a) Make movie
b) Hype it
c) Release it on P2P
d) Wait six moths, release in theaters
e) When it bombs, sue 10,000 John Does because you know they can't afford to defend themselves.
f) Profit!
Anybody see a flaw?
Yeah I see a flaw. The basic template of this trope requires at least one line that contains only "..."
e) When it bombs, sue 10,000 John Does because you know they can't afford to defend themselves.
f)...
g) Profit!
The problem is that people use religion to fill the void of what science does not know.
Ah yes the "God of the gaps." That idea that a god is responsible for whatever science has yet to explain would get a lot more traction a few hundred years ago. Today the gaps are much smaller. The start of life on earth has been shown to be plausible in the conditions that existed way back when, evolution has explained how life developed from that initial start to the abundance of today, and physics has explained the history of the universe back to the first infinitesimal moments of time.
The trouble with inserting a god into the history of the universe is that it raises extremely difficult questions without adding any useful understanding of how the universe came into being. If there was a being that had a part in starting the universe, then who or what created that being? Was it another such being? If so did yet another such being come before and is it "turtles all they way down?"
Of course science could be wrong about so many things, just like Newton was "wrong." F=ma is great but it totally falls apart when speeds approach the speed of light. This is what is so cool, so beautiful about science. It is a process that allows for continual improvement of our understanding. Einstein comes along and says that if you go fast enough all sorts of paradoxes exist. So he proposed a modified theory that eliminated those paradoxes (and later caused others when looked at in terms of quantum mechanics.) We'll figure that out eventually too.
Religion is the opposite of science. It is a statement that things are this particular way (dogma) and it is "sin" to challenge dogma. This idea of "faith" is the idea of believing something in the face of contradictory evidence. Faith is considered a virtue by nearly all religions. In fact a believer is considered more virtuous if his/her faith is particularly strong. So someone who believes absurd things like the world is around 7,000 years old and the first woman was literally made from a rib from the first man, is more virtuous than someone who waffles and says "well maybe evolution is a tool that God used to create the world's abundance." Religion makes it a virtue to accept what authority tells you without question. The process of science is to question, to look for evidence, to build a model based on the evidence found, and then to test your model through experimentation (and to allow others to test your model.). If a model is more successful at predicting outcome of experimentation and observations then it will eventually be accepted as the new model. If it fails to account for the results of experimentation or observation then the model will be rejected. Richard Dawkins the esteemed evolutionary biologist has publicly stated what would cause him to abandon the theory of evolution: fossil rabbits in the pre-cambrian. In other words evidence that the theory cannot account for. Ask a deist what would convince him that a god did not create the universe.
But here's the really big difference. Science yields useful results. Religion yields... people who are taught to believe things in the face of overwhelming evidence.
I can't resist one last jab. You've probably heard that "there are no atheists in a foxhole." Personally I have faced my own imminent death and didn't become a deist. Here's good reply, "there are no honest creationists getting useful treatment for multiple drug resistant TB."
http://sciencefun.wordpress.com/2007/02/20/i-love-doonesbury/
New York, NY, population 8,391,881 has 23 arcades. That's one for every 36,4864 people.
San Rafael, CA, population 55,649 has 2 arcades. That's one for every 27,824 people. That's not counting Pinky's Pizza which has about 20 games in the back.
Starbase Arcade has some really cool old school games. I've been drooling over the table version of Tempest that he has for years. He almost never turns it on because the color vector screen is impossible to replace. http://www.starbasearcade.com/locations.php
Nearly all the value of nearly all copyrighted works comes from ideas that the author learned from people who came before and who the author didn't pay.
I wonder why you think this is the case. This guy is a famous broadway composer. I would expect that he went to school to learn composing. That was very far from free. I would also suspect that he's gone to lots of live musical theater. That certainly wasn't free. I would also guess that he has bought lots of music and paid for it. In fact I wouldn't be at all surprised if he, like many music fans, had spent a huge quantity of money during his life just buying records/cds/etc. So please explain exactly what ideas has he failed to pay for?
