That said, if someone has the whimsical income to afford a $7000+ Kaleidescape system, they can probably afford to buy their movies legally. Once again, the movie industry doesn't have a goddamned clue.
This is the key point that makes the whole argument absurd. Many of the Kaleidescape buyers don't even deal with ripping DVDs themselves, they give their collection and/or just tell the HT installers what they want on it (who then go buy a crapload of legal DVDs) and pay someone else to do all of the work for them. Total plug-and-play system for rich people, they probably only ever watch a fraction of the movies they own, and I'm sure somehow the MPAA will argue it's costing the industry billions of dollars per year...
Actually, Target has already done this for years (house brands and exclusives) with a bunch of products and it has worked pretty well for them so far (almost too well, sometimes - the whole Missoni thing was so popular it took down their website for a while).
In general, their house brands for clothes and housewares are actually pretty decent, and a good deal... way better than Walmart's house branded crap. They definitely have a reputation as the quality leader among discount megastores...
It's more like saying "Happy Birthday is a stupid song, I hate it, and I will NEVER sing it". And then complaining and wishing the author dead when someone says "that's good, because you can't sing it anyway." Besides, precedent has already been set allowing your example, which shows - once in a while - that common sense in these situations can win out...
But slowly, after 10,000 rounds of solitaire, some will start paying $2 for that movie. Perhaps a whole new way of publishing and distributing will emerge that prevents copying for free (Steam, Eve Online [technically you can play for free], Origin, etc)
Great, so instead of copyright law that at least gives people a choice to decide if their copying is legal (fair use, etc) we let the content publishers DRM everyone to death. I think I prefer to be given the option to act like a responsible adult than a child (or "zombie").
Besides, $2 or $4 is not going to cover the cost of a decent Pixar or Dreamworks 3D movie, let alone something like Avatar, Hugo, Harry Potter, etc (which were very well received by consumers). When you spend $200-300M on a movie or two and don't get anything in return, that's pretty much it for the company who produced it, you don't get 20 tries.
The iPhone is scarce when launch, not because it got pirated out of existence, but because of people willing to pay $1000 for one here.
And the iPhone is a *horrible* example - the resale value due to shortage of iPhones is very opposite example of supply and demand from an example that would bring a movie cost down to $1 with unlimited supply. Duplicating it accurately at a cost less than the original was impossible (a little more doable now that capacitive touch screens and small size LCDs, etc are more common, but due to the inherent hardware costs involved there is a minimum BOM, and few are going to beat Apple on the BOM cost). And further, the same trademark, copyright, and patent laws that prevent duplication of movies PREVENTED duplication of the iPhone, which is another argument *for it* from the manufacturer's viewpoint!
I was waiting for that idiotic, if obvious, reply...
If destroying the entertainment industry is not a bad thing to you, then you have no interest in the content anyway, so why the hell would you care what other people do? Jealousy? Spite?
There is nothing wrong with doing a job for the money. That's why the vast majority of people work. At the same time, loving what you do and making a living are not mutually exclusive. There are actually some very good *movies* and video games that cost over $100M and years of effort by hundreds of people to make, and a lot of love was put into them.
I'd like to think they would make all of that back plus a bit of profit based purely on consumer generosity, but the fact is, if people had the choice between paying $50 for a game or $1, the majority will pay $1. And if they had a choice between a $10 movie ticket or a $1 movie ticket, they will buy the $1 movie ticket. Those companies would quickly go out of business, and all of those consumers will now get to entertain themselves watching PBS and playing solitaire.
Until it destroyed the entire entertainment industry because no one could afford to produce any content.
And PLEASE don't tell me about another starving musician who got their start on bittorrent. I guarantee you that would be the end of the movie industry as we know it, as there would be no reason for a company to invest $100M+ into a major production if no one had to pay to see it.
Especially considering how little of the financial benefit of those laws actually goes to the creator.
The copyright length is definitely absurd (I'd argue in most cases 2-3 years would allow recovering the investment made into it and the majority of future profits), and removing casual copying of content probably would not result in much of an increase in sales, I agree. But it is still a huge benefit to content creators in one way - it keeps organized, commercial piracy (that is so common in Asian countries) to a minimum in many countries.
Imagine if there were *no* laws against copying someone else's work - say anyone could legally copy a studio's movie print and show it in their own theater, or copy DVDs, CDs, or books and sell them in a retail store along side the "official" copies, etc. Those copiers don't have to make back the time and money put into creating the work, only the trivial cost of duplicating it. I'd call preventing that a definite financial benefit to the creator...
And since it's estimated that less than 10% of any ideas are original, according to this judge 90% of the population is guilty of copyright infringement!
