Hmm. I see what you're saying, and agree Snooki isn't exactly a classy lady, but I don't know if I like where this argument leads, even after removing the "rape" part of the equation.
By this logic, if person #1 decides that person #2's behavior is amoral or atypical enough from their own moral standards, person #1 can can treat person #2 like shit/meat/a victim/whatever while avoiding any moral repercussion of their own. Since comparing morality doesn't have an objective benchmark (other than existing laws, I guess, but that's a discussion all on its own), this isn't a very good precedent; you may end up with some "Lawful Good" (so to speak) cop beating the shit out of some "Neutral Good" (again, so to speak) nursing student to "teach them a lesson in morality".
I think the best you can really say is if someone is acting like a piece of trash and engaging in behavior you find reprehensible, you have the right to avoid them entirely, and perhaps cite laws or your own ethical code of conduct, depending how much you give a shit about "correcting" someone's behavior (it's my opinion that your case be stronger than "god says so!"). You don't have the right to deviate from how you'd treat anybody else, though, unless the offensive/damaging behavior is directed at you and/or harming you or yours.
In other words, this thinking means that while you're busy treating Snooki like the trash she is, you have no business bitching about others treating you like the trash they see you as for your perceived moral failings. Snooki's actually a great example; it's a logical disconnect to watch her (or others like her) bitch about how shitty some asshole is to her, while they in turn bitch about how morally bankrupt some skank at the bar is. It's probably a good assumption that the same thing happens at other (higher?/shrug) moral levels, too, albeit more discreetly.
The more I think about it, the idea of ignoring other people's "reprehensible" behavior when it doesn't affect your life in any way is actually a pretty damn good one.
This is often why they're rapists in the first place, so, no, "an eye for an eye" isn't appropriate for serial rapists.
Actually, the only truly effective deterrents are chemical castration, death, or permanent incarceration (depending on the severity of the crime) since rehabilitation is often impossible for these shitbags. Even plain old righteous punishment typically doesn't work, not that our advanced society still engages in this (heh). A more permanent solution is required; these folks were either born broken or have become broken at some point along the way.
I think it's rather more like the girl leaving her diary in what she thought was her living room because she doesn't care if her room-mates read it, but didn't realize there was an invisible (to her) portal marketed by a creepy company to creepy creepers for their creeping pleasure.
Agreed, people need to be more informed about privacy settings and how to ensure that only the people they trust can see the things they want to keep with the trustworthy. For this to happen companies like Facebook need to be far more clear about which data is used for what purposes, and simplify the settings to the point that it's a easy for the user to understand what's happening. Asking for this, though, is like the salmon asking the bear to show it exactly how to avoid being eaten.
Maybe Facebook should be required to warn users more clearly and provide easy to understand settings (or perhaps "even easier to understand"; remember, most of Facebook's users are people who still don't get the difference between a CPU and a computer case, and have zero clue to the real reason Facebook is "free").
You really think so? The point you're missing is that the recipient needs to have control over whether they respond, or are even seen as "available" to be approached. I actually met my ex-wife through AOL's profile system, but she was listed as looking and had signed her profile up for the service. The difference is in how much information is presented to others without that person's knowledge or control. It's not just a text message to a random stranger, or the even more classic approach an interesting person in the bar; it's an avenue for finding out FAR more of this person's information than what may have been intended, for whatever purposes. It's more akin to searching through a random stranger's garbage and THEN the text.
I do agree with you here, though: " Instead of FB bombarding us with people we might know, why don't they facilitate connections with people we do not know who are interested in the same things that we are? The people I know are that simply because we were born in the same area and ran in to each other. "
I'd love to see services where people can meet other people with like interests, so long as both (or more) participants actually want to participate, know which data is presented, and have control over how much and which data is shown. Just because it's on Facebook doesn't automatically mean I want it on a "Meet Random Strangers" app. My new racquetball partner probably doesn't need to know I have two daughters until/unless it comes up in conversation, just like it has worked for the last how-ever-many thousands of years.
Eh.... the following comments from the developer sort of flies in the face of the "it's all innocent!" argument:
"In the mood for love, or just after a one-night stand? Girls Around Me puts you in control!" (right in the summary) and "helps you see where nearby girls are checking in, and shows you what they look like and how to get in touch" (press release).
That doesn't necessarily mean they advocated stalking, or that they were doing anything illegal/dishonest/that-a-clever-person-can't-do-with-twitter, but this type of of data aggregation, presented as a way to find chicks to hook up with, is just about the definition of creepy.
It might have been somewhat less creepy had they marketed the name and function of the app as "People Around Me" (apparently, you can also search for guys, but I had to dig through the press release to find that out) and allowed users to mark themselves as track-able/approach-able, but they didn't.
Yet another situation where the data we're willingly spraying about can be used in ways we can't anticipate. Now just imagine how they use it behind the scenes.
Actually, that's really not what I'm assuming; rather, I'm saying that traffic costs and routing overhead wouldn't matter to this argument at all in a normal, healthy market. What a company pays for it's infrastructure, overhead, traffic, etc has no bearing on the prices they set (other providing a minimum benchmark to cover fixed costs). In a fair market, they could charge themselves, their competitors, their partners or their customers whatever prices the market would bear, and truck along happily until a competitor offers better prices and/or better services, forcing them to innovate or die (yay healthy market!).