Now he's out there in the world trying to make a living writing music that has added value to the lives of countless people and all he wants is a lousy $3.99 for a copy of the sheet music of an original piece of music that he wrote. If he sells three or four copies, he can go buy a CD to listen to. If he sells 20 copies (and assuming he gets 100% of that $3.99) then he can buy a matinee ticket to go see a broadway show. A few thousand copies and he can pay his rent and bills for a whole month during which he can write a few more songs that you might like so much that you want a copy of the sheet music for them. It seems like a totally reasonable request to me.
I agree, and he probably would also, that the 150 year copyright duration is crazy, that was done essentially at the request of Disney because Mickey Mouse was about to enter the public domain. But hell this poor guy is alive right now and trying to make a living writing music. Cough up the lousy $3.99.
It's more complicated than that. There are two types of Niton XRFs. The most common type which has been around for a while use a radioactive source (ironically Cd109). The the sources have a fairly short half life so must be replaced every other year or so, and cost thousands of dollars. These sources are VERY strictly regulated requiring licensing at the state level and access to inspectors. There are storage and transport requirements, etc. Most likely the person is an environmental consultant (like me) and has access to one at work, or is a geologist and has access to one at work. It is unlikely that any individuals own one of these.
The other newer type of XRF uses some sort of x-ray tube to generate the radiation and does not have all the licensing requirements but costs even more $$.
Being a Dad this is my definition: If I would be embarrassed to hear my 6 year old say it then it's a swear word. Until you've experienced your offspring banging their crayon on the table and yelling "fuckit!" loudly in front of other parents, teachers, relatives, clergy, etc. you'll still have an incomplete understanding of swearing.
Now if someone out there could suggest some way I might stop my self from all this Goddamn swearing so that I can reduce the, thankfully rare, occurrence of these embarrassing incidents.... shit, I'd be willing to give any-damn-thing a muthafucking try.
Candy was not banned at the school because of a "nutritional" requirement, certain types of candy were banned because the kids were making a mess with them, and it was getting expensive to have to keep cleaning it up.
Okay so there really was a good reason for the rule. The punishment was a bit harsh esp. for a 3rd grader, but missing recess for a week is bearable. This brings up another issue. The kid goes home and squeezes out some tears and Mom goes on a rampage getting the media involved etc. This is exactly why kids have cell phones in class these days. They may text constantly and be completely distracted from learning but when the school says NO and confiscates the phones, the parents cry foul and get the policy over turned. If I were the principal I would be doing two things, tell the teacher to lighten up a bit on the kids, and then publicly I would stand behind the punishment without reservation.
HD reception via satellite is much better quality than the vast majority of Internet streaming video
You have a very different idea of quality than I do. "The Wire" on my CRT TV on DVD, THAT was quality. Survivor in HD via satellite is very far from quality. We're a broadcast and cable/sat free household since 2006. It's not that we don't watch the tube, we just watch it on Hulu, netflix instant, and DVD. I would guess that my 6 year old boy has been exposed to about 5% of the number of TV commercials that a typical American 6 year old has seen. When other homes and see them watching the TV it blows me away. 20 minutes of commercials per hour of programming is obscene.
Here's the geeky tech bit. I'm doing all of this with a computer I built in 2001. The key is my ATI all-in-wonder card. I just plug in the TV with the Svideo cable and extend my desktop. I have googlechrome and Winmediaplayer setup to open on that part of the desktop and that's where we watch our online TV.
My home PC is now 9.5 years old and it was trivial for me to setup Hulu, and Netflix Instant so I watch it on the TV (that ati all-in-wonder card is still amazing). I usually browse with FF, but I have Crome set up to open on the TV screen part of my desktop and I get to watch what I want when I want (almost). I don't have a digital tuner for local broadcast. I don't get pay tv. I don't care about most sports so none of that matters to me. I did want to watch some winter Olympics but you could not get the Olympics online w/out proving that you had a cable/sat subscription. That pissed me off.
