It's been shown in several studies that too many choices hinders the decision-making process and leads to decreased happiness, which was the subject of the book I linked by psychologist Barry Schwartz.
I'm familiar with his theory, which is essentially that when we have too much information to process, we get unhappy, mostly because we fear we aren't making the best choice, or the cost of making a decision is greater than the benefits the choices convey. There are two ways to deal with the problem of too much information to process: less information or better processing. I advocate the latter whenever feasible.
It goes without saying that the sites on the first page of the search results get the vast majority of hits. Nobody wants to sift through the 10,000,000+ hits a Google search gives you. It's an impressive number but ultimately meaningless in terms of how most people use a search engine.
You missed my point. There is an ever increasing amount of information, but Google helps you process the information you need. That's why the existance of 10,000,000 sites on a particular subject doesn't cause us anxiety. Google doesn't make those sites inaccessible, and if you decide are searching for something much more specific, a site that may have been a million pages deep will be the first result. Google's role is in the organization of that information.
I'm not sure if the best answer to the paradox of choice is to remove choice and configurability. For example, newegg offers a ton of deals for buying certain combinations of hardware, and when there are 231 possible deals for your CPU, it's not feasible to try and sort through that. The answer wouldn't be to stop those deals, but rather, to make it easier to process all that information.
One might have argued at one point that there are too many websites on the internet, but the solution to that wasn't to reduce the number of websites, but to create good search engines that let us make sense of it all.
Yes, diet is more important than exercise in terms of weight and body composition. Not exercising for a month will probably make you heavier, and your body will consist of more fat and less muscle. Not eating food for a month, on the other hand, will make you lose weight, and consist of dead tissue. Outside of that, it's not an either/or issue. For some reason, we cling to the idiotic notion that if there are two factors involved in something, they effect the two factors have is that of a ratio, where the more effect one has, the less the other has. Nature vs. Nurture is one of the most common versions of this notion. There isn't a 'more important factor,' as the relationship between the two factors is more accurately described as multiplicative than additive (the reality is going to be even more complex math than that)
What kind of economy is built on giving things away for free?
A post-scarcity economy, although 'economy' may not be the proper word for this, since the concern of economics is how to allocate scarce resources.
And your analogy sucks because a good cheesecake recipe will taste good a thousand years from now while today's best software will be useless in a few decades.
I sort of doubt that. Many Unix tools are largely unchanged from their initial conception. Either way, it still works the same. The difference is that exponential increases in computing power and peripherals have lead to better methods of doing certain tasks, so it is relatively useless. For the comparisons to recipes, they have changed greatly as well. Compared to a thousand years ago, our recipes are far better, because most spices are no longer extreme rarities and we don't use rotten meat so often. The best recipe from back then would taste just as good now, but it would probably taste like shit to us.
This shouldn't be a philosophical debate, people want to get paid for writing good software and people are willing to pay to get it
Then pay them directly to write software. There's no sense in creating an artificial scarcity model to indirectly fund the manhours.
They are bigger than the studios themselves, which is generally what Hollywood refers to. The involvement of other players does make things a bit more difficult to separate, though.
Not if we're talking about retail, which I think we were. Not even close.
I realize that there's a certain amount of economy of scale involved that changes things up, but I didn't feeling like doing in depth research for a rhetorical that involves a ton of factors that can't be accounted for given this little information. I added on a K to account for that somewhat, but whatever. Since you feel like being pedantic, let's change it to 10K and 1K MORE cups from Starbucks.
True, but that ignores the fact that the zeroth copy doesn't magically fall out of the sky.
No, it doesn't. The cost of producing the original is the same regardless of how many copies are sold. That's my entire point. There are an initial costs, and further costs are negligible. This is different from the economics of physical goods.
The notion of more or less regulation is a fallacy. The ideal we should be striving for is smart and effective regulation. The shallow mindset you are advocating is how we end with such an awful mess. We end up having strong regulations when it comes to keeping competition out and weak regulation when it comes to controlling the non-competitive markets the aforementioned regulation creates.
Actually, food does have to be designed, both at the crop level and the entree level. If you are eating domesticated food, it was designed. If you are eating prepared food, it was more explicitly designed.
There is nothing irrational in expecting that when you create something (A) and exchange it for something else (B), you should only exchange it if B is worth more to you than the time you spent on creating A.
