No, you need new politicians. Which, in the UK's case, means you're due for another round of governance by the Tories. So you're basically fucked.
The problem with that is, if the UK is anything like the US, a new batch of politicians isn't going to be any better than the old batch.
Sure, each party is going to have its own pet ideological projects... They'll push for some kind of reform or regulation, or less of those, or whatever. But, ultimately, politicians really don't seem to be terribly interested in what the average citizen has to say. They just wind up doing whatever their lobbyists and corporate interests tell them to.
Is this some kind of hit piece to try and convince people not to use Verizon instead of AT&T? If you use data, it seems reasonable to me to charge a fee even if you just made "a mistake". It's not like international roaming is any more lenient.
I don't have a problem actually paying for data use. If I fire up a web browser and surf around a bit, go ahead and bill me.
The problem I have is that on my phone the web browser is bound to the up direction on the circular directional wheel... With the OK button in the middle. I have frequently hit the up direction accidentally when I meant to press OK. And that launches the web browser. It doesn't ask for confirmation... Just pops up the web browser and immediately starts loading a page.
Obviously I hit another button to cancel the web browser and go back to what I'm doing... But Verizon rounds pretty much any data transfer up to the nearest MB. So I'm billed for at least 1 MB even though I only actually transferred a couple K of data.
This was enough of a nuisance, not just for me but also my wife and son, that I had to block data entirely on our account. It would be nice to have it available if I needed it, but that just isn't possible. It's entirely too easy to wind up with a pile of little charges.
Sounds like the UK ones are massively overengineered, inconvenient, and introduce extra points of failure unnecessarily.
Hm?
I don't know that I'd say that...
The UK ones typically have a bit of insulation on the prongs. This prevents you from accidentally touching live wires or shorting anything if the plug isn't fully inserted. And I doubt if it costs too much just to add a half-inch of plastic/rubber to the prongs.
The prongs themselves are much thicker and sturdier, they aren't just metal blades. They don't fold over without a lot of effort. I'm sure those cost more than the flimsy things I've got in my house... But just about every plug in my house is at least slightly bent from use.
The fuse in the plug is very nice. For some reason we here in the US don't worry too much about that... About the only GFI outlets you'll see are in bathrooms. A lot of times you'll see outlets that aren't properly grounded. You can buy all sorts of adapters to convert lightbulb sockets into electrical outlets... Or to plug a 3-prong cord into a 2-prong outlet... It's fairly easy to do something unsafe and, at best, trip a breaker - at worst, do some real damage. Putting a fuse in the cord/outlet itself means you can stop the damage before it even gets into your wall. Again, I guess this probably costs more... But I'd gladly pay a few cents extra for the safety.
UK outlets also usually have some kind of safety flap thing, that prevents you from sticking a fork in the outlet. Again, I'm sure this extra bit of plastic costs a bit more... But I think I'd be willing to pay for that added safety.
I agree that plenty of devices in the U.S. don't use a ground pin, but I've rarely seen appliances with no ground. Have you really seen a refrigerator or a microwave or something with no ground pin?
I have.
Sure, usually the appliance cord has a ground pin on it... But you wouldn't believe how many times I've seen those appliances plugged into an adapter and then into a groundless outlet.
Our old apartment had horribly frightening wiring... None of the outlets had group plugs. We went through lightbulbs on a weekly basis. We couldn't run the microwave at the same time as the stove, because we'd trip a breaker. We complained to the landlord a few times, but they weren't interested in fixing it. We moved out as soon as it was possible. I'm kind of surprised the place is still standing... I really sort of thought it would have burned down from an electrical fire by now.
Alright, I guess I made about as much sense yesterday as you did.
My point, though badly made, is that you are drawing lines where they don't belong and blurring lines that should be there.
You suggest that Advil is a product, while The Terminator is not. I disagree.
The initial development costs for both are exorbitant. You've got years of work before the first Advil is ever produced, and you've got years of work before the first screening of The Terminator.
