In an industry where the corporations are suing their customers, there is PLENTY of room for large companies to take a new stance and embrace the now pissed off consumers.
I see this as history repeating itself. Provided the U.S. Congress can restrain itself from passing laws requiring anti-copying technology, then the market will naturally swing just as you said. It happened in the 80s with anti-copying tech on floppy disks. For a while, every disk had an anti-copying scheme on it. But eventually enough customers were irritated that companies just started shipping non-copy-protected disks again. It'll come around. The customer always wins in the end. Not only that, but the formats that Congress does lock down will simply be abandoned. See any DATs anywhere? Nope.
How this got modded as Insightful I will never understand. This is about as shit an idea as you can get. Even looking past your a priori assumption that there is a "problem of illegal file trading," which by itself is extremely shaky, you go on to advance the preposterous notion that giving a private cartel criminal prosecution powers would be a benefit to society. If it wasn't for plugging your blog, I'd think this was a clever troll.
Supposing, sadly, that you believe this notion, I should like to point out that in a criminal trial the verdict is decided by a jury of one's peers. Precisely how many juries do you think are going to send a 19-year-old college kid to prison because he downloaded some Usher tunes? Going somewhat further, and supposing as you suggest that 5,000 such college kids end up with a size 7 poopshoot in prison as punishment for their wicked file trading ways, you had better well believe that people would "stand up and take notice" but not, assuredly, in the way you seem to think.
If I personally break the law I will probably be incarcerated for my crimes. Yet a corporation who's only job is to make more money then it spends simply pays a fine.
I will probably get bombed into karma hell for disagreeing with this easy-to-buy-into opinion. However, if corporations were held to the same standard of liability as individual citizens then businesses would be extremely hesitant to engage in any new ventures. It's easy to demonstrate that the resultant loss of investment spending would tank the economy rather quickly.
Now I do agree with the spirit of the comment, which if I may boldly rephrase is: executives should be liable in equal measure for willful acts of breaking or flouting the law with corporations that they helm. The sad part is that this is already true, but our Attorneys General do not generally go after such infractions, preferring to bust MP3 traders instead.
I clicked on this topic because I was absolutely positively sure I would see some +5 Funnies. I mean, come on. George W. Bush and science. There's gotta be a joke there.
It always amazes me how many people believe in evolution, yet still believe major climate change must spell disaster.
You are 100% on target. I see some people have already tried to defend their POV in other replies to this, and frankly I'm SO in favor of conservation and wise use of resources, but I cringe every time I see something about how global warming [1] is causing 10,000 species to go extinct every day. Yet somehow the planet and all its inhabitants carry on. Better calm down, because climate shift is the norm, not the exception.
[1] I don't doubt scientific evidence for global warming. I do doubt that human beings are powerful enough to cause it singlehandedly. And I do doubt that it's a catastrophic event unseen in the history of the planet. In fact, it seems pretty normal. We've just had a nice period of calm for the last thousand years.
The reason the monkeys worked harder was that they could no longer judge how much work had to be done before they got a reward.
I agree with this.
Double agree. If we find widespread use of a genetically-determined behavior in ourselves and our close evolutionary relatives, the proper lesson is that there is survival benefit to this behavior. Grandparent probably got it right -- it's a talent for judging how much work needs to be done so you can conserve bioenergy and local resources.
Companies don't want BSCS's they want slave labor.
But perhaps the most interesting question is why they are at such a rush for cheap labor. I think blaming "the competition" (i.e., India) is not quite right, and long-winded rants about Reaganomics are really missing the mark. A widespread job market crunch toward the bottom of the wage stack cannot be caused so easily by an American president giving a tax refund.
It's actually the same force that causes companies to be so keen on DRM. There are too few corporations that are too large in size. They don't have normal routes to growth in the marketplace and so they must use "monopoly growth" strategies -- so instead of competing for customers they compete to lower wages, or compete to raise barriers to market entry.