Don't get me wrong; Comcast should NOT be allowed to do this as things stand right now. I'm pointing out that this is an anti-competitive practice that should be legislated into oblivion to protect consumers from an oligopoly. The arguments of "it costs Comcast the same for my traffic as their own" is a solid and logical point, but it still doesn't force (or even give an incentive to) Comcast to set their prices that way; they NEED to be forced to do so. Otherwise, all they're doing is capitalizing on lower costs for themselves, which isn't an evil thing by default. Comcast can easily see which of their equipment is used, and which is not, and still set prices according to their whims, even though the traffic doesn't cost them more (which is apparently what they're doing right now). Net neutrality may already force this upon Comcast, but it doesn't sound like it, if Comcast is doing what they're doing without getting slapped. So, the laws (net neutrality, anti-competitive safeguards, etc) need to be modified to prohibit this practice in an oligopoly situation, and an avenue for a speedy bitch-slap should be put in place to stop any of the other sneaky shit they try to push through a loophole.
I think you're spot on with your preferential treatment argument, and thanks for succinctly bringing the meat to the fore, so to speak. It absolutely IS self-preferential treatment, but that's the way it normally works. Exploiting low costs to your company's advantage is one of the biggies in gaining a competitive edge. In a truly competitive market it happens all the time, and it's not a bad practice at all; it's a great way to compete on things like volume (large or small), marginal profits, shipping costs, etc. Hell, I do it at my print shop; there's no way in hell I'd charge myself the same price for a print that I do for my wholesale customers, who in turn get better rates than my retail buyers, even though the per-print cost to me is the exact same in all three scenarios. I'd bet the farm that most other firms tier their prices for their services in some some similar fashion.
The problem is that Comcast is NOT in a normal, broad, competitive market; there are only a few infrastructure owners who can set prices in all sorts of sneaky ways with no competitors willing or able to keep them in check. The big fuckers ALL do this (Comcast is just the front page firm of the day), and each time they try a new tactic that lowers the base ability of other firms to compete (like, increasing pipe usage costs for everybody except Comcast...) it should be legislated to hell for the "cartels" (Comcast et. al.) in the first place, not rolled out to all competitors (path of least resistance). They need to know that the rules for normal competition do not apply to them due to their control over the market, any more than they do for the phone company, cell towers, the gas company, the power company, the water company, or any other industry with an established infrastructure that makes it difficult (or impossible) to enter the market otherwise. At least, not until the entire infrastructure is state-owned (at which point they lose the competitive edge AND the ability to recoup from their initial investment; this would be BAD for the Comcasts of the world). This is the only way they'll stop abusing normal business practices from their position of power.
The best car analogy I can think of: Let's say I'm running a shuttle service, where you pay me to drive you an allotted number of miles per month (bandwidth) in my car (network). Let's also say I run a sight-seeing service (streaming/television service), using the same car. When you ride in my car, you are, of course, a part of the overall system, occupying a space, which is obvious and literal, but you do NOT own the car, or even the piece your butt is occupying; it's still mine. You're paying me to use it.
Since I'm running a business and can set my own pricing however I think best, I can decide that the mileage used for the sight-seeing service should not be deducted from your shuttle service allotment, too; it is my right to charge however I want (in fact, I'm kind of a double-dipping dick if I charge you for both). On the other hand, if you want me to drive you to the supermarket, even if I was going there anyway for purposes of my own, I can fairly deduct the mileage from your allotment, because I'm still providing a service to you. Even if you make sure you ONLY go places I was going to go anyway (put your server directly on a Comcast node) you're still using my service, and should be paying me for that service. You absolutely do NOT own the piece of my car that you're occupying, and I definitely am NOT prohibited from charging you for my services just because it "doesn't cost me extra".
The entire argument changes when I'm the only one in the city who owns a car, and it's far too expensive for other companies to build their own cars (network infrastructure). At this point it's about forcing the single car owner (or the few owners, as the case may be, as with Comcast, Cox, CenturyLink, etc) to charge fair prices for use of the car to business people who ALSO run sight-seeing services in the interest of having a competitive market. When you factor in the inelasticity of something like internet access/bandwidth, it gets even more vital that there is a level playing field.
The users are not entitled to better deals out of the gate; competitors are just ensured they won't be screwed, which THEN tends to drive prices down as competition increases. See Ma Bell for an example of how this precedent was set years ago.
Yours isn't the only post using this argument, but it's not a very good one.
You, and many others, seem to be referring to this situation: a node not owned by Comcast is sharing data across Comcast's network to a node that is also not owned by Comcast. By definition, the data stops residing on Comcast's owned network equipment at both ends of the connection (not in terms of network addressing, but in terms of hardware that Comcast owns and controls) constituting two third parties utilizing Comcast's network infrastructure. Unless you're willing to concede that by assigning your box an IP, Comcast owns it, I don't understand how you can say the end-nodes are physically part of Comcast's network, except in a uselessly semantic fashion.
None of these examples are analogous to the summarized example, which is: A node owned and controlled by Comcast is providing data (in this case, streaming content) across Comcast's network to a node outside their network; the data only leaves at one end of the connection, constituting a delivery from Comcast to the end-user.
Incidentally, I agree, in principle, that Comcast shouldn't have to charge a customer for the second type of bandwidth usage if they don't want to, especially if the customer is already paying for the streaming service (trust me, they are). That would be like forcing a burger joint to charge their walk-in customers rent, just like they charge the Redbox machine out front.
Whether this causes anti-trust or net neutrality etc. isn't a call I'm qualified to make, but the scenarios you and a few others have brought up just aren't analogous.
Same here. We have it so easy, man. Whenever things don't make sense, God did that (in all His mysterious ways). None of that pesky data collection and analysis here, science LOSERS!