(and I made up the entire statement above without any reasonable proof or evidence, but I'm sure someone has thought it before so don't blame me, I'm just quoting someone else's idea...)
I suppose if it's an entry level AI survey class, it's a good way to present basic information to a large audience.
But I just can't imagine there is that sort of audience (that is interested or even capable) for the 300+ level graduate AI and robotics classes that Thrun (or other similar professors) would be qualified to teach as well. It sure doesn't seem like the best way to train a new batch of teachers and AI researchers, at least.
I just think the whole "I resigned because I can't go back to a 200 person lecture anymore" is a bit melodramatic... hopefully Thrun and others continue to be involved in the small-scale lectures, labs, etc. that are still best being taught close up and in person...
I think this is in many ways the fundamental *problem* with modern education, not the solution.
I don't even think you need an analogy to a different field. Just look at public elementary and secondary education and what happens when you try to cut costs with large class sizes. What you lose is any individualized education and personal interaction with the educator, which ends up boring some students while leaving others behind. Additionally, not everyone learns most effectively in the same way.
Continuing to make education more and more impersonal like a factory assembly line will predictably result in more and more stock, minimally functional products, rather than unique and creative individuals.
Which works for "good" lecturers as well as it does for "good" comics. The difference is the great lecturers (like the great comics) can adapt on the fly based on the audience, in a way making each individual performance/lecture better (for that particular audience) than the impersonal "average"...
1) Their definition of "don't be evil" seems to be "please don't compete with us directly".
2) Facebook has already created the largest walled garden on the Internet by a couple orders of magnitude - maybe before trying to "fix" other companies' software *they* should start looking at ways to include other social networks and web sites without requiring a post/link into Facebook's database and a sneaky redirect...
I think the oranges only have a couple weeks - they are edible now but get better into early Feb.
As far as the tree, the previous owners had no clue what they were doing, but after cutting down all of the suckers (one of them was over 30' tall, jeesh!!) the number of oranges on it this year is insane. I ended up giving over 100 oranges to the food pantry last year after we made all of the OJ and marmalade we could stand (which is not their best uses as they are navels... really best to eat them fresh but you can only eat so many!). This year I swear the tree must have more than 500. Luckily they seem last on the tree for a few months.
I'm thinking of planting a small lemon or lime tree as it would be great to have a year round source like that. Only other fruit tree I have is a plum, which is deciduous so it produces in the summer, gotta wait a while for that one (along with the artichokes;)
How does "coldest in the last 30 years" AND "11th warmest in the last 120" make sense? It would have to be at least "30th warmest in the last 120" for any chance to be true. Duh.
I think you are the one who needs to go sit in a corner and think a bit.
Besides, if you'd actually look it up rather than make pointless snarky comments, you'd see that the data doesn't remotely match the "coldest in 30 years" assertion, anyway.
I agree with all but "inexpensive". $60 for a game is really pushing the budget for a lot of people compared to a $2 movie rental.
I'd like to believe that as games get more popular they will get less expensive as the scale will still allow massive profits on a smaller MSRP. But thinking back (movies, albums, concert/sports tickets, etc) when has that really happened? Instead the actors, performers, athletes, corporations, etc. just demand a larger and larger cut and prices just continue to rise...
It's also perfectly aligned with the building of the Panama Canal and population decline of the bald eagle.
Awesome analogy, considering bald eagles are one of the most famous modern examples of how biologists clearly identified a human-caused problem (most notably DDT in their food source leading to reproductive issues), spoke loudly against it resulting in massive legislative and environmentalist reaction, and due to that effort bald eagles have gone from near extinction in the US in the 70's to off of the endangered list entirely in 2005.
But if the information they posess is based on BS, should they not be called out. Last year was the coldest in the last 30, which is recorded by the local news, and the local wweather stations.
Are you talking about your town? Who cares!
2011 was the 11th warmest *globally* since records were kept in 1880, and is the 35th year on a row where temps are above the 100 year average. And that's with La Nina helping to cool things. Your information is just plain incorrect.
It may be the shipping that kills the product, but only indirectly. Because the product was designed around shipping, it was never good from the start...
(I have a 30 ft orange tree and plant at least 3-4 tomato plants in my backyard and will never buy either of those products if they come from Florida. Nothing against the state, just the industry. I'm sure your homegrown oranges in FL are as awesome as mine are in CA:)
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That said, if someone has the whimsical income to afford a $7000+ Kaleidescape system, they can probably afford to buy their movies legally. Once again, the movie industry doesn't have a goddamned clue.
