small sample size (a few hundreds) so the tendency has to be really common in humans.
If the government wasn't taking 50% of your money to do these "free" "public" things then you might be able to invest in these paid services.
Where it breaks down is also giving these paid services artificial monopolies created by the government.
The private sector can do things cheaper than the public sector provided that they are not given a false monopoly-- if they are then they become much more expensive than the government.
So the real problem is 150 year copyrights and patents that businesses are pushing for. If the patents and copyrights were reduced to 10-15 years, then we get the best of both worlds. The molecules (and other information) are discovered faster and cheaper.
It would be pretty easy to load a bunch of 30th century fertilizer up on one of those rocks once they were moved near by and slam them into the planet creating an extinction event.
Slashdot Mirror
nt and no mod points to mod it up.
I got my CD's in a few weeks. No problem.
It came with a live cd and an install cd. I've been handing them out. You might want to reapply for the disks. Shit happens
You have to laugh or else you go crazy.
You say:
You cannot bring about peace with war.
Correctly applied force is the only way to bring peace. Words only work when backed up with clear evidence you will use force. In some cases, you are only left with the option of completely eradicating the enemy. In most, you only need to remove 10-15% of the population before the rest alter their beliefs to be compatible with you.
if the phone calls are free- how do they justify taxing you for them?
To me, if a piece of work creates a desired emotional response in the part of some of the viewers- then it is art.
So I do not see code as art. I like stallman's view of it as a craft.
However, I think people are saying it in the sense of "more art than science" which means that you can do it in a nifty way which is elegant, smaller, tighter- or in a "machine" way which gets the job done but is ugly, repetative, less efficient but maybe easier to maintain or generate.
In this sense, coding will always have the art aspect. The question is- are people willing to pay for artful code. Remember the assem screen saver a couple years ago that took 93k (yes- K). it was art.
People choose "what everyone else chooses". It is a well documented fact of human nature. A lot of advertising is directed at making you believe everyone else wants something or will think well of you if you choose that thing.
Apple is much slicker than Windows in terms of things working- I must have blown close to a grand trying to get video editing working on Windows and suffered various problems like the sound slowly drifting out of sync (Pinnacle) which were never fixed while Apple just worked.
Linux (and open source) continue to improve every day. And they are free- and free is a good thing.
Microsoft repeatedly engages in unethical behavior using their ownership of the operating system to break competing products. You really had to live through the whole Word95 fiasco to see how blatant they could get (certifying their own product as ready when it violated API call standards for performance while refusing to certify competitors as "ready for windows 95").
I still use Windows- for gaming. However, I have stopped trying to install it. At $399, it is just much easier to buy a cheap box which works properly and install a couple additions.
Linux needs to be a lot easier to install- but part of the reason for that is that the manufacturers are not writing proper drivers for it. So it is the manufacturers- not windows. As soon as Linux reaches a tipping point, you will start to see some cool devices that work there but -not- on windows. There is already linux software that doesn't run on windows so it is just a matter of time.
Linux has a lot of governmental support because Microsoft is perceived as a "lock-in" and an "american" product. So the number of people using it will continue to grow and it will have a much more international base than windows which is america-centric.
There are currently more hours of entertainment available than I can consume.
So I filter based on price, quality, and availability.
If I'm going to keep it, I want it high quality and easy to show at friend's houses, Cons (also technically illegal), etc. So I go to the Fry's (because they get big discounts).
If the series is 90 dollars or more for a single season or movie- I pretty much pass at that point. There are other series I can spend less money on- and there is a huge glut of available material (more than I can possibly watch).
Now- like the previous poster- if I can't even see the series to begin with- I'm not even going to pay 50 bucks for it. I might buy a single disk to sample it at most. In my experience- fansubs have resulted in several sales. I've also seen some series that were highly rated (Orange Road) which I just can't force myself past a couple episodes.
Series need to cost about $30-$50 a season in the U.S. if they want to sell in numbers.
My most recent purchase was Millenium Actress. I read it was good- downloaded it- watched it- and then bought it on DVD. I would -never- have purchased it without fansubs.
Boston Blackie is a series of movies slightly over an hour long (like 70 minutes). So you might remember it as a series. But there were only 6 of them which is a great run for movies but a short run for TV.
Bringing up Baby is a Hepburn/Grant movie with a leapord. Painfully funny.
I'm 43- Not sure if that is ancient or not. But I really enjoyed Boston Blackie (and "Bringing up Baby").
Short- well written and acted- lots of interesting character actors (and since actors and extras were cheaper back then (in absolute terms, adjusted for inflation), they could put a lot more people on a screen at no cost.
I think I understand where you are coming from but I think you misunderstand a couple points that I am making.
