The problem isn't that astrology is a flawed mental shortcut (indeed, what model of thought gives us a *absolutely* accurate representation of the mechanisms of the world?)
The problem is with its accuracy. We use applied Newtonian physics because, even in spite of its shortcomings, it produces accurate results. And more importantly, the results can be demonstrably drawn from quantifiable phenomenon. Even the margins for error in the example you provided are relatively small.
To this day no one has presented any longitudinal studies or results for tests conducted in controlled setting which support astrology's ability to make accurate predictions. With nothing but marketing tenacity and a large, gullible consumer base, astrology despite their obscenely large margins of error and total lack of supporting evidence.
As sleazy as the practice of inciting brand-confusion to produce profit may be, it is ultimately the responsibility of the consumer to do adequate research before plowing ahead with a purchase.
I think some of the comments here are focusing too much on the fact that Mr. Riccitiello works for EA, and not focusing enough on the content of his statement. The fact that he works for EA has no immediate relevance to the content of his statement; a statement which is not far off the mark.
With the emergence of video game markets overseas that offer downloadable content and even entire games for free (not to mention the prevalence of modified consoles playing games downloaded from Bit Torrent), the western games distribution model is going to have to answer some significant questions on how it chooses to continue selling games. People won't shell out $60 forever when torrenting becomes a ubiquitous MO.
Video cards are good for more than just games. They are the cornerstone of potent graphics processing for people who do ultra-high resolution image manipulation and 3D modeling. I work in the games industry, and I couldn't do what I do efficiently with anything less than a dual core with an nVidia 8800 GTS Ultra.
In the end, spending money on a personal computer is a more viable long-term investment than buying a games console like a Wii. Personal computers can do what consoles do and a whole lot more, and when their innards become obsolete you can strip everything out and upgrade. You can't do that with a Wii, a 360, or a PS3 without compromising the function (and only function, really) they were built for.
And as an addendum, I own a Wii, a 360, and a beefy PC. I bought all of them because I enjoy games, but my PC was most definitely the best investment of the three.
What happens when you grossly underestimate how bad it can possibly be?
Do you have a surefire worst-case scenario applicable in any situation, such as getting your penis cut off?
No matter what the situation: "Well, at least I still have my dick."
Acrobat introduced a means of translating documents into image files which was not previously available, hence the reason it caught on. With Microsoft Office the issue is a little different - here Adobe is trying to create a competitor for a program which is already in existence and widely distributed and widely used. Imagine another software company trying to make a program to compete with Adobe Acrobat in the face of its own ubiquity and you'll see what I'm getting at.
Most desktops and laptops which are sold, either to individual home clients or en masse to businesses, come shipped with Microsoft Office pre-installed (since most people want to have the convenience of hooking up the computer and using it right away. Why would someone buy Adobe Office if Microsoft Office was already installed on their computer? This is exactly how Netscape Navigator bit the dust against Microsoft's Internet Explorer - Microsoft simply packed IE in so that people had no incentive to buy from a competitor.
I don't see this as a viable marketing strategy. Unless Adobe can secure a good contract with a large-scale hardware retailer like Dell to have their program pre-installed on new desktops/laptops, "Adobe Office" will go the way of Netscape, like the many other pieces of software that have tried to provide competition for Microsoft's pack-ins.
Keep in mind that while morality cannot be quantified, much of its definition is drawn from human need. Most of the omnivorous among us (myself included) would agree that there is a quality to the experience of eating meat which is just as essential as the nutrients which the meat provides. Supplements also tend to be more costly than meat, and the very nature of their structure at the molecular level makes them sub-optimal for digestion in comparison with animal meat.
You raise good points, but I don't think they are significant enough to affect the scale just yet. When we are able to recreate a steak with the push of a button, then we can expect attitudes to change.
I've always been a proponent of the idea that scientists were the true moral crusaders of our age, not protesters, demonstrators, and certainly not religious zealots.
