Profit comes after "breakeven". It is the amount that is left over after costs have been covered. In theory, profits are achieved by reducing costs or increasing revenues.
True. Profits are also a way of gauging if your market is interested in your market or services, and if you are competitive enough to stay in business. For me, if profits dive and I can do nothing to modify my business, I will usually sell to the business that beats me and move on.
Profits are often used to fund alternative product development. They are used to improve the quality of life of the business owner(s).
Right. To extend this, though, sometimes people see profits as bad. When Katrina happened and gas stations raised prices (what zealots call "gouging"), the gas station owners KNEW that there might be a supply issue. They raised their prices to best allocate funding for the near-term to make sure they'd have money to keep their businesses open and their employees paid even if they had no gas to sell. If you know you'll be out of your product to sell for 8 weeks, and so will everyone else, you'll raise the "profit" of your remaining stock to cover those 8 weeks of zero sales. $2/gallon might rocket to $8/gallon, but if you sell it at $2/gallon and run out, you might not be able to pay rent, pay employees, and pay utilities. Something to consider.
I don't follow my advice, so it won't hurt my feelings if you don't either.
Control over property does not give you absolute right of speech within its borders. To pull out the old Supreme Court analogy, by your logic, if you owned a theater, that would give you permission to attend a crowded performance, yell "Fire!" and watch the havoc unfold. That is absolutely ridiculous.
I find it ridiculous that the Supreme Court decided to control what a property owner can control themselves. If I own a theater and someone yells fire, I should just boot them out, maybe put a sign up saying not to curse, yell fire, or sign old Irish melodies. The "fire!" argument is half a strawman in my mind, because it is a ridiculous premise. The property owner just boots the offender. If you hear someone yell "Fire" do you start to run? If you trample someone, it is your foot that did the killing.
Sure thing. I'll throw out another analogy. You are a restaurant owner who happens to actively dislike black people. You own the restaurant, and it is your "own land." Does it follow that you can "censor" - e.g., deny access, refuse service, etc. - black people from going to your restaurant? (Hint - read the 1964 Civil Rights Act.)
The Civil Rights Act is a piece of garbage if you read it closely, it did NOTHING to "create" harmony. The big problem with civil rights pre-1964 was that LOCAL governments decided to discriminate -- with the populace following the law. The CVA created a mess of racial harmony as has been shown over and over. Look at the mess of Title IX, and how it destroys individual rights.
Please understand that you being pro-freedom necessarily implies that other people have the right to enjoy their freedoms as well, such as freedom from your asshatted bigotry.
I'm not caucasian and was racially berated through high school, but I never said anything. I just realized that people are idiots, if they want to waste their time slurring my background, that'll just hold them back. Two of the people who "hated" my race the most were people I later had a little control over in real life -- I made it perfectly clear that they'd not get a piece of the contract they bid on. In fact, I would likely be prosecuted for that action based on the pro-litigious race laws that exist.
On top of that, I do believe that everyone has freedoms, they just need to take the steps to belong to a community that shares the same beliefs. I have no problem with communities (not necessarily meaning villages or towns but organizations of people with like apprecations and prejudices) joining together to chat about their beliefs. It is part of freedom. If they come on my land, I am free to tell them to get lost.
I still find myself playing my Lynx, too. Freeciv is decent, I need to get that re-installed.
I still love Utopia on my Aquarius (great game, I wonder if there is a PC version that is low res). I also play a ton of Dreamcast when I have time -- I once had a Dreamcast in my old Subaru RS:)
Also it's incredibly demeaning and in a broader sense racist to tie fundamental human rights like freedom of speech to property rights. Does this mean people without wealth or property shouldn't have rights? If a space is open to public people but owned by a person do they have the right to restrict those rights within their owned space?
There's the biggest problem with anarcho-capitalism today: there are so many reasons against it BECAUSE of other reasons against it, it would be hard to put into action without scrapping the lawbooks (which is exactly what we want, hah).
Property rights in an anarcho-capitalist world repudiate the idea of owning land and renting it to someone who is able to maintain the land and make it better with their own labor. Not all anarcho-capitalists believe in this "utopia" but it is something that I believe in. I don't believe that corporations can own land any more than I believe that any one individual could own thousands of acres of land and try to keep it maintained.
The idea of "property" is a huge debate and I'd rather not get into it here because of the usual "he's a troll!" comments that don't want to think about either side of the situation. I believe that in most countries, maybe all, there is enough land to be maintained, and owned, by every individual. I've been all over the world (every continent but Antarctica) and I've yet to see a country with truly minimal land. The big problem is either megacorporations licensed by the State own a lot, or the State itself owns a lot. I am against government owning ANY land, and I believe government would be better suited to be the renter rather than the owner.
In the long run, if someone can't find land close to work, they'll have to find land far from work. For an employer to get people to work, they'll either have to pay them enough to purchase land closer to work, or pay them enough to drive to work. With telecommunications, the issue of living in an urban environment is becoming less and less important. Broadband isn't available in many exurban areas, but that is another government issue: regulations preventing people from running wires where they want.
Again, it is a very intense debate with MANY issues to overcome. Nonetheless, I do believe that a person "renting" land should be able to own the land, and just rent the home (or mortgage it). It is very hard to piece through all the various regulations and paternalism that occurs today that prevents capitalism from taking hold, instead it is replaced by mercantilism that masks itself as a free market.
Thanks for that insightful information, it sounds like UO would be a game I'd like. Games can easily facilitate supply and demand just as UO did, and I don't see why it should be any different.
In fact, I believe if a game properly reflects supply and demand in real time, we'd see the inflationary problems that we face in reality very quickly in a game that allowed an endless supply of "money" or any commodity that is over-created without labor of another.
This is funny because I was talking about it only a year ago -- will we see private property rights exist in cyberspace?
I firmly believe that the ability to speak is a protected right directly protected by the right to personal property. I don't believe we need a government to protect our right to speech on our own land. I also believe we can censor whoever we want, as long as we're on our own land. Once we step onto their land, they have the power to control speech.
Most of the time the GLBT folks anger me because they want to introduce negative rights into the world -- forcing people how they have to act on their own land. I don't believe in negative rights (the ability to criminalize or penalize someone for their speech through government) because I believe it destroys property rights. If I want to sit around in my home, my restaurant, or my office and criticize whites, blacks, gays, straights, midgets, tall people, or geeks, it is my property and my right. If my customers don't like it, they'll go next door to the guy who ISN'T prejudiced. Heck, I even think you could have a "straight women additional fee" on food served if you really wanted to be an idiot.
That's the point of private property -- attract the customers you want to attract.
Now the GLBT folks are mad because they created their own private property, and the "big government" in the game said NO. This is even funnier now because the group that has historically been known to work against individual rights is now being hampered by their own policies.
