If adults don't go to the cinema in sufficient numbers to matter, how did a R rated film like Django Unchained make $400 million? I'd say that's a pretty good pay day for any film maker. I agree with most of what your saying but your impression of cinema is a little out of touch.

I got a migrain just trying to figure out what you were not trying to say while simultaneously trying to say something.

The music industry is more fragmented these days. There's something for everyone out there; you just need to do a little more digging because the mainstream acts are polished productions that are as much marketing as music.

If you think things were better back in the day then that's probably because you're a grumpy old man or you just aren't into music anymore.

This a thousand times.

I love Bandcamp and Top Shelf Records. Bandcamp is the first music platform that actually suits my needs and gives me all kinds of music to listen to with no strings attached. If I find myself listening to an album a lot, I purchase it just for the sake of convenience. Being able to download the album in any format I choose is also handy because I can download a FLAC version to play on my computer and a more compressed MP3 version to play on my phone.

I've actually been so happy with Top Shelf Records' offerings that I recently orderd a vinyl record from them. In the confirmation email for the purchase, they included a Bandcamp download code for the album. I cannot say enough good things about this company. This is the way a record company should treat customers; with respect rather than lawsuits.

I've been using Open Office / Libre Office for at least 5 years now. It does more than I would ever need it to. Honestly... it has too much. So I don't see how there's even a market anymore for Microsoft Office, cloud or not.

As a web designer, I'm not sure I understand your gripe about HTML/CSS being a horrible tool to design user interfaces. Typically I design my interface in Photoshop and then create it using HTML/CSS, which is suprisingly good at this sort of thing and only getting better. I've designed things on multiple platforms in the past and I prefer the HTML/CSS method.

Yep. In his case, he felt the competition might be trying to make him disapear. He occassionaly films weddings (which like most wedding services, is completely cut throat) or does videos for the city (which involves bidding on contracts) so if someone out there feels slighted or envious, they can get your video pulled with enough effort.

My brother is a local film maker in a small town and he got his demo reel pulled from Youtube for "artificially inflating views". Naturally my brother is a little confused by this as he's not savvy enough about the internet to even know how to do such things. Obviously he didn't go to his video and hit refresh a couple thousand times and it's possible some of his friends did but that's not his doing.

The worst part is he's left no recourse. Google pulled the video and warned that if another of his videos sees the same artifically inflated views, his account would be banned so now he's looking at Vimeo as an alternative.

OFN my friend: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/19/us-samsung-seagate-idUSTRE73I1CG20110419

Ebay, Amazon and even Paypal have shown remarkable staying power. The web's still young, but as it ages sites tend to stick around longer and longer. It's going to take an awful lot to dethrone Facebook. I'm sure it will happen but that's the nature of business. Eventually every business either gets replaced or changes their business model to the point that you don't even recognize the company anymore.

Anything of widespread use is going to acquire idiot users. With that said, Twitter is far more useful and worthwhile than most "social" platforms out there. I put "social" in quotes because you could just as easily follow a couple of information sites or key developers on a project and your twitter becomes a centralized news feed rather than people talking about the latest annoyance on their way to work.

I was skeptical of it at first too but it's surprisingly useful if you follow the right people.

If Space X has only spent $375 million to get where it is today, imagine what NASA could do if it wasn't plagued by pork and had actual funding. Movies have bugets of $300 million: http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/records/budgets.php

As a human race, we have some pretty mixed priorities.

All this automation is great and everything but when does it actually translate into a benefit for humanity in general?

I'm so glad some business can now churn out more crap to purchase at cheaper prices. When are we going to focus on shortening the work week or making housing more affordable? What about investing more time in expanding humanity's presence in the solar system? Or reducing our environmental foot print?