Gift cards like those worry me and I refuse to buy them for ANY company. I've seen too many people buy gift cards (that just use a number string) try to get the credit from the card after buying them to only be told that the number has already been used by someone else (they use them by using a Random Key Generator). And since it's just about impossible to prove that you were the first and only owner of it, your typically SOL.
Can a developer REALLY put together almost 5,000 apps?
Sure they can, make them mini-apps for things like money, exp, items, ect.... for an online game like FarmVille and whatnot. Like buying gift cards though the AppStore
Well I just got through the age check while claiming to be 15 years old, which is still classified as a minor in every state and most countries that have access to WoW. The age check is to make sure your not under 12 or younger, but anyone between the ages of 13-17 are minors and having to post their real names is at lightest a privacy issue with what the law see's as someone who isn't mentally capable of understanding the consequence, at worst helping stalkers (and every other 'think of the children' claims possible). Also, the forums are open to the public to read, meaning anyone can sick a data miner of the site and gain a LOT of names real fast and possibly others private information.
Because things like mental illness, physical life-altering handicaps, racism and histories full of physical and mental abuse is just choices people make... not everyone who is 'down on their luck' chose to be. Sometimes its not as simple as declaring its their own fault and they get what they deserve.
As about Police abuse, since your no doubt some dumb kid (you 'stoopid' comment shows your still young and dumb) would mean your too young to hear of things like Rodney King. Not to mention other incidents like what happened last year by the US border guards kinda show that it does happen.
So... I'm of course believing you have some citations for claims that these things don't happen? Or maybe you can just try going to school to begin with.
Their biggest threats are loss of money for both themselves and their shareholders. Their interest in protecting their customers comes much further after this. HSBC is a business, and like all businesses, they are watching their and their shareholders bottom line online.
Tell that to the millions of homeless, not to mention people having been mistreated by the police and nothing happen to the police for the crimes they did against them.
Steam might be a good thing for the industry if they will stop bending over for abusive companies like Ubisoft that demand that they must allow them to install abusive third party DRM. People say that Steam is enough but its sad when you still have to look up a game to see what it's DRM is before you buy a steam game.
Music (AFAIK, everything on iTunes and Amazon are DRM-free)
Software (MS office vs. Open Office)
??
What categories exist where DRM is the only way material is available??
Windows OS/Mac OS, everything beyond music on iTunes, eBooks from most companies, digital movies, consoles...
Jumpin' guzzled barn em backwoods panhandle sittin' cheatin'. Jezebel took commencin' been confounded, lordy fit. Hootin' bootleg townfolk knickers tax-collectors simple, everlastin' consarn. Heffer java gospel give hairy jezebel.
With words like 'guzzled', 'cheatin', 'Jezebel', 'knickers' and 'give hairy jezebel', its think it was some kind of either really kinky or really twisted porno...
so if you ever lost your keys you'd just abandon the car and consider it gone?
This does not follow. My point is that it's justifiable to purposefully cripple a product. Convenience is not the absolute goal.
How is it justifiable though? Your example doesn't address what was being mentioned. How is the user losing a piece of the product the same as the seller crippling a device before the person can buy it and refuse to allow full future function of the device even after the sale? Keys are part of the car, and if you really wish you can attach them to the car so you can't lose that car's piece and like many objects, if you lose a piece then it might not work (maybe hide the key on the car hidden 'pocket' so you don't lose them) With DRM, I never get the keys, they are always held away from me and I must keep going back to the original seller to open the door for me. These are 2 completely different things. This has nothing to do with convenience, in fact none of the comments ever had to do anything with convenience.
Or it's like putting locks on a car so only somebody who managed not to lose his or her key get in and start the engine? Who would ever buy such a crippled vehicle?
