The comment about "A classic British attempt to make science as deep and boring as possible. Luv it!" was actually supposed to go after "Melvyn Bragg."
Krulwich on Science is another NPR broadcast. Not very British at all.
For tech and science news and commentary, I listen to (and in one case, watch) these tech-oriented podcasts, available via iTunes...
In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg
Make Podcast (video)
The Naked Scientists (Good, intelligent reporting and discussion. The hosts each have professional academic specialties and speak from their respective areas of expertise. Nice children's segments in this show.)
NOVA Science Now
Krulwich on Science (A classic British attempt to make science as deep and boring as possible. Luv it!)
NPR Science Friday
NPR Technology
The Science Show
Tech Talk Radio ('Gotta say: They're supposed to be experts, but they aren't and their mistakes are so damned funny sometimes... That's where this show gets entertaining.)
Their central argument is that 'the music industry was pillaged by piracy and competition from other forms of entertainment such as video games... ...and don't forget Disney (Cheetah Girls, Hilary Duff, Vanessa Hudgens) and American Idol and the Pussycat Dolls and almost any fake Emo, teen, pop, R&B or Hip Hop "artist" or group of this century, add nausea. (Pun-intended.) They've played their part in the decline of the music industry.
Mass-produced recorded music has lousy production quality (Too LOUD. It devolves into NOISE. Watch yer peaks and lay off the compression!) and is tainted from decades of over-hyping mediocre acts; an industry that notoriously spends gobs of cash lobbying for new criminal laws and suing their customers to protect their flagging artificial legislative monopoly; and performers who depend more on ProTools plug-ins and "live" vocal tracks than talent.
If there were more market-demand there'd be profit. If music companies were reputable and produced quality products, there'd be more market demand.
If the big recording companies' execs had acted with principles and professional standards (worked towards making quality products at reasonable prices... didn't treat their customers like sh!t...), the industry might still be in a decline, but they'd have a lot more years of opulence and time to exploit emerging markets.
Or, she is wearing all kinds of jewelry or shoes with metal buckles, or something else that sets off the metal detector. TSA waves these people over for secondary screening, because the alternative is to wait while she takes off one thing at a time and walks back and forth through the detector. That wasn't what I was referring to.
This was after the security-checkpoint -- where admittedly the selections for additional security measures were seemingly random and I, myself, was selected for a carry on search, the special air-gust machine and a swab test on my shoes.
The secondary screening that I was referring to was pulling "random" people off the boarding line at the gate. I had 3 transfers out and 2 back and at each one they made an announcement that they were going to randomly ask people to submit to secondary screening and then they pulled elderly black women out of the line. Most of the passengers were young white couples and college kids so in each case the "randomness" was suspect.
Full body search?!?! Gimme a break! Secondary screening involves metal-detector wand, baggage search/explosive screening, id check, etc. That is hardly a full body search. I don't know exactly what standards are supposed to be followed and I did not watch each examination. I did, however, see one of those women receive a pat-down in addition to the wand and the carry-on search.
It's not a strip-search or a cavity search, but I'm sure that it's pretty invasive to an elderly woman in a muumuu/housedress.
"It's almost irrelevant what your answers are..." That's because I'm not a black grandma carting a bunch of grandkids around.
This holiday, every person that I saw pulled out for secondary screening was an elderly black woman with a bunch of little kids.
"We're looking for behavior indicators that show a certain level of stress, fear or anxiety above and beyond that shown by an anxious member of the traveling public." Wow! What a fantastically detailed legal threshold for a full body search!
The TSA considers the program a powerful tool to root out terrorists, but also an antidote to racial profiling. ..."Not!"
No, but there's probably a name for the tendency to criticize people for saying something that they didn't actually say. Here's $5 bucks, kid. Go buy a sense of humor.
I should add this to clarify: The phrase used in the source is "include a copy."
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/would-you-pay-more-for-a-dvd-with-an-itunes-copy/?ref=technology
More interestingly perhaps, the studios are hoping to create "premium" versions of DVDs that include a copy of the movie that can easily be put on an iPod... Whether you think that this means that there will be an iTunes-DRM'ed copy on the physical DVD or an iTunes download code in the packaging, it's still bundling.
In basic economics classes, they teach that when two items are bundled the price of the two will tend to average toward the price most suited to the item of greater demand.
So, slap a $4 dollar download code onto a $12 dollar DVD and while you might get away with a $16 dollar price for a brief time with strong advertising, it won't be long before the thing sells for $12 dollars again.
