I think if he really believed in Liberty for all, he'd be an anarchist, and not a Libertarian. He's not interested in Liberty for all, but in Liberty for natural-born American white straight men. He and his father are a little less hypocritical than many Republicans these days, but that's really not saying much, is it?
Just to add a counter-factual point to your anecdote, I recall some time ago being in the market for a music player. the iPods at the time were white, second or third gen I guess, and of course the non-replaceable battery issue was as live then as it seems to be now. So I shopped around, and bought an iRiver. nice player, good capacity, user-serviceable battery.
3 years or so later, when the time came around to replace the battery, I went online to order a replacement only to find that the battery I needed, with a specific shape and plug, had been discontinued, and there was no way I could get a new one, branded or after-market.
Since then, I haven't been fussed about the non-replaceable battery issue, really.
A lot of streaming and on-demand music and video is blocked at the border. Off the top of my head I can think of Pandora, Spotify, Hulu and any other major network feed out of the US. Netflix exists in Canada, but with a good third of the content in its network streaming archives, and we don't get the dvds at all.
(I'm assuming Canadian law doesn't mandate royalties be paid for any playing of any content, but that's an assumption - somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.)
Canadian law does mandate royalties on playing content in public spaces, including the Internet. The collecting body is SOCAN. Those are the guys quoted in the summary complaining that their flat fees are too low.
The problem there is that the financing, marketing experience etc aren't really necessary either; these days it's perfectly possible to do all that yourself, or source it from your manager instead of from your distributor, and still earn a living. The hype and marketing and financing of the big super-groups and performers isn't about music at all, and studies have shown that people who want music aren't consuming their product. At it's best it's about providing a multi-platform, multi-media marketing message that feeds and feeds on the big media industry Product. At worst, it's spending a lot of money polishing turds. Most big record-label promotion is about scrabbling for a sliver of attention from people for whom music is a background thing. Katy Perry isn't big because of her music, and people don't consume her music. They consume Katy Perry. And her bosses use Katy Perry to sell other product, like So You Think You Can Dance and whatever's passing for Super Music Video Hits of the Super Music Video Stars, but mostly they just use her to sell more eyeballs to more advertisers. And even this is probably not self-sustaining. Don't forget that Justin Bieber was a Youtube sensation before he was a mega-star. Big Media needs the digital age, but the digital age doesn't need Big Media.
Musicians are finding that they don't need the promotion power of Big Media, they can do the promotion themselves. They sell less product but the margins are much much higher, and if they're any good their customers will pay more for the product.
To be strictly fair, it's not exactly a level playing-field. The CBC is a crown corporation, and is directly supported in part by taxpayer dollars. The current government isn't terribly friendly to the CBC these days, and would sell off or axe the whole thing if they thought the electorate wouldn't revolt, but still. Not exactly a textbook case for free market competition.
Having said that, the CBC has paid it's licensing fees for the content, like any other corp, and is selling advertising to pay for the service, and is fulfilling its mandate of exposing Canadian and international listeners to Canadian artists, so I'm all for it.
Except...that the media companies are asking for more restrictions and regulations, not less. And the media companies don't innovate, they take innovative work from one group of people and show it to another group of people, and charge high prices for the service. A service that's no longer required.
The real problem is that while innovation is hard, distribution is not anymore. Someone at the CBC realizes this; the media companies, which insist on charging high rates for distribution, have not.
Personally, I think what the CBC is doing is daring, and has a lot of potential to help connect Canadian musicians with audiences. Perhaps this can be a replacement for the obsolete CanCon laws, that currently mandate all those radio stations to play a certain percentage of Canadian music (regardless of how good that music is).
I think there's good reason for that. You're basically asking them to evaluate their position on a continuum that isn't actually static. It may be that the next discovery, which for the sake of argument might be predicted to move the project along 10%, actually ends up cutting out half the upcoming work, or adds more unknown and unforeseen problems to be solved.
Given Bioware's been including same-sex romance options in the Dragon Age games, yes I think LGBT groups would make a stink, and rightly so. Same-sex romance-option gameplay is a hallmark of Bioware games, and to neglect to put it into their latest flagship game would be a big slap in the face to gamers who've come to expect exactly this kind of gameplay from Bioware.
Instituted by conservative governments in Canada and the USA no less! Remember the days when conservatives used to be the front-runners in protecting the environment?
I would agree with you, but there's something else that Apple has over Windows (but not necessarily over Linux) that contributes to what causes average (and not so average persons like myself) to prefer Apple over other OSs. Specifically, maintenance costs. I do essentially no maintenance on the family Macs, and these days I don't even do any work on the extended family's PCs, because I can claim ignorance. Minimal maintenance makes my life a lot easier, and gives me much extra time to devote to my other responsibilities. Maybe things have changed since Win XP, but the constant running of various third party applications to scan for virii, adware and assorted scumware, defrag hard drives, clean out the registry, ad nauseam was taking up surprisingly large amounts of time that I now have free.
