Posted 11/25/2008 at 11:26:11am

The movie industry in the US Markets had an annual realized profit margin of 5.4% in 2007 an increase of 2.1% year over year.  If you look deeper into the statistics here: http://www.mpaa.org/USEntertainmentIndustryMarketStats.pdf you will see that the average profitable film and the average profitable video game have similar rates of success.  What seperates the two is the longevity and the multiple paths to market that a film has to profitability that a Video Game does not have.  Where I may play DOOM3 once or twice, I will watch a movie like War Games five ten or more times.  The reason for this is fairly simple,  Movies and television are whats known as "cool" mediums.  That is they have little or no way to change the outcome of the broadcast by the user, and the user is only asked to do a couple of things to maximize enjoyment:  Observe the broadcast and in most cases willingly suspend his or her disbelief of the spectacle.  A Video Game, Sporting Activity (such as shooting hoops or playing golf) are "Warm" mediums.  They require coordinated interaction and interaction within and with the environment form the user. This interaction will determine success or failure of the user to achieve the stated goals of the event, whether thats getting a birdie on that par 3 5th hole or Killing legions of Mutants in DOOM3.  In the latter case it requires a suspension of disbelief to play the game per se as well as the coordination to move user input devices mapped on to pixels on a screen to achieve a desired goal.  

What this all boils down to is this:  A consumer of a video game (not non-Arcade style games which dont factor in due to the brevity of the experience and the stated goal of achieving as high an score as possible) will play a full length title to its completion from 1-3 times but not generally over this.  Thus the developer of the title must continually release expansions to the title Farcry Farcry2 Call of Duty... in a series of releases. Or if the game is an online interactive and based on a distributed model like World of Warcraft or LotR Online or Final Fantasy XI Online the developer must continually add new content via patches and expansion packs.  Which of course adds to the Overhead of the title, which incidentally reduces the profitability of the title from a profit over time perspective.  Hollywood does not have this problem.  Once a movie is made and is in the theatres it can be watched over and over again in multiple venues and the royalties continue to accrue without major modification to the content of the film play or television show.

Video Games, and in particular PC based Video Games, have a platform issues to worry about in addition to distribution model issues.  You have to get people to fork over the dough for the game in order to turn a profit.  Marketing, Content Development, Production, Maintenance, and etc all play their role in making a profitable video game as it does in film making.  Yet the Game developer has to continually improve on his original work and add content or the title fades from the shelves rapidly. 

 People will sit for hours on end to finish a game but when they are done with it they are done unless new content comes along.  Not so with films we will watch the same film several times over the course of ten years.

 The next issue is that of the platform.  The pc title you bought 3 years ago may play well on your pc now.  the one you bought 10 years ago probably does not, at least it does not without considerable maintenance and emulation software to reproduce the environment that the pc title of 10 years ago had.  The VHS Tape of Snow White plays just as well in a VCR today as it did when you bought it 15 years ago.  You may have worn the tape out and had to replace it but its shelf life is MUCH longer than a pc video game as is its appeal.

Posted 09/11/2008 at 03:51:31pm

Unfortunately, for most of the ComCast (ComCrap and I thank God i dont have that millstone in my area) users, ComCrap is the ONLY choice for highspeed broadband service.  If every user who was subjugated to the Iron Fist that is CommieCrap had a choice of bandwidth providers, Im guessing CommieCrap would no longer exist as a provider of bandwidth.  You see the users who live in a CommieCrap area usually have That service and no other choice.  Rural areas areas where there is little or no coverage from competitive businesses etc.  If your ISP can limit how much data you can move per month how much longer till they can limit what data you can move per month?  CommieCrap needs to be disenfranchised by the FCC

Posted 09/11/2008 at 03:30:20pm

"Seriously, does anyone care what the constitution says anymore? "

 Yes.  I care.  Im sure that the of the 2900+ people that died 7 years ago today, at least a portion of them cared what the United States Constitution said.  I am VERY sure that every person who has been declared not guilty of a crime in this country's court system cares very deeply about the constitution.  I am further certain that each and every brave soul in Iraq and Afghanistan care about that hallowed scrap of parchment. 

Because YOU do not care does not mean that Others do not care.

Think before you speak or write it gives your mind something to do and your hands time to rest

Posted 09/11/2008 at 11:13:26am

 I would like to point out a few flaws and or oversimplifications in your article on lasers. 

"...Neutrons and protons exert a positive electrical charge..."  While it is true that Protons provide electricaly positive charges, Neutrons, which "weigh" approximately the same as the Proton (P+e --> N+Ve) this formula being the generally accepted form of electron capture,  have an electric charge of 0 and are considered a spin 1/2 baryon.   So only the proton exerts a charge within the nucleus of an atom.   