I'm not anti-gay, anti-lesbian, anti-transgendered, but I am pro-freedom. I do believe that even in a game freedom is expressed by people who are not looking to harm another person's physical propery, and that when it comes to words, the old phrase is very appropriate:
Sticks and stones might break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
Actually, my reason for starting this thread was because the gaming world directly emulates the real world. Just as there are gold farmers in gaming, our own governments are doing the same thing -- creating new money out of "thin air" and devaluing all the money that we own.
The gaming world is no different -- the value of an item versus another item are completely dictated by supply and demand. If some ten year old can spend 90% of his waking hours hording gold, this is no problem from a free market perspective, although it might be hard for the NPCs to be programmed properly.
If there are just 100 gold coins in the virtual world and they're not horded, you set your price for a good based on knowing how much people are willing to pay. If some kid hordes 90 of the coins, leaving only 10, you would drop your price in order to attract the remaining money. If all of a sudden the 10 year old decided to flood the market by buying up all the cheap stuff, prices would return to normal quite quickly as the money would be returned -- a few people might get "hurt" by dropping their price 90%, but it would be VERY temporary.
Funny thing is, this is what the world was like on the gold standard -- the entire market of prices fluctuated to attract money at the rate that money was available within a given economy. Markets that were very close to gold rushes saw prices go up 10-50 times overnight when new gold strikes were found, and countries that exported all their gold saw prices go down quickly to attract gold back.
Actually profit is value added to a product by workers that is not paid out in their wages.
That's very Marxist of you. Every employee that earns a wage is earning a profit themselves for their time spent. Everything we do is about gaining something for the transaction we make with another person. It doesn't have to be financial, profit can be a gain in entertainment, a gain in emotional intercourse, or a gain in a physical product or a store of wealth.
Profit is greed and exploitation.
No, profit is compensation for the time someone spends. Some people are great managers, sales people, laborers or artists. If their time is spent properly and efficiently, other people will pay them in exchange for saving the other person time -- money is just a store of time passed from one person to another as both parties profit from the exchange. Also, some profit is used to cover the costs during a financial dip, this allows businesses and individuals to overcome market adjustments. I call it savings. Is it greedy to save money for when you are sick or on vacation?
And if you think profit is necessary to make a project succesful, you must be living under a rock because you obviously have never heard of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is another form of money -- a store of time. One person gives their time to Wikipedia in exchange for gaining information from one source -- a savings of time for them. This is how the free market works. Wikipedia is not free by any means, it requires that people give some time in exchange for what they gain. Not everyone gives time, though.
For any project to be successful, it has to save people time or give them entertainment value. Doing it for free means YOU have to plan for how you'll live, there is no such thing as altruism in the world.
I don't play any game that has an endless money supply in it -- I don't think there are any games yet that have a fixed amount of commodities in the gaming world, but I'd appreciate seeing it. It would really make people strive to earn (or steal or barter) their "income" online.
That being said, isn't the gold farmer there specifically because it does reduce the most boring part of the game? I think this is exactly what the game needs to prove that the money situation is broken. If money is so easy to get by "farming" it, it means the gaming companies need to come up with a new way to handle the situation of money (preferably by fixing the amount available and only allowing more of it through mining or what not). I'd even say dump the gold-is-the-only-money idea entirely, and fix commodities based on the amount of PC players rather than the amount of NPCs in a game. This will let other commodities find value as a bartering mechanism.
I don't see the reason for ignoring something valuable such as the gold farmer -- if it saves YOU time, then it is worth the cost. Money is a store of time, nothing more. If something saves you time, you give them your money (stored time) in exchange. Someone elsewhere in the world is willing to do your dirty work, compensate them if you can't do it yourself.
Actually, all profit means is that you put in time and others were willing to give you some of their stored time ("money") in exchange for time you saved them. The best way to prove that your product or service has value is when people either put their time into using it or they are willing to give you some of their stored time to help you make it better. The word profit is NOT equal to greed by any means.
For an open source project to be successful, it either has to be built once and never touched again (people use it as-is), or it has to raise money for people who want to see it made better (that money is given because the people realize that the money/time-storage they give up will hopefully save them time in the future).
Ahh, I see now why some people were flabbergasted. Yes, it's up to 80% of the project's net profits. Since almost all our billing hours are labor, the profits are very high. It is usually project gross income minus expenses (travel, food, etc) minus contract lawyer minus contract bonding minus collection overhead. Take that amount and I take between 20% and 50% of the rest based on who sold the project. It is still a lot of money, I've seen people going home with US$20,000 per month before taxes in some of the more profitable projects! Of course, we have months where you earn US$2,000, too, but it is usually much higher than the average salaried worker.
There is a ton of proof that de-regulating monopolies creates better products, including the municipal arena.
Stossel did a 1 hour episode on ABC that showed the various municipalities that de-regulated the water source, and water became cheaper and safer. Many cities are partially deregulating their bus services (buying the busses and then leasing them to competitive businesses for operation) and the costs are dropping 50% while service quotas are kept and beat. California allowed a private tollway to be built which was a huge success before California grabbed it back and screwed it up again.
The proof of privatization comes from other areas. After the airlines were deregulated, the costs fell. Look at subsidies: Airlines now get about $6 per 10,000 miles flown. Greyhound gets about $4 per 10,000 miles driven. Amtrack gets $200 for the same 10,000 miles, and Amtrak is 100% regulated. When Amtrak was created in 1971, the train industry was hurting because of cars and busses and airplanes, but it was still viable. Amtrak destroyed the competitive market and is now completely run by unionized management who asks for more and more money. The last year of Amtrak that was audited had fewer riders than their first year.
Even beyond that look at what privatization has done. When the TV cartel was opened to competition, cable TV came in and slaughtered the old system, replacing 5-10 channels with hundreds. Cable then became a regulated media and the growth slacked until recently as cable companies started to find competitive ways to sell their regulated product. If the regulations were dropped, I bet we'd see many new and competitive features introduced.
The PC market is a mostly unregulated market. The areas that are most regulated tend to have the highest cost products with the least amount of choice. The cost of a PC has dropped enormously.
I'm very glad Slashdot posted this. I've been looking for sources of funding for a little bit now, and I'm at a loss for where to go from here. We've had a trickle of individual donations, which are great and have really helped a lot. But what I'd like to be able to do is take a few months or even a half a year and focus exclusively on Appleseed, especially since it's really starting to come together as a project.
I invest about US$20K a year in new projects and businesses, but all of them require a business plan, a personal statement of intent, and a matching investment by all the principals of the business. In 2006 I have not found any places to spend my money. I also reinvest in all my businesses, but all of them have plans and hard workers to back them up. You'll find it VERY hard to sell a product even to people with grant money if the long term goal of the product is ethereal. Make some CONCRETE plans and post them. I'm a fan of open source, but only if there are enough people willing to spend their time on the project. Money means nothing if you have hundreds of co-developers each putting in their 2 cents (or 2 hours).
Most of the past two years have been creating an API.
Wouldn't your time be better spent promoting the basic plan and finding a dozen people willing to help on the API? Diversify!