Linux is a different sort of beast, and I don't know how you'd compare maintenance time with the Mac, since in my experience with Linux, all the maintenance time is front-loaded. After install you spend about a week sorting out drivers, package dependencies, cron jobs and whatever, and then when you're done you're pretty much done until the next major upgrade. Apple maintenance, what there is of it, only really starts to happen when the computer is reaching the end of its useful life, and mostly involves paring down the software and files you don't really need, or finding less-greedy versions of whatever software you can't live without. And it doesn't take much time. When a Mac comes to the end of its useful life, there just isn't that much you can do software-wise.
Because Apple products are status symbols. A great deal of the irrational behavior you see in a given market space has a lot to do with image.
More accurately, a great deal of the irrational behaviour you see in a given market space has to do with the fact that humans are irrational by nature. Irrationality has more to do with hormones and the function of the nervous system than with "image". You're putting the cart before the horse.
And also because Apple previously made changes to the manufacture of various product lines as a result of pressure from environmental groups. The public interest groups have already had at least one well-publicized success, makes sense to concentrate your efforts where you're most likely to get results. It's not a bad thing for Apple either, as being masters of marketing, they can and do turn these concessions into value added to the product. Converting "Apple caves in to pressure to improve working conditions" to "our supply chain has the best-treated workers in China" is easy as pie for the marketers in Cupertino. And don't under-estimate the value that's being added to the products. People with the money to spend are more than willing to cough up extra money for a product they can feel less guilty about. And finally, by attacking Apple primarily, and having Apple make the changes, other companies are forced to change too, either by public opinion or because they share parts of the supply chain with Apple (Foxconn being the primary example of this).
Yeah yeah yeah, but give me this at least: the hearsay rule covers anecdotes the witness tells about anecdotes other people have told them, does it not? Maybe I'm not taking this seriously enough.
Slashdot Mirror
I think if he really believed in Liberty for all, he'd be an anarchist, and not a Libertarian. He's not interested in Liberty for all, but in Liberty for natural-born American white straight men. He and his father are a little less hypocritical than many Republicans these days, but that's really not saying much, is it?
True that. The store I worked at didn't sell Archos, or I might have bought one of those instead.
Just to add a counter-factual point to your anecdote, I recall some time ago being in the market for a music player. the iPods at the time were white, second or third gen I guess, and of course the non-replaceable battery issue was as live then as it seems to be now. So I shopped around, and bought an iRiver. nice player, good capacity, user-serviceable battery.
3 years or so later, when the time came around to replace the battery, I went online to order a replacement only to find that the battery I needed, with a specific shape and plug, had been discontinued, and there was no way I could get a new one, branded or after-market.
Since then, I haven't been fussed about the non-replaceable battery issue, really.
They are when the war was started under false pretenses.
A lot of streaming and on-demand music and video is blocked at the border. Off the top of my head I can think of Pandora, Spotify, Hulu and any other major network feed out of the US. Netflix exists in Canada, but with a good third of the content in its network streaming archives, and we don't get the dvds at all.
(I'm assuming Canadian law doesn't mandate royalties be paid for any playing of any content, but that's an assumption - somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.)
Canadian law does mandate royalties on playing content in public spaces, including the Internet. The collecting body is SOCAN. Those are the guys quoted in the summary complaining that their flat fees are too low.
Oh I agree, I'm on side with the CBC on this one, but not because of the free market argument.
The problem there is that the financing, marketing experience etc aren't really necessary either; these days it's perfectly possible to do all that yourself, or source it from your manager instead of from your distributor, and still earn a living. The hype and marketing and financing of the big super-groups and performers isn't about music at all, and studies have shown that people who want music aren't consuming their product. At it's best it's about providing a multi-platform, multi-media marketing message that feeds and feeds on the big media industry Product. At worst, it's spending a lot of money polishing turds. Most big record-label promotion is about scrabbling for a sliver of attention from people for whom music is a background thing. Katy Perry isn't big because of her music, and people don't consume her music. They consume Katy Perry. And her bosses use Katy Perry to sell other product, like So You Think You Can Dance and whatever's passing for Super Music Video Hits of the Super Music Video Stars, but mostly they just use her to sell more eyeballs to more advertisers. And even this is probably not self-sustaining. Don't forget that Justin Bieber was a Youtube sensation before he was a mega-star. Big Media needs the digital age, but the digital age doesn't need Big Media.
Musicians are finding that they don't need the promotion power of Big Media, they can do the promotion themselves. They sell less product but the margins are much much higher, and if they're any good their customers will pay more for the product.