After that first run, however, both products become very cheap and easy to make. Their production costs approach, but do not actually become, $0. In the case of Advil, it isn't fee because you have to mix various chemicals, shape them into pills, put them in bottles, slap labels on those bottles, and ship them out to stores.
In the case of The Terminator, it depends a little bit on how you're consuming the product... You might have DVD manufacturing costs, packaging costs, and shipping costs. Or you might have HDD space and bandwidth. Or you might have celluloid and all the labor involved in running a theater.
Either way, it costs something to produce additional products.
With both products, I couldn't care much less about the labor involved. I may care about the brand name or maybe the director involved... Possibly. But I don't care who ran chemical tank #3 or which lighting guy worked on Thursday or who did the QC or the editing or whatever. The labor is necessary to produce both products, but is not what I as a consumer am interested in paying for.
By your logic - labor is a means to an end - there are no actual products at all. Because both Advil and The Terminator are piles of labor applied to some real production costs to produce an end result that people want to pay for.
As for the therapist thing... You are obviously paying your therapist for services/labor. I don't know why you would suggest it is a product. Especially since you seem to think that everything is just labor.
Yes, the end result that you want is a painted house, or lack of fear, or a fixed car - but that isn't what you're paying for. There are many ways to achieve that end result. You could buy a book, or a pre-recorded disc, or you could pay somebody to do it for you.
If you choose to pay somebody to do it for you, you are obviously paying for their labor. If you didn't want to pay for their labor you would do it yourself.
As far as there being competing publishers of Stephen King's works... I doubt if people would care that much. There are currently books that have fallen into the public domain and pretty much anyone can publish them. If you go to your local bookstore, however, you aren't going to see 10 different copies of the same thing competing against each-other.
People don't really care too much about how the book was bound, or what font was used, or what picture is on the cover. They care about the story. And one copy of The Raven is just as good as any other.
However, again, The Stand is a finished product that I'm interested in buying - not the labor involved along the way. The R&D on Stephen King's part may very well be truly essential. It may be impossible to produce The Stand without him. But his manuscript isn't going to do me much good. I still need somebody to edit the thing, typeset it, print it, bind it, ship it, etc. I just don't really care who does all that labor. It doesn't matter if Joe or Sam or Tammy is running the printing press - just that someone is.
Sure, if you want to, you can boil pretty much everything down to pure labor - even your Advil.
I'm not paying for an Advil pill, I'm paying for the labor to make it. And the costs of the plastic bottle it's in? Those aren't the costs for the plastic... Those are the costs for the labor involved in gathering the crude oil, refining it, molding the plastic bottle, and shipping it to the factory.
Valve claims they've got a plan in-place to unlock everything if they go under...
If Valve were to 'go under' part of the process of 'going under' usually involves creditors sailing in and seizing assets. If you think they could just 'set loose' all the licensed content/products they've got tied to their scheme, you've got another thing coming. The 'keys to the treasury' would be passed along to a new owner. Don't kid yourself.
I'm not. That's why I said Steam isn't nearly as good.
I think I was having a bit of an off day yesterday... I was not holding up two shining examples of good digital distribution. I was holding up one good example (iTunes, no DRM on much of their content, trivially bypassed DRM on the rest) and one fairly bad but heading in the right direction example (Steam, DRM and possible-to-ban accounts).
First of all, Panasonic has an accidental damage replacement plan. You just have to buy it. Pretty much all the manufacturers have such a plan if you're willing to pay for it. So your point is pretty much moot.
Second, a Toughbook isn't really purchased because it will stand up to occasional catastrophic damage. It is purchased because it will stand up to the everyday wear and tear that would eat other laptops alive.
Toughbooks are designed to work in extreme heat and cold, in dirty, dusty, wet environments. They work in places that other laptops would simply choke and die.
Sure, you could buy a Dell with an accidental damage plan... And then it would die after a week of use. Of you could buy a Toughbook with an accidental damage plan... And have it keep working for a couple years until someone accidentally destroys it.