Think of it this way - when scientists have perfected a means for reproducing reliable and testable human cancer cells in a laboratory, there will no longer be any need to use lab rats in cancer research. Cancer will be closer to being cured, and rats will be spared. What has the Animal Liberation Front done on that magnitude, apart from burn medical research facilities?
I imagine that when we are able to create vehicles that produce no pollution, it will be considered excessive and morally repugnant to drive gas guzzlers. I imagine that we have developed a means of engineering meat that it will be considered immoral to kill living animals to get it. The idea here is that immorality is scaled and determined in terms of gross excess of what is necessary for survival, and that our technology makes survival easier (thus altering the scale).
We would still give lousy scores to lousy games, because to us the most important element of our work is the trust of our readership. Advertising revenue from entertainment software companies can fluctuate depending on the release schedule of any given year, but we would lose our credibility instantly and unequivocally if anyone suspected our opinions were being bought.
I've worked for two well-known gaming journalism groups, and I can tell you that game developers don't have quite as much control over the content of feature articles as this article might have you suspect.
The principled difference between an advertisement and a feature story is that a company has control over the content of the ad, and that the advertisements are usually handled by the entity producing the game, not the developers.
Developers may control the spigot of game-related information, but they don't control the spigot attached to the gaming press' fingers and mouths. Editor impressions, exclusive previews, and game reviews are all written by the editors of the press outlets, and we get paid by our company, not by the software developers, to write these things. We really do want to help you save money by pointing out which games are worth your time and money.
All of these are elements are effective at providing a check against any potentially slanted information that a company may try to use to artificially spike its product's popularity, and believe me - they get called on this very quickly when it inevitably fails.
They can't sell this as adequate internet viral prophylaxis to anyone using Linux or a beefed-up Firefox and script-blocking configuration. It also won't fly as a means of managing streaming quantities because innovations in fiber optics technology will allow for greater amounts of data to be passed along existing "tubes."
Maybe I'm just naive, but DPI won't stand up to free market capitalism. Anyone aware of the fact that their information is being closely scrutinized won't be as comfortable handing their money over to an ISP which condones the practice. I can imagine a "Googlenet" (or what have you) being created in response to market demand for a Net Neutral internet service provider.
Maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture, though.
The problem with the music industry is that they believe that just because they have made profits in the past that they are now somehow entitled to make them.
Well, too bad. In free market capitalism you don't have the right to make profit. What you have the right to do is sell or not sell. Market forces determine the price of something. If the RIAA wants to make more money on music, then they need to withhold some of what they produce (I use the term produce loosely) in order to increase demand for it. Of course, no one would miss any of the watered-down cookie-cutter garbage that plagues the modern music industry, so demand for it would never increase - an unfortunate situation that the RIAA created for itself by engaging in content control and price fixation.
A word of caution to any business owners out there. You need your customers more than they need you. There will always be someone to provide consumers with what they need, so it wont mater if your company went extinct because you tried to cling to inefficient and disingenuous business models. Sue 1,000 people. Sue 10,000 if you want. All it will affect is the length of your epitaph.
Microsoft charged out the front door with a raging hard-on ready to cram Vista onto everyone's hard drives with half-witted selling angles like releasing a two-year old FPS that was good on a console. Too bad they went flaccid the moment they hit sunlight.
The beautiful part is that free market capitalism is perfectly poised to solve the problem on its own (especially with the Internet around). People will always adopt methods or software which best suit their needs for the lowest cost - and if that means downloading pirated software or cracked operating systems online for free, then that is what people will do. The fact that the general population is becoming increasingly computer-literate won't help Microsoft maintain its stranglehold on the industry for long.
We are approaching an era when open source will overtake commercial software development. Imagine what kind of new online democracy that will produce.
Slashdot Mirror
There's already a "way to avoid actually communicating with all those difficult, boring people in your life": don't talk to them.
The problem isn't that astrology is a flawed mental shortcut (indeed, what model of thought gives us a *absolutely* accurate representation of the mechanisms of the world?)
The problem is with its accuracy. We use applied Newtonian physics because, even in spite of its shortcomings, it produces accurate results. And more importantly, the results can be demonstrably drawn from quantifiable phenomenon. Even the margins for error in the example you provided are relatively small.
