It's official: no reprieve for Hubble

NASA got a 2.5% budget hike for 2006, but none of that is for saving Hubble.  Out of the $16.45 billion budget, only $75 million is allocated to Hubble, and "all of that would be used to develop a mission for steering the orbiting observatory into the ocean at the end of its lifetime."  Everything at NASA now primarily "revolves around" President Bush's stated goal of a return to the Moon by 2020.

"NASA is working on ways to remotely manage the 14-year-old Hubble in order to keep it going as long as possible, and is considering launching two already completed Hubble cameras on a separate yet-to-be-built spacecraft," [NASA comptroller Steve] Isakowitz said.  "We have been as eager as the Congress to try to save the Hubble, but at the end of the day, what we're trying to save is the science related to Hubble."

And, in the end, you've got to respect that.  The science, not the hardware, is, after all, the point.

Yo, RIAA! Want to survive? Pay attention!

In particular, pay attention to this article in the Register.  It's a transcript of an In The City keynote speech from the Register's San Francisco bureau chief, Andrew Orlowski, detailing the inevitable obsolescence, withering and death of the music industry as it was ten years ago, and what the music industry needs to do if it still wants to be around another ten years from now.  There will be a quiz, and it's not one you can cheat or crib on or retake later.

I only really have one issue with this speech, and it's the following paragraph:

The LP gave the music business it's golden years.  It's true lots of LPs have stinkers.  But another way of looking at it is that I've spent $3 instead of $1, and I'm still not that unhappy.  iTunes and Napster destroy this model because they let people pick and choose the tunes they like within 15 seconds of hearing them.  My sympathies are with you guys, because you're actually right from every point of view I can imagine.  The world works on bundles: a newspaper is a bundle of stories; a TV channel is a bundle of programs; a satellite channel is a bundle of TV channels; economically the world only works through bundles.  The stuff you don't want pays for the stuff you do.  There are sound actuarial reasons for this. It works. And artistically, we wouldn't have had The Beatles or Joy Division without the bundle.

Sorry, Mr. Orlowski, but bite me.  You blew this point.  I don't understand how you could be so right on the rest of your talk, and yet so wrong on this.  Bundling, forcing people to take crap they don't want in order to get the stuff they do, has only ever worked when, and because, there was no choice -- no other way for people to get what they wanted.  That does not make it a good business model, and never has.  If you bought something that turned out to be crap and no-one wants it, more fool you for buying it in the first place; ditch it and sell something people want.  Don't expect to be able to soak the public to make them cover you from your own mistakes.  They know when you're doing it, and now they have the power to tell you where you can shove it, and guess what?  For the past few years, they've been doing just that.

You move with the times, or you die.  Period.  And if the times say you can no longer get away with bundling, then you sigh, you say "It was good while it lasted," you thank your lucky stars you were able to get away with it for as long as you did ... and then you move on and live in the new reality.  If you just start searching for a way to continue screwing people, they're going to give you the heave-ho.

It might mean you have to buy music a different way in the first.  Maybe, say, give artists control over what music they're making, and let them make an album the way they're happy with, instead of pressuring them to have an album in four months in time for Christmas and having four decent tracks and six tracks of commercialized garbage on it to make the deadline.  Let them record their music the way they want to play it, instead of yours the way you think they should be playing it.

You know, stuff like the indie labels like Metropolis have been doing.  There just might be a reason why they're succeeding, and why you're not any more.  Try doing it their way for a change.  You might be surprised.  It's always been a great recipe for success -- give the people what they want, instead of giving them what you want to give them, then telling them "Look, we already told you that you want this, so shut up and open your wallet."

From time to time ....

...I go through my friends list peeking at the journals of those who've friended me, looking for those with kindred spirits or similar interests, and add a few.  If I don't add you, don't take it personally; it doesn't mean that I dislike you, just that what you post tends not to coincide with my interests.

I haven't gotten around to updating in a while, bandwidth-limited for so long.  Welcome beckyzoole, friend of bbwoof and dakiwiboid; maltconnoisseur, who knows far more about single malt Scotch whiskey than I can afford to; adriang, who claims to be a hopeless computer nerd; bbullock, fellow Schlocker; and shadowcat48li, human of Fafhrd the Maine Coon Cat.