The purpose of appleseed is to create a network of websites that all work together, and open source is a big part of making sure that anybody who wants to set up an appleseed node (even if it's just for them and a dozen friends) can do so and still maintain full interaction with everybody in the appleseed network.
It's a great idea, but where is the profit in it? Profit is not greed, it is a sign that someone is willing to compensate those working on a project for a viable product. Donations are great, but is there a "need" for the final product, or are you in a chicken-and-egg situation where no market exists because no product exists because no market exists?
This is really a project I'm very excited about, and the possibilities are endless.
Great ideas are never enough, in fact, great ideas have no value without the idea actually adding value to the products already out there. Consumers are fearful of free projects because they know that there is no money to continue them. If this is to be an open API, maybe you need to work on foundational support before raising money to build the house?
For me, this is where I want the web to go,
The best second step is to review your first step. Get others to love the idea, and there's your source for funding and co-development time. A grant isn't going to get you much, and if you want others to invest their time and money in you, you should do that first. Save a ton of cash for a year (work 3 jobs). Then take a year off and live cheaply while focusing on the marketing aspects. Show other people you're putting your money and your time where your mouth is, and they'll jump on once you are committed.
My subject above lays out the process I've seen for business ideas and how the funding is runs in cycles.
The best way to raise capital is to find family and friends to invest in you. If your idea is profitable and you are original, you can probably come up with enough cash to take a few months off work to focus on your dream.
The dotcom boom brought a ton of venture capital, but much of this new money was created by the Fed out of thin air -- it was "easy" money, so it was invested unwisely. Since most VC'd companies never had a profitable product to begin with, the market took care of the problem of unwise investing.
Now that no investment house will throw good money at a bad problem, at least not in the number of the dotcom days, people are looking to grants to help further technology. I'm no fan of grants, especially public ones. I don't want to finance anyone without looking at their business plan.
Grants will eventually give way back to family, as every cycle seems to be.
Me? When I want to run a new business, I work my rear off for a year saving so I can take time off to focus. Rather than looking to use OPM, why not go get 2 or 3 jobs, work VERY hard for 12 months, and then take off for 12 to focus the same hours on your dream? No business will succeed without tender, loving care. Free ones need even more time than profitable ones.
This is terrible, but you have to blame your local village AND your state for the pro-union regulations they've created, requirements that can not and will not change as the market needs them to.
In many states (my state is Illinois), there are so many pro-labor requirements that are managed by labor management, not by technicians, that I am surprised that most people still get ANY service.
If you can't call a third party to provide you service, why is that? It is because third parties are criminals if they run their own circuits -- criminals!
It is regulation that creates monopolies, not deregulation. There has never been deregulation in the telecom industry -- the break-up of one monopoly created market monopolies nonetheless.
Regulation is a big beast, it occurs at many levels. Villages regulate to create monopolies, States regulate to create monopolies and the federal government regulates to create monopolies. Regulation are created NOT to help consumers but to create an impossibly high barrier to entry.
The telecoms are dying, so they need to fortify to try to save their domain of control. The Federal government is too slow to react to market needs, so entrepreneurs provide what consumers want -- the Internet has given small companies HUGE stones to beat Goliath with.
Complete deregulation would be so good for consumers that we'd be able to better compete in the world market, rather than price ourselves into oblivion. Real, complete deregulation means chopping laws from the local level to the federal level -- something that NO politician or public service wants as it destroys their power.
In Illinois, the telecom unions are restricting DSL and other broadband roll-outs at the local level. It is ridiculous that people think that deregulation gives telecoms power, it is "re-regulation" that has occured.
Everybody on the planet? 100,000,000 units have shipped in nearly 6 years -- a lot, but not complete. How many still work? How many markets were ignored because the price couldn't get any lower to get these new markets into using the device? How many people have stopped buying software for the PS2 because the newer software focuses on the newer consoles?
I think Sony could breathe a TON of life back into their current inventory of licensed games (and even new games adapted) for the PS2 -- they don't need the hardware anymore to make money. By letting others develop hardware add-ons and even complete knock-offs of the hardware, Sony could revitalize a market that really isn't ready to die. Competition can make them much more profitable by pushing the costs of new developments to many companies rather than just the ones that can afford the Sony licensing fee.
Sony has a gold mine that they probably won't tap. Giving the PS2 code away to developers could mean HUGE things for Sony in terms of bringing a new demand for their older products. Why not give the hardware away? I can see $39 PS2s selling, not $129 ones. If a new market is opened for the PS2, that same market would open up desire for Sony's products they do sell, still. Hell, let someone create PS2 code for cell phones (Sony could then sell software they own or license for this version). There is so much life left, but monopolizing it for themselves will decrease their market into oblivion eventually.
I'm no karma whore -- I get modded -1 as often as +5, usually for the same opinion. It is more important to me to hear VIABLE replies that properly debate my point, so I can be better prepared to debate myself. The best part of slashdot for me is that I learn where I'm wrong, often. I have my display browsing to -1, so moderation means nothing, and I've often replied to insightful -1 troll posts myself.
I don't want to have to set up an Internet connection, a computer, TV card etc just to watch TV, when the current system means I can just turn on the TV. No doubt you'd have to pay for this torrent business, broadcast TV is free.
Broadcast TV is not free, it is paid for by advertising paid for by consumer purchases. Advertising is slowly losing power, so we'll see more product placement and direct financing by viewers. The market will adapt.
As for setting up an Internet connection, this also could be reduced if the bandwidth was deregulated. I see no reason why a simple Cisco/Netgear/D-Link "Direct-cast" box wouldn't be released for $49.99 at Circuit City that grabs the WiFi signals and puts them up on your TV or your PC to view. Add a US$99 250 gig USB hard drive (I just bought 3 of these at Best buy 2 weeks ago) and you can even store the signal. The market will provide these, also. Soon.
And the TV companies believe otherwise. Who to believe: the random Internet person with no experience, or the people actually running real life businesses?
No experience? I've been in the consulting and retail market for 18 years. I'm paid to make these recommendations to help business prosper as markets change, and I recently spent 7 years changing the high rise and medical contracting industry in Chicagoland to take advantage ot technology. My 3 customers are now the most efficient in the market, and I've been quoted in huge contracting magazines regarding the work I've performed while dotcom companies were going bankrupt. I think I know enough about marketing and market changes to say my opinion is just as worthy as those paid in the big magazines, but I repudiate income for my opinions -- I give them freely so I can bill my real customers more money because you guys give me more insight that I use in my real job. Is this wrong? Don't we all come to slashdot for either entertainment or for real information to use to make ourselves more profitable?
Also, I owned a production company in the late 90s, and I also spent a lot of money on advertising in my failed retail chain, all of which gave me insight from other angles.
I understand the points of the debate, here, and what I wrote was mostly straight from brain-to-fingers. It is the thought process that slashdot creates that makes this a valuable tool.