Nobody bundles a strongly-demanded product with another strongly-demanded product. If both were strongly-demanded then they'd be sold separately to maximize profit. Consumers see the raised price as nothing more than a price hike on the one item that they would have bought, won't pay the increased price and retailers will have to lower the price to move the bundle off their shelves.
Steve Jobs is not a fool. He has people around to remind him of these things. If Jobs is pushing bundled downloads, it's as a promotional bonus and not a premium.
> That person got paid their songwriting fee, and that's that (I think).
No, that person gets paid quite a bit for performance rights and music-publishing.
'Probably much more per track than Ms. Spears gets for doing the vocals since in addition to royalties on the album and online music sales the composer also gets paid for radio-play where Ms. Spears does not.
What makes Ms. Spears' arrangement more advantageous than the composers' are the payments from other sources such as advances against sales, concerts, merchandise, appearances and publicity, commercial advertisements -- and of course the free stuff that she gets just for showing up at awards ceremonies, bars and parties.
1. People -- as a general rule -- process complex ideas granularly. People are also generally lazy thinkers who do not attempt to refine their comprehension with falsifiable methodology. As a result, individual perceptions of value are often biased towards the simplest conclusions at the greatest level of granularity that a person can casually grasp rather than on evidence that intellect and practiced reasoning might produce. In large groups, it is possible to predict behaviors through statistical sampling using assumptions based on this model of granularity and intelligence. The conclusions of such studies are, themselves, subject to individual evaluation under the same model of granular perception. People who don't understand this are stupid religious types. If those same people were smart then they would be compelled to believe in evolution.
2. Most people can't see the forest for the trees. Everybody who is not as smart as the author needs to take remedial education and secular-deprogramming classes.
His site, dragonmount.com is already slow to load...
The Google cache is old.
Rather than overwhelm the dragonmount.com servers with slashdotters (let other fans have a chance to see it), here's the full text from the blog post. I hope that I'm not overstepping by reprinting it here.
Sometimes even when you've fought your best.... Sunday, September 16th, 2007
It is with great sadness that I tell you that the Dragon is gone. RJ left us today at 2:45 PM. He fought a valiant fight against this most horrid disease. In the end, he left peacefully and in no pain. In the years he had fought this, he taught me much about living and about facing death. He never waivered in his faith, nor questioned our God's timing. I could not possibly be more proud of anyone. I am eternally grateful for the time that I had with him on this earth and look forward to our reunion, though as I told him this afternoon, not yet. I love you bubba.
Our beloved Harriet was at his side through the entire fight and to the end. The last words from his mouth were to tell her that he loved her.
Thank each and everyone of you for your prayers and support through this ordeal. He knew you were there. Harriet reminded him today that she was very proud of the many lives he had touched through his work. We've all felt the love that you've been sending my brother/cousin. Please keep it coming as our Harriet could use the support.
Jason will be posting funeral arrangements.
My sincerest thanks.
Peace and Light be with each of you,
Wilson Brother/Cousin 4th of 3
To Catalyst: Never, never loose faith. RJ did not. Harriet hasn't. I haven't. Going through what we have, our faith is only strengthened. Besides, if God didn't exist, we would have never had Jim. We did. God does. Remember my Brother/Cousin, my friend, think of him fondly and glorify God's name.
Editor's Note: The entire staff of Dragonmount.com would like to extend its most deepest sympathies to Robert Jordan's family. He touched all of our lives in some way and we wish him the rest and peace he deserves. We will be posting information in the near future about where you can send condolences. Please check the News Section for these updates.
"The Mars Climate Orbiter was intended to enter orbit at an altitude of 140-150 km above Mars. However, a navigation error caused the spacecraft to reach as low as 57 km. The spacecraft was destroyed by atmospheric stresses and friction at this low altitude. The navigation error arose because a NASA subcontractor (Lockheed Martin) used Imperial units (pound-seconds) instead of the metric units (newton-seconds) as specified by NASA."
Dr. Evil: You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads! Now evidently my cycloptic colleague informs me that that cannot be done. Ah, would you remind me what I pay you people for, honestly? Throw me a bone here! What do we have?
Vets used to inject vaccines in the same place as the favored site of the implant -- midline above the shoulders at the back of the neck.
Vaccines are now given in the leg because many animals developed cancers in their neck in a poorly-understood phenomenon labeled "vaccination associated sarcoma." (It's easier to live with a missing leg than a missing neck...)
It's possible that many of the cancers caused by the implants were mistakenly attributed to vaccinations.
> If you mean pandering to the public to try to increase voter > participation, well, frankly, I think that's a good thing.