This is the key point that makes the whole argument absurd. Many of the Kaleidescape buyers don't even deal with ripping DVDs themselves, they give their collection and/or just tell the HT installers what they want on it (who then go buy a crapload of legal DVDs) and pay someone else to do all of the work for them. Total plug-and-play system for rich people, they probably only ever watch a fraction of the movies they own, and I'm sure somehow the MPAA will argue it's costing the industry billions of dollars per year...
Just ask the Dutch couple arrested and strip searched in New York last week, then deported after no red paint or brushes were found.
Actually, Target has already done this for years (house brands and exclusives) with a bunch of products and it has worked pretty well for them so far (almost too well, sometimes - the whole Missoni thing was so popular it took down their website for a while).
In general, their house brands for clothes and housewares are actually pretty decent, and a good deal... way better than Walmart's house branded crap. They definitely have a reputation as the quality leader among discount megastores...
No, that's Whole Paycheck^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Foods...
Whatever you are taking, you need either more or less of it. The current dosage isn't working out.
It's more like saying "Happy Birthday is a stupid song, I hate it, and I will NEVER sing it". And then complaining and wishing the author dead when someone says "that's good, because you can't sing it anyway." Besides, precedent has already been set allowing your example, which shows - once in a while - that common sense in these situations can win out...
But slowly, after 10,000 rounds of solitaire, some will start paying $2 for that movie. Perhaps a whole new way of publishing and distributing will emerge that prevents copying for free (Steam, Eve Online [technically you can play for free], Origin, etc)
Great, so instead of copyright law that at least gives people a choice to decide if their copying is legal (fair use, etc) we let the content publishers DRM everyone to death. I think I prefer to be given the option to act like a responsible adult than a child (or "zombie").
Besides, $2 or $4 is not going to cover the cost of a decent Pixar or Dreamworks 3D movie, let alone something like Avatar, Hugo, Harry Potter, etc (which were very well received by consumers). When you spend $200-300M on a movie or two and don't get anything in return, that's pretty much it for the company who produced it, you don't get 20 tries.
The iPhone is scarce when launch, not because it got pirated out of existence, but because of people willing to pay $1000 for one here.
And the iPhone is a *horrible* example - the resale value due to shortage of iPhones is very opposite example of supply and demand from an example that would bring a movie cost down to $1 with unlimited supply. Duplicating it accurately at a cost less than the original was impossible (a little more doable now that capacitive touch screens and small size LCDs, etc are more common, but due to the inherent hardware costs involved there is a minimum BOM, and few are going to beat Apple on the BOM cost). And further, the same trademark, copyright, and patent laws that prevent duplication of movies PREVENTED duplication of the iPhone, which is another argument *for it* from the manufacturer's viewpoint!
I was waiting for that idiotic, if obvious, reply...
If destroying the entertainment industry is not a bad thing to you, then you have no interest in the content anyway, so why the hell would you care what other people do? Jealousy? Spite?
There is nothing wrong with doing a job for the money. That's why the vast majority of people work. At the same time, loving what you do and making a living are not mutually exclusive. There are actually some very good *movies* and video games that cost over $100M and years of effort by hundreds of people to make, and a lot of love was put into them.
I'd like to think they would make all of that back plus a bit of profit based purely on consumer generosity, but the fact is, if people had the choice between paying $50 for a game or $1, the majority will pay $1. And if they had a choice between a $10 movie ticket or a $1 movie ticket, they will buy the $1 movie ticket. Those companies would quickly go out of business, and all of those consumers will now get to entertain themselves watching PBS and playing solitaire.
Until it destroyed the entire entertainment industry because no one could afford to produce any content.
And PLEASE don't tell me about another starving musician who got their start on bittorrent. I guarantee you that would be the end of the movie industry as we know it, as there would be no reason for a company to invest $100M+ into a major production if no one had to pay to see it.
Especially considering how little of the financial benefit of those laws actually goes to the creator.
The copyright length is definitely absurd (I'd argue in most cases 2-3 years would allow recovering the investment made into it and the majority of future profits), and removing casual copying of content probably would not result in much of an increase in sales, I agree. But it is still a huge benefit to content creators in one way - it keeps organized, commercial piracy (that is so common in Asian countries) to a minimum in many countries.
Imagine if there were *no* laws against copying someone else's work - say anyone could legally copy a studio's movie print and show it in their own theater, or copy DVDs, CDs, or books and sell them in a retail store along side the "official" copies, etc. Those copiers don't have to make back the time and money put into creating the work, only the trivial cost of duplicating it. I'd call preventing that a definite financial benefit to the creator...
And since it's estimated that less than 10% of any ideas are original, according to this judge 90% of the population is guilty of copyright infringement!
(and I made up the entire statement above without any reasonable proof or evidence, but I'm sure someone has thought it before so don't blame me, I'm just quoting someone else's idea...)