When I meant OSS, I don't just mean amateurs but entire development companies. Coming up with an OSS console from the start would be a losing idea for most companies, but Sony is having problems, real problems. Sure, the PS3 sounds like it will be a winner, but will Sony make it that far? Sony, as a company, has had HUGE problems in the past 5 years -- look at their various attempts in cheaper and newer markets. Sony's reputation is also on the chopping block with repeated problems (the CD-worm scandal and the quality control problems plaguing them on so many forums).
Sony has to make some changes, quick. What they need is to diversify from the cheap market that failed them and refocus on the upper end market, especially if we're going to see an economic crunch in the middle class (and lower class) in the U.S. As people have less money for junk, the wealthy will still have cash to spend on higher quality products. I'm really believe we'll see a relatively long time frame where the high end audio world comes back full force, and Sony does have the engineers and Japanese manufacturing structure still in place to jump back into this market. I really miss Sony's high end products from the late 80s and early 90s, it was very well made. Their new products are junk.
The PS1 is too old to make it worthy of an OSS release. The PS2 is beyond the Dreamcast (I still believe the Dreamcast was a better system, but the Microsoft operating system was junk), and I think Sony has a lot of profit left in their old games IF there is a resurgence of PS2 support. I believe if others start to redevelop for the Sony, especially an OSS release of the PS2 basics, Sony will see a big drive towards selling the older games -- especially in non-Western markets.
Again, this is all conjecture but much of it is based on a lot of research I've done on Sony as a corporation. Things look solid on the surface, but so much is bubbling beneath the crust that I wouldn't be surprised if Sony is bought out and destroyed, or finds a way to recapitalize on their previously profitable markets. The PS3 will fail if Sony doesn't have the marketing money needed to push it hard, and an OSS PS2 release would give sony tons of free marketing in all the markets and communities.
I was thinking about the "Will Microsoft buy out Sony?" situation, and I was thinking the best solution for Sony to capitalize on their losses is to open the world market up to the old Sony platform: release the PS2 as open-source or cheaply licensable and give others access to making new hardware, new software and new accessories.
The PS2 platform is still a great platform with a lot of room for improvement. Imagine a gaming console that can be accessed by the millions of developers, programmers, amateurs and third parties that could make things better. Sony doesn't have to give it up entirely, but they could capitalize on a re-birth by finding ways to continue to market their older titles and software to a new live of PS2's that might come to fruition.
Maybe it isn't the best solution, but I think it is one that isn't thought of usually -- more competition makes those in the business more profitable as new avenues for revenue open up. I love my competition, they make me more money than if I had a monopoly on my services.
It doesn't just apply to DRM and he media cartels either, i see it in so many facets of life in general.
Actually, I'm not against DRM, I am just against laws that protect and require DRM. I think in a more-free market, DRM might have some realistic functions, but I believe competition would make DRM worthless since people would generally prefer the uncluttered media rather than the cluttered ones.
provided some real incentives and subsidies we'd have moved into a far more fuel efficient modus operandi a decade ago.
I don't think any subsidies are needed -- the best incentive is to be the one to replace gas. I don't believe in Peak Oil, but I do believe that oil is only powerful because of the subsidies and protectionism that exists. What amazes me is that people don't see that oil is controlled fully by governments, not corporations. When corporations (unregulated by unsubsidied) have access to commodities, the price usually falls, not increases. I believe ExxonMobil would do a better job bringing fuel to the surface and distributing it than Iran or Saudi or the US does. With bureaucracy comes a 50-100% penalty in price and performance. Deregulating fuel would be a huge step in the right direction.
(FWIW, I don't believe ExxonMobil is efficient because they rely on government. I think other fuel companies would appear to better compete with the fuel cartels, I'm just using the term "corporation" in the free market sense, not in the mercantilist sense).
I agree with your general reply, thanks for the insight.
This would work great for improv performers, I think. Since Chicago is so known for improv, I think that it may be a good place for you to start. With improv, you can always guarantee that next week's show will be completely different. You can also guarantee that you will have material to post online next week.
Bingo. There are GREAT theatre groups in Chicago (even beyond Improv). There is no reason why their production level can't increase slightly (based solely on donations of people who like to watch their 'show'), and they can use the free release of these episodes to get people interested in their production. What is the point of paying a Hollywood actor $5 million per episode? It is because they can -- the distribution is locked in by a cartel, with an infinite barrier to entry. My studio idea can break it down while still being profitable.
You can't offer a suggestion when you are watching the recorded version, but you can if you come in and buy a ticket.
And that there is the power of the studio idea -- when watching it, you WILL hear the people in the crowd throwing out ideas. This might entice people who like the show to actually make a trip out. I love theatre and regularly travel to see both large and small shows, but I have no idea what is out there. With a "free TV" format, your selection goes from 150 shows on right now to thousands. With tagging and viewer moderation, you can even work at finding what you like. Don't like nudity? Negate the tag. Don't like heterosexuals? Block them. Don't like bald people? Gone. A great a la carte format is just waiting to be born.
I was in Chicago last week, and I saw a few shows at the iO theater. All were a hoot.
Make it a regular visit, they're always great. If you need a place to stay, drop me an e-mail, I'm always inviting slashdot regulars to crash a night or two.
Few would really shun the publicity of moving to being a nationaly known group.
And for now it would stay this way as they have no access to convert their live showing to a digital format easily. The plan of our studio is to set up everything at the studio but also set up a few vans for live recordings of bands, theater, who knows what else might happen.
There WERE a lot of crappy games, but today's "great" games seem to be a huge hassle to play. Almost every game I've bought in the past 4 years has been returned (with restocking fee if necessary) because of compatibility issues.
I'm a geek, I have very high end hardware, I've tried all the various OSes and drivers and software patches, and they still have issues.
The X-Box and whatever Sony's machine was called are good to a point, but many of them are just more eye-wash window-dressing gorgeous graphics that forgot to focus on play-factor. The controller is too complicated, IMHO, to make the game fun and exciting.
I still do find great games from time to time, though, but after I've won them once or twice, they go on eBay. I'll never give up Metroid, though.
Yet in the UK digital TV is allocated its own spectrum of frequencies -- a great waste of bandwidth that is by no means a la carte, it is prepackaged.
The key isn't just dumping analog, it is dumping mega-watt transmission frequency regulation. We don't need mega bandwidth or mega compression when you already have a ton of frequencies barely used. XVID and other compression codecs are just fine (its about 300 meg for 24 minutes, right?), and neighborhood mini-distributors can have torrents ready for near-instant download to a small locale. Instead of 50,000 watts x all that wasted frequency range, we could focus better with 500 watt caps or even lower ones. I'd rather see real de-regulation entirely, but this step would likely give us way more choice and open the door for many more content creators to enter the market.
Beyond that, there is a LOT of analog structure still regulated but not needed. I believe there are still cell phone frequencies kept for the previous standards, but I could be wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Profit comes after "breakeven". It is the amount that is left over after costs have been covered. In theory, profits are achieved by reducing costs or increasing revenues.
