"[W]hen you're downloading and consuming over 15 gigabytes of data a month, you're likely streaming Spotify. You're likely streaming YouTube. You're likely streaming Netflix. So we think because the FANG companies will not give us access to the numbers that they have, we have to apply a broad-based levy. They're forcing us to."
Your likely keeping Windows up to date, you likely bought a game on steam, your likely a little too into porn, your likely developing on the web. 15gb a month is pretty much everyone that works or consumes any type of entertainment on the web.
Given a corporate tax of 21% I'm led to believe Apple took in about $280 million in profit last year from the $56 million in taxes. Oh wait they made closer to $10 billion. Maybe they should pay their damn taxes or get the hell out of the US. It's appalling we let corporations get away with this, even more we seem to encourage it. Given Apples ample reserve cash there is absolutely no excuse for this, this should be enough for people to wake up and boycott their products, as if the consumer gouging on excessively marked up products in the first place wasn't enough.
"That may be accurate, but isn't useful for determining if the new version is worth downloading."
Last I checked most updates getting downloaded has absolutely nothing to do with whether they are worth downloading. It has much more to do with your phone, game or other internet connect software forcing you to update or simply annoying the shit out of you until you give in. If you do actually find release notes before being forces to update, the content of them is pretty much mute. Whatever entity that decided you need to update is going to force it on you.
I know enterprise techs have somewhat more control here than consumers, but they still deal with if you want to do X you have to version Y for no other reason than we said so. Occasionally there is actually some technical backing for said reason, more often than not that reason is more directly related to you vendor bank account.
Sure, I'll give CBS $5.99, NBC $5.99, TBS $5.99, ect, ect, ect.
Just that fact that every network thinks they need their own on demand distribution channel is enough to make me avoid any of them all together. If they would all back Netflix or Hulu or NextBigThingStreamer with past and current content I'd have no problem paying $40+ a month even with limited commercials. Other than thinking they need to increase their margin quarter after quarter while paying Ashton Kutcher $1 million an episode for 2 and half men....really, $100,000 would be reasonably excessive, $1 million is ludicrously, stupidly, %$&%$ing excessive. There's no reason they they can't a have a good business without being greedy bitches. I know it's America but the golden age of Hollywood is over. They need to realize there's millions of people on Youtube willing to entertain for far less and they need to learn to compete.
How about they focus on getting 4k working decently first. Saturates DisplayPort and cuts in and out in major graphics cards, and screen tearing with dual HDMI. I'm sure Dual DisplayPort at 5k will fix it all....
I know how to make video games less violent, add more sex.... beating hookers, why not as long they have their tops on otherwise the NC-17 rating makes it un-publishable.
I run 2 of these now discountinued monitors and love them. Still some available on the refurb market. I paid less than $200 each some 3 years ago. These work out to a 98 ppi density, which is damn close the retina definition. They are relative plan monitors that should have been marketed better and they would still be around IMHO. Find it funny that people are complaining about the lack of high resolution displays at reasonable prices, when one existed and flopped because people were afraid to lose a few FPS.
Want to fight piracy, pay your artists.
I've know this for years, used to play WoW with a singer for a band that averaged around 300,000 albums sells per release. He told me about 75% of his income was t-shirt sales at the venue, 20% earnings for playing on tour and less than 5% were CD/Online sales; on a good year he'd make low 6 figures. If you want to support record studios, the RIAA and media companies by all means go out and buy every CD you can afford. If you want to support the artist, steal the CD and go to a concert; buy a shirt while your there. The artist is likely to make more off that shirt sale then if you bought their entire discography. CD releases are a promotional tool, only the biggest artists make any real money off them but the studios clean up regardless.
Listen free on youtube, pandora or one of the other free options and go to concerts, buy an overprices t-shirt or two and you will be doing more to support an artist then anyone sitting around listening to their iPod or CD player.
This analogy works for movies as well, like an actor see their movie in the theater when they get their biggest cut. Want to support MGM, Sony, ect... buy the DVD or Blueray. This the reason the production companys are in such an uproar over piracy, they are losing their share while crying save the artists.
