One of the big issues is a rather controversial one, which the admins are very hush-hush about and which people have been kicked off the discussion boards for talking about. That is that there's an upper limit on the number of characters who can attain given career advancement levels at a given moment. If the cap's been reached, then it doesn't matter how much you train your skills - you'll never be offered the "level up" prompt, because the game simply can't support you being at the higher level. Some careers have the cap very near the beginning of the advancement path, so they'll effectively be closed to you if you join at the wrong moment.
There is a legend that this was once conclusively demonstrated when a group of hackers modifed the game to give everybody the skill settings of the highest level player at that time. Despite this, a number of people in the "dustman" low-level profession were never offered the level-up box even though they were now as skilled as the CEOs. Sadly, this took place on a server emulator and nothing like it has ever been reproduced to conclusively confirm the existance of this problem in Real Life.
An even nastier one is that the player-run economy is having some serious problems. The basic problem is that, when the game started and the player-run economy was first coded in, a bunch of players started trading and did very well, making lots of money and making lots of stuff that people wanted. Now, that's pretty cool, but the problem is that if you're a newbie now, you have pretty much no chance of being able to compete with them; especially since, if they leave the game, they give all their super-buffed tradeskill items to somebody else. In many fields, the tradeskill items are becoming so expensive that nobody but an existing trader could afford them; and some traders are talking about withholding tradeskill items (such as CD and DVD recorders) from all other players on the grounds that they cannot be trusted with them. The situation is similar to that in The Sims Online, where the "mega houses" do indeed deliver better chat and skill development than all others, but the fact they exist means that no other player has any hope of having people come to their house.
> Now, if the people that "liberate digital > content" gave back as well as they take, I'd > probably not be that pissy over it... but the > odds of that are EXTEMELY low. For that > matter, I've found that most of the people > that create things that are generally prone > to "copyright infringement" are the first ones > to pay for other people's works,
That's odd - I've found quite the reverse. I've met a lot of computer users, some of whom pirated software and some who did not, but I've yet to meet a programmer who didn't pirate the odd program (although they do tend to be more honest than others when it comes to the "if I like it I'll pay for it" excuse). Equally, I've never met a musician who lacks an extensive MP3 collection, and what is a "cover version" but a copy?
But this is getting to what I think is one of the "big issues" in copyright these days - the interaction of the "talent" hypothesis with consumer copyright. Thing is, there's no scientific proof that talent exists - and even if there was, the definition only allows you to know when somebody IS talented (because they produce something good). You can never know, in somebody's lifetime, that they are NOT talented because any stimulus (even just time passage) could trigger a talent to emerge. But that isn't the attitude taken today. The attitude taken these days is that everybody knows when somebody is talented or not, and if you're not, you're hopeless.
I think very much the attitude of many copyright violators comes down to: "I'm not talented and can't have a good job like you." "Well, life isn't fair." "So I'll violate your copyrights - that's not fair either, but life isn't fair, right?"
> Capitalism/communism are economic systems. > Dictatorships are political systems. You can > have capitalist dictatorships, and you can > have communist democracy.
The problem with communism, and the reason for its association with dictatorship, is that it has a serious problem with what to do if people don't work. Under pure capitalism, they just don't earn anything, can't eat and die. But under pure communism, you have to either force them to work or kick them out of the commune.
Capitalist advocates are very fond of saying that doing this is immoral, while leaving someone to die is ok because that's only inaction rather than action. I don't agree with that; I tend to take a "black box" view and say that if what goes in is no work and what comes out is dead folks then it doesn't really matter whether inaction or action is in the middle (and, of course, it ignores the fact that choosing capitalism in the knowledge it had that trait, was an action)
Forcing people to work is hard - you can't put them in jail, because then they're still not working. If you kick them out, they're still not working. And so in order to maintain some level of prosperity things tend to get draconian.
> Capitalists always defend their system of > preference by associating it with freedom of > opportunity, but it only works that way when > you get started. Once the system is mature, > the rich pretty much keep everyone else under > control.
This is true. In fact, this was Marx's other complaint. Ignoring the "exploiting the workers" stuff, what he said was that as established producers make profit, their demand for "machinery of production" (ie, the stuff you need to run a business) drives up the cost so high that nobody who isn't already in business can afford it. When that happens, free enterprise collapses and you have socialism. Nowadays, marketing and distribution are probably more important than physical "machinery of production" but the principle stands.
But I think the solution would be to do something unusual with capitalism rather than throwing it away. For example, how about binary capitalism? In this, you have two currencies. Let's call them greenbacks and bluebacks. Greenbacks buy "machinery of production" (and marketing, and shelf space, and business lots, and tools, etc.) and essentials of life. Bluebacks buy luxuries like CDs, videos, etc. Greenbacks can be switched for bluebacks, but NOT the other way around.
Now what happens? When the big companies start selling luxuries to the consumer, they CAN'T use the money they gain to push up the price of market entry - because as they're selling luxuries, they're only earning bluebacks, which can't be spent on business items. They still get rewarded - they get lots of bluebacks which they and their staff can spend on luxuries for themselves. But they can't choke the business market. In order to get greenbacks to buy the stuff they need to stay in business, they have to make and sell business-useful items as well. That means there have to be buyers, so firms are forced to help others get into business by selling them stuff for which they will pay in greenbacks. They can't bulge out the greenback prices, because they'd outprice the market and wouldn't get greenbacks themselves, without which they can't keep their business going.
> There's a problem with this: in a free > society, I should be free to believe whatever > I want. I happen to believe that I'd like more > than just a 'comfortable' level of existence, > because what some people call comfortable I > call barely livable. You may disagree with me, > but who are you to impose your view upon me? > By definition, a free society is one in which > I am free to live however I want.