It's funny because if it isn't on hulu or netflix, I usually don't even know about it. My son and I just watched our way through all 10 seasons of Stargate sg-1 over the last year. That was pretty cheesy but fun. Other programs I am happy to wait for "TV on DVD" or use other means. The advantage of watching when I want is huge. I'm watching the Wire on DVD. It's great. We've been getting Doctor Who via the Pirate Bay since it won't be available to us any other way, and we can't wait for the DVDs. I'm looking forward to the next season of Spooks.
People keep predicting the death of TV. To quote Scotty, "He's dead already!" My life is so much better w/ out the constant barrage of TV ads, that when I visit family and they sit watching 20 minutes of commercials every hour it boggles my mind.
I'm sure you are familiar with the foundational myth of the primary religion around here. The first woman eats an apple, which represents knowledge, and shares it with the first man. They both become ashamed of their nakedness and then are booted out of paradise. This kind of thinking is at the very heart of our culture. It is made even worse because then people are taught that it is the highest virtue to believe impossible things. This is called faith. The more extreme the impossible thing you can believe the stronger your faith and the the better a person you are. It is no wonder that all sort of abominable things are done in the name of GOD.
Several years back I let my son watch an old Tom Baker episode, Pirate Planet. He became obsessed. So after we exhausted what was available on dvd/netflix from his episodes, we started in on the new ones on Netflix Watchnow. We loved Christopher Eccelston and I was sure his replacement would be a disappointment. I couldn't have been more wrong. My son loved David Tenant's doctor so much, he has a pinstriped blazer, converse sneakers, and sideburns. He used to carry his toy sonic with him everywhere. He cried when the 10th doctor "died." This morning I downloaded the new episode and Matt Smith officially has the full blown endorsement of at least one American 6 year old boy (and his dad). Though I hope he manages to interpret the doctor in his own way. He had a bit too much of the DT manic goofiness going.
Oh and where the !@#$%! do I order up a kissogram!!!??!
That sounds like a round about way of saying that it would be profitable to mine if you were allowed to leave your tailings, and the waste from the refining processes in big piles on the ground.
What's the difference between "recovering a password" and hacking into a phone? Shouldn't the summary read "use GPU to break into stolen smart phones."
My point wasn't that the swiss-army-cellphone is a bad idea, but that the projector was something like the divot replacer on certain golf oriented swiss-army knives. It is a tool with limited and specialized appeal. A camera is a great idea and has wide appeal, just like an internet browser, mapping software, or music player.
so the correct acronym when someone is being clueless would be WTFV instead of RTFA.
A bit long winded summary?
on
Window Pain
·
· Score: 2, Funny
If this becomes a normal Summary we'll have to retire "RTFM" and start using "RTFS." I sure didn't read it!
Re:Firefox + NoScript + Adblock Plus + FlashBlocke
on
Window Pain
·
· Score: 1
Actually I think Firefox + NoScript + Adblock Plus + FlashBlocker is over kill. I use Firefox with NoScript. I don't get popups, or the most annoying ads, and flash does not work unless the script is allowed.
Many people wouldn't want to deal with enabling particular scripts to view video or other bits of websites on a regular basis. I don't mind. Truth is when I saw this story I thought, "People still get popups?!?" Then I remembered a recent foray online on another PC with IE and it was nothing but popups and popunders.
Hey look it's Goatse at the Eifel Tower. Hey look it's Goatse on the steps of St. Peters. Hey look it's Goatse at Point Sublime on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
No thanks, I'd rather have someone vetting the photos.
In Utah, and among religious conservatives in general when people talk about constitutional rights, they usually are talking about guns, and property rights. Things like the 1st, 4th and 5th amendments are for pro-molester liberal pinko commies.
Asking for rationality from religious conservative types is simply asking too much. At the very foundation of any religion is the ability of it's adherents to believe in things that are contradicted by science or history. They call it faith. Once you've trained people accept faith over reason then those people are very susceptible to all sorts of other irrational ideas. Common fallacies that are picked up by such people include things like, "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear from warrantless searches" or "keep your government hands off of my medicare."
Slashdot Mirror
a) Make movie b) Hype it c) Release it on P2P d) Wait six moths, release in theaters e) When it bombs, sue 10,000 John Does because you know they can't afford to defend themselves. f) Profit!