Somebodies never called a mechanic... so if you ever lost your keys you'd just abandon the car and consider it gone? If I lose my keys I can either call a mechanic/AMA to have them open the door for me or use a duplicate to open it (can have the key cut again). Now if you lose your DRM key, then your product is lost, you can't call up someone to open it for you, can't have a new 'key' cut, ect...
if you write software, it's ok for me to download and use it without paying you? you'd understand that, right?
To put in bluntly, I would. Its part of the cost of doing business. Not everyone will pay for your product regardless what you may feel it is worth. This has been shown over and over through out history in the form of theft. If someone wants it enough but doesn't want to pay for it then some people will use 'other' means to obtain it, regardless of the legality.
$4 for the sheet music, sells (maybe) 2,500 - so that someone can learn it and enjoy making the music themselves. Requires skills to play the appropriate instrument, and read music. Includes all the physical distribution costs (materials, warehousing, shipping, restocking, financing etc).
$1 for the MP3 that people want to listen to, sells (maybe) 100,000. Requires no skills apart from mashing the play button like a dyslexic autistic orangutan. Includes all the electronic distribution costs (warehousing (disk space), shipping (data transfers), financing etc).
Income from sheet music sales: $10K. Income from MP3 sales: $100K.
Your analysis also ignores the fact that the performance of the art needs to pay the salaries of dozens, every day (not for one day or two days of performance), rental costs for the hall/room/stage/performance arena, costumes, sound engineers, makeup, sets... - as well as rehearsals etc; the paper version is paying for the writing time, publishing, distribution etc - costumes, sound etc is "paid for" by the reader's imagination. They're just not directly comparable (or, "Waaah, why does a prime mover cost less than a Porsche GT2 when the Porsche is smaller")!
The problem with your argument is that your analysis ignores the fact that played music takes: band, instruments, recording studio, sound equipment beyond the instruments, knowledge of how to make music, rehearsals, salaries of anyone else involved in making the album, in many albums costumes as well/photographer (for album art, even mp3's have at least a cover art), ect...
Sheet music takes someone who can write music, and if digital, a basic editor program.
In short, not to be rude but just take your entire last paragraph and replace the word 'preformance of the art' to 'preformance of the music' and replace 'paper version' to 'sheet music'.
Just because demand is low doesn't mean the price must go up, and just because demand is high doesn't mean the price must go down. In fact, that goes against the whole concept of supply and demand.
From the article: "I have also heard from a continuing stream of extraordinarily hostile young men (always men) who insist on "educating" me on the ins and outs of cybermorality, the definition of "stealing," and why I deserve to choke on my own obsolescence."
He is talking about YOU guys from slashdot. Way to go! Don't you understand that you get more bees with honey than vinegar? And further than that, that whole nasty behavior of yours make us all who tries to change mentality to look even nerdier and jerks than before. *sight*
While very, very few of the comments here on slashdot are 'extraordinarily hostile' or tell him 'why I deserve to choke on my own obsolescence', the is no reason people here can't insist on 'educating' him. His entire blog is him trying to 'educate' everyone who reads it the 'ins and outs of cybermorality, the definition of "stealing". Comments on both sides are made up of opinions and have facts and pseudo-facts to back them up. He can complain about people 'insisting on educating him' all he wants but in the end its 'Pot meet kettle'.
Honestly, I'm not sure why he even bothered posting his "experiment". I guess he has no shame.
If he's involved in the submitting of this post, then he just got Slashdotted and now tons of Slashdotters know who Jason Robert Brown is and he may feel this could turn into many sales.
Imagine if you got your paycheck, only to discover that you were shortchanged by 33% because your boss thinks that the other 67% was enough
Sounds pretty much like it was for me when I was in sales. Just because I was working hard and writing out my lines to sell a product, it didn't mean I was always going to sell everything I had. And so in turn my paycheck would be smaller because thats how sales work, hard work and effort won't always make a product sell, sometimes its just dumb luck or the current 'fad' that people are into that will sell a product.
This thread has crystallized what I suspect is the "Slashdot-approved" stance with regards to protecting material. Correct me if I get any of these points wrong.
