Hmm. Point taken. Then I guess it's really just a point of curiosity, and there's nothing to get upset about. I'm still new at this "yelling at bonch for being a horrible person" thing, so there may be a few rough patches to work out.
Might I ask exactly whom you believe will fall for your rubbish? This article is about the absurdity of the FBI having such a file, not about "mean" Steve Jobs. Your article quotes Florian fucking Mueller, and that billion in royalties comes solely from Apple, who (a) can afford it, (b) was already paying it, (c) has been racing to the bottom with Google's business partners for quite some time now, and (d) started it. Learn how to troll.
What I want to know is: "How did 'inventing a web browser plugin' get turned into 'invented a network that has been in place since 1969'?" Seriously, I want to stab samzenpus in the face for letting this through. What's next? Will Bill Gates be said to have invented the microchip?
People will also donate to artists, even those who aren't in theatres or in concert, simply because they're super-impressed with them: behold, the humble donation. Since concerts are so expensive to organize, I believe that artists should focus on cultivating and engaging their fan base, much like web comic artists do, in order to make their living. It's an act of extreme arrogance to believe you can just dump a record at a consumer and expect to have money thrown at you for doing so, without ever going out and asking the consumer what he or she wants. This, essentially, is why the content industry is falling apart; much like when shows on Fox started failing simply because everyone expected them to get cancelled, and stopped putting their hearts on the line.
Sort of. My point was more like "if you want people to pay you just for producing something that is essentially free"—ignoring concerts and stuff—"then make them want to donate to you. Nothing else will work. And no, you will not rake in millions of dollars of profit. You only got those dollars because you created artificial scarcity. The consumers who have been giving you that money don't care about the value of the product; they just want side benefits, and so have no incentive not to exploit you. They have no reason not to abuse the public property."
That last part is the key; remember that the MPAA's argument is that downloading is 'stealing from artists.' Your artists haven't made material that people really want to give you money for having made, and by the way: it's impossible to appeal to everyone at the same time.
In the cases where an alternative distribution channel is available (there often isn't) and it is available for a reasonable price (which people often also disagree on), people pirate content that they don't really care about in order to fill their lives up. Perhaps there's a social incentive for knowing about what happened on some TV show; perhaps it's to stave off boredom because they're depressed and don't have greater ambitions or hobbies for their free time (this describes more people than anyone cares to admit); perhaps it's just to distract them because they're tired. In none of these cases is the consumer deriving value from the art of the content; it's just slightly more interesting than usual time-filling fluff, like the proverbial airport novel, sports news, the weather, or gossip in a bar. That's why we don't feel compelled to repay the artists behind the content.
The only permanent solution is to make content that people want to pay for, instead of making content they feel like they have to pay for. It's not hard to get people to pay for content when you make it actually engaging. You do have to give up on the lie that everyone wants content all the time, but it's possible to survive.
Interesting as in "Your opinion vaguely contravenes general accepted wisdom here; let's have a discussion about it." Which you're doing. So that's something of a win.
That's very cute of you, but the burden of proof is still on your shoulders. C'mon; at least cite a made-up expert. I hear Dr. Fred Mbogo of the University of Bogos will do anything for a buck.
It's interesting how you're saying this is not good at a large-sum, high-scale level, but in general Slashdotters think that doing it on a smaller scale, with donations to musicians, is a good one. As an IP discussion: when does the 'non-guaranteed pay' model work and when is it toxic?
Right. That's the difference between "caused" and "doomed". The chip failure proximally started the chain of events that led to the mission's death, whereas the programming failure spelled ultimate doom. (Dooooooooooooom!)
...or maybe it should be the other way around. Hmm.
And then there's this other Cisco product called IOS, and there was one case about I-Pods... when you think about it, the whole "i" prefix was a staggeringly kitschy dot-com-style bad plan.
Your line of reasoning seems familiar somehow. Please, present evidence as to why this science needs to be held to the unusually rigorous standards you propose when Occam's razor has done its job just fine for absolutely everything else. And while you're at it, please tell us who first introduced you to the idea that anthropogenic global warming isn't real, so that I can inform you which oil company paid them to say that.
Well, there's this. Which, I think, shuts down the entire conversation on its own empirical basis even if we don't understand why, but it doesn't let me make my favourite point ever about anthropogenic threats to the ecosystem: the Mediterranean is a lot dirtier than it was during the last D–O event. It seems to me not that the hilariously tragic loss in biological diversity of the next century will not be on our shoulders merely because we turned up the thermostat, but because we pumped in noxious fumes at the same time. (Have you ever seen one of those fantastically unnerving stories about the Mafia dumping nuclear waste into the sea? Yeah, gee, I wonder where all that goes...)
Nah, you're spot on. Plants are indeed ridiculously complicated and slow at doing things. We estimate most higher plants have about four to five times the number of genes that humans do, and we still have very little idea about why they might decide to just grow instead of reproducing sexually, but it may be due to a malfunction (vaguely equivalent to a tumour that causes you to grow an entire copy of yourself sticking out of your left arm, recursively.) Because plants are so good at recovering themselves when divided, gardeners and horticulturists sometimes use cuttings of exotic plants when seeds won't work, or even in hope of hybridizing similar plants.