True. Profits are also a way of gauging if your market is interested in your market or services, and if you are competitive enough to stay in business. For me, if profits dive and I can do nothing to modify my business, I will usually sell to the business that beats me and move on.
Profits are often used to fund alternative product development. They are used to improve the quality of life of the business owner(s).
Right. To extend this, though, sometimes people see profits as bad. When Katrina happened and gas stations raised prices (what zealots call "gouging"), the gas station owners KNEW that there might be a supply issue. They raised their prices to best allocate funding for the near-term to make sure they'd have money to keep their businesses open and their employees paid even if they had no gas to sell. If you know you'll be out of your product to sell for 8 weeks, and so will everyone else, you'll raise the "profit" of your remaining stock to cover those 8 weeks of zero sales. $2/gallon might rocket to $8/gallon, but if you sell it at $2/gallon and run out, you might not be able to pay rent, pay employees, and pay utilities. Something to consider.
I don't follow my advice, so it won't hurt my feelings if you don't either.
You should, it is excellent advice.
Control over property does not give you absolute right of speech within its borders. To pull out the old Supreme Court analogy, by your logic, if you owned a theater, that would give you permission to attend a crowded performance, yell "Fire!" and watch the havoc unfold. That is absolutely ridiculous.
I find it ridiculous that the Supreme Court decided to control what a property owner can control themselves. If I own a theater and someone yells fire, I should just boot them out, maybe put a sign up saying not to curse, yell fire, or sign old Irish melodies. The "fire!" argument is half a strawman in my mind, because it is a ridiculous premise. The property owner just boots the offender. If you hear someone yell "Fire" do you start to run? If you trample someone, it is your foot that did the killing.
Sure thing. I'll throw out another analogy. You are a restaurant owner who happens to actively dislike black people. You own the restaurant, and it is your "own land." Does it follow that you can "censor" - e.g., deny access, refuse service, etc. - black people from going to your restaurant? (Hint - read the 1964 Civil Rights Act.)
The Civil Rights Act is a piece of garbage if you read it closely, it did NOTHING to "create" harmony. The big problem with civil rights pre-1964 was that LOCAL governments decided to discriminate -- with the populace following the law. The CVA created a mess of racial harmony as has been shown over and over. Look at the mess of Title IX, and how it destroys individual rights.
Please understand that you being pro-freedom necessarily implies that other people have the right to enjoy their freedoms as well, such as freedom from your asshatted bigotry.
I'm not caucasian and was racially berated through high school, but I never said anything. I just realized that people are idiots, if they want to waste their time slurring my background, that'll just hold them back. Two of the people who "hated" my race the most were people I later had a little control over in real life -- I made it perfectly clear that they'd not get a piece of the contract they bid on. In fact, I would likely be prosecuted for that action based on the pro-litigious race laws that exist.
On top of that, I do believe that everyone has freedoms, they just need to take the steps to belong to a community that shares the same beliefs. I have no problem with communities (not necessarily meaning villages or towns but organizations of people with like apprecations and prejudices) joining together to chat about their beliefs. It is part of freedom. If they come on my land, I am free to tell them to get lost.
I still find myself playing my Lynx, too. Freeciv is decent, I need to get that re-installed.
:)
I still love Utopia on my Aquarius (great game, I wonder if there is a PC version that is low res). I also play a ton of Dreamcast when I have time -- I once had a Dreamcast in my old Subaru RS
Also it's incredibly demeaning and in a broader sense racist to tie fundamental human rights like freedom of speech to property rights. Does this mean people without wealth or property shouldn't have rights? If a space is open to public people but owned by a person do they have the right to restrict those rights within their owned space?
There's the biggest problem with anarcho-capitalism today: there are so many reasons against it BECAUSE of other reasons against it, it would be hard to put into action without scrapping the lawbooks (which is exactly what we want, hah).
Property rights in an anarcho-capitalist world repudiate the idea of owning land and renting it to someone who is able to maintain the land and make it better with their own labor. Not all anarcho-capitalists believe in this "utopia" but it is something that I believe in. I don't believe that corporations can own land any more than I believe that any one individual could own thousands of acres of land and try to keep it maintained.
The idea of "property" is a huge debate and I'd rather not get into it here because of the usual "he's a troll!" comments that don't want to think about either side of the situation. I believe that in most countries, maybe all, there is enough land to be maintained, and owned, by every individual. I've been all over the world (every continent but Antarctica) and I've yet to see a country with truly minimal land. The big problem is either megacorporations licensed by the State own a lot, or the State itself owns a lot. I am against government owning ANY land, and I believe government would be better suited to be the renter rather than the owner.
In the long run, if someone can't find land close to work, they'll have to find land far from work. For an employer to get people to work, they'll either have to pay them enough to purchase land closer to work, or pay them enough to drive to work. With telecommunications, the issue of living in an urban environment is becoming less and less important. Broadband isn't available in many exurban areas, but that is another government issue: regulations preventing people from running wires where they want.
Again, it is a very intense debate with MANY issues to overcome. Nonetheless, I do believe that a person "renting" land should be able to own the land, and just rent the home (or mortgage it). It is very hard to piece through all the various regulations and paternalism that occurs today that prevents capitalism from taking hold, instead it is replaced by mercantilism that masks itself as a free market.
Thanks for that insightful information, it sounds like UO would be a game I'd like. Games can easily facilitate supply and demand just as UO did, and I don't see why it should be any different.
In fact, I believe if a game properly reflects supply and demand in real time, we'd see the inflationary problems that we face in reality very quickly in a game that allowed an endless supply of "money" or any commodity that is over-created without labor of another.
Good post.
This is funny because I was talking about it only a year ago -- will we see private property rights exist in cyberspace?
I firmly believe that the ability to speak is a protected right directly protected by the right to personal property. I don't believe we need a government to protect our right to speech on our own land. I also believe we can censor whoever we want, as long as we're on our own land. Once we step onto their land, they have the power to control speech.
Most of the time the GLBT folks anger me because they want to introduce negative rights into the world -- forcing people how they have to act on their own land. I don't believe in negative rights (the ability to criminalize or penalize someone for their speech through government) because I believe it destroys property rights. If I want to sit around in my home, my restaurant, or my office and criticize whites, blacks, gays, straights, midgets, tall people, or geeks, it is my property and my right. If my customers don't like it, they'll go next door to the guy who ISN'T prejudiced. Heck, I even think you could have a "straight women additional fee" on food served if you really wanted to be an idiot.
That's the point of private property -- attract the customers you want to attract.
Now the GLBT folks are mad because they created their own private property, and the "big government" in the game said NO. This is even funnier now because the group that has historically been known to work against individual rights is now being hampered by their own policies.
I'm not anti-gay, anti-lesbian, anti-transgendered, but I am pro-freedom. I do believe that even in a game freedom is expressed by people who are not looking to harm another person's physical propery, and that when it comes to words, the old phrase is very appropriate:
Sticks and stones might break my bones,
but words will never hurt me.