Man I love knowing that all answers to all questions boil down to the same two answers, which are: "but the times you saw one set of footprints in the sand were the times I carried you!" and "because Jeebus died for you, THAT'S why, you dirty, dirty microscope sinner!".
We still on for Wednesday's "New Research? Still God!" strategy meeting? Those lab-coated heathens ain't gonna refute themselves.
Got me thinking... you'd think it'd be lack of competence for *any* job, really. Can you imagine an accountant or attorney giving out passwords all willy nilly? Makes the practice of demanding facebooks even worse; it's training potential employees that security isn't that big a deal if someone "above" you asks.
In any of those 3 cases, go you. Complaining about a company that's so courteously announces they're going to be a shitty employer is like bitching that you can't quite fit your hand past the safety guard on your band saw.
Sure, the practice blows, and should stop, but damn.... what a great reason to say: "I don't think this is the place for me. Thank you for your time. Good day, sir."
Agreed. The practice is just another way to weed out candidates without actually committing someone to examine actual qualifications. In the meantime, "I prefer not to disclose that information." is the proper response, just like the checkbox in the "Race" field of employment applications.
If the request then turns into a demand, give the interviewer the ever-elegant "Raised Eyebrow of Self Respect" and end the interview right then and there. There will be something better if you keep looking (likely something you'd have missed if you took this job) and you shouldn't waste your precious time on this type of blatant asshattery.
Some other sucker can work under that company's bullshit scrutiny (if the company's opening gambit is spying on your personal life, do you really think it stops there?) while you keep looking for a **Real Job**. We all need to pound it into our brains that we have the right and the responsibility to choose who we work for, even in a shitty economy. Sure, you have bills to pay, so it's very hard to turn down a job, but be realistic. You'll either be right back at the job hunt in two months or you'll wanna be hanging from the rafters.
Good post. Usually, the counter argument you hear from the movie-makers' (or music albums, really) is that production and distribution costs etc need to be recouped, so the studios are forced to charge the prices they do. You actually hear this argument a LOT when people have relatively high priced - or seemingly high priced - goods.
If I could speak directly to the studios:
I don't pretend to know what the business model behind selling Blu-Ray, DVD, or CDs is. I'm sure it's very, very expensive, and I'm sure there are a great many costs that need to be covered, and profits to be made; frankly I can't be bothered to look it all up because it doesn't matter to me. What I do know (and care about) is that people are unwilling to pay what we now see as crazy too high prices for items that are a pain in the ass for us to use. When the purchase is made, it's one we have to think about. That doesn't seem like a good thing; I know as a consumer I'd rather pay a price and not have "this is kinda spendy.... hmm... " running through my mind. When I buy toothpaste or cat litter or earbuds or beers or order a pizza I don't think "gee... do I really need this right now? Will it fuck up my computer? Will my kids be able to use it without me at 7 am on Saturday morning?" No way! If I determine I want something, I go out and get it, and I trust that the price is worth the good. We've lost that trust of the movie and music industry's products, and you're just not getting that. You want us thinking "Sweet! It's Friday; let's go to pick up a couple Blu-Rays!" and not even batting an eye at price, knowing intuitively that we're getting our money's worth. Do you even know that "downloading" a movie is WAY more of a pain in the ass than running down to Wal-Mart and buying the damn thing? Piracy occurs because people don't want to pay the prices you ask. Have you seen how successful Netflix is, even after attempting to blast their left nut into smithereens? It's because Netflix feels ungodly inexpensive for the convenience provided. Let me pull down your content and place it onto my own storage media without restriction, and I'll gladly pay you a monthly subscription. I'll even pay a premium to get media around the same time the cable providers do. Then my choice is between filling up my DVR and setting media aside on my PC, which is a problem I really, really, REALLY wanna have.
Figure out a way to make your products worth their price, easy to use, and less restricting. Lower your costs, then lower your prices by the same amount, and guess what? Your margins stay the same, but your sales just may go up!!! You could also bundle 3 or 4 movies into one same-priced set, increasing value to the consumer!! But instead it almost seems like you've laid outo an implied threat to stop creating content if we don't pay your prices. Well, we're calling your bluff. Fine, stop creating it. Either someone will fill the void you leave, or consumers will simply lose the whole "entertainment" thing (I think this is an unlikely outcome, but... it's a risk we're obviously willing to take, based on the general unrest I see these days). Either way, you're eventually gonna go out of business if you don't give us what we want to buy. You'll all be bitter and emo and blame the customer for your failures, but the reality is, somewhere along the way, you've forgotten that customers are a business' lifeblood, not a resource to be exploited. Doing what you do to your customers in any other industry would have led to your bankruptcy decades ago, and you've gotten a free asshole pass long enough. Put up or shut down.
You hit the nail right on the head, but the one thing that we all keep missing is none of it matters at all to the great wide public. Perception is everything; people are constantly using sub-optimal products because the TV tells them to.
Without a successful marketing push, all argument about the Year of the Linux Desktop is pointless. We need both momentum AND quality.
I like just about all the points you make above, but I'll make one more: Perception is EVERYTHING. Even if the GP was correct about all those things you successfully refuted, there are no Linux famous spokesmen out there touting the benefits of switching.