Yes, but that's not how this works at all. The equal or greater value argument wouldn't have a fixed per unit price, but rather a flexible price that varies depending upon the number of users. The more users there are, the lower the needed cost from each user in order to make a profit.
Yeah, the government and the studios don't care, but the public does. If the internet is shut down, Americans can't get their porn. And if Americans can't get their porn, they'll bring out their guns.
But Google is actually bigger than Hollywood. They just don't spend as much on lobbying because their business model is based largely on being left alone, while Hollywood's business model currently depends on having the government tell others what they can't do.
GoDaddy apparently had a material benefit in SOPA. It doesn't matter whether or not Rackspace is shitty, this cuts into their bottom line. Anyways, I'm glad they've publicly come out against it. We need all the help we can get in making sure that SOPA doesn't pass, and even if this is nothing more than lipservice PR, it's lipservice PR that makes SOPA appear less supported.
The cost of making 10K cups of coffee is somewhere around 10 times the cost of making 1K cups of coffee.
The cost of making 10K copies of angry birds is almost identical to the cost of making 1K copies of angry birds.
Creation of food inherently has a significant cost given current technology. If food could be copied as cheaply and efficiently as software, anybody that insists that food should be paid for is an idiot holding us back from having a Star Trek economy.
The thing that's actually irrational is assuming there should be a fixed cost for something that, practically speaking, costs nothing to reproduce.
A lot of the times, what you are talking is done to avoid giving a certain company free advertisement. This could be a particular problem if the program features Yuengling and Budweiser is one your biggest advertisers. Also, fashion tends to have weaker protection, since trademark doesn't protect functionality, and a big part of the functionality of fashion is looking nice. The design on a beer can doesn't make your beer taste better.
I haven't seen the film so I can't confirm it, but in the clip Zach's character clearly mispronounces Louis Vuitton as Lewis Vuitton. That would seem to suggest he knows jack shit about fashion. I can't find a high quality shot of the bag itself, but TFA says the bag is "marked LVM." That would seem to suggest that it's a rather pathetic knockoff, and that's possibly the joke itself. Thus, LV wants WB to pretend a real LV is a fake LV, and deserves to be slapped for being so stupid.
Then John Doe will be an indie author. Now, he may not get an advance, meaning it will take him a little longer to shift to full time, but once he has books written, he will make more money off of them, so the likelihood of him being able to remain a full time author is better.
And most Americans aren't good authors. I suspect the overwhelming majority of those that think they are going to be the next Stephen King write utter garbage.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm familiar with his theory, which is essentially that when we have too much information to process, we get unhappy, mostly because we fear we aren't making the best choice, or the cost of making a decision is greater than the benefits the choices convey. There are two ways to deal with the problem of too much information to process: less information or better processing. I advocate the latter whenever feasible.
You missed my point. There is an ever increasing amount of information, but Google helps you process the information you need. That's why the existance of 10,000,000 sites on a particular subject doesn't cause us anxiety. Google doesn't make those sites inaccessible, and if you decide are searching for something much more specific, a site that may have been a million pages deep will be the first result. Google's role is in the organization of that information.
The iPad has enough power to run Windows XP no problem (although it's not on the right architecture to do so).
I'm not sure if the best answer to the paradox of choice is to remove choice and configurability. For example, newegg offers a ton of deals for buying certain combinations of hardware, and when there are 231 possible deals for your CPU, it's not feasible to try and sort through that. The answer wouldn't be to stop those deals, but rather, to make it easier to process all that information.
One might have argued at one point that there are too many websites on the internet, but the solution to that wasn't to reduce the number of websites, but to create good search engines that let us make sense of it all.
Yes, diet is more important than exercise in terms of weight and body composition. Not exercising for a month will probably make you heavier, and your body will consist of more fat and less muscle. Not eating food for a month, on the other hand, will make you lose weight, and consist of dead tissue. Outside of that, it's not an either/or issue. For some reason, we cling to the idiotic notion that if there are two factors involved in something, they effect the two factors have is that of a ratio, where the more effect one has, the less the other has. Nature vs. Nurture is one of the most common versions of this notion. There isn't a 'more important factor,' as the relationship between the two factors is more accurately described as multiplicative than additive (the reality is going to be even more complex math than that)
It's grease, it's good. Maybe not the best grease, but still good nonetheless.
A post-scarcity economy, although 'economy' may not be the proper word for this, since the concern of economics is how to allocate scarce resources.