You say... Okay- consider the article and read my post again. There IS NO STUDIO. There is NO $6 going to a studio. So like I said, the programme just appears out of thin air? Presumably, someone will be MAKING the programmes. This is the key point. Refer to Star Wreck, The new voyages of Star Trek, and other shows referenced by others in this thread. Once the cost of production drops enough- you do NOT NEED a production company to make a show.
We also had this bid. Because they have astronomical profits. The costs have grown to match the profits. You're a fucking conspiracy theorist. Costs don't go down just because you're not making much money. It just means you're bankrupted.
No conspiracy is needed. You're being rude so I'm not sure why I'm bothering explaining this further but perhaps someone else will understand and make it worth the time.
1) Movies and Television made phenomonal amounts of money in the 50's to the 80's. Everybody got rich. But it wasn't enough to make a million dollars each for a movie. They wanted to manage the yield to make the maximum dollars possible. This means they will push the price to the point where the profits start to drop.
If that means they cut out 40% of their audience- that's not a problem for them. If 60% of people will put up with watching 22 minutes of commercials and that's 1% more profitable than 90% of people watching with 12 minutes of commercials- then they are going to put in 22 minutes of commercials per hour.
Everyone along the way wants a part of the action. The television affiliate that was initially happy to be making $20,000 is going to ask for more. The show or movie's editors are going to charge more. Not because they need more- but because they CAN.
They will push it to the point of turning the experience unpleasant to maximise profits. And that's their right of course.
But it does create opportunities for people who are willing to work for modest profits. You can create a reasonable quality show with 15 grand, average to low actors and a dedicated crew. So what can you do with 2 million per episode? I say if you have good writing- you can create something people will pay money for.
Last point... You say And when you do that, you end up with star wars. But without the marketing and huge special effects budget, it would crash and burn. Horribly I agree the recent 3 movies sucked (and the last half of the original #3). The original which was created on a tiny budget (and probably wouldn't be made with that small a budget - even adjusted for inflation- these days was good. The issue was not the budget- but the quality of the script and acting.
Man - I hate it when I forget to preview. And i wish I didnt have to put in [br]'s and it would just listen to my carriage returns.
Here is my post correctly formatted.
It's hard to come by accurate sales figures but here are some at:
http://www.thefutoncritic.com/cgi/newswire.cgi?id= 5806
In a recent report, Daily Variety has obtained sales figures for the most popular TV-related DVD sets. The results are surprising, as at least six boxed sets have topped one million copies sold:
"The Simpsons: The Complete First Season" - 1.6 million
"Band of Brothers" - 1.4 million
"The Sopranos: The Complete First Season" - 1.3 million
"Friends: The Complete First Season" - 1.3 million
"The Simpsons: The Complete Second Season" - 1.25 million
"Sex and the City: The Complete First Season" - 1.1 million
The results are surprising considering many items on the list retail between $75-$150. That means HBO has pocketed in the neighborhood of $97-$195 for the first season of "The Sopranos" alone.
You say.. That 'ten bucks' isn't your revenue. I think I laid out some of the major costs in my post. I wasn't assuming it wasn't revenue in the first place. It's reasonable to assume that where you had to pay taxes, that would be on top of the $10. In the States, you usually don't have to pay taxes if you do not have a physical location in that state.
Where do you get your numbers for costs from?
Purely conjecture. I do know what starts make when a series starts (usually about 50-60k if they are an unknown) and when a series is successful (a million an episode per star for friends).
But costs depend on supply and demand. Actors wave their salaries for some projects. Unions make things so costly that series get filmed non-union. There are probably a lot of decent actors out there who would be glad to find work for 10,000 an episode for 5 episodes. No- not jennifer aniston's or brad pitts- but that's a false choice.
Plus- costs tend to rise towards revenues. Star trek doesn't -have- to cost as much as it does. The more a show makes- the more everyone working on it wants. Unions lock in high base prices which make it hard to start a show cheap.
It's part of why actors used to make 6-9 films a year and now they only make a film every 2-3 years. Watch the old Boston Blackies and you will find good acting, good writing, and they made them much less expensively without credits that ran for 15 minutes at the end. India makes almost a thousand films a year which they show (presumably at a profit since they keep making them) to an audience who can probably pay 10 to 25 cents to see them. Modern movies and television are artificially expensive to make-- too many hands in the til.
So out of your $8.25 per DVD, you need $6 of that going to the studio.
Okay- consider the article and read my post again. There IS NO STUDIO. There is NO $6 going to a studio.
Making TV shows ALWAYS requires overhead. How do you distribute your DVDs?
Direct distribution to the end customer by mail or electronic image (like magnatune who I have purchased music from). Amazon only comes into the picture after the show becomes popular enough. TV does not ALWAYS require overhead. It only requires overhead if you are broadcasting it on TV. The folks making Star Wreck are making and distributing the movie without Amazon just fine.