1. If you want to make a living creating works that exist in a data format (music, books, video) just accept the fact that nobody owes you a dime for your time. If some people choose to drop some money in your hat, that's awesome - but don't count on it.
Its not as much that 'nobody owes you a dime', its more that just because you made it doesn't mean everyone will feel a burning urge to line up around the block to fill your pockets with money. If people feel it is worth the money, they will pay, but will only pay if they truly feel it is worth the money.
2. If your music is so great, tour and make money that way. If you get moderately successful locally, each band member might be able to clear $80 a night! Of course you'll need a huge cash infusion (i.e. debt) to start touring big, but I'm sure the banks will be happy to help you with loans for such a riskless endeavour.
Never heard of playing smaller shows to build up fame, recognition and money from those sales to help finance a bigger/better 'company'/band name? Very few bands just burst out of no where to start doing multi-city touring. In fact, most play small shows to build a name for themselves before they end up in the band that makes them big.
3. Always remember - costs like studio time, special effects, actors, musicians, props, sets, insurance, essentially every cost involved in the production of your work magically disconnect from the work itself at the moment it is finalized. A ripped copy of that work has absolutely no moral, legal, or implied connection to any of those costs.
Prince was reportedly paid $500,000 over and above the royalties for each CD — typically around 10%. Considering that his last album, 3121, sold only 80,000 copies in the U.K., this deal may have earned him more than eight times as much.
Slashdot Mirror
Consider either using iTunes gift cards.
Gift cards like those worry me and I refuse to buy them for ANY company. I've seen too many people buy gift cards (that just use a number string) try to get the credit from the card after buying them to only be told that the number has already been used by someone else (they use them by using a Random Key Generator). And since it's just about impossible to prove that you were the first and only owner of it, your typically SOL.
Can a developer REALLY put together almost 5,000 apps?
Sure they can, make them mini-apps for things like money, exp, items, ect.... for an online game like FarmVille and whatnot. Like buying gift cards though the AppStore
Well I just got through the age check while claiming to be 15 years old, which is still classified as a minor in every state and most countries that have access to WoW. The age check is to make sure your not under 12 or younger, but anyone between the ages of 13-17 are minors and having to post their real names is at lightest a privacy issue with what the law see's as someone who isn't mentally capable of understanding the consequence, at worst helping stalkers (and every other 'think of the children' claims possible). Also, the forums are open to the public to read, meaning anyone can sick a data miner of the site and gain a LOT of names real fast and possibly others private information.
Because things like mental illness, physical life-altering handicaps, racism and histories full of physical and mental abuse is just choices people make... not everyone who is 'down on their luck' chose to be. Sometimes its not as simple as declaring its their own fault and they get what they deserve.
Subdue him, if need be push him against the car to get him confused for a second or 3 and then handcuff him. I wouldn't have done this though.
This would be a great time to start updating those satellite photos of the gulf
To start with, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty states that, yeah, there are millions of homeless people.
As about Police abuse, since your no doubt some dumb kid (you 'stoopid' comment shows your still young and dumb) would mean your too young to hear of things like Rodney King. Not to mention other incidents like what happened last year by the US border guards kinda show that it does happen.
So... I'm of course believing you have some citations for claims that these things don't happen? Or maybe you can just try going to school to begin with.
Their biggest threats are loss of money for both themselves and their shareholders. Their interest in protecting their customers comes much further after this. HSBC is a business, and like all businesses, they are watching their and their shareholders bottom line online.
Tell that to the millions of homeless, not to mention people having been mistreated by the police and nothing happen to the police for the crimes they did against them.
Steam might be a good thing for the industry if they will stop bending over for abusive companies like Ubisoft that demand that they must allow them to install abusive third party DRM. People say that Steam is enough but its sad when you still have to look up a game to see what it's DRM is before you buy a steam game.