No, not true. You're free to believe whatever you like, but not free to - and certainly not supported in - act on your beliefs. So you can believe that Bill Gates ought to be shot (for instance), but you can't shoot him.
Also, you're not free to live however you want in today's society either. You have to live how you can afford.
> It's not Microsoft's fault that people are too > lazy or not techically inclined enough to > install third party add-ons.
Actually, it is at least partly so; the Windows user interface has selectively dumbed down parts of the system such that the nontechnical user is shuttled towards some features and not others. There's no real reason why you shouldn't be able to insert a CD and have the software install automatically with no further prompting required (the EULA can go on the CD envelope, and with the massive drives in most consumer PCs altering the install directory will only be necessary for most technical users; of course, there'd have to be an option to let you have an install dialog if you wanted), but MS haven't tried to implement that, not even in their own MSI installer. (Except on corporate installs, but that's only because they know the end-users there don't have any choice about what software to use.)
> They made an indispensable application that > you like to use. People weren't forced to use. > People chose to use it. Sure, now you almost > have no choice, but back in the day > WordPerfect was in the same position but MS > unseated them. If it happened once, it can > happen again.
If "Now you almost have no choice", then NOW the restriction should be applied. WordPerfect didn't have a monopoly in the same way that Word does; amongst other things WordPerfect was competing with WordStar and SamnaWord. Further, installing new software was more common then because even the relatively nontechnical users had more computer knowledge (with only a DOS CLI, they had to!)
> better than these competitors. Please note > that Microsoft may have been ruthless in their > business tactics but no one had to say "yes." > The used their position to gain market > dominance, but it wasn't given to them on a > silver platter..
Actually, it WAS. Microsoft were *asked* by IBM to develop DOS. They didn't compete for it. They used DOS to push their apps, then DOS to push Windows, then Windows again to push their apps. Any other firm could have done as "well" as MS if they'd been the ones asked to develop DOS.
And it's not like MS were that good in the first place. I have, in a very old attic, a dusty copy of Microsoft Multiplan for Apple II. Yes, it's the same Microsoft. Multiplan wasn't particularly good; it was a ripoff of VisiCalc with more overblown menus.
> That's just absolutely ridiculous. It makes no > business sense. Please state why you think > they "must" ship other browsers pre-installed > too?
Because there must be a free market - or at least, as free a market as possible - and there isn't one if one product is much easier to choose than all the others.
> Actually, they didn't ship AOL icons with > Win95 because of anti-trust, they did it > because of some clever manoeuvring by AOL.
No, it was the other way round. MS used the offer of an icon on the Windows desktop to tempt ISPs into using IE as their supported browser. Remember the Netscape lawsuit?
> Yeah, and those particular images of Bugs > Bunny are now in the public domain, but if you > try to make your own brand-new Bugs Bunny > cartoon, you're still going to fall afoul of > the Warners lawyers, because Bugs is still a > trademark of Warners. Which was my original > point.
Umm, isn't it only illegal to use trademarks where they "might cause confusion?"
So if you made your Bugs cartoon, but had a caption on the screen all the way through saying "THIS IS NOT A WARNER BROS. CARTOON" then that would be ok?
> However, suppose the value in movies that he > acquired without paying for and value in music > he listened to without paying for equaled his > life savings.
It's still not reasonable.
If it was shown that: a) the RIAA could catch anyone pirating files on a particular network, b) they know about all the pirates, but c) they picked only the ones with the highest value pirated to sue; then IMHO they'd have an argument for entrapment, saying that by failing to take action earlier they created the impression that pirating was "safe" and encouraged them to rack up a higher value.
(Also, amusingly, if this was ever proven then a pirate who was not sued could just wait for 90 days and then point out that all RIAA's copyrights on the songs (s)he pirated just became invalid because they failed to act on known infringement within the time limit. Yes, that's in copyright law.. it's the reason behind all the "cease/sue/instant settle" things that happen when somebody is technically breaking a firm's copyright but the firm don't actually mind)
Normally you can't blame somebody for not catching you doing a crime (as in the infamous case of the murderer who tried to sue the police for negligence, arguing that they should have stopped him so he would have been guilty of only attempted murder!) BUT if it can be proven that the RIAA is completely capable of catching the low-volume pirates and is just picking and choosing then this might carry a bit more weight.
> RIAA and the Record Companies do not make > artists into stars, their Fans do.
Sadly, that's not true. Bands only get fans through being known about, and they only get known about through advertising and radio play, which bands can only get through labels.
Look at many of the most popular bands and you'll see that they never had many fands in the first place. The Spice Girls didn't have any fans before they were the Spice Girls. They had plenty afterwards, because the marketers made them.
In order for a creator-driven model to really work, a radical change is needed in the consumption habits of people: folks must be prepared to look along the shelf of vertical stacked CDs when they want new music, not to pick the one at eye-level, the one that's advertised, or the one that's by the band they know.
Sadly, the only way to force this to happen would be to outlaw advertising and branding and nationalise retail. But that might be necessary soon anyway, to prevent free enterprise being crippled by unaffordable but required advertising and unbeatable established reputations.
Yea, WMA is notorious for making Sudden Web attacks when it's slightly suspicious about content.
Mind you, those are not exactly uncommon even in legit circumstances these days. Anyone know if there's a patch to insert a mandatory delay in IE before an outgoing request is sent, during which it can be aborted, so that Sudden Web attacks can be halted?
> College professors assume that everyone on the > planet uses Microsoft Office, but they fail to > consider how many of us use a pirated copy. > Even better, how many of us use pirated > software specifically because we must have it > for school or work and can not afford to buy > it?