There is probably nothing that can address downward-spiraling wages other than breaking up the monolithic corporations that have gobbled up so much of the economy.
An interesting tidbit from the trailer notes that, as your character sways towards the light or dark side, so do the rest of the characters in your party.
This is something I expected to happen in the original, and I had so many evil plans of corruption in cohort with that evil assassin droid (can't remember his name). I was immensely entertained by the fact that my face got grayer and more veiny as my evil intensified, but I was never able to sway anyone except at the very end.
Each time, the media fight it and try to gain control. So far, they have always lost. and when doing so, it turns out that the new features actually helped the media companies, not hurt them.
This isn't a behavior of media companies, it's a behavior of monopolies. Once a company (or a small oligarchy of companies) achieves monopoly status, their only growth path is to make absolutely sure that their customers have no viable alternative in the marketplace, then squeeze the customers for more dollars. So the NFL (which has a monopoly on professional [U.S.] football) wants a situation where no one can even view a game without paying dollars to the NFL. They can't stop VCR recording without pissing too many people off (although their official line is that it's illegal to tape NFL games), but they will rabidly fight any new personal recording technology.
This kind of thing only facilitates using more than one window at a time, the only purpose of which is unauthorized copying. Let's shut down this piracy tool before our economy is destroyed.
OS X Tiger...has a few concepts from Looking Glass.
This should be +5 Insightful. The 3D desktop isn't a massive shift in thinking, it's about maximizing the WIMP metaphor. Tabbed browsing isn't a exactly a new paradigm in information retrieval, but it sure as hell is a nice evolutionary improvement to web browsing. When bits of 3D desktop experiments prove useful, they find their ways into "real" products like OS X.
To protect your Toy Story Disc from damage by children, you put it in a a safe place, and make them ask you for it before they watch it.
You clearly don't know what small children are like. Unless this "safe place" you speak of has fingerprint-secured magnetic bolts, the children will observe you, learn how to get the DVD, and jamsmear it. There's no stopping the destructive tenacity of a three-year-old.
otherwise my "converged" media will be a DRM'd crippled mess
[cynical] There's no otherwise about it. Adding DRM to your toaster is what this is all about. There will absolutely not be any innovation involved. Any innovative uses of (or the mere existence of) devices that universally talk to each other will be killed with prejudice by a storm of lawsuits. [/cynical]
just have to roll up my sleeves and do it myself
[extra-cynical] No, I'm afraid that will be illegal too. [/extra-cynical]
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Everybody knows downloading movies is theft. I'm not falling for your honeypot, MPAA.
I see this as history repeating itself. Provided the U.S. Congress can restrain itself from passing laws requiring anti-copying technology, then the market will naturally swing just as you said. It happened in the 80s with anti-copying tech on floppy disks. For a while, every disk had an anti-copying scheme on it. But eventually enough customers were irritated that companies just started shipping non-copy-protected disks again. It'll come around. The customer always wins in the end. Not only that, but the formats that Congress does lock down will simply be abandoned. See any DATs anywhere? Nope.
I don't disagree with the general direction of the parent comment, but two out of three of these particular assertions are false.
Wait, what's really really wrong with this is that I can remember his girlfriend's name.
Supposing, sadly, that you believe this notion, I should like to point out that in a criminal trial the verdict is decided by a jury of one's peers. Precisely how many juries do you think are going to send a 19-year-old college kid to prison because he downloaded some Usher tunes? Going somewhat further, and supposing as you suggest that 5,000 such college kids end up with a size 7 poopshoot in prison as punishment for their wicked file trading ways, you had better well believe that people would "stand up and take notice" but not, assuredly, in the way you seem to think.
I will probably get bombed into karma hell for disagreeing with this easy-to-buy-into opinion. However, if corporations were held to the same standard of liability as individual citizens then businesses would be extremely hesitant to engage in any new ventures. It's easy to demonstrate that the resultant loss of investment spending would tank the economy rather quickly.
