Here's a letter I wrote to Mark Cuban I thought it was a fun read!

WAKE UP MARK!

I don't mean that in a bad way, but come on most people here are complaining about the same thing over and over. It's not the theatre's that have the problem it's the industry as a whole.

Here's the issue, the Movie industry is still living with the same economic model it was living with 20 years ago. $80 million budgets another $20 million in marketing and the "HOPE" that they make it all back or most of it in the 1st weekend. Modern world to the movie industry, that doesn't work anymore. We the consumer have far more choices now, we have theatres in every room in the house, and most of us have 100's of channels of original content. According to the Motion Picture Association something like 194 Movies were released last year. The average budget of said movies was $48 million. Oprah, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Heck countless DIY and HGTV programs will do 194 productions in a season. All this is done with Millions watching, what are the millions paying to watch? Nothing, virtually nothing. Sure some may pay cable companies or satellite companies, but in reality what I pay the cable company monthly my wife and I could only go to the movies 2-3 times tops. The sad thing is I rarely even watch movies on the 100's of channels that I have, I even have some 20 "movie" channels which all of 2 (2!!!!!!!!) are available in HD. I still rarely will watch what's on there, the reason is a lack of original content. I'm more likely to watch HBO for their shows than I am for the movies, most of which I've already seen on DVD. Why? Simple, I know that they'll play that same movie 80 times in the next 3 months and my DVR will catch it for me at 2am if I really want to watch it again. I rarely do that though because I rent from Blockbuster.com for all of $17 a month and get to watch 15-25 DVD quality relevant movies or TV shows a month.

So how is it that I the consumer would rather watch the latest episode of Lost than the movie that's already been on the market for the past 6 months? Simple, for one it's free, another, the quality of the production rivals that of the movie, and finally its original programming. How is it that the broadcast industry, which 20 years ago was much like the movie industry, is able to provide me with far more quality content than the movie industry? 20 years ago when I watched television I had some 8 channels to watch, with some original programming, we got cable and then we had all of 30 channels to watch with more original programming. We’d still get bored with it, the way it was presented to us, the quality was sub-par, and we couldn’t get it when we wanted it. So when we wanted the best entertainment possible we went to the movies! The Movies were in surround sound not just stereo, they were on 40’ screens, the quality of the films blew anything else we’d see on TV out of the water! At home we all had 25” CRT sets with at best stereo sound and at best we could watch the movie on the overwhelming quality of VHS. Now I have hundreds of channels to watch, all of my local broadcast (FREE) affiliates offer really good programming absolutely free in stunning High Definition with 5.1 surround sound. We’re talking 720p digital broadcasts that run DVD’s out of the water. Not only do they offer me this for free, but they offer me hundreds of these near masterpieces for free, they only ask that I watch the commercials, which I don’t even have to do that because of the wonders of science that provided us with the “DVR”. So with all those choices you want me and my wife to hunk down $20-30 after concessions to go see a feature film. Sorry it’s not going to happen, you want to make money making movies you need to do what the Television industry did in the last 20 years. They changed the way they did business in order to catch up with the technology. They quit paying actors ridiculous sums to make shows, through digital means they took production costs and reduced them on a massive scale, they created more programming based on reality to both heighten interest and reduce overall costs and in the end to create more content that technology now allowed them to broadcast. Yet here is the movie industry, still paying people like Tom Cruise $20million to do a film, Steven Speilberg $15 million, still producing some 200 movies per year at ridiculous costs. The Motion Picture Association hasn’t caught up with Television, they are far behind, and soon with Television producing more and sometimes better content than that of the movies they may not even be relevant to the discussion anymore. If you want to make money making original films than you need to change the antiquated business model, the competition is far too fierce and is eating you alive. Here is a quick list of 5 things I’d change immediately regarding the Industry and the Theatre.

