Everyone knows that the Internet is moving from free to fee. So why isn't the Internet army fighting back?
Because for all the yelping and whining, they realize, like everyone else, that bandwidth and "content" (I hate that term) are NOT free, and that giving away a product is an inherently flawed business model that will cost jobs and good products.
People who want everything for free are indirectly supporting a minimum-wage, no-opportunity society where the only companies allowed to make money are those who charge for Internet access.
Want to see some of the cool sites/businesses on the Internet succeed? Great! BUY SOMETHING AND QUIT WHINING ABOUT HOW EVERYTHING ISN'T FREE!
Votes with dollars sometimes count just as much as votes with voices or ballots when it comes to the economy.
And so the end of free content nears.
There was never "free" content. It was just donated. "Free" content is only free if your time is worth nothing.
calls it "the counterrevolution": mature companies in mature categories striking back at Silicon Valley technology and the pricing-power collapse that it implies.
And they are doing this with employment and B2B purchasing *at least* as much as they are with on-line customers.
Their efforts are meeting with considerable success.
For now.
in the future ( through Internet-Protocol telephony ), all voice calls would be free.
No, they would be less expensive, and paid to someone else.
Voice calls are still not free...and they never will be. People need to EAT. (When is this everything-free fantasy going to go away? IT DOESN'T EXIST!!)
but it is a measure of Hollywood's clout that California senator Dianne Feinstein -- formerly the mayor of San Francisco -- has cosponsored it.
Huh? She's a democrat senator from the state where Hollywood is. Hello? McFly?
may well pass both houses of Congress. That's real power.
Which is well-balanced by a certain pen at the other end of Pennsylvania avenue, and a gavel or three around the corner.
These days, their business depends on it.
What business? I thought everything was free?
Basic Rule of the Internet: Bandwidth is not free. Therefore content is not free. Period.
The Internet will continue to change business until it is totally dissimilar to what it is today. It will provide opportunity on a scale unimaginable 20 years ago for people to start and grow their own businesses, PROVIDED those who are served by those businesses participate without the incessant whining about having to fork over/cough up/shell out/plunk down a few dollars here and there.
They may have to lay off many of the technitians that are required to keep their networks running.
Oh, they *will* lay off as many people as they can. First option and *priority* for any "corporate" company is to destroy careers first, ask questions later.
Probably one of the best (and most innovative, gameplay-wise) side scrolling games ever written...except for those pod ships.. I *hated* those little red fighters that flew out of them.
So what do you serve? Seems to me the person served could refuse the search on the grounds there is no warrant, and it also seems that they could very well be sustained by a court.
Where is the record of the conversation? How can the person being served verify the legality of the search without a signature? Or without the "particular description" required by the 4th amendment? Is there room in the 4th amendment for a verbal contract?
Why have warrants at all? Just dial 1-900-WARRANT and take whatever they want. Can they leave the petition on the answering machine?
Sounds like a spectacularly easy way to get evidence tossed.
and in some cases, they can get a warrant on the spot to do it, if there is a judge handy to a phone. Its not all that hard to get nailed for doing nothing wrong.
Nope. Can't get a warrant on the phone. The warrant and any evidence produced therefrom will be tossed the instant it hits the courtroom on the grounds it was improperly served. Warrants have to be in writing and signed.
most of the requests I see for low poly 3d modellers for games ask/demand that the user is proficient in Max.
Which is interesting, given the likelihood of the average hobbiest/graduate owning a paid license for MAX is somewhere around... oh, let's see... uh... ZERO.
And, like all technical skills, proficiency in any other 3D package is less than useless. So all the nine-hour-a-day Blender people needn't bother.
But the game industry is way too obsessed with getting just one more frame per second out of the voxel-mapper than in building something other than a clone.
This is the industry that asked "who's going to buy a game about doing the chores?" when the Sims was being pitched.... for three years.
Now, they can't churn out the sequels fast enough. (and the middle manager who asked that question probably got a bonus and a free vacation, PAID FOR by sales of the Sims).