Push for change in the middle of The Walking Dead. Insert some mindshare by paying Peter Griffin to use Linux at home. Have American Idols sing into Linux branded microphones. The public is inertia, defined, and isn't going to adopt anything new unless they have what THEY see as a kickass reason to do so. "Free" and "word of mouth" isn't enough. Get some commercials done. Push it. Sell it. Find a way to change public perception about things like "simpler to use than Windows" because it doesn't matter whether it is or not, anyway. What people want to hear is "This is so way awesome that celebrities and football players use it!".
Do you think zombie Apple reanimated itself by arguing about Windows on Slashdot? Hell no - they did it by screaming at the top of their lungs about how much better they are than Windows. Linux needs to do the same thing. "I'm a nerdy PC. I'm a hipster Mac. Yeah? I'm the fucking Linux T-Rex. I'll eat your enemies, save you from terrorists, defend your online liberty, let YOU tax the GUBMINT, make it rain 10 dollar bills in your backyard, and babysit your kids all the while." There's the first one; consider it a freebie.
Oh, and dump the silly names for more marketable ones, unless your marketing folks are so good they can turn a fun-but-unprofessional word like "Gimp" into the commercial powerhouse that the word "Photoshop" has become. Yeah, I like saying Gimp too, but seriously? That ain't gonna fly in prime-time without some serious spin (think "Bing". I cringe every time I hear it, but the MS marketdroids are making it happen anyway). Names like OpenOffice are a start, but people want to know exactly what a thing is by hearing the name.
You know, you're absolutely right, but I think this is still a big hurdle to a widely adopted Linux desktop. Everyday users don't want to be told "if you do this, it will work." even when it's true. Even though they have to install DirectX to install a game on Windows; average users don't even notice it, because the game installer puts it in place without them having to see anything but a "Next" button. Pushing next is just what you push until "Finish", which is the button that makes shortcuts to click. They just want software to work, with no additional steps that they have to think about. They only perceive installing Wine as "I have to do more stuff than Windows", and that only looks like excuses for a less-functional-than-Windows computer.
Your average joe or josephine isn't gonna want to hear that they need to install Wine to then install Photoshop or Quicken, especially when they have to call Adobe support for help installing Photoshop in the first place. I think what Linux needs for widespread success is a broad spectrum "ezmode" for users that just don't care about things like which OS they use. Put cd in, click next a buncha times, gogo spreadsheet/tax return/headshots. In fact, to the user, an "ezmode" isn't even a feature, it's a "normal", so it just needs to be there by default, with no fanfare. Touting a "brand new ezmode!!" feature will STILL work against Linux, because it'll call attention to the fact the OS can be trickier than a "Windows", which is scary to a new, unskilled user.
I don't know if this is something that the Linux community will want to do anyway, because if it happens and is broadly adopted, Linux won't have a special uniqueness anymore. We'll all be supporting Linux ezmode instead of the stuff that makes Linux beautiful. Maybe if software vendors started packaging things like Wine, with an optimal configuration in their own sandbox, into their installers, we'd see a difference, but then we run into a catch 22. Why would a vendor want to do this for such a small market share?
What's even more unfortunate is Windows and Mac OS's have paved a track that users follow. Unless Linux can funnel users into a very, very similar track, it doesn't stand a chance of breaking them out of the pattern. Free just doesn't make up for a perceived pain in the ass, and while I hate it as much as the rest of you, that's the reality right now.
I had an Epson that used to ask me to "Insert More Deeply". I'd rather have my printer's error messages be unintelligible than to have the little bastard agree with my girlfriend.
Eh... while the DesignJets (HP's commercial line) are competitive and do a decent job, thermal heads in general are dying a slow death.
Epson's piezo heads are in just about every high end commercial inkjet these days because they're easier to control (which led to variable droplet tech), and they don't suffer the same damage from solvent inks, meaning output done with mild solvents don't need the UV treatment aqueous inks do. HP does have some high end solvent and latex machines, but those are designed for a different purpose than fine-art reproduction.
I love my DesignJet, it makes for some truly beautiful prints and has a color gamut to die for, but for mass production? Gotta go with a piezo head for the-end high-volume.
Also, the DesignJet side is managed from Barcelona, and is a totally different division than their DeskJet side (though they do have a testing facility for both divisions in Boise). Both tend to be hampered with atrocious and over-engineered print drivers - just get a good RIP and send data through ethernet.
Actually, they sort of already do this. When you purchase a new inkjet, the cartridges are rarely the same as in the specified standard inkset; these are the special ones used to fill and test the machine's ink lines, and typically have 1/3-ish the ink of a new cartridge. Lexmark, especially, was notorious for this, and had some desktop printers they'd sell for less than the price of a new inkset.
Printer manufacturers have a vested interest in having you buy their ink, from the little 8.5x11 printers to huge 128" solvent machines (both of which, by the way, HP has in their DeskJet and DesignJet product lines). Even in my shop, I spend more per year by FAR (3-4 times more, actually) in ink than I do on the machine lease, and anybody printing tons of photos at home will too. A printer is just an ink vending machine, you know.
It's really an odd human nature thing; I actually love working, unless I have to. At that point, it's not work anymore. I'm still getting paid, and I have a choice, so it's not servitude, but it's something in between.
I really hope you're right, and I hope when the chips fall I can be one who says "screw this!" and walk out for breakfast beers with you, because it absolutely sucks to burn out on work you used to love. Like Oreos? Try eating 15,000 per month for 10 years to make your mortgage. It's like that.
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Hmm. I see what you're saying, and agree Snooki isn't exactly a classy lady, but I don't know if I like where this argument leads, even after removing the "rape" part of the equation.
/shrug) moral levels, too, albeit more discreetly.