I've seen Panasonic Toughbooks in police cars, fire trucks, and in the vehicles of industrial companies, but I guess I don't get why; the laptops are well protected in the car or truck, and it's not like a cop is going to use it as a shield in a shoot out, or a fireman is going to be typing something inside a burning building.
It is possible that they really don't need the Toughbooks and were just oversold. It wouldn't be the first time that has happened.
It is also possible that those are the semi-rugged Toughbooks. They're more durable than your average laptop, but they aren't really built to take the abuse that a fully-rugged Toughbook is.
It is most likely that they actually need some form of ruggedization in those laptops. A Toughbook isn't just built to take physical abuse like bullets and being dropped down stairs... They also handle shocks very well, like you might get in a vehicle if you hit something or had to stop suddenly. They handle temperature extremes very well, which you might see in a vehicle on a cold winter morning, or after sitting in the sun all day long. They handle dust and humidity well, which you might see at the scene of a fire.
This is pure ignorance on my part...I can appreciate there is very likely a need, or they wouldn't make them, but I really don't know what that need is; especially, under what circumstances would it be possible to get my laptop run over by a truck as part of a normal day?
Construction is a big one.
We do work for a couple different building contractors and they love their Toughbooks. They're definitely worth the money. I've seen those things get dropped in muddy puddles and snowbanks a dozen times. I've seen fairly heavy chunks of masonry fall on them. And even under the best of circumstances they're operating in fairly dirty, dusty, and wet environments.
When a plumber came over to fix some pipes, he brought with him a battered Compaq laptop that was missing several keys, looked like it'd gone through hell, but was still working and wasn't "ruggedized" in any way I could tell.
Older laptops are halfway-rugged anyway... The old processors used to run cooler, the GPU was simple and basic, the HDDs weren't all that dense... There was more margin for error in just about everything. With the current emphasis on thin, light-weight laptops that perform as well as a desktop, there's very little margin for error.
Having said that, however, I doubt if that plumber's laptop would work very well at 30 below zero... Or 100+... Or in truly dirty, wet environments...
But as for ruggedness testing, do you think that they were going a little overboard? I have been using my Latitude D810 for about four years now, have dropped it multiple times at the airport, the wife stepped on it while the lid was shut, and my aging cat urinated on the keyboard. Thing is that it still works. I am impressed with Dell's quality for the higher-end models made to withstand abuse. I would have bought two or three HPs in the time that I have had my Latitude. End of story for me.
Overboard?
You do understand what a "rugged laptop" is, right?
These are things like the Panasonic Toughbookdaily basis. They're supposed to be used at construction sites, or by the military.
I've seen Toughbooks get run over by cars and keep working.
They've typically got a metal case, as opposed to plastic. They've usually got plenty of vibration dampening and shock absorption built in. Their ports are usually somehow protected from foreign objects and/or moisture. They're usually underclocked or cooled at least partly passively, so they don't have as much trouble with dusty environments.
Fine, your Dell is fairly durable for a more-or-less normal home/office environment. That's great. But when you call a laptop "rugged" people expect a bit more than resistance to cat urine.
I like your suggestions below, like investing in the creation of a movie ahead of time instead of paying for a ticket after the fact. That actually sounds like a pretty good idea. But your response here just doesn't make much sense.
Or, even better, to abandon the idea that you're manufacturing a product in the first place.
While I'll agree that they aren't turning out a physical product that is inherently consumable and limited, you are still turning out a product.
You suggest calling it what it is - designing stuff - but nobody is just designing stuff. Well, ok, maybe the screenwriters are just designing stuff... Everyone else is setting up lights, and doing makeup, and editing the movie, and pretending to be someone else. These people aren't just designing stuff. They're doing real work.
But we aren't really paying for their work, we're paying for the end product we eventually get. The labor involved in acting is pretty much useless to me without the special effects, editing, makeup, and whatever else.
In the end, I'm paying for a movie - which is a product as much as anything else. Again, maybe not something physical and inherently limited like a hammer or a pill... But it is still a product.