Amen. College students love doing this. And best of all is when they make it so obvious.
At my old Uni, one of the projects on the Graphics course was to make a short rendered graphics video. "Short" only meant a few seconds, it didn't have to be anything complex and it didn't have to be realtime. But the number of students who, on their credits page, mentioned using 3D Studio MAX... and where did they get that from then. Sheesh.
Not as quite blatant as the cheek of another student who handed in a UML report with nicely drawn diagrams and mentioned in their references section that they'd drawn them at home.. using Rational Rose Enterprise. (!!!!)
> This is where Sony can make inroads against > Nintendo with their upcoming handheld. Include > a 32MB+ CF card (or built in memory) that can > transfer games you download online, via USB > cable to the handheld.
What, you mean like say, the GP32?
What happened with the GP32? It had emulators ported to it. Damn sweet to be able to play C64, NES, PCengine etc. games on a handheld. Especially sweet when you only have to port one binary (the emulator) to get a huge number of games. Not too sweet when the free availability, range, and quality of the emulated titles stomp on the commercial titles. I think someone, somewhere, might have bought a commercial GP32 game (that wasn't Pinball Dreams). Sometime. Once.
Oh, and let's not mention the horrors that can arise from a ported GB or GBA emulator.
No, the term "shareware" supposedly comes from the very old concept of a "developer commons".
The basic idea here was: you'd join a commons with some other programmers. Then, any useful software you write, you share with the others; in exchange, you get a share of all their software. Thus, software was effectively freely distributed among the commons, in anticipation that its value would be "repaid" by the users' contributions to the same commons.
Of course, this was only really useful back in the very, very old days where pretty much anyone who used a computer was a programmer because there was pretty much nothing to do with computers other than trying to program them. When non-programming users became the norm, these commons could no longer work, so the request for money was substituted for the anticipation of reciprocially shared software. Crippleware was the paranoid's version of that.
Oddly enough, the main killers of shareware games were the commercial companies who dumped "shareware" versions of their commercial games on shop shelves. Remember the "shareware Diablo" and the "shareware Descent"? This neatly taught consumers that anything called 'shareware' must be an inferior version of something they could buy in a shop, and killed the market for a while.
Yea, Crimsonland is definately cool (shame about Reflexive's other stuff though.. why oh why couldn't they have stuck a level editor in Ricochet?). Popcap and Garage games aren't necessarily that great - Popcap, in particular, tends to specialise in making clones of established puzzle games with flashier graphics, which isn't really very shareware; and their prices are outrageous.
For shareware firms how about Llamasoft - yes, that Llamasoft, with that Jeff Minter. Gridrunner++ is one of the best shareware games I've ever played and it only costs a fiver.
> The pseudocode is simple enough, but the Z spec > took up a whole page.
Who wrote the spec?
If a and b are part of your system state-schema then a swap operation is just:
Swap delta System -- theta System adres {a,b} = theta System' adres {a,b} a' = b b' = a
Short and not too complex. (The "theta System adres" bit is basically just saying "this operation doesn't change anything other than a and b in the system"; if I knew exactly what your System schema was I wouldn't have even needed to write that. And "adres" means "domain anti-restriction".)
> Well duh. The bank technically is only giving > you an "advance" on that home loan you applied > for too. Of course you still have to pay it > back. The point is that if you could come up > with the money to buy a house yourself you > wouldn't have needed their help. Likewise, > these artists need money to get nationwide > exposure and they're willing to take the > label's advances in the hopes that it will > launch their career to the point where they're > making their own living off it. Repeat after > me: the labels are not just going to "give" > artists money, they will LOAN it to them.
But this isn't true. Labels aren't like venture capitalists. They don't just "loan" the money to the musicians: they skim the profits the musician themselves can make from it, too.
And the musician can never reach the stage where they can make their living on their own, because to get stuff in stores it has to come from a label. No amount of money changes that.
> The label takes the risk for fronting money on > an album, they deserve to reap the rewards.
The labels create the risk. Have every label stop spending millions advertising albums, hey presto, they don't need to spend them anymore, but Joe Consumer has to search for his music again.
> Exactly, that's all the more reason to sign > with a major label!
No. If there were no major labels, stores couldn't make that choice. It's an artifical choice that creates a cartel, not a fact of nature.
> Okay, you're still missing the point. Let's > say you're a "talented artist" who's put up a > website selling songs at a "Slashdotter > -approved" price of two cents per song. How am > I going to find your music? I don't hear you > on the radio, I don't see you on TV, I don't > see articles about you in the newspaper, etc. > You have no exposure.
Get rid of the major labels and no-one has any exposure, and this is no longer a problem.
> they just found out I had programming skills > after I had a no-brainer job, and occasionally > ask me to do some custom stuff. Nothing to > heavy, but I still own the rights (I program > everything on my own personal laptop).
In the UK at least they wouldn't need to give you a contract. Anything written using work resources as part of work, is automatically the employer's copyright. Work time counts as "work resources".
> The UK (Parlophone) version is completely > fine. Normal CD. I checked very carefully > before I bought it.
Well, my UK version had some of the best rip protection I was ever seen: the CD was slightly warped, making it play fine in players and computer CD drives, but making it impossible to spin in faster than 1x or to hold the rip sync for more than a few seconds. I'm heading to the patent office..
> The point is that you NEED those "greedy > middle men" to get any exposure. What, do you > think that just because you make amazing music > that if you stick it up on a website (or > better yet, put it on Kazaa) you'll be making > millions in sales? Someone has to KNOW who you > are first, it is unlikely that you'll just > stumble upon artists if there's no marketing > behind them.
But there's a problem with this.