By this logic, if person #1 decides that person #2's behavior is amoral or atypical enough from their own moral standards, person #1 can can treat person #2 like shit/meat/a victim/whatever while avoiding any moral repercussion of their own. Since comparing morality doesn't have an objective benchmark (other than existing laws, I guess, but that's a discussion all on its own), this isn't a very good precedent; you may end up with some "Lawful Good" (so to speak) cop beating the shit out of some "Neutral Good" (again, so to speak) nursing student to "teach them a lesson in morality".
I think the best you can really say is if someone is acting like a piece of trash and engaging in behavior you find reprehensible, you have the right to avoid them entirely, and perhaps cite laws or your own ethical code of conduct, depending how much you give a shit about "correcting" someone's behavior (it's my opinion that your case be stronger than "god says so!"). You don't have the right to deviate from how you'd treat anybody else, though, unless the offensive/damaging behavior is directed at you and/or harming you or yours.
In other words, this thinking means that while you're busy treating Snooki like the trash she is, you have no business bitching about others treating you like the trash they see you as for your perceived moral failings. Snooki's actually a great example; it's a logical disconnect to watch her (or others like her) bitch about how shitty some asshole is to her, while they in turn bitch about how morally bankrupt some skank at the bar is. It's probably a good assumption that the same thing happens at other (higher?
The more I think about it, the idea of ignoring other people's "reprehensible" behavior when it doesn't affect your life in any way is actually a pretty damn good one.
This is often why they're rapists in the first place, so, no, "an eye for an eye" isn't appropriate for serial rapists.
Actually, the only truly effective deterrents are chemical castration, death, or permanent incarceration (depending on the severity of the crime) since rehabilitation is often impossible for these shitbags. Even plain old righteous punishment typically doesn't work, not that our advanced society still engages in this (heh). A more permanent solution is required; these folks were either born broken or have become broken at some point along the way.
I think it's rather more like the girl leaving her diary in what she thought was her living room because she doesn't care if her room-mates read it, but didn't realize there was an invisible (to her) portal marketed by a creepy company to creepy creepers for their creeping pleasure.
Agreed, people need to be more informed about privacy settings and how to ensure that only the people they trust can see the things they want to keep with the trustworthy. For this to happen companies like Facebook need to be far more clear about which data is used for what purposes, and simplify the settings to the point that it's a easy for the user to understand what's happening. Asking for this, though, is like the salmon asking the bear to show it exactly how to avoid being eaten.
Maybe Facebook should be required to warn users more clearly and provide easy to understand settings (or perhaps "even easier to understand"; remember, most of Facebook's users are people who still don't get the difference between a CPU and a computer case, and have zero clue to the real reason Facebook is "free").
You really think so? The point you're missing is that the recipient needs to have control over whether they respond, or are even seen as "available" to be approached. I actually met my ex-wife through AOL's profile system, but she was listed as looking and had signed her profile up for the service. The difference is in how much information is presented to others without that person's knowledge or control. It's not just a text message to a random stranger, or the even more classic approach an interesting person in the bar; it's an avenue for finding out FAR more of this person's information than what may have been intended, for whatever purposes. It's more akin to searching through a random stranger's garbage and THEN the text.
I do agree with you here, though: " Instead of FB bombarding us with people we might know, why don't they facilitate connections with people we do not know who are interested in the same things that we are? The people I know are that simply because we were born in the same area and ran in to each other. "
I'd love to see services where people can meet other people with like interests, so long as both (or more) participants actually want to participate, know which data is presented, and have control over how much and which data is shown. Just because it's on Facebook doesn't automatically mean I want it on a "Meet Random Strangers" app. My new racquetball partner probably doesn't need to know I have two daughters until/unless it comes up in conversation, just like it has worked for the last how-ever-many thousands of years.
Rats. Missed that this link was already in the summary. More coffee for me.
Also, the developer, i-Free, has their full statement here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/03/31/girls-around-me-developer-defends-app-after-foursquare-dismissal/
Eh.... the following comments from the developer sort of flies in the face of the "it's all innocent!" argument:
"In the mood for love, or just after a one-night stand? Girls Around Me puts you in control!" (right in the summary) and "helps you see where nearby girls are checking in, and shows you what they look like and how to get in touch" (press release).
That doesn't necessarily mean they advocated stalking, or that they were doing anything illegal/dishonest/that-a-clever-person-can't-do-with-twitter, but this type of of data aggregation, presented as a way to find chicks to hook up with, is just about the definition of creepy.
It might have been somewhat less creepy had they marketed the name and function of the app as "People Around Me" (apparently, you can also search for guys, but I had to dig through the press release to find that out) and allowed users to mark themselves as track-able/approach-able, but they didn't.
Yet another situation where the data we're willingly spraying about can be used in ways we can't anticipate. Now just imagine how they use it behind the scenes.
Actually, that's really not what I'm assuming; rather, I'm saying that traffic costs and routing overhead wouldn't matter to this argument at all in a normal, healthy market. What a company pays for it's infrastructure, overhead, traffic, etc has no bearing on the prices they set (other providing a minimum benchmark to cover fixed costs). In a fair market, they could charge themselves, their competitors, their partners or their customers whatever prices the market would bear, and truck along happily until a competitor offers better prices and/or better services, forcing them to innovate or die (yay healthy market!).