1. Reduce the price of admission drastically, this can be done by reducing the amount of costs involved with making and distributing films, we don’t need people selling us tickets at a booth that can be automated thanks. (online, or kiosks at the theater)
2. Make it easier for the typical American Family to see the movie, how about an area for small children to be watched while mom and dad go see the movie. I’d gladly pay $10 so that my child could be watched during the movie.
3. Change the way concessions are handled, popcorn and drinks could easily be sold via a machine, offer some quality food at the non-self serve areas and maybe areas in the theatre where a dinner could be eaten, maybe a small bar in front of some rows so that drinks and food could placed. If I’m going to pay an outrageous amount for food I’d rather pay $7-8 on a quality burger or sandwich than $4 on a mediocre hot dog.
4. As many have already stated give the consumer more choice, offer the movie at a Kiosk at the theater on DVD, or via mail on the internet. Make the DVD one track fully uncompressed, no features no nothing, make the previews part of said track. One 10 gig track is not an easy feat to compress and viably pirate, especially if it’s already at 720p in Mpeg4 format. Besides why pirate it if you can buy it online or head to a kiosk and get your own copy for $9.99. Cost of selling it that way? Not much, that $9.99 equal damn near pure profit.
5. Change the business model of the theater itself, where as you may drastically reduce the cost of seeing one movie, offer the consumer more choice in the theater as a whole. Offer season passes where people can buy an allotment of movies, we’ll say 10 because it’s easy and that pass last for 6 months and cost around $45. You can sell that by advertising movies that will be coming out in the next 6 months to hit your demography. You can offer discounts on concessions with said pass, and you can finally give control to parents on what their kids are seeing. If the parents don’t want their kids to see anything worse than PG-13 their season pass is restricted as such. The technology is here, get with the broadcast industry and use it.

There’s a few other things you could change right now that would help. Bring back Ushers, and make them actually shut people up, or at least offer everyone a headphone jack in the seats. If I’m going to pay $8 to watch a movie in your theater vs my own than give me an incentive and at least get rid of the previews and advertisements. Oh and if you want me to get there and see that show then let all these changes be known. Give us that we apologize speech that Bill Ford gave, the one that goes we’re sorry for royally screwing you for the last 40 years, come back and see what all we’ve changed.

Free Water and Power.

Ok here's my idea for free power and water for everyone. Not sure where to take this, so I'm going to post it here and if you think you can use it, or make it work, go for it. To make this work you will need essentially 3 things, sea water, the sun, and a large mechanical contraption. The 1st 2 are essentially free, the contraption is a one time investment. As someone will point out I probably used too many commas, but I don't really care. Moving on, affix several parabolic mirrors in a circle, make sure they can be adjusted in a north south fashion (15 degree range should suffice), in the center place a large boiler, make sure your mirrors reflect sunlight at one spot on each side of the boiler. This should be done somewhere near the coast, you'll need a pick up line to get sea water, a turbine, a generator and some pipe. When you get done assembling your contraption should look similar to the illustration I've provided.
How it works: As you can see the water is trapped by a simple tidal tray, the pressure from the tide moves water down the pipe opening a valve in the boiler. The Boiler being heated by the sun quickly brings the water to a boil and causes the water to convert to a gaseous state forcing it to expand in the chamber. This gas that is forced out of the chamber is then fed through a turbine which in turn rotates a generator. The panels are moved slightly throughout the day to coincide with the rotation of the earth, so that their aim stays true to the boiler. After the gas exits the turbine it will need to be fed through some type of filter to collect whatever salt remnant maybe in the gas. The remaining gas should be pumped into an aquifer where it will then be allowed to cool and return to it's liquid state completely clean of impurities (distilled water). The boiler will need to be cleaned periodically of salt and other solvents.

Some add ons that might also work:

1. Natural gas heaters under boiler to supplement boiler at night so one could have a continuous charge.
2. Auto cleaning contraption for the boiler.
3. Possibly filter out some salt before it reaches the turbine to prolong life of the turbine.
4. New lubrication techniques maybe needed to deal with the corrosive effects of salt and water.
Quick notes:
The illustration is mock up of a device that is over 60' in diameter. Each mirror is over 6' tall, if I used the commonly accepted rule of Solar wattage (550 watts per meter squared in the North American region), this device at %30 efficiency could potentially deliver 7.3 kilowatts during peak time continuously.
Any suggestions or comments please let me know.
Again if you use this idea or like it in general tell people where you heard about it.