That's part of it. Another part is that the sci-fi community is still plagued by insecurity and by throwing their lot in with feature films and pop tv, people seem to hope to legitimize something that's already legitimate.
Pandering, in this sense, refers to the simpering geek begging for attention, affection and affirmation who lurks inside of otherwise competent and confident adults.
> By "the message isn't getting through", you mean, "actual nominees keep winning"
No, I mean that every year there are protest votes and gag votes because the categories are not taken seriously or are outright ridiculed. There's a significant portion of the sci-fi community that considers those categories worthy of scorn.
When there was only one dramatic presentation award, participants only treated it half-seriously. For gosh sake, "Flesh Gordon" was a nominee!
But the fun has gone out of the game. People, as I said, vote for what they think legitimizes and promotes the industry to outsiders rather than what they enjoy or honestly believe is worthy of praise. It's a drag and I think that those categories -- recent additions -- should be retired.
Bioactive glass is a group of ceramic materials that are currently the subject of various studies related to bone-replacement and reconstructive surgery for (among others) persons who have had bone removed due to cancer.
New developments in making the materials with porous structures to stimulate bone growth have brought a spurt in the use of it as graft material and encouraged investigations into other medical uses, but I wonder now whether it and other silicates as a class pose a significant cancer risk, themselves.
Actually, churches do take money from the government.
(And yes, that is state-supported religion.)
Our tax money is going to fund churches under the direction of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives a.k.a. the "Department of Faith."
Quoting from the Wikipedia: "The initiative seeks to strengthen faith-based and community organizations and expand their capacity to provide federally funded social services, with the idea being that these groups are well-situated to meet the needs of local individuals."...and:
"Former director Jim Towey admitted in 2004 that 'no direct federal grants from his program had gone to a non-Christian religious group.'"
Slashdot Mirror
Oops! I have to correct my previous post.
The comment about "A classic British attempt to make science as deep and boring as possible. Luv it!" was actually supposed to go after "Melvyn Bragg."
Krulwich on Science is another NPR broadcast. Not very British at all.
For tech and science news and commentary, I listen to (and in one case, watch) these tech-oriented podcasts, available via iTunes...
In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg
Make Podcast (video)
The Naked Scientists (Good, intelligent reporting and discussion. The hosts each have professional academic specialties and speak from their respective areas of expertise. Nice children's segments in this show.)
NOVA Science Now
Krulwich on Science (A classic British attempt to make science as deep and boring as possible. Luv it!)
NPR Science Friday
NPR Technology
The Science Show
Tech Talk Radio ('Gotta say: They're supposed to be experts, but they aren't and their mistakes are so damned funny sometimes... That's where this show gets entertaining.)
It's a civil case.
The worst that can be said about it is that it's bad precedent and the judgment was wrong.
The judge did not make DNS requests illegal.
Has it occurred to anyone that the phone call was from MS, but was to the wrong number?
I get calls like that once or twice each year.
People mis-dial.
Mass-produced recorded music has lousy production quality (Too LOUD. It devolves into NOISE. Watch yer peaks and lay off the compression!) and is tainted from decades of over-hyping mediocre acts; an industry that notoriously spends gobs of cash lobbying for new criminal laws and suing their customers to protect their flagging artificial legislative monopoly; and performers who depend more on ProTools plug-ins and "live" vocal tracks than talent.
If there were more market-demand there'd be profit. If music companies were reputable and produced quality products, there'd be more market demand.
If the big recording companies' execs had acted with principles and professional standards (worked towards making quality products at reasonable prices... didn't treat their customers like sh!t...), the industry might still be in a decline, but they'd have a lot more years of opulence and time to exploit emerging markets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave#Plot
;)
"The prison-house is the world of sight..."
'Been there. Done that. Bought the movie rights.
...unless they started doing it again in the past two weeks. Apparently, they still do it during peak holiday travel periods.This was after the security-checkpoint -- where admittedly the selections for additional security measures were seemingly random and I, myself, was selected for a carry on search, the special air-gust machine and a swab test on my shoes.
The secondary screening that I was referring to was pulling "random" people off the boarding line at the gate. I had 3 transfers out and 2 back and at each one they made an announcement that they were going to randomly ask people to submit to secondary screening and then they pulled elderly black women out of the line. Most of the passengers were young white couples and college kids so in each case the "randomness" was suspect. Full body search?!?! Gimme a break! Secondary screening involves metal-detector wand, baggage search/explosive screening, id check, etc. That is hardly a full body search. I don't know exactly what standards are supposed to be followed and I did not watch each examination. I did, however, see one of those women receive a pat-down in addition to the wand and the carry-on search.