To this day no one has presented any longitudinal studies or results for tests conducted in controlled setting which support astrology's ability to make accurate predictions. With nothing but marketing tenacity and a large, gullible consumer base, astrology despite their obscenely large margins of error and total lack of supporting evidence.
As sleazy as the practice of inciting brand-confusion to produce profit may be, it is ultimately the responsibility of the consumer to do adequate research before plowing ahead with a purchase.
I think some of the comments here are focusing too much on the fact that Mr. Riccitiello works for EA, and not focusing enough on the content of his statement. The fact that he works for EA has no immediate relevance to the content of his statement; a statement which is not far off the mark.
With the emergence of video game markets overseas that offer downloadable content and even entire games for free (not to mention the prevalence of modified consoles playing games downloaded from Bit Torrent), the western games distribution model is going to have to answer some significant questions on how it chooses to continue selling games. People won't shell out $60 forever when torrenting becomes a ubiquitous MO.
They already do. This is the function that polls serve.
"Legislators are like fruit, keep them around too long and they start to rot."
Just to make sure I'm processing your analogy correctly, you're saying the appropriate response is to eat our legislators before they rot?
Video cards are good for more than just games. They are the cornerstone of potent graphics processing for people who do ultra-high resolution image manipulation and 3D modeling. I work in the games industry, and I couldn't do what I do efficiently with anything less than a dual core with an nVidia 8800 GTS Ultra.
In the end, spending money on a personal computer is a more viable long-term investment than buying a games console like a Wii. Personal computers can do what consoles do and a whole lot more, and when their innards become obsolete you can strip everything out and upgrade. You can't do that with a Wii, a 360, or a PS3 without compromising the function (and only function, really) they were built for.
And as an addendum, I own a Wii, a 360, and a beefy PC. I bought all of them because I enjoy games, but my PC was most definitely the best investment of the three.
What happens when you grossly underestimate how bad it can possibly be? Do you have a surefire worst-case scenario applicable in any situation, such as getting your penis cut off? No matter what the situation: "Well, at least I still have my dick."
Acrobat introduced a means of translating documents into image files which was not previously available, hence the reason it caught on. With Microsoft Office the issue is a little different - here Adobe is trying to create a competitor for a program which is already in existence and widely distributed and widely used. Imagine another software company trying to make a program to compete with Adobe Acrobat in the face of its own ubiquity and you'll see what I'm getting at.
Most desktops and laptops which are sold, either to individual home clients or en masse to businesses, come shipped with Microsoft Office pre-installed (since most people want to have the convenience of hooking up the computer and using it right away. Why would someone buy Adobe Office if Microsoft Office was already installed on their computer? This is exactly how Netscape Navigator bit the dust against Microsoft's Internet Explorer - Microsoft simply packed IE in so that people had no incentive to buy from a competitor.
I don't see this as a viable marketing strategy. Unless Adobe can secure a good contract with a large-scale hardware retailer like Dell to have their program pre-installed on new desktops/laptops, "Adobe Office" will go the way of Netscape, like the many other pieces of software that have tried to provide competition for Microsoft's pack-ins.
Keep in mind that while morality cannot be quantified, much of its definition is drawn from human need. Most of the omnivorous among us (myself included) would agree that there is a quality to the experience of eating meat which is just as essential as the nutrients which the meat provides. Supplements also tend to be more costly than meat, and the very nature of their structure at the molecular level makes them sub-optimal for digestion in comparison with animal meat.
You raise good points, but I don't think they are significant enough to affect the scale just yet. When we are able to recreate a steak with the push of a button, then we can expect attitudes to change.
This actually brings up an interesting idea.
I've always been a proponent of the idea that scientists were the true moral crusaders of our age, not protesters, demonstrators, and certainly not religious zealots.
Think of it this way - when scientists have perfected a means for reproducing reliable and testable human cancer cells in a laboratory, there will no longer be any need to use lab rats in cancer research. Cancer will be closer to being cured, and rats will be spared. What has the Animal Liberation Front done on that magnitude, apart from burn medical research facilities?