People whose business is making products don't have a piracy problem. Wyeth (maker of Advil) hasn't gone out of business just because you can find store-brand ibuprofen on the same shelf, and the store-brand manufacturers haven't gone out of business just because you can find Advil on the same shelf. They all make money by charging a little more per pill than it costs them to make. And the price doesn't fall to zero, because it actually does cost something to make a bottle of pills.
The key here is not that they're producing a physical product - that just makes things a little more obvious. The key is that there is some real competition and the prices are based on reality.
If you're charging some crazy, exorbitant price for your medication, somebody is going to come along and offer a cheaper alternative. Prices will drop until you get to the point where they can't really go too much lower and still make a profit. And the name-brand stuff will always be able to tack on a few extra dollars just because of the name recognition.
This doesn't work with creative works because there isn't really any competition or reality to base things on. Stephen King writes a new book... There are hundreds of other books for sale out there, but they aren't written by Stephen King. How much is his writing style and talent worth? How many more copies will his name sell? How much money is he going to demand from his publisher? You can't really write a book under the Kephen Sting pseudonym and pass it off as a generic version of The Stand.
Piracy is only a problem for people whose real business is designing stuff but who are afraid to embrace a business model in which they get paid for designing stuff. Instead they pretend that they're manufacturing a product, even though the marginal cost of each unit is approximately zero -- it'd be like a therapist charging you every time you went out in public without fear, for the rest of your life, instead of charging an hourly rate for the time she spent treating your agoraphobia. They treat their business like a lottery, hoping to hit it big by selling a ton of copies, rather than coming up with an honest valuation of their "designing stuff" labor and leaving distribution up to those who can do it more efficiently.
This example just doesn't make sense.
You pay a therapist for a customized treatment. For individual attention. For listening to you, understanding what you're saying, applying their knowledge and expertise, and coming up with a fix that works specifically for you.
If you're too cheap you can certainly buy a self-help book or a CD or something... And they might work just fine... But it isn't an individualized treatment.
You aren't paying for eventual lack of fear, you're paying for individualized treatment and their unique expertise.
It is genuinely easier for me to buy a song on iTunes - even if I won't use iTunes or an iPod to play it back - than it is for me to track down a torrent.
But then you open Beemp3 and it's a tie again:)
Nice website. I didn't know it existed. Thanks for pointing it out - I've got it bookmarked now.
But it isn't a tie.
Ok, fine, I can go to one website and download just about anything... But that website won't keep my music library nicely organized. It won't burn my playlists to discs. It won't sync to my MP3 player. I can't even actually play the MP3s from that site.
For my personal use, BeeMP3 is probably going to be fine. I usually sync my device by manually dragging and dropping files on it. And I prefer Songbird for playback. But for my wife and kid? All they know is iTunes. It manages their library, it organizes their files, it plays their music, and it syncs their iPods. And I think there are far more people out there who are like my wife and kid, than are like me. Convenience is king.
I have bought a lot on Steam in the past few years, just because it is easy, I don't have to find the CD/DVD, I won't lose the product key, etc.
Yea, yea, I can't resell it. Let me check... um, right... The last time I resold a game was... wait for it... never...
I can redownload it as much as I want, to any computer I want, forever... I can make local backups, play offline, etc.
Theft is too much work now...:)
The ease of Steam has been 100% responsible for my last three purchases.
I saw some favorable reviews for Torchlight, and I wanted to try it out. There was a demo available on Steam, so that's where I went to download it.
While I was logged into Steam, an ad popped up indicating that STALKER was on sale for $5 over the weekend. I've always wanted to play that game, but never got around to it. I've checked torrent sites a few times, but never found a working download. And I certainly wasn't going to shell out $50 for it... So, I paid $5 and got it on Steam. Purely an impulse buy. Something I probably would have never purchased if it hadn't been on Steam.
Turns out I liked Torchlight. To be completely honest, I probably would not have purchased it in the past. It's a good game, but there's no multiplayer and I'm not convinced I'll keep playing it all that long. Normally I'd go looking for a torrent. Normally I'd even wait for a torrent to become available. Normally, I would definitely not drive to the store and buy the thing.