It's not a strip-search or a cavity search, but I'm sure that it's pretty invasive to an elderly woman in a muumuu/housedress.
"How are you today?"
"Where are you heading?"
"Is this all your property?"
"It's almost irrelevant what your answers are..." That's because I'm not a black grandma carting a bunch of grandkids around.
This holiday, every person that I saw pulled out for secondary screening was an elderly black woman with a bunch of little kids. "We're looking for behavior indicators that show a certain level of stress, fear or anxiety above and beyond that shown by an anxious member of the traveling public." Wow! What a fantastically detailed legal threshold for a full body search! The TSA considers the program a powerful tool to root out terrorists, but also an antidote to racial profiling. ..."Not!"
It's very weird to em how this opening weekend is being treated by analysts.
They predicted a "successful" $33 million opening weekend.
It now looks like they're going to take in around $28 million.
That's a "box office disaster."
WTF?
The difference between success and disaster of a $200 million dollar film is $5 million dollars in the opening weekend?
My god! Feeling good at the movies is a hysterical conversion disorder?!
What will science take away from us next?!
Quickly now! Take the children out of school and get rid of that "independent thinking" stuff they're being indoctrinated with.
We're in a hurry here! They must be deprogrammed before Lethal Weapon 5 comes out.
Please! It's for Mel!
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/would-you-pay-more-for-a-dvd-with-an-itunes-copy/?ref=technology More interestingly perhaps, the studios are hoping to create "premium" versions of DVDs that include a copy of the movie that can easily be put on an iPod... Whether you think that this means that there will be an iTunes-DRM'ed copy on the physical DVD or an iTunes download code in the packaging, it's still bundling.
In basic economics classes, they teach that when two items are bundled the price of the two will tend to average toward the price most suited to the item of greater demand.
So, slap a $4 dollar download code onto a $12 dollar DVD and while you might get away with a $16 dollar price for a brief time with strong advertising, it won't be long before the thing sells for $12 dollars again.
Nobody bundles a strongly-demanded product with another strongly-demanded product. If both were strongly-demanded then they'd be sold separately to maximize profit. Consumers see the raised price as nothing more than a price hike on the one item that they would have bought, won't pay the increased price and retailers will have to lower the price to move the bundle off their shelves.
Steve Jobs is not a fool. He has people around to remind him of these things. If Jobs is pushing bundled downloads, it's as a promotional bonus and not a premium.
> That person got paid their songwriting fee, and that's that (I think).
No, that person gets paid quite a bit for performance rights and music-publishing.
'Probably much more per track than Ms. Spears gets for doing the vocals since in addition to royalties on the album and online music sales the composer also gets paid for radio-play where Ms. Spears does not.
What makes Ms. Spears' arrangement more advantageous than the composers' are the payments from other sources such as advances against sales, concerts, merchandise, appearances and publicity, commercial advertisements -- and of course the free stuff that she gets just for showing up at awards ceremonies, bars and parties.
1. People -- as a general rule -- process complex ideas granularly. People are also generally lazy thinkers who do not attempt to refine their comprehension with falsifiable methodology. As a result, individual perceptions of value are often biased towards the simplest conclusions at the greatest level of granularity that a person can casually grasp rather than on evidence that intellect and practiced reasoning might produce. In large groups, it is possible to predict behaviors through statistical sampling using assumptions based on this model of granularity and intelligence. The conclusions of such studies are, themselves, subject to individual evaluation under the same model of granular perception. People who don't understand this are stupid religious types. If those same people were smart then they would be compelled to believe in evolution.
:)
2. Most people can't see the forest for the trees. Everybody who is not as smart as the author needs to take remedial education and secular-deprogramming classes.
Now you don't have to read the article.
You're welcome.
The Google cache is old.
Rather than overwhelm the dragonmount.com servers with slashdotters (let other fans have a chance to see it), here's the full text from the blog post. I hope that I'm not overstepping by reprinting it here. Sometimes even when you've fought your best....
Sunday, September 16th, 2007
It is with great sadness that I tell you that the Dragon is gone. RJ left us today at 2:45 PM. He fought a valiant fight against this most horrid disease. In the end, he left peacefully and in no pain. In the years he had fought this, he taught me much about living and about facing death. He never waivered in his faith, nor questioned our God's timing. I could not possibly be more proud of anyone. I am eternally grateful for the time that I had with him on this earth and look forward to our reunion, though as I told him this afternoon, not yet. I love you bubba.