 "...Light—any type of light—is created when electrons are energized by an external source, such as electricity. Once that is accomplished, the electrons move into a higher orbit around the atom, and the atom becomes unstable. This state is only temporary, however; the electrons soon return to their normal orbit, and this is when the good stuff happens. As the electrons return to a state of equilibrium, they release their excess energy in the form of particles called photons: light. ..."

Light, at least as far as we know so far, is not "created".  An exchange of energy states can be said to have happened, an electron on retruning to the ground state from an excited state emits a photon, would be a true statement but Light along with other forms of energy or matter are not created. This would violate Conservation of Mater and Energy.  This is a "law or rule" that we think, and all evidence so far supports this thinking, does not change.  Now notice something.  The photon was not "inside" the electron waiting to be emitted but yet it is Not created.  It is truly the result of a transfer of energy/momentum of one particle interacting with another particle.  

 Oh and electricity could never interact with an electron as electricity is nothing more than the flow of electrons through a medium, and since that is the case and all electrons must by definition carry an electricaly negative charge the two particles are excluded (Pauli's exclusion principle) from interaction.  The electron may only emit photons which can interact with other electrons!  The statement would be rather like saying electricity is energized by electricity.  A better choice of words there would have been to simply say an external energy source, and leave it at that.  Going further with that thought would require that the reader have a doctorate in physics to fully understand the implications. 

"Light—Any type of light—..." There are no discreet types of light that I (or any rational being ) am aware of.  There are differing frequencies of light but there are not discreet types of light.  All light consists of photons, indeed the photon is the fundamental particle of light.  Light may not consist of anything other than light in discreet "packets" that we call photons and each photon is known as 1 quanta of light.  The generally accepted definition of light is: electromagnetic radiation in the form of photons.  There is no other generally accepted definition than this.  It is fundamental to QCD and QED and to date we have not had any contradictions of this definition.  light=light everytime no exceptions to the rule so far.  Now light can have different frequencies.  780nm between peaks (near infrared) to 405nm between peaks (blue) are two frequencies of light, but they are still photons moving At c.   

Posted 08/08/2008 at 01:14:46pm

According to the Supreme Court Test: 

In Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967) Justice Harlan issued a concurring opinion articulating the two-part test later adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court as the test for determining whether a police or government search is subject to the limitations of the Fourth Amendment: (1) governmental action must contravene an individual's actual, subjective expectation of privacy; (2) and that expectation of privacy must be reasonable, in the sense that society in general would recognize it as such.

and again according to a general notion of privacy as held by current common law practice,  A persons home is both subjective of such privacy and objective and reasonable of such privacy.  Therefore an illegal search would have been conducted had the person taking the photo been an officer of the court or in the employ of such. 

As this was a private company there is no "search" illegal or otherwise however the private company has created a potentially damaging situation should the images they capture be subsequently used as evidence of a crime in that not only would such testimony or evidence be disallowed in a criminal trial but should a third party private to the evidence be found culpable of releasing information that was then later excluded on the basis of privilege would most likely be subject to litigation of an anti defamatory nature. 

The specific case of the woman's cat being displayed could also lead to potential negligence or malfeasance claims against Google or any other private organization if that woman's property was damaged or lives in her home were put in jeapordy based on the images being taken then subsequently released to the public without regard for the private citizens safety.  "the camerman has a responsibiilty of where he points his camera"  if harm befalls because of the camermans negligence or malfeasance the camerman is as guilty as the perpatrator

Posted 08/08/2008 at 12:27:28pm

People Elections Matter!!  If you dont want yet another Souter Stephens Ginsburg or Bryer on the Supreme Court, Make Sure you vote Against Obama!!  He will be the one who replaces the next member to leave the Supreme Court. 

 You really want to solve the countries ills?  This fall when it comes time to vote vote Against Obama!  Vote Against your current Democratic House member (gets rid of Pelosi as speaker) Vote Against your Democratic Senator(gets rid of Reid as Majority Leader)  and vote against any neo liberal RINO (Republican in Name Only)

Failing that you will be forced at some point to choose:  My family or the Government.  Just as in the film The Patriot the protagonist had to choose so shall you.  Before it comes down to that choice do your self a favor stack the deck for yourself by electing leaders who are not self serving demagogues or pacifistic tree huggers with designs of global utopian communism elect leaders who understand what Jefferson truly belived:  The government that governs least governs best.  Do this and I can guarantee that you will have an easier time when it comes time to put would be dictators and plutocrats backs against the wall