Let's suppose for a moment that I can wave my magic wand and make music marketing disappear. Distribution, mastering, etc. will all still exist, but there'll be no marketing anymore. Not only that, but it'll magically stop any band putting their name on their albums. They have to just carry the album name, nothing more. Ping. There we go.
Now, how is Joe Soap going to buy his music? He can't just go buy what he's seen advertised, because there IS no advertising. He can't just buy what's on the point of presence displays, because there AREN'T ANY. He can't just buy the big established bands, because he CAN'T TELL which are their CDs. Likewise, shops can't pick and choose which songs to buy or not, or what to put where, because they can't tell either and there's no advertising for them to follow. So Joe Soap *HAS* to go to the shelves, listen to different music, see what he likes, buy the ones he likes the most without prejudice. If he likes one, he can tell his friends and they can buy it too. There are still reviews, but they can't be paid for.
Now, if Joe Soap was doing this, there'd be NO NEED for anyone to be marketed. Sooner or later someone would hear their album and the word of mouth would start to spread - good or bad. Any musician could enter the market on a fair footing, because they won't lose out by not being advertised (no-one else is advertised either!), nor will consumers reject them because they don't know them (they don't know who wrote any other music either)
Ok, ding. Back to the real world of advertising. But now you can see that the only reason new entrants need advertising, is because others have it. The only service those fat cats provide, is a solution to the problem they themselves create. It is very much like a protection racket.
And I do feel that something like this (ban all advertising, nationalise retail) will soon be necessary to prevent capitalism coming to a screeching halt because Joe Soap has stopped acting as a responsible consumer and just follows the ads (and thus always buys from the firms with the most money now, thus eliminating new competition, thus ensuring new firms fail, thus killing free enterprise and capitalism with it).
Heh, that reminds me of what Richard Bandler used to say (paraphrased):
"Teachers today say they can't interest our kids. Let me get this straight. They have the entire world of science, literature and mathematics to work with and they can't interest our children, but Nintendo Corp. can make our kids obsessively, hours-on-end-every-day interested in an Italian plumber crushing turtles by jumping on them.. and they think the *kids* are doing something wrong."
> This guy has a really good point here. I > wouldn't mind programming on a gamecube, sure > you couldn't just all of the sudden use the 3d > engine in a week but people would eventually > approach it with confidence.
Ever hear of Net Yaroze? That was basically that kind of thing, where Sony opened a simplified version of their coding API to any user who wanted to join.
It was freakin' impossible to use and only about 20 or so people outside Japan ever produced anything with it.
> We like the music and we want to use the > technology that enables us to copy and share it > over the Internet for free. We want the > product, but we don't want to pay.
Except it isn't true. I've never downloaded an MP3 I don't own. But I *have* ripped MP3s off my CDs to listen to while coding without needing to switch CDs all the time, stuck them on a portable player, normalized them, etc. And I'd be very annoyed to be told that I couldn't do that because we need to block people from music sharing.
I also have an interest as a computery person in opposing the general tendancy for more and more technology to be produced to lock people out of their own hardware.
Your request is pretty much tantamount to asking for the songs for free. At that price, the RIAA would be making less money that it cost for them to send you the song in the first place.
> People are individually and unilaterally > repealing copyright law, because it's not a > fair law anymore.
That is true, but it isn't just because of works not dropping into the public domain; it's because of a whole bunch of other factors.
The most obvious one is the distribution-led market; ie, that if you write a piece of music yourself, you'll never be able to do anything with it (nor meaningfully use your copyright) unless you can sell it to a distribution company. Unfortunately, all the distribution companies are happy making money without you and don't really care, so you have an uphill struggle that's pretty much impossible and will involve you shedding most of your rights in the process. Yea, there's internet distribution, but you still have to get folks to know about it.
Sadly, there is little that can be done about this. The only thing that could be done would be to outlaw all advertising, thus forcing consumers to proactively search for goods they want to buy instead of just choosing from what they've passively heard about. But at this point, doing that would only entrench brand loyalty.
A second problem is the glamour-talent hypothesis, which is particularly bad in the music business now. The fact that they spend so much time broadcasting stuff which is designed to create the perception that a) the music stars are shown as superhuman gods/goddesses who never seem to do any work; and that b) if you have "musical talent" (whatever that is) then you don't have to do any work to write music, and if you don't have "talent" then you can never produce anything good regardless of how hard you work. Is it any wonder that people don't feel bad about taking the artist's work for nothing? All the media about those artists is practically designed to condition them into thinking that the artists don't do any work and spend days and weeks having fun!
When stuff *is* distributed freely, and people *are* honest and direct about the work they've done, then folks very often *don't* copy it, because then they *do* think the law is fair.
> in proceedings challenging a patent, the loser > pays the winner's legal fees. Not a bad idea > for all civil case, btw - cuts down on the > number of spurious claims in general.
No, it doesn't work.
Under the US system (everyone pays their own lawyer) BigCorp spins out the lawsuit until LittleGuy can't afford it anymore.
Under the UK system (loser pays all), BigCorp spins out the lawsuit and pumps up its own costs by hiring expensive lawyers and throwing everything it possibly can into the "legal costs" bracket (such as making the lawyer pay for transporting witnesses so it gets considered a lawsuit cost). Soon LittleGuy is facing ruin a thousand times over if he loses the suit, whereas BigCorp is facing a blip on a balance sheet. BigCorp then offers a settlement which LittleGuy normally takes because, even if he's 'in the right', the risk is just too great.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, there's a few other slight problems.
One of the big issues is a rather controversial one, which the admins are very hush-hush about and which people have been kicked off the discussion boards for talking about. That is that there's an upper limit on the number of characters who can attain given career advancement levels at a given moment. If the cap's been reached, then it doesn't matter how much you train your skills - you'll never be offered the "level up" prompt, because the game simply can't support you being at the higher level. Some careers have the cap very near the beginning of the advancement path, so they'll effectively be closed to you if you join at the wrong moment.