Our beloved Harriet was at his side through the entire fight and to the end. The last words from his mouth were to tell her that he loved her.
Thank each and everyone of you for your prayers and support through this ordeal. He knew you were there. Harriet reminded him today that she was very proud of the many lives he had touched through his work. We've all felt the love that you've been sending my brother/cousin. Please keep it coming as our Harriet could use the support.
Jason will be posting funeral arrangements.
My sincerest thanks.
Peace and Light be with each of you,
Wilson
Brother/Cousin
4th of 3
To Catalyst: Never, never loose faith. RJ did not. Harriet hasn't. I haven't. Going through what we have, our faith is only strengthened. Besides, if God didn't exist, we would have never had Jim. We did. God does. Remember my Brother/Cousin, my friend, think of him fondly and glorify God's name.
Editor's Note:
The entire staff of Dragonmount.com would like to extend its most deepest sympathies to Robert Jordan's family. He touched all of our lives in some way and we wish him the rest and peace he deserves. We will be posting information in the near future about where you can send condolences. Please check the News Section for these updates.
A harsh lesson that I have learned here...
If you're going to make a lame joke, at least include a cite so there's a chance of getting modded up as "informative."
The Mars Climate Orbiter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
"The Mars Climate Orbiter was intended to enter orbit at an altitude of 140-150 km above Mars. However, a navigation error caused the spacecraft to reach as low as 57 km. The spacecraft was destroyed by atmospheric stresses and friction at this low altitude. The navigation error arose because a NASA subcontractor (Lockheed Martin) used Imperial units (pound-seconds) instead of the metric units (newton-seconds) as specified by NASA."
Dr. Evil: You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads! Now evidently my cycloptic colleague informs me that that cannot be done. Ah, would you remind me what I pay you people for, honestly? Throw me a bone here! What do we have?
Number Two: Sea Bass.
Dr. Evil: [pause] Right.
Number Two: They're mutated sea bass.
Dr. Evil: Are they ill tempered?
Number Two: Absolutely.
Dr. Evil: Oh well, that's a start.
Vets used to inject vaccines in the same place as the favored site of the implant -- midline above the shoulders at the back of the neck.
Vaccines are now given in the leg because many animals developed cancers in their neck in a poorly-understood phenomenon labeled "vaccination associated sarcoma." (It's easier to live with a missing leg than a missing neck...)
It's possible that many of the cancers caused by the implants were mistakenly attributed to vaccinations.
> If you mean pandering to the public to try to increase voter
> participation, well, frankly, I think that's a good thing.
That's part of it. Another part is that the sci-fi community is still plagued by insecurity and by throwing their lot in with feature films and pop tv, people seem to hope to legitimize something that's already legitimate.
Pandering, in this sense, refers to the simpering geek begging for attention, affection and affirmation who lurks inside of otherwise competent and confident adults.
> By "the message isn't getting through", you mean, "actual nominees keep winning"
No, I mean that every year there are protest votes and gag votes because the categories are not taken seriously or are outright ridiculed. There's a significant portion of the sci-fi community that considers those categories worthy of scorn.
When there was only one dramatic presentation award, participants only treated it half-seriously. For gosh sake, "Flesh Gordon" was a nominee!
But the fun has gone out of the game. People, as I said, vote for what they think legitimizes and promotes the industry to outsiders rather than what they enjoy or honestly believe is worthy of praise. It's a drag and I think that those categories -- recent additions -- should be retired.
I wish they'd eliminate those categories. They're nothing but pandering.
Participants keep pushing with the "No Award" votes, but the message isn't getting through.
Bioactive glass is a group of ceramic materials that are currently the subject of various studies related to bone-replacement and reconstructive surgery for (among others) persons who have had bone removed due to cancer.
New developments in making the materials with porous structures to stimulate bone growth have brought a spurt in the use of it as graft material and encouraged investigations into other medical uses, but I wonder now whether it and other silicates as a class pose a significant cancer risk, themselves.
Actually, churches do take money from the government.
...and:
v es
(And yes, that is state-supported religion.)
Our tax money is going to fund churches under the direction of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives a.k.a. the "Department of Faith."
Quoting from the Wikipedia:
"The initiative seeks to strengthen faith-based and community organizations and expand their capacity to provide federally funded social services, with the idea being that these groups are well-situated to meet the needs of local individuals."
"Former director Jim Towey admitted in 2004 that 'no direct federal grants from his program had gone to a non-Christian religious group.'"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_based_initiati
"Ironically, socialized medicine takes healthcare decisions out of individuals' hands..."
So do HMO's.