Anybody see a flaw?
Yeah I see a flaw. The basic template of this trope requires at least one line that contains only "..."
...
e) When it bombs, sue 10,000 John Does because you know they can't afford to defend themselves.
f)
g) Profit!
The problem is that people use religion to fill the void of what science does not know.
Ah yes the "God of the gaps." That idea that a god is responsible for whatever science has yet to explain would get a lot more traction a few hundred years ago. Today the gaps are much smaller. The start of life on earth has been shown to be plausible in the conditions that existed way back when, evolution has explained how life developed from that initial start to the abundance of today, and physics has explained the history of the universe back to the first infinitesimal moments of time.
The trouble with inserting a god into the history of the universe is that it raises extremely difficult questions without adding any useful understanding of how the universe came into being. If there was a being that had a part in starting the universe, then who or what created that being? Was it another such being? If so did yet another such being come before and is it "turtles all they way down?"
Of course science could be wrong about so many things, just like Newton was "wrong." F=ma is great but it totally falls apart when speeds approach the speed of light. This is what is so cool, so beautiful about science. It is a process that allows for continual improvement of our understanding. Einstein comes along and says that if you go fast enough all sorts of paradoxes exist. So he proposed a modified theory that eliminated those paradoxes (and later caused others when looked at in terms of quantum mechanics.) We'll figure that out eventually too.
Religion is the opposite of science. It is a statement that things are this particular way (dogma) and it is "sin" to challenge dogma. This idea of "faith" is the idea of believing something in the face of contradictory evidence. Faith is considered a virtue by nearly all religions. In fact a believer is considered more virtuous if his/her faith is particularly strong. So someone who believes absurd things like the world is around 7,000 years old and the first woman was literally made from a rib from the first man, is more virtuous than someone who waffles and says "well maybe evolution is a tool that God used to create the world's abundance." Religion makes it a virtue to accept what authority tells you without question. The process of science is to question, to look for evidence, to build a model based on the evidence found, and then to test your model through experimentation (and to allow others to test your model.). If a model is more successful at predicting outcome of experimentation and observations then it will eventually be accepted as the new model. If it fails to account for the results of experimentation or observation then the model will be rejected. Richard Dawkins the esteemed evolutionary biologist has publicly stated what would cause him to abandon the theory of evolution: fossil rabbits in the pre-cambrian. In other words evidence that the theory cannot account for. Ask a deist what would convince him that a god did not create the universe.
But here's the really big difference. Science yields useful results. Religion yields... people who are taught to believe things in the face of overwhelming evidence.
I can't resist one last jab. You've probably heard that "there are no atheists in a foxhole." Personally I have faced my own imminent death and didn't become a deist. Here's good reply, "there are no honest creationists getting useful treatment for multiple drug resistant TB."
http://sciencefun.wordpress.com/2007/02/20/i-love-doonesbury/
Journalism used to be about taking risks to bring critical public interest information to everyone, with a strong ethic and moral code.
Yeah! Remember the Maine!
1. Serious engineers use HP calculators;
Unfortunately HP no longer makes serious calculators. sigh.
New York, NY, population 8,391,881 has 23 arcades. That's one for every 36,4864 people.
San Rafael, CA, population 55,649 has 2 arcades. That's one for every 27,824 people. That's not counting Pinky's Pizza which has about 20 games in the back.
Starbase Arcade has some really cool old school games. I've been drooling over the table version of Tempest that he has for years. He almost never turns it on because the color vector screen is impossible to replace. http://www.starbasearcade.com/locations.php
Nearly all the value of nearly all copyrighted works comes from ideas that the author learned from people who came before and who the author didn't pay.
I wonder why you think this is the case. This guy is a famous broadway composer. I would expect that he went to school to learn composing. That was very far from free. I would also suspect that he's gone to lots of live musical theater. That certainly wasn't free. I would also guess that he has bought lots of music and paid for it. In fact I wouldn't be at all surprised if he, like many music fans, had spent a huge quantity of money during his life just buying records/cds/etc. So please explain exactly what ideas has he failed to pay for?