I sort of doubt that. Many Unix tools are largely unchanged from their initial conception. Either way, it still works the same. The difference is that exponential increases in computing power and peripherals have lead to better methods of doing certain tasks, so it is relatively useless. For the comparisons to recipes, they have changed greatly as well. Compared to a thousand years ago, our recipes are far better, because most spices are no longer extreme rarities and we don't use rotten meat so often. The best recipe from back then would taste just as good now, but it would probably taste like shit to us.
Then pay them directly to write software. There's no sense in creating an artificial scarcity model to indirectly fund the manhours.
They are bigger than the studios themselves, which is generally what Hollywood refers to. The involvement of other players does make things a bit more difficult to separate, though.
I realize that there's a certain amount of economy of scale involved that changes things up, but I didn't feeling like doing in depth research for a rhetorical that involves a ton of factors that can't be accounted for given this little information. I added on a K to account for that somewhat, but whatever. Since you feel like being pedantic, let's change it to 10K and 1K MORE cups from Starbucks.
No, it doesn't. The cost of producing the original is the same regardless of how many copies are sold. That's my entire point. There are an initial costs, and further costs are negligible. This is different from the economics of physical goods.
The notion of more or less regulation is a fallacy. The ideal we should be striving for is smart and effective regulation. The shallow mindset you are advocating is how we end with such an awful mess. We end up having strong regulations when it comes to keeping competition out and weak regulation when it comes to controlling the non-competitive markets the aforementioned regulation creates.
Yes, but that's not how this works at all. The equal or greater value argument wouldn't have a fixed per unit price, but rather a flexible price that varies depending upon the number of users. The more users there are, the lower the needed cost from each user in order to make a profit.
His record seems to confirm it. He's been very open about ending the war on drugs, and allowing pretty much anything at the federal level.
Yeah, the government and the studios don't care, but the public does. If the internet is shut down, Americans can't get their porn. And if Americans can't get their porn, they'll bring out their guns.
But Google is actually bigger than Hollywood. They just don't spend as much on lobbying because their business model is based largely on being left alone, while Hollywood's business model currently depends on having the government tell others what they can't do.
Separating his personal views from his political philosophy is Ron Paul's thing, though.
GoDaddy apparently had a material benefit in SOPA. It doesn't matter whether or not Rackspace is shitty, this cuts into their bottom line. Anyways, I'm glad they've publicly come out against it. We need all the help we can get in making sure that SOPA doesn't pass, and even if this is nothing more than lipservice PR, it's lipservice PR that makes SOPA appear less supported.
They're not half as stupid as those that think artificially creating scarcity is a good idea.
The cost of making 10K cups of coffee is somewhere around 10 times the cost of making 1K cups of coffee.
The cost of making 10K copies of angry birds is almost identical to the cost of making 1K copies of angry birds.
Creation of food inherently has a significant cost given current technology. If food could be copied as cheaply and efficiently as software, anybody that insists that food should be paid for is an idiot holding us back from having a Star Trek economy.
The thing that's actually irrational is assuming there should be a fixed cost for something that, practically speaking, costs nothing to reproduce.
There's a leap week built in for that.
Halloween is gone. On the plus side, it appears that they've managed to get a lot of the drinking holidays on the weekend.
A lot of the times, what you are talking is done to avoid giving a certain company free advertisement. This could be a particular problem if the program features Yuengling and Budweiser is one your biggest advertisers. Also, fashion tends to have weaker protection, since trademark doesn't protect functionality, and a big part of the functionality of fashion is looking nice. The design on a beer can doesn't make your beer taste better.
I haven't seen the film so I can't confirm it, but in the clip Zach's character clearly mispronounces Louis Vuitton as Lewis Vuitton. That would seem to suggest he knows jack shit about fashion. I can't find a high quality shot of the bag itself, but TFA says the bag is "marked LVM." That would seem to suggest that it's a rather pathetic knockoff, and that's possibly the joke itself. Thus, LV wants WB to pretend a real LV is a fake LV, and deserves to be slapped for being so stupid.
Because they aren't advertising a real bag.
Then John Doe will be an indie author. Now, he may not get an advance, meaning it will take him a little longer to shift to full time, but once he has books written, he will make more money off of them, so the likelihood of him being able to remain a full time author is better.
And most Americans aren't good authors. I suspect the overwhelming majority of those that think they are going to be the next Stephen King write utter garbage.