I'm also assuming there is a lot of money to be made selling DVDs in 'brick and mortar' stores
That's true in the past- I'm still uncomfortable about making major purchases over the internet- but I'm up to about $200 items and I get more used to it every day. The stuff arrives- I don't have to waste time or gas going to stores that don't carry the items I want (which happens more and more as time goes on- stores selection compared to what is ava
It's hard to come by accurate sales figures but here are some at:
http://www.thefutoncritic.com/cgi/newswire.cgi?id= 5806
In a recent report, Daily Variety has obtained sales figures for the most popular TV-related DVD sets. The results are surprising, as at least six boxed sets have topped one million copies sold: "The Simpsons: The Complete First Season" - 1.6 million "Band of Brothers" - 1.4 million "The Sopranos: The Complete First Season" - 1.3 million "Friends: The Complete First Season" - 1.3 million "The Simpsons: The Complete Second Season" - 1.25 million "Sex and the City: The Complete First Season" - 1.1 million The results are surprising considering many items on the list retail between $75-$150. That means HBO has pocketed in the neighborhood of $97-$195 for the first season of "The Sopranos" alone. You say.. That 'ten bucks' isn't your revenue. I think I laid out some of the major costs in my post. I wasn't assuming it wasn't revenue in the first place. It's reasonable to assume that where you had to pay taxes, that would be on top of the $10. In the States, you usually don't have to pay taxes if you do not have a physical location in that state.
Where do you get your numbers for costs from?
Purely conjecture. I do know what starts make when a series starts (usually about 50-60k if they are an unknown) and when a series is successful (a million an episode per star for friends).
But costs depend on supply and demand. Actors wave their salaries for some projects. Unions make things so costly that series get filmed non-union. There are probably a lot of decent actors out there who would be glad to find work for 10,000 an episode for 5 episodes. No- not jennifer aniston's or brad pitts- but that's a false choice.
Plus- costs tend to rise towards revenues. Star trek doesn't -have- to cost as much as it does. The more a show makes- the more everyone working on it wants. Unions lock in high base prices which make it hard to start a show cheap.
It's part of why actors used to make 6-9 films a year and now they only make a film every 2-3 years. Watch the old Boston Blackies and you will find good acting, good writing, and they made them much less expensively without credits that ran for 15 minutes at the end. India makes almost a thousand films a year which they show (presumably at a profit since they keep making them) to an audience who can probably pay 10 to 25 cents to see them. Modern movies and television are artificially expensive to make-- too many hands in the til.
So out of your $8.25 per DVD, you need $6 of that going to the studio.
Okay- consider the article and read my post again. There IS NO STUDIO. There is NO $6 going to a studio.
Making TV shows ALWAYS requires overhead. How do you distribute your DVDs?
Direct distribution to the end customer by mail or electronic image (like magnatune who I have purchased music from). Amazon only comes into the picture after the show becomes popular enough. TV does not ALWAYS require overhead. It only requires overhead if you are broadcasting it on TV. The folks making Star Wreck are making and distributing the movie without Amazon just fine.
I'm also assuming there is a lot of money to be made selling DVDs in 'brick and mortar' stores
That's true in the past- I'm still uncomfortable about making major purchases over the internet- but I'm up to about $200 items and I get more used to it every day. The stuff arrives- I don't have to waste time or gas going to stores that don't carry the items I want (which happens more and more as time goes on- stores selection compared to what is available to buy on the internet sucks- Circuit City.com carries items that Circuit City stores do not carry).
Yeah you could use bittorrent, but then a lot of these people who use bittorrent think that 'information wants to be free', and that copyright law is evil a
Plus- they only care about certain eyeballs.
If you are too old, too young, or the wrong sex, race, or religion then you won't get a program made for your demographic.
The question isn't -will you watch TV but "will you buy select products that can pay the most for advertising."
Assume just a million people pay 10 bucks a piece for your DVD set of 5 shows (i.e. 1 DVD).
You are looking at a gross of 10 million dollars. You only pay taxes on the profits. So first take off your costs. Actors- Figure 50k per episode for the Stars and 10k per episode for all bit actors. But they might go for a percentage of the gross. Techs- Figure another 100k per episode for editors, etc.
Music- Another 100k per episode. Costumes and Sets- 300k one time setup plus 10k per episode- so say another 60k per episode.
Easily 200k per episode profits after the cost of producing quality dvd's. Take off 50% for the government and you have 500k profits.
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Part of the reason it is expensive now is that you are paying for a HUGE overhead of hollywood, distributers, and local outlets. All of that expense goes away.
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Check out "Star Wreck" or "Star Trek the new Voyages" for an idea of what you can do with merely 15 grand- upscale that by about 500 grand and imagine how much better it would be.