I imagine that when we are able to create vehicles that produce no pollution, it will be considered excessive and morally repugnant to drive gas guzzlers. I imagine that we have developed a means of engineering meat that it will be considered immoral to kill living animals to get it. The idea here is that immorality is scaled and determined in terms of gross excess of what is necessary for survival, and that our technology makes survival easier (thus altering the scale).
We would still give lousy scores to lousy games, because to us the most important element of our work is the trust of our readership. Advertising revenue from entertainment software companies can fluctuate depending on the release schedule of any given year, but we would lose our credibility instantly and unequivocally if anyone suspected our opinions were being bought.
I've worked for two well-known gaming journalism groups, and I can tell you that game developers don't have quite as much control over the content of feature articles as this article might have you suspect.
The principled difference between an advertisement and a feature story is that a company has control over the content of the ad, and that the advertisements are usually handled by the entity producing the game, not the developers.
Developers may control the spigot of game-related information, but they don't control the spigot attached to the gaming press' fingers and mouths. Editor impressions, exclusive previews, and game reviews are all written by the editors of the press outlets, and we get paid by our company, not by the software developers, to write these things. We really do want to help you save money by pointing out which games are worth your time and money.
All of these are elements are effective at providing a check against any potentially slanted information that a company may try to use to artificially spike its product's popularity, and believe me - they get called on this very quickly when it inevitably fails.
They can't sell this as adequate internet viral prophylaxis to anyone using Linux or a beefed-up Firefox and script-blocking configuration. It also won't fly as a means of managing streaming quantities because innovations in fiber optics technology will allow for greater amounts of data to be passed along existing "tubes." Maybe I'm just naive, but DPI won't stand up to free market capitalism. Anyone aware of the fact that their information is being closely scrutinized won't be as comfortable handing their money over to an ISP which condones the practice. I can imagine a "Googlenet" (or what have you) being created in response to market demand for a Net Neutral internet service provider. Maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture, though.
The problem with the music industry is that they believe that just because they have made profits in the past that they are now somehow entitled to make them.
Well, too bad. In free market capitalism you don't have the right to make profit. What you have the right to do is sell or not sell. Market forces determine the price of something. If the RIAA wants to make more money on music, then they need to withhold some of what they produce (I use the term produce loosely) in order to increase demand for it. Of course, no one would miss any of the watered-down cookie-cutter garbage that plagues the modern music industry, so demand for it would never increase - an unfortunate situation that the RIAA created for itself by engaging in content control and price fixation.
A word of caution to any business owners out there. You need your customers more than they need you. There will always be someone to provide consumers with what they need, so it wont mater if your company went extinct because you tried to cling to inefficient and disingenuous business models. Sue 1,000 people. Sue 10,000 if you want. All it will affect is the length of your epitaph.
And no one will miss you.
They forgot to include "adult theater janitor."
(@ T- 26 seconds)
"How are you? Chew on my milk duds."
Nevertheless, fantastic use of technology. I can't wait to see where they go with this.
Microsoft charged out the front door with a raging hard-on ready to cram Vista onto everyone's hard drives with half-witted selling angles like releasing a two-year old FPS that was good on a console. Too bad they went flaccid the moment they hit sunlight.
The beautiful part is that free market capitalism is perfectly poised to solve the problem on its own (especially with the Internet around). People will always adopt methods or software which best suit their needs for the lowest cost - and if that means downloading pirated software or cracked operating systems online for free, then that is what people will do. The fact that the general population is becoming increasingly computer-literate won't help Microsoft maintain its stranglehold on the industry for long.
We are approaching an era when open source will overtake commercial software development. Imagine what kind of new online democracy that will produce.
Wouldn't be surprised if MS tried to consolidate voting procedures the same way they have tried to do with the entertainment market.
"New to the Xbox Live Marketplace, vote for your favorite U.S. Presidential Puppet in the new 'Red Vs. Blue' civic action feature."