There is a legend that this was once conclusively demonstrated when a group of hackers modifed the game to give everybody the skill settings of the highest level player at that time. Despite this, a number of people in the "dustman" low-level profession were never offered the level-up box even though they were now as skilled as the CEOs. Sadly, this took place on a server emulator and nothing like it has ever been reproduced to conclusively confirm the existance of this problem in Real Life.
An even nastier one is that the player-run economy is having some serious problems. The basic problem is that, when the game started and the player-run economy was first coded in, a bunch of players started trading and did very well, making lots of money and making lots of stuff that people wanted. Now, that's pretty cool, but the problem is that if you're a newbie now, you have pretty much no chance of being able to compete with them; especially since, if they leave the game, they give all their super-buffed tradeskill items to somebody else. In many fields, the tradeskill items are becoming so expensive that nobody but an existing trader could afford them; and some traders are talking about withholding tradeskill items (such as CD and DVD recorders) from all other players on the grounds that they cannot be trusted with them. The situation is similar to that in The Sims Online, where the "mega houses" do indeed deliver better chat and skill development than all others, but the fact they exist means that no other player has any hope of having people come to their house.
> Now, if the people that "liberate digital
> content" gave back as well as they take, I'd
> probably not be that pissy over it... but the
> odds of that are EXTEMELY low. For that
> matter, I've found that most of the people
> that create things that are generally prone
> to "copyright infringement" are the first ones
> to pay for other people's works,
That's odd - I've found quite the reverse. I've met a lot of computer users, some of whom pirated software and some who did not, but I've yet to meet a programmer who didn't pirate the odd program (although they do tend to be more honest than others when it comes to the "if I like it I'll pay for it" excuse). Equally, I've never met a musician who lacks an extensive MP3 collection, and what is a "cover version" but a copy?
But this is getting to what I think is one of the "big issues" in copyright these days - the interaction of the "talent" hypothesis with consumer copyright. Thing is, there's no scientific proof that talent exists - and even if there was, the definition only allows you to know when somebody IS talented (because they produce something good). You can never know, in somebody's lifetime, that they are NOT talented because any stimulus (even just time passage) could trigger a talent to emerge. But that isn't the attitude taken today. The attitude taken these days is that everybody knows when somebody is talented or not, and if you're not, you're hopeless.
I think very much the attitude of many copyright violators comes down to: "I'm not talented and can't have a good job like you." "Well, life isn't fair." "So I'll violate your copyrights - that's not fair either, but life isn't fair, right?"
> Capitalism/communism are economic systems.
> Dictatorships are political systems. You can
> have capitalist dictatorships, and you can
> have communist democracy.
The problem with communism, and the reason for its association with dictatorship, is that it has a serious problem with what to do if people don't work. Under pure capitalism, they just don't earn anything, can't eat and die. But under pure communism, you have to either force them to work or kick them out of the commune.
Capitalist advocates are very fond of saying that doing this is immoral, while leaving someone to die is ok because that's only inaction rather than action. I don't agree with that; I tend to take a "black box" view and say that if what goes in is no work and what comes out is dead folks then it doesn't really matter whether inaction or action is in the middle (and, of course, it ignores the fact that choosing capitalism in the knowledge it had that trait, was an action)
Forcing people to work is hard - you can't put them in jail, because then they're still not working. If you kick them out, they're still not working. And so in order to maintain some level of prosperity things tend to get draconian.
> Capitalists always defend their system of
> preference by associating it with freedom of
> opportunity, but it only works that way when
> you get started. Once the system is mature,
> the rich pretty much keep everyone else under
> control.
This is true. In fact, this was Marx's other complaint. Ignoring the "exploiting the workers" stuff, what he said was that as established producers make profit, their demand for "machinery of production" (ie, the stuff you need to run a business) drives up the cost so high that nobody who isn't already in business can afford it. When that happens, free enterprise collapses and you have socialism. Nowadays, marketing and distribution are probably more important than physical "machinery of production" but the principle stands.
But I think the solution would be to do something unusual with capitalism rather than throwing it away. For example, how about binary capitalism? In this, you have two currencies. Let's call them greenbacks and bluebacks. Greenbacks buy "machinery of production" (and marketing, and shelf space, and business lots, and tools, etc.) and essentials of life. Bluebacks buy luxuries like CDs, videos, etc. Greenbacks can be switched for bluebacks, but NOT the other way around.
Now what happens? When the big companies start selling luxuries to the consumer, they CAN'T use the money they gain to push up the price of market entry - because as they're selling luxuries, they're only earning bluebacks, which can't be spent on business items. They still get rewarded - they get lots of bluebacks which they and their staff can spend on luxuries for themselves. But they can't choke the business market. In order to get greenbacks to buy the stuff they need to stay in business, they have to make and sell business-useful items as well. That means there have to be buyers, so firms are forced to help others get into business by selling them stuff for which they will pay in greenbacks. They can't bulge out the greenback prices, because they'd outprice the market and wouldn't get greenbacks themselves, without which they can't keep their business going.
> There's a problem with this: in a free
> society, I should be free to believe whatever
> I want. I happen to believe that I'd like more
> than just a 'comfortable' level of existence,
> because what some people call comfortable I
> call barely livable. You may disagree with me,
> but who are you to impose your view upon me?
> By definition, a free society is one in which
> I am free to live however I want.
No, not true. You're free to believe whatever you like, but not free to - and certainly not supported in - act on your beliefs. So you can believe that Bill Gates ought to be shot (for instance), but you can't shoot him.