Music (AFAIK, everything on iTunes and Amazon are DRM-free) Software (MS office vs. Open Office) ?? What categories exist where DRM is the only way material is available??
Windows OS/Mac OS, everything beyond music on iTunes, eBooks from most companies, digital movies, consoles...
It's pushing to expect Americans to know there is another side of the world.
Isn't that where all the Commies live?
Seems like it...
Jumpin' guzzled barn em backwoods panhandle sittin' cheatin'. Jezebel took commencin' been confounded, lordy fit. Hootin' bootleg townfolk knickers tax-collectors simple, everlastin' consarn. Heffer java gospel give hairy jezebel.
With words like 'guzzled', 'cheatin', 'Jezebel', 'knickers' and 'give hairy jezebel', its think it was some kind of either really kinky or really twisted porno...
slashdot followers ?
They called us Nerds.
But I'm ok with that since even Slashdot itself tells me I'm a nerd, which for once isn't news, but does matter.
so if you ever lost your keys you'd just abandon the car and consider it gone?
This does not follow. My point is that it's justifiable to purposefully cripple a product. Convenience is not the absolute goal.
How is it justifiable though? Your example doesn't address what was being mentioned. How is the user losing a piece of the product the same as the seller crippling a device before the person can buy it and refuse to allow full future function of the device even after the sale? Keys are part of the car, and if you really wish you can attach them to the car so you can't lose that car's piece and like many objects, if you lose a piece then it might not work (maybe hide the key on the car hidden 'pocket' so you don't lose them) With DRM, I never get the keys, they are always held away from me and I must keep going back to the original seller to open the door for me. These are 2 completely different things. This has nothing to do with convenience, in fact none of the comments ever had to do anything with convenience.
This is a mostly USA site so it's pushing it to expect everyone here to know slang from the almost the other side of the world
Saddos: Brit slang a socially inadequate or pathetic person.
Or it's like putting locks on a car so only somebody who managed not to lose his or her key get in and start the engine? Who would ever buy such a crippled vehicle?
Somebodies never called a mechanic... so if you ever lost your keys you'd just abandon the car and consider it gone? If I lose my keys I can either call a mechanic/AMA to have them open the door for me or use a duplicate to open it (can have the key cut again). Now if you lose your DRM key, then your product is lost, you can't call up someone to open it for you, can't have a new 'key' cut, ect...
if you write software, it's ok for me to download and use it without paying you? you'd understand that, right?
To put in bluntly, I would. Its part of the cost of doing business. Not everyone will pay for your product regardless what you may feel it is worth. This has been shown over and over through out history in the form of theft. If someone wants it enough but doesn't want to pay for it then some people will use 'other' means to obtain it, regardless of the legality.
$4 for the sheet music, sells (maybe) 2,500 - so that someone can learn it and enjoy making the music themselves. Requires skills to play the appropriate instrument, and read music. Includes all the physical distribution costs (materials, warehousing, shipping, restocking, financing etc).
$1 for the MP3 that people want to listen to, sells (maybe) 100,000. Requires no skills apart from mashing the play button like a dyslexic autistic orangutan. Includes all the electronic distribution costs (warehousing (disk space), shipping (data transfers), financing etc).
Income from sheet music sales: $10K. Income from MP3 sales: $100K.
Your analysis also ignores the fact that the performance of the art needs to pay the salaries of dozens, every day (not for one day or two days of performance), rental costs for the hall/room/stage/performance arena, costumes, sound engineers, makeup, sets ... - as well as rehearsals etc; the paper version is paying for the writing time, publishing, distribution etc - costumes, sound etc is "paid for" by the reader's imagination. They're just not directly comparable (or, "Waaah, why does a prime mover cost less than a Porsche GT2 when the Porsche is smaller")!
The problem with your argument is that your analysis ignores the fact that played music takes: band, instruments, recording studio, sound equipment beyond the instruments, knowledge of how to make music, rehearsals, salaries of anyone else involved in making the album, in many albums costumes as well/photographer (for album art, even mp3's have at least a cover art), ect...
