Cities That "Feel" European

Well, considering I have never been to Europe (where a lot of Bollywood movies are set).

Urban "Fingerprints" Finally Reveal the Similarities (and Differences) Between American and European Cities

Travel to any European city and the likelihood is that it will look and feel substantially different to modern American cities such as Los Angeles, San Diego, or Miami. ..... New York and Tokyo share similar shape distributions but the visual similarity between these cities’ layouts is far from obvious. ..... cities fall into four main types ... The first category contains only one city, Buenos Aires in Argentina, which is entirely different from every other city in the database. Its blocks are all medium-size squares and regular rectangles. .... An example from the second group is Athens in Greece. These cities are composed mostly of small blocks with a broad distribution of shapes. ..... Most cities that Louf and Barthelemy studied fall into the third group. Like the second group, the blocks in the cities have a broad distribution of shapes. However, they tend to be larger than the blocks in Athens. ..... This third group contains several subgroups. One of these contains 68 percent of all the American cities that Louf and Barthelemy studied. By contrast, all of the European cities, except Athens, fall into another subgroup. This “European” subgroup also contains Boston, Washington, Portland, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Baltimore, which have a European flavor. ..... There is one final group, represented by Mogadishu in Somalia, made up almost entirely of small square-shaped blocks with a sprinkling of small rectangles..... It may also allow other kinds of “city science.” An interesting approach might be to look for correlations between crime and certain types of neighborhood layout.

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What Price A Movie?

Image via WikipediaNew York Times: Dodd Calls for Hollywood and Silicon Valley to Meet

..... no Washington player can safely assume that a well-wired, heavily financed legislative program is safe from a sudden burst of Web-driven populism...... “This is altogether a new effect,” Mr. Dodd said, comparing the online movement to the Arab Spring. He could not remember seeing “an effort that was moving with this degree of support change this dramatically” in the last four decades, he added.

Say it is 10 dollars at the movie theater on release day. Some places it is 13, some 9. But let's say it's 10.

If the movie industry would move such that new releases can be watched on your laptop the day of the release, how much should you be asked to pay for it? It has to be less than 10. They did not build the home you are sitting in. They are not having to pay for the air conditioning, or the chair. The laptop is yours. The Internet is not charging them for the streaming.

The only thing they need is the production cost and the profit.

I think three dollars. Maybe even two.

They will make more money that way than they do now. They will reach a much, much wider audience for one. They could stream it from their own websites. Ads at that site would be the new popcorn.

I don't understand what stops them.

The Movie Industry's Non Innovation

Image via WikipediaSteve Blank has a great blog post cross posted on ReadWriteWeb.

Why The Movie Industry Can’t Innovate and the Result is SOPA

This year the movie industry made $30 billion (a third of it in the U.S.) from box-office revenue. But the total movie industry revenue was $87 billion. Where did the other $57 billion come from? ..... From sources that the studios at one time claimed would put them out of business: Pay-per view TV, cable and satellite channels, video rentals, DVD sales, online subscriptions and digital downloads. ..... Today it's the Internet that's going to put the studios out of business. Sound familiar? ..... Why was the movie industry consistently wrong? And why do they continue to fight new technology? ........ But why does the movie business think their solution is in Washington and legislation? History and success. ...... when they hired Jack Valenti, who ran the studios' lobbying efforts for the next 38 years. Ironically, it was Valenti's skill in hobbling competitive innovation that negated any need for studios to develop agility, vision and technology leadership. ....... The incumbents tend to have short-sighted goals and often fail to recognize that more money can be made on new platforms and distribution channels. ...... Ironically, the six major movie studios have a great technology lab in Silicon Valley with projects in streaming rights, Video On Demand, Ultraviolet, etc. But lacking the support from the studio CEOs or boards, the lab languishes in the backwaters of the studios' strategy. Instead of leading with new technology, the studios lead with litigation, legislation and lobbying. (Imagine if the $110 million/year spent on lobbying went to disruptive innovation.) ......... The fact is piracy is rampant in all forms of commerce. ..... Grocery and retail stores euphemistically call it shrinkage. ...... SOPA gives corporations unprecedented power to censor almost any site on the Internet. ...... What the music and movie industry should be doing in Washington is promoting legislation to adapt copyright law to new technology- and then leading the transition to the new platforms. ..... Studios are run by financial managers who have no corporate DNA to exploit disruptive innovation

I think of the Internet as one big farm. It is the farm that feeds you mindfood. Movies are mindfood. Of all technologies that were ever invented for the creation and consumption of mindfood, the Internet is the best by a wide margin. The movie executives fighting the Internet is farmers saying keep me away from the farm. What kind of farmers are these people?