Also, you're not free to live however you want in today's society either. You have to live how you can afford.
> It's not Microsoft's fault that people are too
> lazy or not techically inclined enough to
> install third party add-ons.
Actually, it is at least partly so; the Windows user interface has selectively dumbed down parts of the system such that the nontechnical user is shuttled towards some features and not others. There's no real reason why you shouldn't be able to insert a CD and have the software install automatically with no further prompting required (the EULA can go on the CD envelope, and with the massive drives in most consumer PCs altering the install directory will only be necessary for most technical users; of course, there'd have to be an option to let you have an install dialog if you wanted), but MS haven't tried to implement that, not even in their own MSI installer. (Except on corporate installs, but that's only because they know the end-users there don't have any choice about what software to use.)
> They made an indispensable application that
> you like to use. People weren't forced to use.
> People chose to use it. Sure, now you almost
> have no choice, but back in the day
> WordPerfect was in the same position but MS
> unseated them. If it happened once, it can
> happen again.
If "Now you almost have no choice", then NOW the restriction should be applied. WordPerfect didn't have a monopoly in the same way that Word does; amongst other things WordPerfect was competing with WordStar and SamnaWord. Further, installing new software was more common then because even the relatively nontechnical users had more computer knowledge (with only a DOS CLI, they had to!)
> better than these competitors. Please note
> that Microsoft may have been ruthless in their
> business tactics but no one had to say "yes."
> The used their position to gain market
> dominance, but it wasn't given to them on a
> silver platter..
Actually, it WAS. Microsoft were *asked* by IBM to develop DOS. They didn't compete for it. They used DOS to push their apps, then DOS to push Windows, then Windows again to push their apps. Any other firm could have done as "well" as MS if they'd been the ones asked to develop DOS.
And it's not like MS were that good in the first place. I have, in a very old attic, a dusty copy of Microsoft Multiplan for Apple II. Yes, it's the same Microsoft. Multiplan wasn't particularly good; it was a ripoff of VisiCalc with more overblown menus.
> That's just absolutely ridiculous. It makes no
> business sense. Please state why you think
> they "must" ship other browsers pre-installed
> too?
Because there must be a free market - or at least, as free a market as possible - and there isn't one if one product is much easier to choose than all the others.
> Actually, they didn't ship AOL icons with
> Win95 because of anti-trust, they did it
> because of some clever manoeuvring by AOL.
No, it was the other way round. MS used the offer of an icon on the Windows desktop to tempt ISPs into using IE as their supported browser. Remember the Netscape lawsuit?
> Yeah, and those particular images of Bugs
> Bunny are now in the public domain, but if you
> try to make your own brand-new Bugs Bunny
> cartoon, you're still going to fall afoul of
> the Warners lawyers, because Bugs is still a
> trademark of Warners. Which was my original
> point.
Umm, isn't it only illegal to use trademarks where they "might cause confusion?"
So if you made your Bugs cartoon, but had a caption on the screen all the way through saying "THIS IS NOT A WARNER BROS. CARTOON" then that would be ok?
> However, suppose the value in movies that he
> acquired without paying for and value in music
> he listened to without paying for equaled his
> life savings.
It's still not reasonable.
If it was shown that: a) the RIAA could catch anyone pirating files on a particular network, b) they know about all the pirates, but c) they picked only the ones with the highest value pirated to sue; then IMHO they'd have an argument for entrapment, saying that by failing to take action earlier they created the impression that pirating was "safe" and encouraged them to rack up a higher value.
(Also, amusingly, if this was ever proven then a pirate who was not sued could just wait for 90 days and then point out that all RIAA's copyrights on the songs (s)he pirated just became invalid because they failed to act on known infringement within the time limit. Yes, that's in copyright law.. it's the reason behind all the "cease/sue/instant settle" things that happen when somebody is technically breaking a firm's copyright but the firm don't actually mind)
Normally you can't blame somebody for not catching you doing a crime (as in the infamous case of the murderer who tried to sue the police for negligence, arguing that they should have stopped him so he would have been guilty of only attempted murder!) BUT if it can be proven that the RIAA is completely capable of catching the low-volume pirates and is just picking and choosing then this might carry a bit more weight.
> RIAA and the Record Companies do not make
> artists into stars, their Fans do.
Sadly, that's not true. Bands only get fans through being known about, and they only get known about through advertising and radio play, which bands can only get through labels.
Look at many of the most popular bands and you'll see that they never had many fands in the first place. The Spice Girls didn't have any fans before they were the Spice Girls. They had plenty afterwards, because the marketers made them.
In order for a creator-driven model to really work, a radical change is needed in the consumption habits of people: folks must be prepared to look along the shelf of vertical stacked CDs when they want new music, not to pick the one at eye-level, the one that's advertised, or the one that's by the band they know.
Sadly, the only way to force this to happen would be to outlaw advertising and branding and nationalise retail. But that might be necessary soon anyway, to prevent free enterprise being crippled by unaffordable but required advertising and unbeatable established reputations.
Yea, WMA is notorious for making Sudden Web attacks when it's slightly suspicious about content.
Mind you, those are not exactly uncommon even in legit circumstances these days. Anyone know if there's a patch to insert a mandatory delay in IE before an outgoing request is sent, during which it can be aborted, so that Sudden Web attacks can be halted?
> College professors assume that everyone on the
> planet uses Microsoft Office, but they fail to
> consider how many of us use a pirated copy.
> Even better, how many of us use pirated
> software specifically because we must have it
> for school or work and can not afford to buy
> it?
Amen. College students love doing this. And best of all is when they make it so obvious.