Perhaps someone will develop and market such a game, but it is highly doubtful it will be the "game industry."
ooh, even BETTER graphics? will it go 80 FPS and have tesselated-voxel-optimized-mip-mapping and gigapixel-super-flex-capacitor-alpha-blended vertex buffering too?
YAWN
Will it have any new GAMEPLAY features or a well-written STORY or interesting CHARACTERS or a compelling SETTING?
Or will it (more likely) be another overpriced framerate-fest with one more feature on top of the tired FPS design that was new almost TEN YEARS ago? (ooh look we can drive trucks now!)
Knowing the "game industry" the answer is fairly obvious.
it must be carefully regimented and designed to communicate the corporate message, not a personal one.
Because middle management isn't interested in productivity or the happiness/accomplishments of their employees. ALL that matters is every other Friday. Period.
Only government has the power to legislate. Copy protection schemes are illegal when they drift into abridging free speech, ergo Fair Use, Parody, Trademark exceptions, reverse engineering, etc.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
This, along with the M$ stuff, is drifting towards "only approved content will play on your [TV/Rio/PC/PDA]" Who approves the content? Whoops! First amendment!
Unemployment only measures those receiving UI. The real unemployment rate is probably double what's reported.
So you know a half-dozen people who are unemployable. Big deal.
It's a big deal for them.
We had a huge run up in the supply of workers and a huge drop in demand for them
A huge drop in demand? I thought unemployment was only 6%?
The Bloomberg article quotes support my point:
Unemployment rose from 5.8 percent in May
The U.S. economy grew at a 6.1 percent annual rate
That's companies laying off workers to boost the stock price.
The fact is, people are out of work, and when they do find work, it's temporary at best, and underpaid. Companies are still laying people off TODAY by the tens of thousands while the economists claim 6.1% growth, and people who are qualified to do just about any job can't get work running 10-keys and filing. The rest are stocking shelves at Wal-Mart to pay off their student loans. They're told they are "overqualified" at interviews while they borrow money to feed their kids.
An economy that fails to keep it's best minds employed is a failed economy.
Despite Japan's prolonged recession it remains the world's second largest economy. Its also the first in the world in the field of robotics. I don't see how their businesses are falling behind technologically.
Japan is an example of an economy that ISN'T falling behind technologically, because they KEEP their MOST QUALIFIED people EMPLOYED. That was my POINT in the ORIGINAL MESSAGE.
6% isn't fiction, (it recently creeped up to 5.9% actually). What we had was a bubble.
So all of the people out of work now *should* be out of work, right? There have been a half million layoffs (and those are only the reported ones) in the last 18 months, with about 40,000 of those happening in the last two.
We should always have hundreds of thousands of college-educated, highly-qualified people spending their productive time reading dice.com, I suppose.
The fact that it was able to burst and have such tepid effects on the greater economy as a whole is what's amazing and a true testement to the resilliency of the American economy.
LOL!! Oh, this is incredible. The economy has lost trillions of dollars in capital. Hundreds of thousands of people have been out of work for well over a year. They've lost their HOMES and FAMILIES and CAREERS so some MIDDLE MANAGER can look good at meetings.
Tens of thousands are being laid off every month. People AREN'T BEING HIRED BACK. This "recovery" is nothing of the sort.
I PERSONALLY know a half-dozen people who are unemployable. They have sent out literally THOUSANDS of resumes over the past 18 months, and they can't RENT a job. The ones who are employed are either miserable, or know factually they will be out of work within six months.
But that's ok, right? "It's only 6%" say the apologists. Well, as far as I'm concerned it's not right, bubble or not.
Good to see. Now development can continue, and I certainly hope the company can continue development on their web site (which is excellent, especially the tutorials) and generate greater revenue.
If they aren't earning their keep than they should be let go. Laying off workers allows them to bee freed up for more productive work.
Nahh, it's: "if our stock price isn't high enough, they should be let go. Taking a person's career and home allows them to be freed up for more productive work, like trying to keep their family from starving."