Actually, my reason for starting this thread was because the gaming world directly emulates the real world. Just as there are gold farmers in gaming, our own governments are doing the same thing -- creating new money out of "thin air" and devaluing all the money that we own.
The gaming world is no different -- the value of an item versus another item are completely dictated by supply and demand. If some ten year old can spend 90% of his waking hours hording gold, this is no problem from a free market perspective, although it might be hard for the NPCs to be programmed properly.
If there are just 100 gold coins in the virtual world and they're not horded, you set your price for a good based on knowing how much people are willing to pay. If some kid hordes 90 of the coins, leaving only 10, you would drop your price in order to attract the remaining money. If all of a sudden the 10 year old decided to flood the market by buying up all the cheap stuff, prices would return to normal quite quickly as the money would be returned -- a few people might get "hurt" by dropping their price 90%, but it would be VERY temporary.
Funny thing is, this is what the world was like on the gold standard -- the entire market of prices fluctuated to attract money at the rate that money was available within a given economy. Markets that were very close to gold rushes saw prices go up 10-50 times overnight when new gold strikes were found, and countries that exported all their gold saw prices go down quickly to attract gold back.
Actually profit is value added to a product by workers that is not paid out in their wages.
That's very Marxist of you. Every employee that earns a wage is earning a profit themselves for their time spent. Everything we do is about gaining something for the transaction we make with another person. It doesn't have to be financial, profit can be a gain in entertainment, a gain in emotional intercourse, or a gain in a physical product or a store of wealth.
Profit is greed and exploitation.
No, profit is compensation for the time someone spends. Some people are great managers, sales people, laborers or artists. If their time is spent properly and efficiently, other people will pay them in exchange for saving the other person time -- money is just a store of time passed from one person to another as both parties profit from the exchange. Also, some profit is used to cover the costs during a financial dip, this allows businesses and individuals to overcome market adjustments. I call it savings. Is it greedy to save money for when you are sick or on vacation?
And if you think profit is necessary to make a project succesful, you must be living under a rock because you obviously have never heard of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is another form of money -- a store of time. One person gives their time to Wikipedia in exchange for gaining information from one source -- a savings of time for them. This is how the free market works. Wikipedia is not free by any means, it requires that people give some time in exchange for what they gain. Not everyone gives time, though.
For any project to be successful, it has to save people time or give them entertainment value. Doing it for free means YOU have to plan for how you'll live, there is no such thing as altruism in the world.
I don't play any game that has an endless money supply in it -- I don't think there are any games yet that have a fixed amount of commodities in the gaming world, but I'd appreciate seeing it. It would really make people strive to earn (or steal or barter) their "income" online.
That being said, isn't the gold farmer there specifically because it does reduce the most boring part of the game? I think this is exactly what the game needs to prove that the money situation is broken. If money is so easy to get by "farming" it, it means the gaming companies need to come up with a new way to handle the situation of money (preferably by fixing the amount available and only allowing more of it through mining or what not). I'd even say dump the gold-is-the-only-money idea entirely, and fix commodities based on the amount of PC players rather than the amount of NPCs in a game. This will let other commodities find value as a bartering mechanism.
I don't see the reason for ignoring something valuable such as the gold farmer -- if it saves YOU time, then it is worth the cost. Money is a store of time, nothing more. If something saves you time, you give them your money (stored time) in exchange. Someone elsewhere in the world is willing to do your dirty work, compensate them if you can't do it yourself.
Actually, all profit means is that you put in time and others were willing to give you some of their stored time ("money") in exchange for time you saved them. The best way to prove that your product or service has value is when people either put their time into using it or they are willing to give you some of their stored time to help you make it better. The word profit is NOT equal to greed by any means.
For an open source project to be successful, it either has to be built once and never touched again (people use it as-is), or it has to raise money for people who want to see it made better (that money is given because the people realize that the money/time-storage they give up will hopefully save them time in the future).
Ahh, I see now why some people were flabbergasted. Yes, it's up to 80% of the project's net profits. Since almost all our billing hours are labor, the profits are very high. It is usually project gross income minus expenses (travel, food, etc) minus contract lawyer minus contract bonding minus collection overhead. Take that amount and I take between 20% and 50% of the rest based on who sold the project. It is still a lot of money, I've seen people going home with US$20,000 per month before taxes in some of the more profitable projects! Of course, we have months where you earn US$2,000, too, but it is usually much higher than the average salaried worker.
There is a ton of proof that de-regulating monopolies creates better products, including the municipal arena.
Stossel did a 1 hour episode on ABC that showed the various municipalities that de-regulated the water source, and water became cheaper and safer. Many cities are partially deregulating their bus services (buying the busses and then leasing them to competitive businesses for operation) and the costs are dropping 50% while service quotas are kept and beat. California allowed a private tollway to be built which was a huge success before California grabbed it back and screwed it up again.
The proof of privatization comes from other areas. After the airlines were deregulated, the costs fell. Look at subsidies: Airlines now get about $6 per 10,000 miles flown. Greyhound gets about $4 per 10,000 miles driven. Amtrack gets $200 for the same 10,000 miles, and Amtrak is 100% regulated. When Amtrak was created in 1971, the train industry was hurting because of cars and busses and airplanes, but it was still viable. Amtrak destroyed the competitive market and is now completely run by unionized management who asks for more and more money. The last year of Amtrak that was audited had fewer riders than their first year.
Even beyond that look at what privatization has done. When the TV cartel was opened to competition, cable TV came in and slaughtered the old system, replacing 5-10 channels with hundreds. Cable then became a regulated media and the growth slacked until recently as cable companies started to find competitive ways to sell their regulated product. If the regulations were dropped, I bet we'd see many new and competitive features introduced.
The PC market is a mostly unregulated market. The areas that are most regulated tend to have the highest cost products with the least amount of choice. The cost of a PC has dropped enormously.
I'm very glad Slashdot posted this. I've been looking for sources of funding for a little bit now, and I'm at a loss for where to go from here. We've had a trickle of individual donations, which are great and have really helped a lot. But what I'd like to be able to do is take a few months or even a half a year and focus exclusively on Appleseed, especially since it's really starting to come together as a project.
I invest about US$20K a year in new projects and businesses, but all of them require a business plan, a personal statement of intent, and a matching investment by all the principals of the business. In 2006 I have not found any places to spend my money. I also reinvest in all my businesses, but all of them have plans and hard workers to back them up. You'll find it VERY hard to sell a product even to people with grant money if the long term goal of the product is ethereal. Make some CONCRETE plans and post them. I'm a fan of open source, but only if there are enough people willing to spend their time on the project. Money means nothing if you have hundreds of co-developers each putting in their 2 cents (or 2 hours).
Most of the past two years have been creating an API.
Wouldn't your time be better spent promoting the basic plan and finding a dozen people willing to help on the API? Diversify!
The purpose of appleseed is to create a network of websites that all work together, and open source is a big part of making sure that anybody who wants to set up an appleseed node (even if it's just for them and a dozen friends) can do so and still maintain full interaction with everybody in the appleseed network.