Don't get me wrong; Comcast should NOT be allowed to do this as things stand right now. I'm pointing out that this is an anti-competitive practice that should be legislated into oblivion to protect consumers from an oligopoly. The arguments of "it costs Comcast the same for my traffic as their own" is a solid and logical point, but it still doesn't force (or even give an incentive to) Comcast to set their prices that way; they NEED to be forced to do so. Otherwise, all they're doing is capitalizing on lower costs for themselves, which isn't an evil thing by default. Comcast can easily see which of their equipment is used, and which is not, and still set prices according to their whims, even though the traffic doesn't cost them more (which is apparently what they're doing right now). Net neutrality may already force this upon Comcast, but it doesn't sound like it, if Comcast is doing what they're doing without getting slapped. So, the laws (net neutrality, anti-competitive safeguards, etc) need to be modified to prohibit this practice in an oligopoly situation, and an avenue for a speedy bitch-slap should be put in place to stop any of the other sneaky shit they try to push through a loophole.
I think you're spot on with your preferential treatment argument, and thanks for succinctly bringing the meat to the fore, so to speak. It absolutely IS self-preferential treatment, but that's the way it normally works. Exploiting low costs to your company's advantage is one of the biggies in gaining a competitive edge. In a truly competitive market it happens all the time, and it's not a bad practice at all; it's a great way to compete on things like volume (large or small), marginal profits, shipping costs, etc. Hell, I do it at my print shop; there's no way in hell I'd charge myself the same price for a print that I do for my wholesale customers, who in turn get better rates than my retail buyers, even though the per-print cost to me is the exact same in all three scenarios. I'd bet the farm that most other firms tier their prices for their services in some some similar fashion.
The problem is that Comcast is NOT in a normal, broad, competitive market; there are only a few infrastructure owners who can set prices in all sorts of sneaky ways with no competitors willing or able to keep them in check. The big fuckers ALL do this (Comcast is just the front page firm of the day), and each time they try a new tactic that lowers the base ability of other firms to compete (like, increasing pipe usage costs for everybody except Comcast...) it should be legislated to hell for the "cartels" (Comcast et. al.) in the first place, not rolled out to all competitors (path of least resistance). They need to know that the rules for normal competition do not apply to them due to their control over the market, any more than they do for the phone company, cell towers, the gas company, the power company, the water company, or any other industry with an established infrastructure that makes it difficult (or impossible) to enter the market otherwise. At least, not until the entire infrastructure is state-owned (at which point they lose the competitive edge AND the ability to recoup from their initial investment; this would be BAD for the Comcasts of the world). This is the only way they'll stop abusing normal business practices from their position of power.
As for your example of Comca
The best car analogy I can think of: Let's say I'm running a shuttle service, where you pay me to drive you an allotted number of miles per month (bandwidth) in my car (network). Let's also say I run a sight-seeing service (streaming/television service), using the same car. When you ride in my car, you are, of course, a part of the overall system, occupying a space, which is obvious and literal, but you do NOT own the car, or even the piece your butt is occupying; it's still mine. You're paying me to use it.
Since I'm running a business and can set my own pricing however I think best, I can decide that the mileage used for the sight-seeing service should not be deducted from your shuttle service allotment, too; it is my right to charge however I want (in fact, I'm kind of a double-dipping dick if I charge you for both). On the other hand, if you want me to drive you to the supermarket, even if I was going there anyway for purposes of my own, I can fairly deduct the mileage from your allotment, because I'm still providing a service to you. Even if you make sure you ONLY go places I was going to go anyway (put your server directly on a Comcast node) you're still using my service, and should be paying me for that service. You absolutely do NOT own the piece of my car that you're occupying, and I definitely am NOT prohibited from charging you for my services just because it "doesn't cost me extra".
The entire argument changes when I'm the only one in the city who owns a car, and it's far too expensive for other companies to build their own cars (network infrastructure). At this point it's about forcing the single car owner (or the few owners, as the case may be, as with Comcast, Cox, CenturyLink, etc) to charge fair prices for use of the car to business people who ALSO run sight-seeing services in the interest of having a competitive market. When you factor in the inelasticity of something like internet access/bandwidth, it gets even more vital that there is a level playing field.
The users are not entitled to better deals out of the gate; competitors are just ensured they won't be screwed, which THEN tends to drive prices down as competition increases. See Ma Bell for an example of how this precedent was set years ago.
Yours isn't the only post using this argument, but it's not a very good one.
You, and many others, seem to be referring to this situation: a node not owned by Comcast is sharing data across Comcast's network to a node that is also not owned by Comcast. By definition, the data stops residing on Comcast's owned network equipment at both ends of the connection (not in terms of network addressing, but in terms of hardware that Comcast owns and controls) constituting two third parties utilizing Comcast's network infrastructure. Unless you're willing to concede that by assigning your box an IP, Comcast owns it, I don't understand how you can say the end-nodes are physically part of Comcast's network, except in a uselessly semantic fashion.
None of these examples are analogous to the summarized example, which is: A node owned and controlled by Comcast is providing data (in this case, streaming content) across Comcast's network to a node outside their network; the data only leaves at one end of the connection, constituting a delivery from Comcast to the end-user.
Incidentally, I agree, in principle, that Comcast shouldn't have to charge a customer for the second type of bandwidth usage if they don't want to, especially if the customer is already paying for the streaming service (trust me, they are). That would be like forcing a burger joint to charge their walk-in customers rent, just like they charge the Redbox machine out front.
Whether this causes anti-trust or net neutrality etc. isn't a call I'm qualified to make, but the scenarios you and a few others have brought up just aren't analogous.
Same here. We have it so easy, man. Whenever things don't make sense, God did that (in all His mysterious ways). None of that pesky data collection and analysis here, science LOSERS!