Now he's out there in the world trying to make a living writing music that has added value to the lives of countless people and all he wants is a lousy $3.99 for a copy of the sheet music of an original piece of music that he wrote. If he sells three or four copies, he can go buy a CD to listen to. If he sells 20 copies (and assuming he gets 100% of that $3.99) then he can buy a matinee ticket to go see a broadway show. A few thousand copies and he can pay his rent and bills for a whole month during which he can write a few more songs that you might like so much that you want a copy of the sheet music for them. It seems like a totally reasonable request to me.
I agree, and he probably would also, that the 150 year copyright duration is crazy, that was done essentially at the request of Disney because Mickey Mouse was about to enter the public domain. But hell this poor guy is alive right now and trying to make a living writing music. Cough up the lousy $3.99.
It's more complicated than that. There are two types of Niton XRFs. The most common type which has been around for a while use a radioactive source (ironically Cd109). The the sources have a fairly short half life so must be replaced every other year or so, and cost thousands of dollars. These sources are VERY strictly regulated requiring licensing at the state level and access to inspectors. There are storage and transport requirements, etc. Most likely the person is an environmental consultant (like me) and has access to one at work, or is a geologist and has access to one at work. It is unlikely that any individuals own one of these.
The other newer type of XRF uses some sort of x-ray tube to generate the radiation and does not have all the licensing requirements but costs even more $$.
It depends on the kind of game. If he likes solving puzzles, then he could be a natural coder.
The subpoena as well as some comments by one of the twitter-ers can be seen here: - http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/19/tom-corbett-twitter/
Being a Dad this is my definition: If I would be embarrassed to hear my 6 year old say it then it's a swear word. Until you've experienced your offspring banging their crayon on the table and yelling "fuckit!" loudly in front of other parents, teachers, relatives, clergy, etc. you'll still have an incomplete understanding of swearing.
Now if someone out there could suggest some way I might stop my self from all this Goddamn swearing so that I can reduce the, thankfully rare, occurrence of these embarrassing incidents.... shit, I'd be willing to give any-damn-thing a muthafucking try.
Candy was not banned at the school because of a "nutritional" requirement, certain types of candy were banned because the kids were making a mess with them, and it was getting expensive to have to keep cleaning it up.
Okay so there really was a good reason for the rule. The punishment was a bit harsh esp. for a 3rd grader, but missing recess for a week is bearable. This brings up another issue. The kid goes home and squeezes out some tears and Mom goes on a rampage getting the media involved etc. This is exactly why kids have cell phones in class these days. They may text constantly and be completely distracted from learning but when the school says NO and confiscates the phones, the parents cry foul and get the policy over turned. If I were the principal I would be doing two things, tell the teacher to lighten up a bit on the kids, and then publicly I would stand behind the punishment without reservation.
HD reception via satellite is much better quality than the vast majority of Internet streaming video
You have a very different idea of quality than I do. "The Wire" on my CRT TV on DVD, THAT was quality. Survivor in HD via satellite is very far from quality. We're a broadcast and cable/sat free household since 2006. It's not that we don't watch the tube, we just watch it on Hulu, netflix instant, and DVD. I would guess that my 6 year old boy has been exposed to about 5% of the number of TV commercials that a typical American 6 year old has seen. When other homes and see them watching the TV it blows me away. 20 minutes of commercials per hour of programming is obscene.
Here's the geeky tech bit. I'm doing all of this with a computer I built in 2001. The key is my ATI all-in-wonder card. I just plug in the TV with the Svideo cable and extend my desktop. I have googlechrome and Winmediaplayer setup to open on that part of the desktop and that's where we watch our online TV.
My home PC is now 9.5 years old and it was trivial for me to setup Hulu, and Netflix Instant so I watch it on the TV (that ati all-in-wonder card is still amazing). I usually browse with FF, but I have Crome set up to open on the TV screen part of my desktop and I get to watch what I want when I want (almost). I don't have a digital tuner for local broadcast. I don't get pay tv. I don't care about most sports so none of that matters to me. I did want to watch some winter Olympics but you could not get the Olympics online w/out proving that you had a cable/sat subscription. That pissed me off.