Wow watch out my wife and I got a really bad virus!!!

Look out, make sure your medicine cabinets are filled with the latest non-expired virus definitions, there's a bug out there so bad it will immediately make your life miserable. Last Friday I came home from work and I noticed the old internal disk was churning in a most uncomfortable way. By about 8pm it was dumping malware all over the place, from both the input device, and the output device. Around that same time my wife reported the same error, by 10pm her system dumped out her input device directly after she had inputted some code. By midnight our systems were dumping constantly, rebooting didn't help, no matter what fix we tried to apply we were still left with a massive system crash. It's unfortunate we don't have a firewall running on our internal network, but as most will tell you it's a pain when you wanna play games or have a little fun when you have to deal with some type of protection device. Anyway by midnight I decided it was time to seek some professional help, so we headed to the local ER. There they had the latest malware destroyers, and their virus definitions were up to date. They were able to bypass the normal input devices and get their patch in without the virus detecting it. While they weren't able to completely delete the virus, they were able to quarantine it which allowed my already installed immune system to destroy it completely.

I'd just like to say if you find yourself in a similar situation, and you have some type of extended software/hardware support coverage, get to an ER. They will be able to get your system cleaned up and running like new in no time.

Mr. T 2008!!

That's right!! Mr. T 2008! If he's not running in 2008 I'm penciling him in! Mr. T would be the best president this country has ever had. He should form his own political party, the "T" Party. As many of you know Mr. T has his own show now, it's very inspirational and motivational while at the same time witty and fun to watch. It's called "I Pity the Fool", it involves Mr. T finding people in need of a strong leader who will give them motivational support. Through his teachings and support Mr. T brings these people together and shows them how they can enrich their lives by instituting a set of moral values for them to follow. While Mr. T himself is a devout Christian and cancer survivor he doesn't force his beliefs on people, he only tells them how Trusts, Loyalty, Leadership, Motivation, hard work, and a little Tenacity can bring fulfillment in their daily lives.

So why would Mr. T be a great president? Honestly because this country needs someone like him to run it. Someone who could careless about corporations and their sponsorship, someone who knows what it's like to be poor, someone who knows what it's like to be in the military and someone who has been to the bottom and pulled themselves all the way out. Mr. T may not be the most intelligent or the most educated person, but if we look at our current president that doesn't seem to be a prerequesit for the job. Mr. T grew up poor with several siblings in a small suburb outside Chicago, he holds his family (especially his Mother) more dear to his heart than anything else. He even wrote a song about how important it is to respect your mother and family in the 80's, this was no small feat for someone so incredibly tone deaf and lacking of any musical talent. After high school he was awarded a football scholarship at Prarie Veiw A&M, but he got thrown out after he had an altercation with his coach. He then joined the Military Police and had a 3 year stint in the US Army. Afterwards in order to make ends meet he got a job as a Bouncer at a prominent club in Chicago, when he threw people out for being malcontent he would often challenge them to try to get past him if they were wearing gold. If they couldn't he kept their gold. The Gold chains became his signature throughout his acting career. Meeting Syllvester Stallone in 1981 he was cast as Clubber Lange in the blockbuster Rocky 2. He later found fame in the "A Team" an action sitcom where he and a group of 3 other Military veterans would help those in need with some militia style rampages. After the A Team was canceled he joined Hulk Hogan in the WWF and wrestled tag team style for a number of years until he contracted cancer in 1995. By 1998 after intense treayments with Chemotherapy and other medications and coming close to death Mr. T battled his cancer into remission. He now speaks out against corporate corruption, poverty, and general inequality among the classes. In 2005 he gave up his gold after watching the plight of Hurricane Katrina victims. The proceeds went to funding food, shelter, and clothing for the victims.

So if you are like me and ready for a change from a political asshole to a straight up guy who doesn't put up with crap, while at the same time won't concede to corporate corruption Vote Mr. T for President 2008.