At my old Uni, one of the projects on the Graphics course was to make a short rendered graphics video. "Short" only meant a few seconds, it didn't have to be anything complex and it didn't have to be realtime. But the number of students who, on their credits page, mentioned using 3D Studio MAX... and where did they get that from then. Sheesh.
Not as quite blatant as the cheek of another student who handed in a UML report with nicely drawn diagrams and mentioned in their references section that they'd drawn them at home.. using Rational Rose Enterprise. (!!!!)
> This is where Sony can make inroads against
> Nintendo with their upcoming handheld. Include
> a 32MB+ CF card (or built in memory) that can
> transfer games you download online, via USB
> cable to the handheld.
What, you mean like say, the GP32?
What happened with the GP32? It had emulators ported to it. Damn sweet to be able to play C64, NES, PCengine etc. games on a handheld. Especially sweet when you only have to port one binary (the emulator) to get a huge number of games. Not too sweet when the free availability, range, and quality of the emulated titles stomp on the commercial titles. I think someone, somewhere, might have bought a commercial GP32 game (that wasn't Pinball Dreams). Sometime. Once.
Oh, and let's not mention the horrors that can arise from a ported GB or GBA emulator.
No, the term "shareware" supposedly comes from the very old concept of a "developer commons".
The basic idea here was: you'd join a commons with some other programmers. Then, any useful software you write, you share with the others; in exchange, you get a share of all their software. Thus, software was effectively freely distributed among the commons, in anticipation that its value would be "repaid" by the users' contributions to the same commons.
Of course, this was only really useful back in the very, very old days where pretty much anyone who used a computer was a programmer because there was pretty much nothing to do with computers other than trying to program them. When non-programming users became the norm, these commons could no longer work, so the request for money was substituted for the anticipation of reciprocially shared software. Crippleware was the paranoid's version of that.
Oddly enough, the main killers of shareware games were the commercial companies who dumped "shareware" versions of their commercial games on shop shelves. Remember the "shareware Diablo" and the "shareware Descent"? This neatly taught consumers that anything called 'shareware' must be an inferior version of something they could buy in a shop, and killed the market for a while.
And it's available for PC *and Linux* as well.
;)
So much for beating the offerings of Linux developers
Yea, Crimsonland is definately cool (shame about Reflexive's other stuff though.. why oh why couldn't they have stuck a level editor in Ricochet?). Popcap and Garage games aren't necessarily that great - Popcap, in particular, tends to specialise in making clones of established puzzle games with flashier graphics, which isn't really very shareware; and their prices are outrageous.
For shareware firms how about Llamasoft - yes, that Llamasoft, with that Jeff Minter. Gridrunner++ is one of the best shareware games I've ever played and it only costs a fiver.
Or how about Elastomania?
> The pseudocode is simple enough, but the Z spec
> took up a whole page.
Who wrote the spec?
If a and b are part of your system state-schema then a swap operation is just:
Swap
delta System
--
theta System adres {a,b} = theta System' adres {a,b}
a' = b
b' = a
Short and not too complex. (The "theta System adres" bit is basically just saying "this operation doesn't change anything other than a and b in the system"; if I knew exactly what your System schema was I wouldn't have even needed to write that. And "adres" means "domain anti-restriction".)
> Well duh. The bank technically is only giving
> you an "advance" on that home loan you applied
> for too. Of course you still have to pay it
> back. The point is that if you could come up
> with the money to buy a house yourself you
> wouldn't have needed their help. Likewise,
> these artists need money to get nationwide
> exposure and they're willing to take the
> label's advances in the hopes that it will
> launch their career to the point where they're
> making their own living off it. Repeat after
> me: the labels are not just going to "give"
> artists money, they will LOAN it to them.
But this isn't true. Labels aren't like venture capitalists. They don't just "loan" the money to the musicians: they skim the profits the musician themselves can make from it, too.
And the musician can never reach the stage where they can make their living on their own, because to get stuff in stores it has to come from a label. No amount of money changes that.
> The label takes the risk for fronting money on
> an album, they deserve to reap the rewards.
The labels create the risk. Have every label stop spending millions advertising albums, hey presto, they don't need to spend them anymore, but Joe Consumer has to search for his music again.
> Exactly, that's all the more reason to sign
> with a major label!
No. If there were no major labels, stores couldn't make that choice. It's an artifical choice that creates a cartel, not a fact of nature.
> Okay, you're still missing the point. Let's
> say you're a "talented artist" who's put up a
> website selling songs at a "Slashdotter
> -approved" price of two cents per song. How am
> I going to find your music? I don't hear you
> on the radio, I don't see you on TV, I don't
> see articles about you in the newspaper, etc.
> You have no exposure.
Get rid of the major labels and no-one has any exposure, and this is no longer a problem.
> they just found out I had programming skills
> after I had a no-brainer job, and occasionally
> ask me to do some custom stuff. Nothing to
> heavy, but I still own the rights (I program
> everything on my own personal laptop).
In the UK at least they wouldn't need to give you a contract. Anything written using work resources as part of work, is automatically the employer's copyright. Work time counts as "work resources".
> The UK (Parlophone) version is completely
> fine. Normal CD. I checked very carefully
> before I bought it.
Well, my UK version had some of the best rip protection I was ever seen: the CD was slightly warped, making it play fine in players and computer CD drives, but making it impossible to spin in faster than 1x or to hold the rip sync for more than a few seconds. I'm heading to the patent office..
> The point is that you NEED those "greedy
> middle men" to get any exposure. What, do you
> think that just because you make amazing music
> that if you stick it up on a website (or
> better yet, put it on Kazaa) you'll be making
> millions in sales? Someone has to KNOW who you
> are first, it is unlikely that you'll just
> stumble upon artists if there's no marketing
> behind them.