The roots do indeed get cut up all the time, but as for organism independence, that still leaves the "If the PRC collapses and the Taiwanese government takes over mainland China again, is it the original Chinese government?" question. Or in a more computer-y sense, "if you delete all signs of a viral infection but the boot sector, then the virus comes back from that boot sector, then you clean the boot sector but forget to delete the other parts, is it still the same infection?" Or, as proposed in 'John Dies At The End', "If you replace both the handle and the head of an axe with identical parts, one at a time, is it the same axe?"
I very well might. The trouble is that the general public doesn't want to be faced with the stark reality that most of the reductionist labels we employ on a regular basis are terms of convenience and are nonsense from a biological perspective. We can't really say where a mitochondrion ends and the human cell containing it begins; we can't even say whether or not the mitochondrion should be considered a symbiotic bacterium or a natural component of the human cell that just so happens to be bacterial in origin. We can't say where one organism ends and the next begins; we can't say where one species ends and the next begins. All but the most simplistic species of bacteria form a mat when left to their own devices, as do (and did) many kinds of yeast—is it a primitive form of multicellular life, or just a community? What the hell, then, is the primitive organisation in a tumour? And let's not even start to get into questions about what makes up a speciation event or what's even alive—there are exceptions to every scenario and subtle condition that we have ever imagined; some people have even argued that transposons are living systems.
Maybe the distinction for what makes up an organism is about being physically separate, or having a distinct genome. Okay, hotshot: is a sperm cell an organism? An ovum? A seed? A virus? Male angler fish? What about this nightmare-inducing thing? And don't tell me it has to be independently capable of survival—there are lots of parasites that, simply, aren't.
The task of explaining all these blurry lines makes for a good book, but it doesn't really fit into a Slashdot post very well. (And for full disclosure, I was running out the door at the time.) All we can really say is that we're all blobs of proteins, nucleic acids, fats, carbohydrates, and a few trace amounts of other things stuck on for good measure. We're all... well, most of us are currently considered alive by modern science, but good luck saying anything for certain. We're still messing up entropy pretty good, at least. That counts for something.
Slashdot Mirror
That's the most half-hearted attempt at misogyny I've ever read. I might recommend this Wikipedia article as a starting place to work on your insults.
Hmm. Point taken. Then I guess it's really just a point of curiosity, and there's nothing to get upset about. I'm still new at this "yelling at bonch for being a horrible person" thing, so there may be a few rough patches to work out.
Might I ask exactly whom you believe will fall for your rubbish? This article is about the absurdity of the FBI having such a file, not about "mean" Steve Jobs. Your article quotes Florian fucking Mueller, and that billion in royalties comes solely from Apple, who (a) can afford it, (b) was already paying it, (c) has been racing to the bottom with Google's business partners for quite some time now, and (d) started it. Learn how to troll.
No problem. I'll put up another journal.
Certainly that happens too, though I suspect with less regularity.
What I want to know is: "How did 'inventing a web browser plugin' get turned into 'invented a network that has been in place since 1969'?" Seriously, I want to stab samzenpus in the face for letting this through. What's next? Will Bill Gates be said to have invented the microchip?
People will also donate to artists, even those who aren't in theatres or in concert, simply because they're super-impressed with them: behold, the humble donation. Since concerts are so expensive to organize, I believe that artists should focus on cultivating and engaging their fan base, much like web comic artists do, in order to make their living. It's an act of extreme arrogance to believe you can just dump a record at a consumer and expect to have money thrown at you for doing so, without ever going out and asking the consumer what he or she wants. This, essentially, is why the content industry is falling apart; much like when shows on Fox started failing simply because everyone expected them to get cancelled, and stopped putting their hearts on the line.
Sort of. My point was more like "if you want people to pay you just for producing something that is essentially free"—ignoring concerts and stuff—"then make them want to donate to you. Nothing else will work. And no, you will not rake in millions of dollars of profit. You only got those dollars because you created artificial scarcity. The consumers who have been giving you that money don't care about the value of the product; they just want side benefits, and so have no incentive not to exploit you. They have no reason not to abuse the public property."
That last part is the key; remember that the MPAA's argument is that downloading is 'stealing from artists.' Your artists haven't made material that people really want to give you money for having made, and by the way: it's impossible to appeal to everyone at the same time.
In the cases where an alternative distribution channel is available (there often isn't) and it is available for a reasonable price (which people often also disagree on), people pirate content that they don't really care about in order to fill their lives up. Perhaps there's a social incentive for knowing about what happened on some TV show; perhaps it's to stave off boredom because they're depressed and don't have greater ambitions or hobbies for their free time (this describes more people than anyone cares to admit); perhaps it's just to distract them because they're tired. In none of these cases is the consumer deriving value from the art of the content; it's just slightly more interesting than usual time-filling fluff, like the proverbial airport novel, sports news, the weather, or gossip in a bar. That's why we don't feel compelled to repay the artists behind the content.