Man I love knowing that all answers to all questions boil down to the same two answers, which are: "but the times you saw one set of footprints in the sand were the times I carried you!" and "because Jeebus died for you, THAT'S why, you dirty, dirty microscope sinner!".
We still on for Wednesday's "New Research? Still God!" strategy meeting? Those lab-coated heathens ain't gonna refute themselves.
Apples to oranges since Charon is actually a Mass Effect Relay.
Got me thinking... you'd think it'd be lack of competence for *any* job, really. Can you imagine an accountant or attorney giving out passwords all willy nilly? Makes the practice of demanding facebooks even worse; it's training potential employees that security isn't that big a deal if someone "above" you asks.
In any of those 3 cases, go you. Complaining about a company that's so courteously announces they're going to be a shitty employer is like bitching that you can't quite fit your hand past the safety guard on your band saw.
Sure, the practice blows, and should stop, but damn.... what a great reason to say: "I don't think this is the place for me. Thank you for your time. Good day, sir."
Agreed. The practice is just another way to weed out candidates without actually committing someone to examine actual qualifications. In the meantime, "I prefer not to disclose that information." is the proper response, just like the checkbox in the "Race" field of employment applications.
If the request then turns into a demand, give the interviewer the ever-elegant "Raised Eyebrow of Self Respect" and end the interview right then and there. There will be something better if you keep looking (likely something you'd have missed if you took this job) and you shouldn't waste your precious time on this type of blatant asshattery.
Some other sucker can work under that company's bullshit scrutiny (if the company's opening gambit is spying on your personal life, do you really think it stops there?) while you keep looking for a **Real Job**. We all need to pound it into our brains that we have the right and the responsibility to choose who we work for, even in a shitty economy. Sure, you have bills to pay, so it's very hard to turn down a job, but be realistic. You'll either be right back at the job hunt in two months or you'll wanna be hanging from the rafters.
Good post. Usually, the counter argument you hear from the movie-makers' (or music albums, really) is that production and distribution costs etc need to be recouped, so the studios are forced to charge the prices they do. You actually hear this argument a LOT when people have relatively high priced - or seemingly high priced - goods.
If I could speak directly to the studios:
I don't pretend to know what the business model behind selling Blu-Ray, DVD, or CDs is. I'm sure it's very, very expensive, and I'm sure there are a great many costs that need to be covered, and profits to be made; frankly I can't be bothered to look it all up because it doesn't matter to me. What I do know (and care about) is that people are unwilling to pay what we now see as crazy too high prices for items that are a pain in the ass for us to use. When the purchase is made, it's one we have to think about. That doesn't seem like a good thing; I know as a consumer I'd rather pay a price and not have "this is kinda spendy.... hmm... " running through my mind. When I buy toothpaste or cat litter or earbuds or beers or order a pizza I don't think "gee... do I really need this right now? Will it fuck up my computer? Will my kids be able to use it without me at 7 am on Saturday morning?" No way! If I determine I want something, I go out and get it, and I trust that the price is worth the good. We've lost that trust of the movie and music industry's products, and you're just not getting that. You want us thinking "Sweet! It's Friday; let's go to pick up a couple Blu-Rays!" and not even batting an eye at price, knowing intuitively that we're getting our money's worth. Do you even know that "downloading" a movie is WAY more of a pain in the ass than running down to Wal-Mart and buying the damn thing? Piracy occurs because people don't want to pay the prices you ask. Have you seen how successful Netflix is, even after attempting to blast their left nut into smithereens? It's because Netflix feels ungodly inexpensive for the convenience provided. Let me pull down your content and place it onto my own storage media without restriction, and I'll gladly pay you a monthly subscription. I'll even pay a premium to get media around the same time the cable providers do. Then my choice is between filling up my DVR and setting media aside on my PC, which is a problem I really, really, REALLY wanna have.
Figure out a way to make your products worth their price, easy to use, and less restricting. Lower your costs, then lower your prices by the same amount, and guess what? Your margins stay the same, but your sales just may go up!!! You could also bundle 3 or 4 movies into one same-priced set, increasing value to the consumer!! But instead it almost seems like you've laid outo an implied threat to stop creating content if we don't pay your prices. Well, we're calling your bluff. Fine, stop creating it. Either someone will fill the void you leave, or consumers will simply lose the whole "entertainment" thing (I think this is an unlikely outcome, but... it's a risk we're obviously willing to take, based on the general unrest I see these days). Either way, you're eventually gonna go out of business if you don't give us what we want to buy. You'll all be bitter and emo and blame the customer for your failures, but the reality is, somewhere along the way, you've forgotten that customers are a business' lifeblood, not a resource to be exploited. Doing what you do to your customers in any other industry would have led to your bankruptcy decades ago, and you've gotten a free asshole pass long enough. Put up or shut down.
You hit the nail right on the head, but the one thing that we all keep missing is none of it matters at all to the great wide public. Perception is everything; people are constantly using sub-optimal products because the TV tells them to.
Without a successful marketing push, all argument about the Year of the Linux Desktop is pointless. We need both momentum AND quality.
I like just about all the points you make above, but I'll make one more: Perception is EVERYTHING. Even if the GP was correct about all those things you successfully refuted, there are no Linux famous spokesmen out there touting the benefits of switching.