This is about protecting their brand, trademarks and image.
No, it's about protecting their patents. Trademark infringement is completely different...
On the other hand, in an election year would you rather be on the good side of the MPAA & RIAA, or Google, Facebook and Twitter?
I suppose if it's an entry level AI survey class, it's a good way to present basic information to a large audience.
But I just can't imagine there is that sort of audience (that is interested or even capable) for the 300+ level graduate AI and robotics classes that Thrun (or other similar professors) would be qualified to teach as well. It sure doesn't seem like the best way to train a new batch of teachers and AI researchers, at least.
I just think the whole "I resigned because I can't go back to a 200 person lecture anymore" is a bit melodramatic... hopefully Thrun and others continue to be involved in the small-scale lectures, labs, etc. that are still best being taught close up and in person...
I think this is in many ways the fundamental *problem* with modern education, not the solution.
I don't even think you need an analogy to a different field. Just look at public elementary and secondary education and what happens when you try to cut costs with large class sizes. What you lose is any individualized education and personal interaction with the educator, which ends up boring some students while leaving others behind. Additionally, not everyone learns most effectively in the same way.
Continuing to make education more and more impersonal like a factory assembly line will predictably result in more and more stock, minimally functional products, rather than unique and creative individuals.
Which works for "good" lecturers as well as it does for "good" comics. The difference is the great lecturers (like the great comics) can adapt on the fly based on the audience, in a way making each individual performance/lecture better (for that particular audience) than the impersonal "average"...
Yeah - I think the perfect summary is "walls work both ways"...
1) Their definition of "don't be evil" seems to be "please don't compete with us directly".
2) Facebook has already created the largest walled garden on the Internet by a couple orders of magnitude - maybe before trying to "fix" other companies' software *they* should start looking at ways to include other social networks and web sites without requiring a post/link into Facebook's database and a sneaky redirect...
3) Wait, Myspace has engineers?!?
I think the oranges only have a couple weeks - they are edible now but get better into early Feb.
As far as the tree, the previous owners had no clue what they were doing, but after cutting down all of the suckers (one of them was over 30' tall, jeesh!!) the number of oranges on it this year is insane. I ended up giving over 100 oranges to the food pantry last year after we made all of the OJ and marmalade we could stand (which is not their best uses as they are navels... really best to eat them fresh but you can only eat so many!). This year I swear the tree must have more than 500. Luckily they seem last on the tree for a few months.
I'm thinking of planting a small lemon or lime tree as it would be great to have a year round source like that. Only other fruit tree I have is a plum, which is deciduous so it produces in the summer, gotta wait a while for that one (along with the artichokes ;)
How does "coldest in the last 30 years" AND "11th warmest in the last 120" make sense? It would have to be at least "30th warmest in the last 120" for any chance to be true. Duh.
I think you are the one who needs to go sit in a corner and think a bit.
Besides, if you'd actually look it up rather than make pointless snarky comments, you'd see that the data doesn't remotely match the "coldest in 30 years" assertion, anyway.
I agree with all but "inexpensive". $60 for a game is really pushing the budget for a lot of people compared to a $2 movie rental.
I'd like to believe that as games get more popular they will get less expensive as the scale will still allow massive profits on a smaller MSRP. But thinking back (movies, albums, concert/sports tickets, etc) when has that really happened? Instead the actors, performers, athletes, corporations, etc. just demand a larger and larger cut and prices just continue to rise...
It's also perfectly aligned with the building of the Panama Canal and population decline of the bald eagle.
Awesome analogy, considering bald eagles are one of the most famous modern examples of how biologists clearly identified a human-caused problem (most notably DDT in their food source leading to reproductive issues), spoke loudly against it resulting in massive legislative and environmentalist reaction, and due to that effort bald eagles have gone from near extinction in the US in the 70's to off of the endangered list entirely in 2005.
But if the information they posess is based on BS, should they not be called out. Last year was the coldest in the last 30, which is recorded by the local news, and the local wweather stations.
Are you talking about your town? Who cares!
2011 was the 11th warmest *globally* since records were kept in 1880, and is the 35th year on a row where temps are above the 100 year average. And that's with La Nina helping to cool things. Your information is just plain incorrect.
It may be the shipping that kills the product, but only indirectly. Because the product was designed around shipping, it was never good from the start...
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/28/137371975/how-industrial-farming-destroyed-the-tasty-tomato
(I have a 30 ft orange tree and plant at least 3-4 tomato plants in my backyard and will never buy either of those products if they come from Florida. Nothing against the state, just the industry. I'm sure your homegrown oranges in FL are as awesome as mine are in CA :)
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