But there's a problem with this.
Let's suppose for a moment that I can wave my magic wand and make music marketing disappear. Distribution, mastering, etc. will all still exist, but there'll be no marketing anymore. Not only that, but it'll magically stop any band putting their name on their albums. They have to just carry the album name, nothing more. Ping. There we go.
Now, how is Joe Soap going to buy his music? He can't just go buy what he's seen advertised, because there IS no advertising. He can't just buy what's on the point of presence displays, because there AREN'T ANY. He can't just buy the big established bands, because he CAN'T TELL which are their CDs. Likewise, shops can't pick and choose which songs to buy or not, or what to put where, because they can't tell either and there's no advertising for them to follow. So Joe Soap *HAS* to go to the shelves, listen to different music, see what he likes, buy the ones he likes the most without prejudice. If he likes one, he can tell his friends and they can buy it too. There are still reviews, but they can't be paid for.
Now, if Joe Soap was doing this, there'd be NO NEED for anyone to be marketed. Sooner or later someone would hear their album and the word of mouth would start to spread - good or bad. Any musician could enter the market on a fair footing, because they won't lose out by not being advertised (no-one else is advertised either!), nor will consumers reject them because they don't know them (they don't know who wrote any other music either)
Ok, ding. Back to the real world of advertising. But now you can see that the only reason new entrants need advertising, is because others have it. The only service those fat cats provide, is a solution to the problem they themselves create. It is very much like a protection racket.
And I do feel that something like this (ban all advertising, nationalise retail) will soon be necessary to prevent capitalism coming to a screeching halt because Joe Soap has stopped acting as a responsible consumer and just follows the ads (and thus always buys from the firms with the most money now, thus eliminating new competition, thus ensuring new firms fail, thus killing free enterprise and capitalism with it).
Heh, that reminds me of what Richard Bandler used to say (paraphrased):
"Teachers today say they can't interest our kids. Let me get this straight. They have the entire world of science, literature and mathematics to work with and they can't interest our children, but Nintendo Corp. can make our kids obsessively, hours-on-end-every-day interested in an Italian plumber crushing turtles by jumping on them.. and they think the *kids* are doing something wrong."
> This guy has a really good point here. I
> wouldn't mind programming on a gamecube, sure
> you couldn't just all of the sudden use the 3d
> engine in a week but people would eventually
> approach it with confidence.
Ever hear of Net Yaroze? That was basically that kind of thing, where Sony opened a simplified version of their coding API to any user who wanted to join.
It was freakin' impossible to use and only about 20 or so people outside Japan ever produced anything with it.
> We like the music and we want to use the
> technology that enables us to copy and share it
> over the Internet for free. We want the
> product, but we don't want to pay.
Except it isn't true. I've never downloaded an MP3 I don't own. But I *have* ripped MP3s off my CDs to listen to while coding without needing to switch CDs all the time, stuck them on a portable player, normalized them, etc. And I'd be very annoyed to be told that I couldn't do that because we need to block people from music sharing.
I also have an interest as a computery person in opposing the general tendancy for more and more technology to be produced to lock people out of their own hardware.
Your request is pretty much tantamount to asking for the songs for free. At that price, the RIAA would be making less money that it cost for them to send you the song in the first place.
> People are individually and unilaterally
> repealing copyright law, because it's not a
> fair law anymore.
That is true, but it isn't just because of works not dropping into the public domain; it's because of a whole bunch of other factors.
The most obvious one is the distribution-led market; ie, that if you write a piece of music yourself, you'll never be able to do anything with it (nor meaningfully use your copyright) unless you can sell it to a distribution company. Unfortunately, all the distribution companies are happy making money without you and don't really care, so you have an uphill struggle that's pretty much impossible and will involve you shedding most of your rights in the process. Yea, there's internet distribution, but you still have to get folks to know about it.
Sadly, there is little that can be done about this. The only thing that could be done would be to outlaw all advertising, thus forcing consumers to proactively search for goods they want to buy instead of just choosing from what they've passively heard about. But at this point, doing that would only entrench brand loyalty.
A second problem is the glamour-talent hypothesis, which is particularly bad in the music business now. The fact that they spend so much time broadcasting stuff which is designed to create the perception that a) the music stars are shown as superhuman gods/goddesses who never seem to do any work; and that b) if you have "musical talent" (whatever that is) then you don't have to do any work to write music, and if you don't have "talent" then you can never produce anything good regardless of how hard you work. Is it any wonder that people don't feel bad about taking the artist's work for nothing? All the media about those artists is practically designed to condition them into thinking that the artists don't do any work and spend days and weeks having fun!
When stuff *is* distributed freely, and people *are* honest and direct about the work they've done, then folks very often *don't* copy it, because then they *do* think the law is fair.
> Huh? Since when do expensive advertising
> campaigns make a more customer-friendly company?
Since stupid people started believing what adverts say?
> in proceedings challenging a patent, the loser
> pays the winner's legal fees. Not a bad idea
> for all civil case, btw - cuts down on the
> number of spurious claims in general.
No, it doesn't work.
Under the US system (everyone pays their own lawyer) BigCorp spins out the lawsuit until LittleGuy can't afford it anymore.
Under the UK system (loser pays all), BigCorp spins out the lawsuit and pumps up its own costs by hiring expensive lawyers and throwing everything it possibly can into the "legal costs" bracket (such as making the lawyer pay for transporting witnesses so it gets considered a lawsuit cost). Soon LittleGuy is facing ruin a thousand times over if he loses the suit, whereas BigCorp is facing a blip on a balance sheet. BigCorp then offers a settlement which LittleGuy normally takes because, even if he's 'in the right', the risk is just too great.