It's a great idea, but where is the profit in it? Profit is not greed, it is a sign that someone is willing to compensate those working on a project for a viable product. Donations are great, but is there a "need" for the final product, or are you in a chicken-and-egg situation where no market exists because no product exists because no market exists?
This is really a project I'm very excited about, and the possibilities are endless.
Great ideas are never enough, in fact, great ideas have no value without the idea actually adding value to the products already out there. Consumers are fearful of free projects because they know that there is no money to continue them. If this is to be an open API, maybe you need to work on foundational support before raising money to build the house?
For me, this is where I want the web to go,
The best second step is to review your first step. Get others to love the idea, and there's your source for funding and co-development time. A grant isn't going to get you much, and if you want others to invest their time and money in you, you should do that first. Save a ton of cash for a year (work 3 jobs). Then take a year off and live cheaply while focusing on the marketing aspects. Show other people you're putting your money and your time where your mouth is, and they'll jump on once you are committed.
My subject above lays out the process I've seen for business ideas and how the funding is runs in cycles.
The best way to raise capital is to find family and friends to invest in you. If your idea is profitable and you are original, you can probably come up with enough cash to take a few months off work to focus on your dream.
The dotcom boom brought a ton of venture capital, but much of this new money was created by the Fed out of thin air -- it was "easy" money, so it was invested unwisely. Since most VC'd companies never had a profitable product to begin with, the market took care of the problem of unwise investing.
Now that no investment house will throw good money at a bad problem, at least not in the number of the dotcom days, people are looking to grants to help further technology. I'm no fan of grants, especially public ones. I don't want to finance anyone without looking at their business plan.
Grants will eventually give way back to family, as every cycle seems to be.
Me? When I want to run a new business, I work my rear off for a year saving so I can take time off to focus. Rather than looking to use OPM, why not go get 2 or 3 jobs, work VERY hard for 12 months, and then take off for 12 to focus the same hours on your dream? No business will succeed without tender, loving care. Free ones need even more time than profitable ones.
Good luck.
This is terrible, but you have to blame your local village AND your state for the pro-union regulations they've created, requirements that can not and will not change as the market needs them to.
In many states (my state is Illinois), there are so many pro-labor requirements that are managed by labor management, not by technicians, that I am surprised that most people still get ANY service.
If you can't call a third party to provide you service, why is that? It is because third parties are criminals if they run their own circuits -- criminals!
It is regulation that creates monopolies, not deregulation. There has never been deregulation in the telecom industry -- the break-up of one monopoly created market monopolies nonetheless.
Regulation is a big beast, it occurs at many levels. Villages regulate to create monopolies, States regulate to create monopolies and the federal government regulates to create monopolies. Regulation are created NOT to help consumers but to create an impossibly high barrier to entry.
The telecoms are dying, so they need to fortify to try to save their domain of control. The Federal government is too slow to react to market needs, so entrepreneurs provide what consumers want -- the Internet has given small companies HUGE stones to beat Goliath with.
Complete deregulation would be so good for consumers that we'd be able to better compete in the world market, rather than price ourselves into oblivion. Real, complete deregulation means chopping laws from the local level to the federal level -- something that NO politician or public service wants as it destroys their power.
In Illinois, the telecom unions are restricting DSL and other broadband roll-outs at the local level. It is ridiculous that people think that deregulation gives telecoms power, it is "re-regulation" that has occured.
Everybody on the planet? 100,000,000 units have shipped in nearly 6 years -- a lot, but not complete. How many still work? How many markets were ignored because the price couldn't get any lower to get these new markets into using the device? How many people have stopped buying software for the PS2 because the newer software focuses on the newer consoles?
I think Sony could breathe a TON of life back into their current inventory of licensed games (and even new games adapted) for the PS2 -- they don't need the hardware anymore to make money. By letting others develop hardware add-ons and even complete knock-offs of the hardware, Sony could revitalize a market that really isn't ready to die. Competition can make them much more profitable by pushing the costs of new developments to many companies rather than just the ones that can afford the Sony licensing fee.
Sony has a gold mine that they probably won't tap. Giving the PS2 code away to developers could mean HUGE things for Sony in terms of bringing a new demand for their older products. Why not give the hardware away? I can see $39 PS2s selling, not $129 ones. If a new market is opened for the PS2, that same market would open up desire for Sony's products they do sell, still. Hell, let someone create PS2 code for cell phones (Sony could then sell software they own or license for this version). There is so much life left, but monopolizing it for themselves will decrease their market into oblivion eventually.
Interesting, I wasn't aware of the licensing issues. That's too bad, maybe Sony can renegotiate some of them, hmm.
:)
By the way, bizarre-host.com suspended your account, will it get back running soon? I'm interested in your topic
Great karma whoring.
I'm no karma whore -- I get modded -1 as often as +5, usually for the same opinion. It is more important to me to hear VIABLE replies that properly debate my point, so I can be better prepared to debate myself. The best part of slashdot for me is that I learn where I'm wrong, often. I have my display browsing to -1, so moderation means nothing, and I've often replied to insightful -1 troll posts myself.
I don't want to have to set up an Internet connection, a computer, TV card etc just to watch TV, when the current system means I can just turn on the TV. No doubt you'd have to pay for this torrent business, broadcast TV is free.
Broadcast TV is not free, it is paid for by advertising paid for by consumer purchases. Advertising is slowly losing power, so we'll see more product placement and direct financing by viewers. The market will adapt.
As for setting up an Internet connection, this also could be reduced if the bandwidth was deregulated. I see no reason why a simple Cisco/Netgear/D-Link "Direct-cast" box wouldn't be released for $49.99 at Circuit City that grabs the WiFi signals and puts them up on your TV or your PC to view. Add a US$99 250 gig USB hard drive (I just bought 3 of these at Best buy 2 weeks ago) and you can even store the signal. The market will provide these, also. Soon.
And the TV companies believe otherwise. Who to believe: the random Internet person with no experience, or the people actually running real life businesses?
No experience? I've been in the consulting and retail market for 18 years. I'm paid to make these recommendations to help business prosper as markets change, and I recently spent 7 years changing the high rise and medical contracting industry in Chicagoland to take advantage ot technology. My 3 customers are now the most efficient in the market, and I've been quoted in huge contracting magazines regarding the work I've performed while dotcom companies were going bankrupt. I think I know enough about marketing and market changes to say my opinion is just as worthy as those paid in the big magazines, but I repudiate income for my opinions -- I give them freely so I can bill my real customers more money because you guys give me more insight that I use in my real job. Is this wrong? Don't we all come to slashdot for either entertainment or for real information to use to make ourselves more profitable?
Also, I owned a production company in the late 90s, and I also spent a lot of money on advertising in my failed retail chain, all of which gave me insight from other angles.
I understand the points of the debate, here, and what I wrote was mostly straight from brain-to-fingers. It is the thought process that slashdot creates that makes this a valuable tool.