Sheet music takes someone who can write music, and if digital, a basic editor program.
In short, not to be rude but just take your entire last paragraph and replace the word 'preformance of the art' to 'preformance of the music' and replace 'paper version' to 'sheet music'.
Just because demand is low doesn't mean the price must go up, and just because demand is high doesn't mean the price must go down. In fact, that goes against the whole concept of supply and demand.
From the article: "I have also heard from a continuing stream of extraordinarily hostile young men (always men) who insist on "educating" me on the ins and outs of cybermorality, the definition of "stealing," and why I deserve to choke on my own obsolescence."
He is talking about YOU guys from slashdot. Way to go! Don't you understand that you get more bees with honey than vinegar? And further than that, that whole nasty behavior of yours make us all who tries to change mentality to look even nerdier and jerks than before. *sight*
While very, very few of the comments here on slashdot are 'extraordinarily hostile' or tell him 'why I deserve to choke on my own obsolescence', the is no reason people here can't insist on 'educating' him. His entire blog is him trying to 'educate' everyone who reads it the 'ins and outs of cybermorality, the definition of "stealing". Comments on both sides are made up of opinions and have facts and pseudo-facts to back them up. He can complain about people 'insisting on educating him' all he wants but in the end its 'Pot meet kettle'.
Honestly, I'm not sure why he even bothered posting his "experiment". I guess he has no shame.
If he's involved in the submitting of this post, then he just got Slashdotted and now tons of Slashdotters know who Jason Robert Brown is and he may feel this could turn into many sales.
Imagine if you got your paycheck, only to discover that you were shortchanged by 33% because your boss thinks that the other 67% was enough
Sounds pretty much like it was for me when I was in sales. Just because I was working hard and writing out my lines to sell a product, it didn't mean I was always going to sell everything I had. And so in turn my paycheck would be smaller because thats how sales work, hard work and effort won't always make a product sell, sometimes its just dumb luck or the current 'fad' that people are into that will sell a product.
This thread has crystallized what I suspect is the "Slashdot-approved" stance with regards to protecting material. Correct me if I get any of these points wrong. 1. If you want to make a living creating works that exist in a data format (music, books, video) just accept the fact that nobody owes you a dime for your time. If some people choose to drop some money in your hat, that's awesome - but don't count on it.
Its not as much that 'nobody owes you a dime', its more that just because you made it doesn't mean everyone will feel a burning urge to line up around the block to fill your pockets with money. If people feel it is worth the money, they will pay, but will only pay if they truly feel it is worth the money.
2. If your music is so great, tour and make money that way. If you get moderately successful locally, each band member might be able to clear $80 a night! Of course you'll need a huge cash infusion (i.e. debt) to start touring big, but I'm sure the banks will be happy to help you with loans for such a riskless endeavour.
Never heard of playing smaller shows to build up fame, recognition and money from those sales to help finance a bigger/better 'company'/band name? Very few bands just burst out of no where to start doing multi-city touring. In fact, most play small shows to build a name for themselves before they end up in the band that makes them big.
3. Always remember - costs like studio time, special effects, actors, musicians, props, sets, insurance, essentially every cost involved in the production of your work magically disconnect from the work itself at the moment it is finalized. A ripped copy of that work has absolutely no moral, legal, or implied connection to any of those costs.
They don't magically disconnect from the work, but they must be managed during the entire process. You can't sit there and hemorrhage money like there is no tomorrow with the magical expectation that because you dumped so much money into this work that it must make the same amount x10+, regardless of who you are or who you are working with.
It worked for Prince.
From the linked article:
Prince was reportedly paid $500,000 over and above the royalties for each CD — typically around 10%. Considering that his last album, 3121, sold only 80,000 copies in the U.K., this deal may have earned him more than eight times as much.