But it was on Steam... Just a couple clicks away from the full version... And since I had the demo installed, there wasn't even anything to download... Wouldn't have to search torrent sites, wouldn't have to wait for it to download, wouldn't have to find a crack... So, I paid my $20 and bought the full thing on Steam.
Then my wife saw me playing Torchlight. She got curious, wanted to try it out.
Now, in the past, we've typically shared a single purchase even when we went out to the store and bought a boxed product. One of us would install a no-CD crack... Or we'd only keep the disc in long enough to get past the copy protection... Or whatever.
But Steam ties the game to your login... So, if I wanted to play Torchlight, she couldn't log in as me to play it. So she made her own Steam account and grabbed the demo. She liked it. So she shelled out $20 and purchased the full game as well.
Three sales in about as many days solely because it was easier to buy the games on Steam than it was to pirate them.
It's only going to be easier to buy than to track down that torrent if the industry maintains a steady pressure to shut down torrent sites and force them into hiding. Therefore the industry has to do both - provide a reliable alternative, and also lots of FUD and takedown notices.
The success of iTunes has nothing to do with the industry maintaining steady pressure to shut down torrent sites.
There are plenty of torrent sites out there... And plenty of P2P clients as well... And plenty of friends who already have the MP3s on their computer and would happily email a copy out...
The reason iTunes is successful is because it is quick and easy. Just a couple clicks and you've got your music. You don't need to type in any credit card information... Don't need to surf to a torrent site... Don't need to specify any save locations... Don't need to keep a torrent client installed and up to date... Don't need to try to figure out how the title of the song might have been mis-typed... Don't have to scan anything to make sure it is virus-free...
Some of us havent forgotten the debacle of losing our DRM'd files legitimately purchased on previous platforms. I dont know if you have? This is why I either buy a physical CD/DVD/Blu-Ray and then find a pirated rip (usually of the DVD's/Blu-Ray's) to stream to my consoles. I will always want / need the physical media, because it can not be taken away, but can be shared between family and friends and even at a library when I pass away. Everyone should have this in their will, what books and media to leave to who and to your local library. ~Gabbi
Just because something is distributed digitally does not mean it is DRM-locked in some way.
Take a look at iTunes. You can purchase plain ol' MP3s on there - no DRM. Even if you purchase their DRMed files it is a piece of cake to convert them. In either case, you can easily dump a bunch of MP3s onto whatever medium you want and keep a backup. Apple could go up in a ball of flame tomorrow and you'd still have all your music.
Steam isn't nearly as good... Pretty much everything on Steam is wrapped in DRM. You do have the option of burning a backup disc, to re-install your product later if you want to, but you still need a working Steam account to activate that product. Valve claims they've got a plan in-place to unlock everything if they go under... But that would mean you'd have to get your hands on the patch (which might not be as easy as you'd like). And it is also possible to get your Steam account locked/banned/whatever... Which is also bad.
But, again, there's no reason that digital distribution has to be DRM-locked.
Digital distribution has the potential to lower costs by eliminating packaging.
And the right of first sale. If I buy a CD, and decide I hate it, I can sell it secondhand. Likewise for anything sold to me on a physical medium. If I shell out money for something sent digitally, even if the cost is minimal, it is forever a sunk cost, never to be recouped.
Fair enough. I did say "potential." But there's no reason that digital distribution has to eliminate the right of first sale. People sell WoW accounts and equipment all the time. Yes, I realize that is against the EULA... But they do it. So, just because something is digital, doesn't mean it cannot be sold.
It can expand the marketplace by making truly ancient and fringe titles available.
Yes, but only if the copyright holder deems it profitable enough to distribute in the first place. The costs may be lower than physical distribution, and the statistics of demand more immediate, but you are still at the mercy of the copyright holder, no matter how old the thing in question is. There's also the complicated situation of how to deal with everyone else who worked on what you're after (contract obligations and such) and well as licensing issues overseas (Hulu only being offered in the US).