When I meant OSS, I don't just mean amateurs but entire development companies. Coming up with an OSS console from the start would be a losing idea for most companies, but Sony is having problems, real problems. Sure, the PS3 sounds like it will be a winner, but will Sony make it that far? Sony, as a company, has had HUGE problems in the past 5 years -- look at their various attempts in cheaper and newer markets. Sony's reputation is also on the chopping block with repeated problems (the CD-worm scandal and the quality control problems plaguing them on so many forums).
Sony has to make some changes, quick. What they need is to diversify from the cheap market that failed them and refocus on the upper end market, especially if we're going to see an economic crunch in the middle class (and lower class) in the U.S. As people have less money for junk, the wealthy will still have cash to spend on higher quality products. I'm really believe we'll see a relatively long time frame where the high end audio world comes back full force, and Sony does have the engineers and Japanese manufacturing structure still in place to jump back into this market. I really miss Sony's high end products from the late 80s and early 90s, it was very well made. Their new products are junk.
The PS1 is too old to make it worthy of an OSS release. The PS2 is beyond the Dreamcast (I still believe the Dreamcast was a better system, but the Microsoft operating system was junk), and I think Sony has a lot of profit left in their old games IF there is a resurgence of PS2 support. I believe if others start to redevelop for the Sony, especially an OSS release of the PS2 basics, Sony will see a big drive towards selling the older games -- especially in non-Western markets.
Again, this is all conjecture but much of it is based on a lot of research I've done on Sony as a corporation. Things look solid on the surface, but so much is bubbling beneath the crust that I wouldn't be surprised if Sony is bought out and destroyed, or finds a way to recapitalize on their previously profitable markets. The PS3 will fail if Sony doesn't have the marketing money needed to push it hard, and an OSS PS2 release would give sony tons of free marketing in all the markets and communities.
I was thinking about the "Will Microsoft buy out Sony?" situation, and I was thinking the best solution for Sony to capitalize on their losses is to open the world market up to the old Sony platform: release the PS2 as open-source or cheaply licensable and give others access to making new hardware, new software and new accessories.
The PS2 platform is still a great platform with a lot of room for improvement. Imagine a gaming console that can be accessed by the millions of developers, programmers, amateurs and third parties that could make things better. Sony doesn't have to give it up entirely, but they could capitalize on a re-birth by finding ways to continue to market their older titles and software to a new live of PS2's that might come to fruition.
Maybe it isn't the best solution, but I think it is one that isn't thought of usually -- more competition makes those in the business more profitable as new avenues for revenue open up. I love my competition, they make me more money than if I had a monopoly on my services.
It doesn't just apply to DRM and he media cartels either, i see it in so many facets of life in general.
Actually, I'm not against DRM, I am just against laws that protect and require DRM. I think in a more-free market, DRM might have some realistic functions, but I believe competition would make DRM worthless since people would generally prefer the uncluttered media rather than the cluttered ones.
provided some real incentives and subsidies we'd have moved into a far more fuel efficient modus operandi a decade ago.
I don't think any subsidies are needed -- the best incentive is to be the one to replace gas. I don't believe in Peak Oil, but I do believe that oil is only powerful because of the subsidies and protectionism that exists. What amazes me is that people don't see that oil is controlled fully by governments, not corporations. When corporations (unregulated by unsubsidied) have access to commodities, the price usually falls, not increases. I believe ExxonMobil would do a better job bringing fuel to the surface and distributing it than Iran or Saudi or the US does. With bureaucracy comes a 50-100% penalty in price and performance. Deregulating fuel would be a huge step in the right direction.
(FWIW, I don't believe ExxonMobil is efficient because they rely on government. I think other fuel companies would appear to better compete with the fuel cartels, I'm just using the term "corporation" in the free market sense, not in the mercantilist sense).
I agree with your general reply, thanks for the insight.
This would work great for improv performers, I think. Since Chicago is so known for improv, I think that it may be a good place for you to start. With improv, you can always guarantee that next week's show will be completely different. You can also guarantee that you will have material to post online next week.
Bingo. There are GREAT theatre groups in Chicago (even beyond Improv). There is no reason why their production level can't increase slightly (based solely on donations of people who like to watch their 'show'), and they can use the free release of these episodes to get people interested in their production. What is the point of paying a Hollywood actor $5 million per episode? It is because they can -- the distribution is locked in by a cartel, with an infinite barrier to entry. My studio idea can break it down while still being profitable.
You can't offer a suggestion when you are watching the recorded version, but you can if you come in and buy a ticket.
And that there is the power of the studio idea -- when watching it, you WILL hear the people in the crowd throwing out ideas. This might entice people who like the show to actually make a trip out. I love theatre and regularly travel to see both large and small shows, but I have no idea what is out there. With a "free TV" format, your selection goes from 150 shows on right now to thousands. With tagging and viewer moderation, you can even work at finding what you like. Don't like nudity? Negate the tag. Don't like heterosexuals? Block them. Don't like bald people? Gone. A great a la carte format is just waiting to be born.
I was in Chicago last week, and I saw a few shows at the iO theater. All were a hoot.
Make it a regular visit, they're always great. If you need a place to stay, drop me an e-mail, I'm always inviting slashdot regulars to crash a night or two.
Few would really shun the publicity of moving to being a nationaly known group.
And for now it would stay this way as they have no access to convert their live showing to a digital format easily. The plan of our studio is to set up everything at the studio but also set up a few vans for live recordings of bands, theater, who knows what else might happen.
Thanks for the insightful reply.
There WERE a lot of crappy games, but today's "great" games seem to be a huge hassle to play. Almost every game I've bought in the past 4 years has been returned (with restocking fee if necessary) because of compatibility issues.
I'm a geek, I have very high end hardware, I've tried all the various OSes and drivers and software patches, and they still have issues.
The X-Box and whatever Sony's machine was called are good to a point, but many of them are just more eye-wash window-dressing gorgeous graphics that forgot to focus on play-factor. The controller is too complicated, IMHO, to make the game fun and exciting.
I still do find great games from time to time, though, but after I've won them once or twice, they go on eBay. I'll never give up Metroid, though.
Yet in the UK digital TV is allocated its own spectrum of frequencies -- a great waste of bandwidth that is by no means a la carte, it is prepackaged.
The key isn't just dumping analog, it is dumping mega-watt transmission frequency regulation. We don't need mega bandwidth or mega compression when you already have a ton of frequencies barely used. XVID and other compression codecs are just fine (its about 300 meg for 24 minutes, right?), and neighborhood mini-distributors can have torrents ready for near-instant download to a small locale. Instead of 50,000 watts x all that wasted frequency range, we could focus better with 500 watt caps or even lower ones. I'd rather see real de-regulation entirely, but this step would likely give us way more choice and open the door for many more content creators to enter the market.
Beyond that, there is a LOT of analog structure still regulated but not needed. I believe there are still cell phone frequencies kept for the previous standards, but I could be wrong.