It's funny because if it isn't on hulu or netflix, I usually don't even know about it. My son and I just watched our way through all 10 seasons of Stargate sg-1 over the last year. That was pretty cheesy but fun. Other programs I am happy to wait for "TV on DVD" or use other means. The advantage of watching when I want is huge. I'm watching the Wire on DVD. It's great. We've been getting Doctor Who via the Pirate Bay since it won't be available to us any other way, and we can't wait for the DVDs. I'm looking forward to the next season of Spooks.
People keep predicting the death of TV. To quote Scotty, "He's dead already!" My life is so much better w/ out the constant barrage of TV ads, that when I visit family and they sit watching 20 minutes of commercials every hour it boggles my mind.
Clearly all knowledge leads to Bad Things
I'm sure you are familiar with the foundational myth of the primary religion around here. The first woman eats an apple, which represents knowledge, and shares it with the first man. They both become ashamed of their nakedness and then are booted out of paradise. This kind of thinking is at the very heart of our culture. It is made even worse because then people are taught that it is the highest virtue to believe impossible things. This is called faith. The more extreme the impossible thing you can believe the stronger your faith and the the better a person you are. It is no wonder that all sort of abominable things are done in the name of GOD.
Because this is the year of linux on the desktop!
Several years back I let my son watch an old Tom Baker episode, Pirate Planet. He became obsessed. So after we exhausted what was available on dvd/netflix from his episodes, we started in on the new ones on Netflix Watchnow. We loved Christopher Eccelston and I was sure his replacement would be a disappointment. I couldn't have been more wrong. My son loved David Tenant's doctor so much, he has a pinstriped blazer, converse sneakers, and sideburns. He used to carry his toy sonic with him everywhere. He cried when the 10th doctor "died." This morning I downloaded the new episode and Matt Smith officially has the full blown endorsement of at least one American 6 year old boy (and his dad). Though I hope he manages to interpret the doctor in his own way. He had a bit too much of the DT manic goofiness going.
Oh and where the !@#$%! do I order up a kissogram!!!??!
Germany warns against using internet.
That sounds like a round about way of saying that it would be profitable to mine if you were allowed to leave your tailings, and the waste from the refining processes in big piles on the ground.
What's the difference between "recovering a password" and hacking into a phone? Shouldn't the summary read "use GPU to break into stolen smart phones."
My point wasn't that the swiss-army-cellphone is a bad idea, but that the projector was something like the divot replacer on certain golf oriented swiss-army knives. It is a tool with limited and specialized appeal. A camera is a great idea and has wide appeal, just like an internet browser, mapping software, or music player.
so the correct acronym when someone is being clueless would be WTFV instead of RTFA.
If this becomes a normal Summary we'll have to retire "RTFM" and start using "RTFS." I sure didn't read it!
Actually I think Firefox + NoScript + Adblock Plus + FlashBlocker is over kill. I use Firefox with NoScript. I don't get popups, or the most annoying ads, and flash does not work unless the script is allowed.
Many people wouldn't want to deal with enabling particular scripts to view video or other bits of websites on a regular basis. I don't mind. Truth is when I saw this story I thought, "People still get popups?!?" Then I remembered a recent foray online on another PC with IE and it was nothing but popups and popunders.
Hey look it's Goatse at the Eifel Tower. Hey look it's Goatse on the steps of St. Peters. Hey look it's Goatse at Point Sublime on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
No thanks, I'd rather have someone vetting the photos.
In Utah, and among religious conservatives in general when people talk about constitutional rights, they usually are talking about guns, and property rights. Things like the 1st, 4th and 5th amendments are for pro-molester liberal pinko commies.
Asking for rationality from religious conservative types is simply asking too much. At the very foundation of any religion is the ability of it's adherents to believe in things that are contradicted by science or history. They call it faith. Once you've trained people accept faith over reason then those people are very susceptible to all sorts of other irrational ideas. Common fallacies that are picked up by such people include things like, "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear from warrantless searches" or "keep your government hands off of my medicare."