Push for change in the middle of The Walking Dead. Insert some mindshare by paying Peter Griffin to use Linux at home. Have American Idols sing into Linux branded microphones. The public is inertia, defined, and isn't going to adopt anything new unless they have what THEY see as a kickass reason to do so. "Free" and "word of mouth" isn't enough. Get some commercials done. Push it. Sell it. Find a way to change public perception about things like "simpler to use than Windows" because it doesn't matter whether it is or not, anyway. What people want to hear is "This is so way awesome that celebrities and football players use it!".
Do you think zombie Apple reanimated itself by arguing about Windows on Slashdot? Hell no - they did it by screaming at the top of their lungs about how much better they are than Windows. Linux needs to do the same thing. "I'm a nerdy PC. I'm a hipster Mac. Yeah? I'm the fucking Linux T-Rex. I'll eat your enemies, save you from terrorists, defend your online liberty, let YOU tax the GUBMINT, make it rain 10 dollar bills in your backyard, and babysit your kids all the while." There's the first one; consider it a freebie.
Oh, and dump the silly names for more marketable ones, unless your marketing folks are so good they can turn a fun-but-unprofessional word like "Gimp" into the commercial powerhouse that the word "Photoshop" has become. Yeah, I like saying Gimp too, but seriously? That ain't gonna fly in prime-time without some serious spin (think "Bing". I cringe every time I hear it, but the MS marketdroids are making it happen anyway). Names like OpenOffice are a start, but people want to know exactly what a thing is by hearing the name.
You know, you're absolutely right, but I think this is still a big hurdle to a widely adopted Linux desktop. Everyday users don't want to be told "if you do this, it will work." even when it's true. Even though they have to install DirectX to install a game on Windows; average users don't even notice it, because the game installer puts it in place without them having to see anything but a "Next" button. Pushing next is just what you push until "Finish", which is the button that makes shortcuts to click. They just want software to work, with no additional steps that they have to think about. They only perceive installing Wine as "I have to do more stuff than Windows", and that only looks like excuses for a less-functional-than-Windows computer.
Your average joe or josephine isn't gonna want to hear that they need to install Wine to then install Photoshop or Quicken, especially when they have to call Adobe support for help installing Photoshop in the first place. I think what Linux needs for widespread success is a broad spectrum "ezmode" for users that just don't care about things like which OS they use. Put cd in, click next a buncha times, gogo spreadsheet/tax return/headshots. In fact, to the user, an "ezmode" isn't even a feature, it's a "normal", so it just needs to be there by default, with no fanfare. Touting a "brand new ezmode!!" feature will STILL work against Linux, because it'll call attention to the fact the OS can be trickier than a "Windows", which is scary to a new, unskilled user.
I don't know if this is something that the Linux community will want to do anyway, because if it happens and is broadly adopted, Linux won't have a special uniqueness anymore. We'll all be supporting Linux ezmode instead of the stuff that makes Linux beautiful. Maybe if software vendors started packaging things like Wine, with an optimal configuration in their own sandbox, into their installers, we'd see a difference, but then we run into a catch 22. Why would a vendor want to do this for such a small market share?
What's even more unfortunate is Windows and Mac OS's have paved a track that users follow. Unless Linux can funnel users into a very, very similar track, it doesn't stand a chance of breaking them out of the pattern. Free just doesn't make up for a perceived pain in the ass, and while I hate it as much as the rest of you, that's the reality right now.
I had an Epson that used to ask me to "Insert More Deeply". I'd rather have my printer's error messages be unintelligible than to have the little bastard agree with my girlfriend.
Eh... while the DesignJets (HP's commercial line) are competitive and do a decent job, thermal heads in general are dying a slow death.
Epson's piezo heads are in just about every high end commercial inkjet these days because they're easier to control (which led to variable droplet tech), and they don't suffer the same damage from solvent inks, meaning output done with mild solvents don't need the UV treatment aqueous inks do. HP does have some high end solvent and latex machines, but those are designed for a different purpose than fine-art reproduction.
I love my DesignJet, it makes for some truly beautiful prints and has a color gamut to die for, but for mass production? Gotta go with a piezo head for the-end high-volume.
Also, the DesignJet side is managed from Barcelona, and is a totally different division than their DeskJet side (though they do have a testing facility for both divisions in Boise). Both tend to be hampered with atrocious and over-engineered print drivers - just get a good RIP and send data through ethernet.
And now I just read your comment text again. So.... yeah. Agreed.
Actually, they sort of already do this. When you purchase a new inkjet, the cartridges are rarely the same as in the specified standard inkset; these are the special ones used to fill and test the machine's ink lines, and typically have 1/3-ish the ink of a new cartridge. Lexmark, especially, was notorious for this, and had some desktop printers they'd sell for less than the price of a new inkset.
Printer manufacturers have a vested interest in having you buy their ink, from the little 8.5x11 printers to huge 128" solvent machines (both of which, by the way, HP has in their DeskJet and DesignJet product lines). Even in my shop, I spend more per year by FAR (3-4 times more, actually) in ink than I do on the machine lease, and anybody printing tons of photos at home will too. A printer is just an ink vending machine, you know.
While the club does require membership approval, she approved every member who came across her*, so it's something of a cosmic wash.
*bwahaha
It's really an odd human nature thing; I actually love working, unless I have to. At that point, it's not work anymore. I'm still getting paid, and I have a choice, so it's not servitude, but it's something in between.
I really hope you're right, and I hope when the chips fall I can be one who says "screw this!" and walk out for breakfast beers with you, because it absolutely sucks to burn out on work you used to love. Like Oreos? Try eating 15,000 per month for 10 years to make your mortgage. It's like that.