Of course you're at the mercy of the copyright holder - this is true with physical media as well. Unless you're talking about secondhand merchandise... But, again, you could re-sell digital stuff too.
With a physical product you've got to expect a decent return. You've got a boxed video game taking up shelf space that could be holding something much newer and more popular. You've got the expense involved in manufacturing, packaging, and shipping a product.
With digital distribution you just upload your game to the server and leave it there. You don't need to keep manufacturing or packaging anything. I suppose it is occupying a few GB of HDD space... But drive space is cheap. You can just leave it up there pretty much forever.
To put it in a little more perspective, the industry, whoever is fighting digital distribution and any kind of piracy... make it easier and more appealing to purchase your product than pirate it. It really is that simple.
iTunes and the likes are a perfect example. I consider my time pretty valuable to me, so when a song pops in my head that I haven't heard in 10 years, and I want to listen to it, to me, it is more beneficial to me to just spend the.99 cents on a song than it is to waste a good hour hunting down a torrent or similar and wait for it to download, just to possibly find out it wasn't what I was looking for.
Steam is another great example. I'd rather pony up $5 to buy The Dig than to scour the internet for hours trying to find a pirated version, just to wait hours/DAYS! to get it, only to find out that it was a CLASS release (remember those folks!?) with no sound and video compressed so bad that you can't make out what you are seeing.
This, I think, is going to be key to stopping piracy as we know it today.
Digital distribution has the potential to lower costs by eliminating packaging. It can expand the marketplace by making truly ancient and fringe titles available. It can facilitate impulse buys and periodic sales. And it can give you the instant gratification of getting something without having to go out to the store or wait on shipping.
It is genuinely easier for me to buy a song on iTunes - even if I won't use iTunes or an iPod to play it back - than it is for me to track down a torrent.
It is genuinely easier for me to buy a game on Steam than it is for me to track down a torrent and wait for it to download.
I dont think their purpose even is to completely win the battle, but to make it inconvenient enough for casual people to get stuff for free. It's the same thing with DRM - it doesn't keep the hardcore pirates off who are there to break it, but it surely keeps casual people from copying to friends and so on.
The fix is not to make it inconvenient to pirate stuff... I realize this is what they're trying to accomplish with DRM and whatnot. But that isn't the fix. The fix is to make people want to legitimately purchase your product.
You can do this by adding value to the paid product - with some kind of on-line subscription that gets you added goodies, for example. Something that can't simply be downloaded and installed. Something that can't be pirated.
You can do this by making the legitimate purchase even easier than piracy. Look at iTunes, or Steam - either of those is genuinely easier than tracking down a torrent of the thing.
The reason we have rampant piracy today is not because the DRM is somehow lacking, or because it is too easy to pirate something. The reason we have rampant piracy today is because folks don't feel that the price (in time, effort, money, etc.) is right.
It seems to me that it's more the large number of developers, and the diversity of games/apps, that could be a bigger issue. Sure, immediacy is nice, but...if Nintendo keeps up the policy of charging multi-thousands of dollars for a dev kit, with a requirement that it _must_ be a business location (no home offices), I don't see 3G as being much help...
I disagree.
Nintendo has always produced entertainment devices. Sure, there have been a few productivity apps shoehorned into the GameBoy in the past... But the vast majority of their software is games. I don't see Nintendo selling a device that is primarily a PDA or GPS or phone anytime soon.
The iPhone is competing in the smartphone arena. Folks with smartphones are used to being able to buy random apps on-line and install them. Folks with smartphones are used to being able to buy small little utilities for a couple dollars, or download free programs.
Nintendo does not compete in that market. Nintendo is competing in the console/handheld market. Yes, there are homebrew games and mod communities... But, for the most part, the console/handheld market is all about fairly large publishers, development kits, DRM, and licensing.
I think what we're seeing here is kind of a convergence of forces...
Nintendo is seeing devices like the Kindle, and thinking we could do that. The GameBoy has enough processing power to run an ebook reader for sure... And the hardware is getting cheap enough that there's no reason you couldn't stick a 3G modem in there. Maybe it wouldn't be the primary use of the GameBoy, but they could maybe steal some sales.