DVD, WTF is that and why do we still have them. Sure they make great coasters and fill shelves that would otherwise lie empty, but really serve no other significant purpose. This is just another part of why it's easier to pirate then buy things legitimately.......
Netflix and Hulu have it right IMHO. If all the studios would back them and make their entire libraries, minus the standard theatrical release window, available through services like these there would be no need for DVDs, cable, satellite or any of the traditional distribution methods that the studios, as well as uninformed consumers, cling to like a sinking ship; all the while complaining about how cold the knee deep water is. If you want to minimize piracy, give me a distribution channel that can compete and at a reasonable price. Think along the lines of what you currently pay for cable.
As for TV series on DVD, my personal favorite failure is the Simpsons. It only took them like 10 years to catch up with current episodes on DVD, I could pirate them the day they aired 20 years ago.
The thing that gets me in the size of the these "micro" transactions. Seriously, $99 for Smurfs on mobile game is crazy, that's the price of 2 full blown console games and all that does is get you in the door to buy more shit. While this an extreme, and obviously exploitative example it is far from uncommon. I mean look at WoW, $15 to dollars to move a character after realizing the server you leveled on has shit for end game potential, this should be a free but limited service to improve the player experience. $15 for a an in game pet, yes I know a portion goes to charity but its a damn pet. Throw in there DLC, I quit playing my Xbox partial because it really pissed me off when I bought Dragon Age and not 10 hours in they where hitting me up for more money to unlock a quest line. A hour or so extra content? Two bucks? Nope more like 15.... WTF does that come a kiss?
While I don't really have a huge problem with the idea of micro transactions, keep them micro. In game item, 1-2 dollars max. Extra hour of content, less than a dollar. Any more then that I can find a plethora of other things in real life that offer more bang of the buck. Personally I evaluate games by price/per of playtime. I refuse to pay $50 for game that is going to keep my attention for less then 50 hours, yes this can include multi-player and overall replayability, any less that and it probably wasn't very fun away.
Slashdot Mirror
"[W]hen you're downloading and consuming over 15 gigabytes of data a month, you're likely streaming Spotify. You're likely streaming YouTube. You're likely streaming Netflix. So we think because the FANG companies will not give us access to the numbers that they have, we have to apply a broad-based levy. They're forcing us to." Your likely keeping Windows up to date, you likely bought a game on steam, your likely a little too into porn, your likely developing on the web. 15gb a month is pretty much everyone that works or consumes any type of entertainment on the web.
Considering the location, the property in question must be roughly 1 square meter in size to be valued at $200.
Given a corporate tax of 21% I'm led to believe Apple took in about $280 million in profit last year from the $56 million in taxes. Oh wait they made closer to $10 billion. Maybe they should pay their damn taxes or get the hell out of the US. It's appalling we let corporations get away with this, even more we seem to encourage it. Given Apples ample reserve cash there is absolutely no excuse for this, this should be enough for people to wake up and boycott their products, as if the consumer gouging on excessively marked up products in the first place wasn't enough.
"That may be accurate, but isn't useful for determining if the new version is worth downloading." Last I checked most updates getting downloaded has absolutely nothing to do with whether they are worth downloading. It has much more to do with your phone, game or other internet connect software forcing you to update or simply annoying the shit out of you until you give in. If you do actually find release notes before being forces to update, the content of them is pretty much mute. Whatever entity that decided you need to update is going to force it on you. I know enterprise techs have somewhat more control here than consumers, but they still deal with if you want to do X you have to version Y for no other reason than we said so. Occasionally there is actually some technical backing for said reason, more often than not that reason is more directly related to you vendor bank account.
Sure, I'll give CBS $5.99, NBC $5.99, TBS $5.99, ect, ect, ect. Just that fact that every network thinks they need their own on demand distribution channel is enough to make me avoid any of them all together. If they would all back Netflix or Hulu or NextBigThingStreamer with past and current content I'd have no problem paying $40+ a month even with limited commercials. Other than thinking they need to increase their margin quarter after quarter while paying Ashton Kutcher $1 million an episode for 2 and half men....really, $100,000 would be reasonably excessive, $1 million is ludicrously, stupidly, %$&%$ing excessive. There's no reason they they can't a have a good business without being greedy bitches. I know it's America but the golden age of Hollywood is over. They need to realize there's millions of people on Youtube willing to entertain for far less and they need to learn to compete.