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A lot of junk will be produced- but a lot of good stuff too. Once you build up street cred that you won't rip people off- you produce a "pilot" and put it out. Tell folks "The nut for this is 500,000 viewers at 20 bucks a piece. If we get it- we will produce 5 episodes on DVD for those folks. We'll make another 6 episodes as long as the actors and the audience can agree on a price for more. We'll stop when they can't agree."
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The cost of making things like this is dropping like a stone. You don't need 150 million dollars to do it if you don't go through hollywood.
They can't download it from you unless they buy it in the first place.
Essentially you are selling your bandwidth to the record company for credits to buy other songs with. You paid for it, except for the first copy, you download it from another person, you stored it for the record company, you used your bandwidth to offer it to others.
Essentially, the record company only has to maintain bandwidth and storage for 1 copy of each song to be downloaded each time. Their costs will be virtually zero.
What do you want to bet that they will still charge a "fair" price of a dollar a track for it?
I block pop-ups, flash ads, fast moving jerky/jittery ads.
For the most part, other ads I leave alone but I also do not see at a concious level.
In UK/US/etc. you are being offered about 1 hour of income per customer you sell or about 25 weeks worth of income. Against this you have a high risk of jail time, lifetime loss of earnings, you may lose a job that is hard to replace given high unemployment, etc. In India/China/Etc, you are being offered 20 hours of income per customer or roughly 500 weeks worth of income (almost 10 years) and may have substantially lower risk of jail time and since the job market is so hot, you may not even have trouble replacing your job. To have a similarly effective bribe in the US/UK/etc. they would have to offer you a lot more money.
Not entirely true. The TFA says not much of an upgrade but then goes on to say there was a lot of tuning in the existing pieces.
The benchmarking page shows this card is red hot.
You could save a lot of bandwidth if you use torrent for distributing your startup code and your patches.
I'm not neglecting anything in particular.
I was addressing what seemed to be your point that people in general would feel horrible guilt over killing people when it is clearly not true.
People have to be specifically trained NOT to be violent, and even then, in a majority of cases the training doesn't take. Despite huge penalties (going to hell, going to prison, being executed) a lot of people enjoy injuring and hurting others- even to the point of killing them.
Humans repeatedly engage in these activities. It is a lot harder remain peaceful than it is to be violent. In fact, in some cases remaining peaceful will just get you killed. Given power over others, humans routinely abuse it. They don't need to be trained to do so.
The same religious documents relate how god "rewards" the faithful with the young women of the sinners after the faithful kills every male and every woman that is too old or young. (see the section dealing with Mose's flock laying waste to a city - of whom half the population at least (and probably more like 90%- had done nothing to him or his people).
Other religious documents go into exquisite detail on how to torture and kill other human beings as long as they are not among the faithful. (Check out the Koran for nice details).
Religions that have suceeded have done so by murdering large numbers of people who were not among the faithful (yup- even buddism and atheism).
I agree with you on the power point. Inflicting pain was probably merely an expression of having power.
As far as animals go- lots of predatory animals have a great deal of fun playing with their food before they finally kill it. Humans have the potential wired in to enjoy playing with their victims before they finally kill them.
Our ultra-pacifism really is very recent- mostly since the invention of TV where a few people could repeatedly hammer home messages like "animals are equal to humans", "good always wins in the end", "if we protect ourselves, we'll become monsters just like them" and other similar soft-headed notions.
You say...
but I'm sure will never forget it, despite that I was justified in defending myself. People who have been through such scenarios will testify to the truth of this.
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You forget or are unaware that in this century people in southern america had parties and celebrated killing negros and whites who sympathised with them. They felt no remorse or guilt and if they never forgot it, it was to remember it with fondness in their advancing years.
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The only reason we are against killing is because we have been trained (very recently) to think of killing other human beings as a bad thing. It is very easy for humans to not only learn to kill but learn to enjoy killing. It is very easy for them to learn to enjoy torturing them too.
Hell, more than a few of the yale students in the Milgrim psych test enjoyed themselves thinking they were really torturing the victims with painful electric shocks. And that was a -really- small sample size (a few hundreds) so the tendency has to be really common in humans.
If the government wasn't taking 50% of your money to do these "free" "public" things then you might be able to invest in these paid services.
Where it breaks down is also giving these paid services artificial monopolies created by the government.
The private sector can do things cheaper than the public sector provided that they are not given a false monopoly-- if they are then they become much more expensive than the government.
So the real problem is 150 year copyrights and patents that businesses are pushing for. If the patents and copyrights were reduced to 10-15 years, then we get the best of both worlds. The molecules (and other information) are discovered faster and cheaper.
The only way to remove conflict with a people committed to your destruction is to eliminate everyone of them.
Anything less is just prolonging the problem and putting yourself at risk that they will grow strong enough to succeed at their goal.
It would be pretty easy to load a bunch of 30th century fertilizer up on one of those rocks once they were moved near by and slam them into the planet creating an extinction event.