Laying a person off should be the last resort just prior to Chapter 7. It should *not* be an everyday business "action item" like cleaning the #%*&@$)(*@$ whiteboards.
Hey, personally, I couldn't care less. If the plant-waterers want to let their companies fall behind technologically, it just means less competition. But there are still a lot of unemployed and hurting people out there. (and 6% is a fiction) They've had their careers destroyed, and not because of some "bubble."
Businesses just find it more convenient to fire people to "artificially" prop up the stock price than to actually do real work, and that's wrong. And it isn't just "tech." A wide cross-section of middle-class income-level jobs are being made unavailable by all of this.
charging for content hasn't been a successful business model'' to ``people won't pay for content.'' These are two entirely different things.
Yet they are often confused, and not always inadvertently. A lot of people screech "greedy company!!" when all businesses are trying to do (usually) is provide better service at a lower price.
Selling subscriptions hasn't helped them break even
That's the difference. In other words nobody is getting filthy stinking rich off selling content. Whole different question.
That's the goal of a business model, after all: to either enable you to break even, or, preferably, make a profit. Salon hasn't done that.
Because they overspent. Their problem exists somewhere between the top line and the bottom line (where middle management spends, what a surprise).
it's thus far been true that people won't pay in sufficient numbers or at sufficiently high rates to make selling content a profitable enterprise.
Because Salon's overspending is not limited to Salon. We've all watched the Aeron chair stories.
People will pay for good products, no matter where or how they are made available. Businesses that overspend do not necessarily speak to the quality of a business model.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone knows that the Internet is moving from free to fee. So why isn't the Internet army fighting back?
..and they never will be. People need to EAT. (When is this everything-free fantasy going to go away? IT DOESN'T EXIST!!)
Because for all the yelping and whining, they realize, like everyone else, that bandwidth and "content" (I hate that term) are NOT free, and that giving away a product is an inherently flawed business model that will cost jobs and good products.
People who want everything for free are indirectly supporting a minimum-wage, no-opportunity society where the only companies allowed to make money are those who charge for Internet access.
Want to see some of the cool sites/businesses on the Internet succeed? Great! BUY SOMETHING AND QUIT WHINING ABOUT HOW EVERYTHING ISN'T FREE!
Votes with dollars sometimes count just as much as votes with voices or ballots when it comes to the economy.
And so the end of free content nears.
There was never "free" content. It was just donated. "Free" content is only free if your time is worth nothing.
calls it "the counterrevolution": mature companies in mature categories striking back at Silicon Valley technology and the pricing-power collapse that it implies.
And they are doing this with employment and B2B purchasing *at least* as much as they are with on-line customers.
Their efforts are meeting with considerable success.
For now.
in the future ( through Internet-Protocol telephony ), all voice calls would be free.
No, they would be less expensive, and paid to someone else.
Voice calls are still not free.
but it is a measure of Hollywood's clout that California senator Dianne Feinstein -- formerly the mayor of San Francisco -- has cosponsored it.
Huh? She's a democrat senator from the state where Hollywood is. Hello? McFly?
may well pass both houses of Congress. That's real power.
Which is well-balanced by a certain pen at the other end of Pennsylvania avenue, and a gavel or three around the corner.
These days, their business depends on it.
What business? I thought everything was free?
Basic Rule of the Internet: Bandwidth is not free. Therefore content is not free. Period.
The Internet will continue to change business until it is totally dissimilar to what it is today. It will provide opportunity on a scale unimaginable 20 years ago for people to start and grow their own businesses, PROVIDED those who are served by those businesses participate without the incessant whining about having to fork over/cough up/shell out/plunk down a few dollars here and there.
They may have to lay off many of the technitians that are required to keep their networks running.
Oh, they *will* lay off as many people as they can. First option and *priority* for any "corporate" company is to destroy careers first, ask questions later.
Defender
:)
Probably one of the best (and most innovative, gameplay-wise) side scrolling games ever written...except for those pod ships.. I *hated* those little red fighters that flew out of them.
Good sound effects too.
Sinistar
Run, Coward!