Nintendo is seeing devices like the iPhone, which is not primarily a gaming device, but is being used for gaming. Folks will be sitting at the DMV or whatever, bored, and grab some random $2 game for the iPhone just to kill some time. Nintendo would like to get in on this market. Maybe most of their sales would still be cartridges sold at a store...but they could probably get some impulse sales.
But, I think, the biggest factor is that people are getting used to having always-on access to the Internet in some capacity.
Pretty much every cell phone these days is capable of Internet access. You don't even need to buy a smartphone anymore. And most cell phones can run some sort of games. People are used to being able to just push a couple buttons on their phone and get a ringtone or a game or some wallpaper.
Smartphones are offering application marketplaces on-line. No need to go to a store and buy a physical product. Just push a couple buttons and you've got your software delivered right to your phone, no matter where you are.
Folks are using DVRs to watch TV when and how they want it. Or they're watching TV on Hulu or something similar. Again, on-demand and pretty much wherever you are.
The idea that you have to go to a store and buy a physical item, even for a simple pile of minigames like Brain Age, is a bit outdated. Maybe it wouldn't make sense to download 5+ GB of data wirelessly... But we're not talking about a PS3 here - this is a GameBoy. I'd be surprised if the games are much bigger than 1 GB.
So, Nintendo is looking at this instant-gratification marketplace... Where people want to be able to get a new game just by pushing a couple buttons, wherever they are. They're seeing the iPhone steal some of their thunder not because it is a spectacular gaming platform, but just because it's got that instant-gratification marketplace. They're looking at the Kindle and thinking we could steal some of their thunder. And they're looking at the actual costs of putting that hardware into their next device and thinking why the hell not?
Sure, a more open marketplace would be nice... It'd be great if you could publish games for free on the GameBoy... It'd be nice if they didn't require so much just to get developer access... But I really don't think that's going to be as much of a hindranc
Does he mean "in Japan" or "everywhere in the world"?
This sure won't work in Canada, where the cellphone providers have a stronghold on almost anything wireless.
It'll probably work much like the Kindle does...
Amazon has partnered with various wireless providers for the Kindle. The wireless isn't exactly free... You're paying for the Kindle, and you're using your wireless to download content purchases - part of that money goes to pay for the wireless access. So the wireless providers are getting paid for your usage. And it is in Amazon's (or Nintendo's) best interest to get as many wireless providers on-board as possible.
But to you, the user, it appears to be free because you aren't paying a monthly fee for a wireless plan.
"...if you can't follow the speed limits and whatnot - you are a bad driver." Ridiculous, and your post isn't even internally consistent.
Did you actually read my post?
Seriously, did people get stupid, or are you just being an ass?
My original post (with emphasis added, for the comprehension impaired):
But, regardless of how well you handle a vehicle, if you can't follow the speed limits and whatnot - you are a bad driver.
The speed limits, turn restrictions, signage, whatever is all there for a reason. It's to create a safe and predictable driving environment for everyone. Generally speaking, you aren't the only person on the road. A speed limit of 30 mph isn't there to make it take longer for you to get to work - it's there to ensure that everyone is traveling at roughly 30 mph. Which makes it possible, for example, to enter and exit the flow of traffic from parking lots relatively easily.
Sure, you may be able to handle your vehicle well... But if you're speeding up the road at 60 mph, in a 30 mph zone, somebody else may very well try to pull out in front of you and cause an accident.
Surprises cause accidents. Traffic laws and signage are there to reduce surprises. If you cannot follow the laws and signage, you are creating surprises. You may be able to deal with the surprises, or you may not - but that isn't the big problem. The big problem is how all the other drivers are going to deal with your surprises.
Where did I state that you were supposed to blindly follow the speed limit regardless of what was going on around you? Where did I suggest that you should be doing 55 mph while everyone around you travels at 65+ mph?
Since I apparently have to spell it out very carefully, line-by-line...