To be strictly fair, it's not exactly a level playing-field. The CBC is a crown corporation, and is directly supported in part by taxpayer dollars. The current government isn't terribly friendly to the CBC these days, and would sell off or axe the whole thing if they thought the electorate wouldn't revolt, but still. Not exactly a textbook case for free market competition.
Having said that, the CBC has paid it's licensing fees for the content, like any other corp, and is selling advertising to pay for the service, and is fulfilling its mandate of exposing Canadian and international listeners to Canadian artists, so I'm all for it.
Don't you think?
Except...that the media companies are asking for more restrictions and regulations, not less. And the media companies don't innovate, they take innovative work from one group of people and show it to another group of people, and charge high prices for the service. A service that's no longer required.
The real problem is that while innovation is hard, distribution is not anymore. Someone at the CBC realizes this; the media companies, which insist on charging high rates for distribution, have not.
Personally, I think what the CBC is doing is daring, and has a lot of potential to help connect Canadian musicians with audiences. Perhaps this can be a replacement for the obsolete CanCon laws, that currently mandate all those radio stations to play a certain percentage of Canadian music (regardless of how good that music is).
I think there's good reason for that. You're basically asking them to evaluate their position on a continuum that isn't actually static. It may be that the next discovery, which for the sake of argument might be predicted to move the project along 10%, actually ends up cutting out half the upcoming work, or adds more unknown and unforeseen problems to be solved.
Given Bioware's been including same-sex romance options in the Dragon Age games, yes I think LGBT groups would make a stink, and rightly so. Same-sex romance-option gameplay is a hallmark of Bioware games, and to neglect to put it into their latest flagship game would be a big slap in the face to gamers who've come to expect exactly this kind of gameplay from Bioware.
Chill out and accept everyone, except those who don't tolerate you.
FTFY
"Strictly for the purposes of procreation."
Instituted by conservative governments in Canada and the USA no less! Remember the days when conservatives used to be the front-runners in protecting the environment?
I would agree with you, but there's something else that Apple has over Windows (but not necessarily over Linux) that contributes to what causes average (and not so average persons like myself) to prefer Apple over other OSs. Specifically, maintenance costs. I do essentially no maintenance on the family Macs, and these days I don't even do any work on the extended family's PCs, because I can claim ignorance. Minimal maintenance makes my life a lot easier, and gives me much extra time to devote to my other responsibilities. Maybe things have changed since Win XP, but the constant running of various third party applications to scan for virii, adware and assorted scumware, defrag hard drives, clean out the registry, ad nauseam was taking up surprisingly large amounts of time that I now have free.
Linux is a different sort of beast, and I don't know how you'd compare maintenance time with the Mac, since in my experience with Linux, all the maintenance time is front-loaded. After install you spend about a week sorting out drivers, package dependencies, cron jobs and whatever, and then when you're done you're pretty much done until the next major upgrade. Apple maintenance, what there is of it, only really starts to happen when the computer is reaching the end of its useful life, and mostly involves paring down the software and files you don't really need, or finding less-greedy versions of whatever software you can't live without. And it doesn't take much time. When a Mac comes to the end of its useful life, there just isn't that much you can do software-wise.
Because Apple products are status symbols. A great deal of the irrational behavior you see in a given market space has a lot to do with image.
More accurately, a great deal of the irrational behaviour you see in a given market space has to do with the fact that humans are irrational by nature. Irrationality has more to do with hormones and the function of the nervous system than with "image". You're putting the cart before the horse.
And also because Apple previously made changes to the manufacture of various product lines as a result of pressure from environmental groups. The public interest groups have already had at least one well-publicized success, makes sense to concentrate your efforts where you're most likely to get results. It's not a bad thing for Apple either, as being masters of marketing, they can and do turn these concessions into value added to the product. Converting "Apple caves in to pressure to improve working conditions" to "our supply chain has the best-treated workers in China" is easy as pie for the marketers in Cupertino. And don't under-estimate the value that's being added to the products. People with the money to spend are more than willing to cough up extra money for a product they can feel less guilty about. And finally, by attacking Apple primarily, and having Apple make the changes, other companies are forced to change too, either by public opinion or because they share parts of the supply chain with Apple (Foxconn being the primary example of this).
For the Horde, I mean, FOR THE CHILDREN!
So, for the Alliance, then.
What is this I don't even
Noted things down in his log, of course!
Maybe for you. My real wages have definitely grown since becoming an adult, even considering inflation. But then, I started from pretty low down....
Yeah yeah yeah, but give me this at least: the hearsay rule covers anecdotes the witness tells about anecdotes other people have told them, does it not? Maybe I'm not taking this seriously enough.
Inclusive?