How about they focus on getting 4k working decently first. Saturates DisplayPort and cuts in and out in major graphics cards, and screen tearing with dual HDMI. I'm sure Dual DisplayPort at 5k will fix it all....
I know how to make video games less violent, add more sex.... beating hookers, why not as long they have their tops on otherwise the NC-17 rating makes it un-publishable.
No beer and no TV make Homer something, something
I run 2 of these now discountinued monitors and love them. Still some available on the refurb market. I paid less than $200 each some 3 years ago. These work out to a 98 ppi density, which is damn close the retina definition. They are relative plan monitors that should have been marketed better and they would still be around IMHO. Find it funny that people are complaining about the lack of high resolution displays at reasonable prices, when one existed and flopped because people were afraid to lose a few FPS.
$6.4 Billion in losses last year, with ideas like this they will top that next year easily. Go Sony, just hope it doesn't take too long to go broke.
Want to fight piracy, pay your artists. I've know this for years, used to play WoW with a singer for a band that averaged around 300,000 albums sells per release. He told me about 75% of his income was t-shirt sales at the venue, 20% earnings for playing on tour and less than 5% were CD/Online sales; on a good year he'd make low 6 figures. If you want to support record studios, the RIAA and media companies by all means go out and buy every CD you can afford. If you want to support the artist, steal the CD and go to a concert; buy a shirt while your there. The artist is likely to make more off that shirt sale then if you bought their entire discography. CD releases are a promotional tool, only the biggest artists make any real money off them but the studios clean up regardless. Listen free on youtube, pandora or one of the other free options and go to concerts, buy an overprices t-shirt or two and you will be doing more to support an artist then anyone sitting around listening to their iPod or CD player. This analogy works for movies as well, like an actor see their movie in the theater when they get their biggest cut. Want to support MGM, Sony, ect... buy the DVD or Blueray. This the reason the production companys are in such an uproar over piracy, they are losing their share while crying save the artists.
DVD, WTF is that and why do we still have them. Sure they make great coasters and fill shelves that would otherwise lie empty, but really serve no other significant purpose. This is just another part of why it's easier to pirate then buy things legitimately.......
Netflix and Hulu have it right IMHO. If all the studios would back them and make their entire libraries, minus the standard theatrical release window, available through services like these there would be no need for DVDs, cable, satellite or any of the traditional distribution methods that the studios, as well as uninformed consumers, cling to like a sinking ship; all the while complaining about how cold the knee deep water is. If you want to minimize piracy, give me a distribution channel that can compete and at a reasonable price. Think along the lines of what you currently pay for cable.
As for TV series on DVD, my personal favorite failure is the Simpsons. It only took them like 10 years to catch up with current episodes on DVD, I could pirate them the day they aired 20 years ago.
The thing that gets me in the size of the these "micro" transactions. Seriously, $99 for Smurfs on mobile game is crazy, that's the price of 2 full blown console games and all that does is get you in the door to buy more shit. While this an extreme, and obviously exploitative example it is far from uncommon. I mean look at WoW, $15 to dollars to move a character after realizing the server you leveled on has shit for end game potential, this should be a free but limited service to improve the player experience. $15 for a an in game pet, yes I know a portion goes to charity but its a damn pet. Throw in there DLC, I quit playing my Xbox partial because it really pissed me off when I bought Dragon Age and not 10 hours in they where hitting me up for more money to unlock a quest line. A hour or so extra content? Two bucks? Nope more like 15.... WTF does that come a kiss?
While I don't really have a huge problem with the idea of micro transactions, keep them micro. In game item, 1-2 dollars max. Extra hour of content, less than a dollar. Any more then that I can find a plethora of other things in real life that offer more bang of the buck. Personally I evaluate games by price/per of playtime. I refuse to pay $50 for game that is going to keep my attention for less then 50 hours, yes this can include multi-player and overall replayability, any less that and it probably wasn't very fun away.
Just my 2 cents....