Now I do agree with the spirit of the comment, which if I may boldly rephrase is: executives should be liable in equal measure for willful acts of breaking or flouting the law with corporations that they helm. The sad part is that this is already true, but our Attorneys General do not generally go after such infractions, preferring to bust MP3 traders instead.
You sure about that? I vaguely recall a little film that predates Deus Ex by a few years.
You are 100% on target. I see some people have already tried to defend their POV in other replies to this, and frankly I'm SO in favor of conservation and wise use of resources, but I cringe every time I see something about how global warming [1] is causing 10,000 species to go extinct every day. Yet somehow the planet and all its inhabitants carry on. Better calm down, because climate shift is the norm, not the exception.
[1] I don't doubt scientific evidence for global warming. I do doubt that human beings are powerful enough to cause it singlehandedly. And I do doubt that it's a catastrophic event unseen in the history of the planet. In fact, it seems pretty normal. We've just had a nice period of calm for the last thousand years.
Double agree. If we find widespread use of a genetically-determined behavior in ourselves and our close evolutionary relatives, the proper lesson is that there is survival benefit to this behavior. Grandparent probably got it right -- it's a talent for judging how much work needs to be done so you can conserve bioenergy and local resources.
But perhaps the most interesting question is why they are at such a rush for cheap labor. I think blaming "the competition" (i.e., India) is not quite right, and long-winded rants about Reaganomics are really missing the mark. A widespread job market crunch toward the bottom of the wage stack cannot be caused so easily by an American president giving a tax refund.
It's actually the same force that causes companies to be so keen on DRM. There are too few corporations that are too large in size. They don't have normal routes to growth in the marketplace and so they must use "monopoly growth" strategies -- so instead of competing for customers they compete to lower wages, or compete to raise barriers to market entry.
There is probably nothing that can address downward-spiraling wages other than breaking up the monolithic corporations that have gobbled up so much of the economy.
This is something I expected to happen in the original, and I had so many evil plans of corruption in cohort with that evil assassin droid (can't remember his name). I was immensely entertained by the fact that my face got grayer and more veiny as my evil intensified, but I was never able to sway anyone except at the very end.
You are correct, because if downloading a game is theft then so is buying secondhand.
This isn't a behavior of media companies, it's a behavior of monopolies. Once a company (or a small oligarchy of companies) achieves monopoly status, their only growth path is to make absolutely sure that their customers have no viable alternative in the marketplace, then squeeze the customers for more dollars. So the NFL (which has a monopoly on professional [U.S.] football) wants a situation where no one can even view a game without paying dollars to the NFL. They can't stop VCR recording without pissing too many people off (although their official line is that it's illegal to tape NFL games), but they will rabidly fight any new personal recording technology.
You are thinking about it in the wrong way. In The Future(tm) everyone will use one big shared HD, and its name will be Google.
So they were for being against opposing patents. This is your brain on drugs.
This should be +5 Insightful. The 3D desktop isn't a massive shift in thinking, it's about maximizing the WIMP metaphor. Tabbed browsing isn't a exactly a new paradigm in information retrieval, but it sure as hell is a nice evolutionary improvement to web browsing. When bits of 3D desktop experiments prove useful, they find their ways into "real" products like OS X.
You clearly don't know what small children are like. Unless this "safe place" you speak of has fingerprint-secured magnetic bolts, the children will observe you, learn how to get the DVD, and jamsmear it. There's no stopping the destructive tenacity of a three-year-old.
[cynical] There's no otherwise about it. Adding DRM to your toaster is what this is all about. There will absolutely not be any innovation involved. Any innovative uses of (or the mere existence of) devices that universally talk to each other will be killed with prejudice by a storm of lawsuits. [/cynical]
just have to roll up my sleeves and do it myself
[extra-cynical] No, I'm afraid that will be illegal too. [/extra-cynical]