This is because when it matters, Microsoft's security is tough as nails.
So, I guess the next question is obvious: why doesn't it matter in their products?
So what do you serve? Seems to me the person served could refuse the search on the grounds there is no warrant, and it also seems that they could very well be sustained by a court.
Where is the record of the conversation? How can the person being served verify the legality of the search without a signature? Or without the "particular description" required by the 4th amendment? Is there room in the 4th amendment for a verbal contract?
Why have warrants at all? Just dial 1-900-WARRANT and take whatever they want. Can they leave the petition on the answering machine?
Sounds like a spectacularly easy way to get evidence tossed.
and in some cases, they can get a warrant on the spot to do it, if there is a judge handy to a phone. Its not all that hard to get nailed for doing nothing wrong.
Nope. Can't get a warrant on the phone. The warrant and any evidence produced therefrom will be tossed the instant it hits the courtroom on the grounds it was improperly served. Warrants have to be in writing and signed.
IANAL.
most of the requests I see for low poly 3d modellers for games ask/demand that the user is proficient in Max.
Which is interesting, given the likelihood of the average hobbiest/graduate owning a paid license for MAX is somewhere around... oh, let's see... uh... ZERO.
And, like all technical skills, proficiency in any other 3D package is less than useless. So all the nine-hour-a-day Blender people needn't bother.
Move on. The publicity from the suggestion is doing more than the actual advertising.
especially with a remote control (cough)
is a thiny disguised request to
"get back on the couch."
But the game industry is way too obsessed with getting just one more frame per second out of the voxel-mapper than in building something other than a clone.
This is the industry that asked "who's going to buy a game about doing the chores?" when the Sims was being pitched.... for three years.
Now, they can't churn out the sequels fast enough. (and the middle manager who asked that question probably got a bonus and a free vacation, PAID FOR by sales of the Sims).
Perhaps someone will develop and market such a game, but it is highly doubtful it will be the "game industry."
ooh, even BETTER graphics? will it go 80 FPS and have tesselated-voxel-optimized-mip-mapping and gigapixel-super-flex-capacitor-alpha-blended vertex buffering too?
YAWN
Will it have any new GAMEPLAY features or a well-written STORY or interesting CHARACTERS or a compelling SETTING?
Or will it (more likely) be another overpriced framerate-fest with one more feature on top of the tired FPS design that was new almost TEN YEARS ago?
(ooh look we can drive trucks now!)
Knowing the "game industry" the answer is fairly obvious.
too much ... competition
Yeah. Too much competition. Shame.
Like too much democracy, or too much freedom.
sigh...
it must be carefully regimented and designed to communicate the corporate message, not a personal one.
Because middle management isn't interested in productivity or the happiness/accomplishments of their employees. ALL that matters is every other Friday. Period.
Mr Joe Average is someone who wants to install their OS, boot it up, and it works.
Linux: 1
Windows: 0
NEXT!
Only government has the power to legislate. Copy protection schemes are illegal when they drift into abridging free speech, ergo Fair Use, Parody, Trademark exceptions, reverse engineering, etc.
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
This, along with the M$ stuff, is drifting towards "only approved content will play on your [TV/Rio/PC/PDA]" Who approves the content? Whoops! First amendment!
GOODNIGHT EVERYBODY!!!
There's a difference between borrowing and renting.
Unemployment rose from 5.8 percent in May
Unemployment only measures those receiving UI. The real unemployment rate is probably double what's reported.
So you know a half-dozen people who are unemployable. Big deal.
It's a big deal for them.
We had a huge run up in the supply of workers and a huge drop in demand for them
A huge drop in demand? I thought unemployment was only 6%?
The Bloomberg article quotes support my point:
Unemployment rose from 5.8 percent in May
The U.S. economy grew at a 6.1 percent annual rate
That's companies laying off workers to boost the stock price.