The only permanent solution is to make content that people want to pay for, instead of making content they feel like they have to pay for. It's not hard to get people to pay for content when you make it actually engaging. You do have to give up on the lie that everyone wants content all the time, but it's possible to survive.
Interesting as in "Your opinion vaguely contravenes general accepted wisdom here; let's have a discussion about it." Which you're doing. So that's something of a win.
That's very cute of you, but the burden of proof is still on your shoulders. C'mon; at least cite a made-up expert. I hear Dr. Fred Mbogo of the University of Bogos will do anything for a buck.
It turned out that while you can't buy them love, you sure can buy love from them.
It's interesting how you're saying this is not good at a large-sum, high-scale level, but in general Slashdotters think that doing it on a smaller scale, with donations to musicians, is a good one. As an IP discussion: when does the 'non-guaranteed pay' model work and when is it toxic?
Right. That's the difference between "caused" and "doomed". The chip failure proximally started the chain of events that led to the mission's death, whereas the programming failure spelled ultimate doom. (Dooooooooooooom!)
...or maybe it should be the other way around. Hmm.
And then there's this other Cisco product called IOS, and there was one case about I-Pods... when you think about it, the whole "i" prefix was a staggeringly kitschy dot-com-style bad plan.
Your line of reasoning seems familiar somehow. Please, present evidence as to why this science needs to be held to the unusually rigorous standards you propose when Occam's razor has done its job just fine for absolutely everything else. And while you're at it, please tell us who first introduced you to the idea that anthropogenic global warming isn't real, so that I can inform you which oil company paid them to say that.
Really? Really? Damn; I thought I had more street cred than that.
Maybe you should emphasize that it came directly from Canterlot.
Yes. For some more rambling on the subject, there is this comment.
Didn't you hear? Hydrogenated alkenes are the devil.
Well, there's this. Which, I think, shuts down the entire conversation on its own empirical basis even if we don't understand why, but it doesn't let me make my favourite point ever about anthropogenic threats to the ecosystem: the Mediterranean is a lot dirtier than it was during the last D–O event. It seems to me not that the hilariously tragic loss in biological diversity of the next century will not be on our shoulders merely because we turned up the thermostat, but because we pumped in noxious fumes at the same time. (Have you ever seen one of those fantastically unnerving stories about the Mafia dumping nuclear waste into the sea? Yeah, gee, I wonder where all that goes...)
Nah, you're spot on. Plants are indeed ridiculously complicated and slow at doing things. We estimate most higher plants have about four to five times the number of genes that humans do, and we still have very little idea about why they might decide to just grow instead of reproducing sexually, but it may be due to a malfunction (vaguely equivalent to a tumour that causes you to grow an entire copy of yourself sticking out of your left arm, recursively.) Because plants are so good at recovering themselves when divided, gardeners and horticulturists sometimes use cuttings of exotic plants when seeds won't work, or even in hope of hybridizing similar plants.
The roots do indeed get cut up all the time, but as for organism independence, that still leaves the "If the PRC collapses and the Taiwanese government takes over mainland China again, is it the original Chinese government?" question. Or in a more computer-y sense, "if you delete all signs of a viral infection but the boot sector, then the virus comes back from that boot sector, then you clean the boot sector but forget to delete the other parts, is it still the same infection?" Or, as proposed in 'John Dies At The End', "If you replace both the handle and the head of an axe with identical parts, one at a time, is it the same axe?"
Well, again, there's the thing. They think the roots of the 80,000-year-old Pando aspen grove are still connected, but can't prove it.
I very well might. The trouble is that the general public doesn't want to be faced with the stark reality that most of the reductionist labels we employ on a regular basis are terms of convenience and are nonsense from a biological perspective. We can't really say where a mitochondrion ends and the human cell containing it begins; we can't even say whether or not the mitochondrion should be considered a symbiotic bacterium or a natural component of the human cell that just so happens to be bacterial in origin. We can't say where one organism ends and the next begins; we can't say where one species ends and the next begins. All but the most simplistic species of bacteria form a mat when left to their own devices, as do (and did) many kinds of yeast—is it a primitive form of multicellular life, or just a community? What the hell, then, is the primitive organisation in a tumour? And let's not even start to get into questions about what makes up a speciation event or what's even alive—there are exceptions to every scenario and subtle condition that we have ever imagined; some people have even argued that transposons are living systems.
Maybe the distinction for what makes up an organism is about being physically separate, or having a distinct genome. Okay, hotshot: is a sperm cell an organism? An ovum? A seed? A virus? Male angler fish? What about this nightmare-inducing thing? And don't tell me it has to be independently capable of survival—there are lots of parasites that, simply, aren't.
The task of explaining all these blurry lines makes for a good book, but it doesn't really fit into a Slashdot post very well. (And for full disclosure, I was running out the door at the time.) All we can really say is that we're all blobs of proteins, nucleic acids, fats, carbohydrates, and a few trace amounts of other things stuck on for good measure. We're all... well, most of us are currently considered alive by modern science, but good luck saying anything for certain. We're still messing up entropy pretty good, at least. That counts for something.