Happy 65th birthday to one of the greatest scientific minds of our time. To say that Prof. Hawkins is a genius is an understatement, but I think he is missing an additional vocation as an impressionist – but more on that later.
I want to watch some off my DVD movies on my iPhone, but due to licencing laws I should buy an iPhone iTunes download of a movie to do that – even if I already own the movie! Now I’m all for the movie and music industry earning from what they give us – but I think it stinks when they try to charge you multiple times for a product.
Case in point: Ringtones. Sorry, but if I bought your song, then I should be able to use it as I wish for my personal use. I don’t mean I want to copy it and sell it, or distribute it in any other way, I just want to use MY purchase MY way for MY use.
I think a person should have the rights to use their purchases as they wish – as long as they are used for personal use, and not shared. I don’t want to buy an artists ringtone if I already own the song, after all, it’s my music, my phone, and me that’ll use and hear it! What’s next? If I play the song in my car I will have to pay rights to the artists if my passengers are listening!
DVD movies are in the same area of thought for me. I already own the discs, so why can’t I freely use then on my iPhone? It’s not like I’m watching both at the same time, and on the iPhone only one person can really watch something – yet I have to pay more…. but play the DVD on the TV and I can watch it with friends… so where are the lines drawn?
Now if I want a John Cleese quote as a message alert, and I already own a CD or DVD that contains the material, then I’d baulk at paying for a few seconds worth for a clip – but I am more than willing to pay for a stand alone message that he may make just for phones etc.
I have John Cleese as a voice on my GPS, and I payed for that use. I had no problem paying for his voice talent being used in this new role – He has to make a living after all. Same goes with a few other novelty voices I bought a few years ago when I bought the GPS originally.
That brings me to time travel. It was something John said on his Twitter blog that triggered a thought in my head. I don’t think time travel is, was or will ever be possible. Imagine 30 years ago how people thought about computers and mobile phones! Only very few people had these things, but now they are in reach to all of us – regardless of age, wealth, religion, sanity etc. There are people who break the law with them, people who use them for deviant purposes (no matter what their age)… and that is why I don’t believe in time travel.
Imagine if time travel became viable – like the first computers. It would start out as a top secret thing (probably military or government). Years later it would become a private sector thing for business and industry. Soon it would be open to the public. Eventually it would be there for all to use. I am fully aware that this process could take decades, or hundreds of years, but we are talking about time travel… Initial development could be sped up by going back in time to solve problems that had taken years to solve first time around.
So, if time travel existed in government or military circles, I am sure the development would be rapid. The designers could get so far, and then go back in time with solutions to speed up develoment… I hope you can follow that!
As time goes on, time travel would leak out, or simply become publically available. The moment it is publically available you can place a safe bet that people would travel back. Kids etc just wouldn’t think twice about misusing it – and as such we would know about time travel by now (or in the past!) because we would have been visited by now!
Does this screw things up for Stephen Hawkins then? This crazy blogger disregarding science due to future kids with high jinx and time travel on their hands? What’s Hawkins to do?
No disrespect, but if I spoke through a box, then I’d do what I did with my GPS… Hawkins could give lectures in the style of John Cleese (less the silly walk), or in gangster tones of a mafiosa hitman. If science did fail Hawkins then, he could always install a few celebrity voices and become an impressionist… as long as he paid for the voice rights.
Sometimespace 