Cool! Checking it out now.

I feel like such a bum compared to this guy, actually I am a bum compared to this guy.

Or to put it another way, at least you're still alive and capable of feeling inadequate. That's more than he can say.

It's certainly the future but I think calling it beta is charitable. When it works right it's great but when it fails it's about as bad as all other voice recognition systems that came before.

It works just frequently enough and well enough for you to want to rely on it and fails just often enough that you're wanting to chuck the phone out the window in frustration.

I think the worst bit is the inconsistent network connectivity. Since every bit of voice processing is done off the phone, you're dependent on a network connection and there's no telling when Siri won't be able to reach the server. So you can tell it to set an appointment and it will get that and ask you to confirm it and you say yes and it fails. Or you could be speaking to it in a loud voice and it will either wait 5 seconds after you're speaking to accept what you said for processing or it will cut you off mid-speech to process only part of your request.

I'm not denying this is the future but it will probably take another iphone version number before they get the glitches ironed out.

How does anything get produced these days, shows or movies or games? Someone has to come up with the money, then the movie gets made, then it gets distributed.

Now, ultimately that money is coming from individual people voting with their wallets. If people weren't watching Trek, there wouldn't be Trek. If kids weren't buying Pokemon cards and games, it wouldn't be made.

So, the question isn't a matter of straight economics. It's not like any of this stuff is subsidized. Entertainment is enormously popular, enormously profitable, and gatekeepers are making bank.

Distribution used to be the sticking point. You need theaters to show movies in, television networks to put tv shows on, and physical media to sell into homes. This all is very capital-intensive, costs a lot of money, and there are many barriers to entry.

The internet is fucking the traditional distribution model sideways. Video stores are as dead as Kodak, we're just watching the corpses twitching. Video game stores are in a similar bind.

So, where's the last barrier to entry? Capital. Even if you strip out the inflated salaries, graft, and Hollywood accounting in entertainment, this stuff is expensive to make. While you can shoot a Kevin Smith movie for $20k or make an Angry Birds for $250k (maybe it was $500k), you can't make a GTAIV or the Matrix for that kind of scratch. It takes money.

The technology is pretty much in place for fans to take ownership of their own IP, it's just a matter of setting the precedent. This is the next step that the gatekeepers don't want to see happen. Right now things are basically made on spec -- capital is put up and then profits are made after the product is produced.

So you get a producer who puts out a prospectus for a movie. Here's the plot, here's some storyboards. Target is $x to begin production. It's an investment with no guarantee of return. You kick in $5, you get your name in the credits. If the movie is profitable, you'll get points off it. But more likely the only payback is seeing the film made.

Once the film is released, it can be distributed on Netflix, direct download, physical media, and the books for the project will be left open for public audit. If it makes a profit, the investors can see a return.

If the movie is successful, the producer can pitch his next project and start raising money.

The internet is making the distribution costs cheap, can remove barriers of entry put up by rent seekers and other assholes who are trying to get a cut for not doing a goddamn thing but it still takes a pile of cash to make something. GTAIV was $100m but the typical AAA title on this generation is at least $30m. Even if 75% of the cost is bloat and waste and could be saved with an efficient, targeted effort, that's still a giant pile of cash.

Ah, that takes me back. I was such a pathetic nerd as a kid that I used to buy all the D&D guides and modules and read them even though I didn't have any friends to actually play it with. If there were any other kids at my school into D&D back in those early days, they certainly would never have publicly admitted it. I remember watching the movie Taps [wikipedia.org], and seeing the scene where the cadets are playing D&D and being so jealous that they had other people to play with.

Yeah. When other geeks would complain about only having their geek friends at school for company I was always like wow, I'm so jealous of your life. The only place I found fellow geeks was on the local BBS'. Yes, there were a number of us in the same area code but we didn't go to the same schools.

I can understand doing something really difficult with a lot of preparation. Bike across America? Cool. Walk across America? Cool. Crawl across America? Moonwalk across America? Walk on your hands across America? That goes beyond an interesting challenge to just bizarre.

I can understand sailing across an ocean. I can even understand doing it solo. But trying to set a record for smallest boat or rowing? That just seems like trying to push beyond difficult to stupidly dangerous.

I understand doing something for the challenge but there has to be a screw loose to do it for notoriety. Yeah, yeah, nobody will remember my name after I'm dead and she'll get her name in the history books whether she survives or not. In fact, she'll probably be remembered better if she does fail. Amelia Earhart surely owes a good deal of her current name recognition to not just how she lived but how she died. I guess if fame's that important to you, have at it.

If the big governments want rid of it, they will find a way.

[quote]And that's in a universe that's 15 *billion* light years across. It's a big place, with an unimaginable number of other planets. But mostly it's just a giant, empty void.[/quote]

Yakko: Everybody lives on a street in a city
Or a village or a town for what it's worth.
And they're all inside a country which is part of a continent
That sits upon a planet known as Earth.
And the Earth is a ball full of oceans and some mountains
Which is out there spinning silently in space.
And living on that Earth are the plants and the animals
And also the entire human race.

It's a great big universe
And we're all really puny
We're just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
It's big and black and inky
And we are small and dinky
It's a big universe and we're not.

And we're part of a vast interplanetary system
Stretching seven hundred billion miles long.
With nine planets and a sun; we think the Earth's the only one
That has life on it, although we could be wrong.
Across the interstellar voids are a billion asteroids
Including meteors and Halley's Comet too.
And there's over fifty moons floating out there like balloons
In a panoramic trillion-mile view.

And still it's all a speck amid a hundred billion stars
In a galaxy we call the Milky Way.
It's sixty thousand trillion miles from one end to the other
And still that's just a fraction of the way.
'Cause there's a hundred billion galaxies that stretch across the sky
Filled with constellations, planets, moons and stars.
And still the universe extends to a place that never ends
Which is maybe just inside a little jar!

YW+D : It's a great big universe
And we're all really puny
We're just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
You might think that you're essential
Try inconsequential
It's a small world after all!

Making good movies is not the business they're in. Hollywood is about profit maximization and ego-stroking. You're not going to get a good, nutritious meal from McDonalds, either. It's got the salt and fat and sugar that pander to tastebuds and people go there by choice but it's not good for them, it's not good for America. And it's a chicken/egg argument over whether bad American tastes drive McDonald's practices or whether McDonald's practices ruined America's taste.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oLto_YZIDw

The haunting Torgo theme with a techno remix. Better than DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS. For reals.