The fact is, people are out of work, and when they do find work, it's temporary at best, and underpaid. Companies are still laying people off TODAY by the tens of thousands while the economists claim 6.1% growth, and people who are qualified to do just about any job can't get work running 10-keys and filing. The rest are stocking shelves at Wal-Mart to pay off their student loans. They're told they are "overqualified" at interviews while they borrow money to feed their kids.
An economy that fails to keep it's best minds employed is a failed economy.
Despite Japan's prolonged recession it remains the world's second largest economy. Its also the first in the world in the field of robotics. I don't see how their businesses are falling behind technologically.
Japan is an example of an economy that ISN'T falling behind technologically, because they KEEP their MOST QUALIFIED people EMPLOYED. That was my POINT in the ORIGINAL MESSAGE.
6% isn't fiction, (it recently creeped up to 5.9% actually). What we had was a bubble.
So all of the people out of work now *should* be out of work, right? There have been a half million layoffs (and those are only the reported ones) in the last 18 months, with about 40,000 of those happening in the last two.
We should always have hundreds of thousands of college-educated, highly-qualified people spending their productive time reading dice.com, I suppose.
The fact that it was able to burst and have such tepid effects on the greater economy as a whole is what's amazing and a true testement to the resilliency of the American economy.
LOL!! Oh, this is incredible. The economy has lost trillions of dollars in capital. Hundreds of thousands of people have been out of work for well over a year. They've lost their HOMES and FAMILIES and CAREERS so some MIDDLE MANAGER can look good at meetings.
Tens of thousands are being laid off every month. People AREN'T BEING HIRED BACK. This "recovery" is nothing of the sort.
I PERSONALLY know a half-dozen people who are unemployable. They have sent out literally THOUSANDS of resumes over the past 18 months, and they can't RENT a job. The ones who are employed are either miserable, or know factually they will be out of work within six months.
But that's ok, right? "It's only 6%" say the apologists. Well, as far as I'm concerned it's not right, bubble or not.
Good to see. Now development can continue, and I certainly hope the company can continue development on their web site (which is excellent, especially the tutorials) and generate greater revenue.
Good news all around. Ometedou!!
If they aren't earning their keep than they should be let go. Laying off workers allows them to bee freed up for more productive work.
Nahh, it's: "if our stock price isn't high enough, they should be let go. Taking a person's career and home allows them to be freed up for more productive work, like trying to keep their family from starving."
Laying a person off should be the last resort just prior to Chapter 7. It should *not* be an everyday business "action item" like cleaning the #%*&@$)(*@$ whiteboards.
Hey, personally, I couldn't care less. If the plant-waterers want to let their companies fall behind technologically, it just means less competition. But there are still a lot of unemployed and hurting people out there. (and 6% is a fiction) They've had their careers destroyed, and not because of some "bubble."
Businesses just find it more convenient to fire people to "artificially" prop up the stock price than to actually do real work, and that's wrong.
And it isn't just "tech." A wide cross-section of middle-class income-level jobs are being made unavailable by all of this.
emulate American prosperity
Yeah. Umpty thousand layoffs and MSCS Engineers bagging groceries.
Lots of prosperity there.
Japanese companies keep their staff employed for more than six months at a time.
A minor point, but meetings don't make money, and middle managers don't build products.
charging for content hasn't been a successful business model'' to ``people won't pay for content.'' These are two entirely different things.
Yet they are often confused, and not always inadvertently. A lot of people screech "greedy company!!" when all businesses are trying to do (usually) is provide better service at a lower price.
Selling subscriptions hasn't helped them break even
That's the difference. In other words nobody is getting filthy stinking rich off selling content. Whole different question.
That's the goal of a business model, after all: to either enable you to break even, or, preferably, make a profit. Salon hasn't done that.
Because they overspent. Their problem exists somewhere between the top line and the bottom line (where middle management spends, what a surprise).
it's thus far been true that people won't pay in sufficient numbers or at sufficiently high rates to make selling content a profitable enterprise.
Because Salon's overspending is not limited to Salon. We've all watched the Aeron chair stories.
People will pay for good products, no matter where or how they are made available. Businesses that overspend do not necessarily speak to the quality of a business model.