Individual judgment is an important part of driving. Regardless of what the posted speed limit may be, you need to travel at a safe speed. In inclement weather, for example, it is generally a good idea to slow down. Even if the posted speed limit is 55 mph, you probably shouldn't be traveling that fast on glare ice.
A safe speed may also exceed the posted speed limit as a vehicle moving significantly slower than the flow of traffic is as effective an obstacle as one completely stopped in the middle of the road. This is sometimes reflected in road signage that indicates a minimum speed, as well as a maximum. Even without such signage, it is generally advisable to travel at roughly the same speed as those around you.
However, none of that means that blatantly ignoring the rules of the road, turn restrictions, lane restrictions, speed limits, right-of-way, and speed limits is a good idea. Generally speaking, someone who does all that (blatantly ignoring the rules of the road, turn restrictions, lane restrictions, speed limits, right-of-way, and speed limits) is a bad driver.
Or are you honestly suggesting that driving the wrong way up a one-way street is a good idea as long as you don't collide with anything?
To make an analogy, imagine that traffic laws are like government mandated school curriculum, they are designed to be of the most benefit to the majority, they are by no means designed to define driving ability.
Bad analogy.
Traffic laws are like the code of conduct within a classroom. They prohibit someone from sitting in the back of the classroom and screaming at the top of their lungs while pelting the other students with rotten vegetables. The screaming/pelting kid may very well learn great like that, but they're a terrible distraction to everyone else and degrade the learning experience for the rest of the classroom.
Some of the best drivers I know are the ones who can't obey speed limits, make illegal turns, and ultimately are deemed as "bad" drivers. However these same folks maintain superior control of their vehicles and never get into accidents unless they are caused by another driver's lack of control.
So, perhaps this gene is more of a "disrespect for authority" gene?
Well, I'm not certain that this study is actually testing driving ability... Seems more to be about their memory than their ability to drive...
But, regardless of how well you handle a vehicle, if you can't follow the speed limits and whatnot - you are a bad driver.
The speed limits, turn restrictions, signage, whatever is all there for a reason. It's to create a safe and predictable driving environment for everyone. Generally speaking, you aren't the only person on the road. A speed limit of 30 mph isn't there to make it take longer for you to get to work - it's there to ensure that everyone is traveling at roughly 30 mph. Which makes it possible, for example, to enter and exit the flow of traffic from parking lots relatively easily.
Sure, you may be able to handle your vehicle well... But if you're speeding up the road at 60 mph, in a 30 mph zone, somebody else may very well try to pull out in front of you and cause an accident.
Surprises cause accidents. Traffic laws and signage are there to reduce surprises. If you cannot follow the laws and signage, you are creating surprises. You may be able to deal with the surprises, or you may not - but that isn't the big problem. The big problem is how all the other drivers are going to deal with your surprises.
That last part is illegal. You should have continued to clock in on time and read the newsletter (or not) afterwards. If you got fired for not reading the newsletter, you get unemployment. If you got fired for reading it on company time, you get unemployment. Either way the company gets some scrutiny from your local version of the labor standards board.
Again, this is not an isolated incident.
There have been dozens of horror stories about how Wal-Mart treats employees. I'm sure a quick Google search will turn up plenty. Yes, they've been investigated - because they're such a large target - but that doesn't mean the problem has gone away.
The only reason my particular anecdote was illegal is because I was an hourly employee, and there are laws specifying you must get a break every so often. If you're a salaried employee, all bets are off.
And every place I've worked for hourly wages, there's been a very strong implication that you should keep working until the job is done - but clock out when your shift is over. It's called "being a team player" or some such nonsense.
Folks who insist on working just their shift and then going home often get less-than-favorable reviews, frequently with comments like "not a team player." They'll be passed over for promotions or raises if not replaced outright.
Hell, just look at the recent discussion here on Slashdot about hiring people who don't code in their spare time... There was a very strong theme running through that entire discussion that you want to hire people who are passionate about their work and willing to go the extra mile to get things done.
Maybe the tone of my post was off... Maybe I wasn't clear... Maybe you misunderstood me... But your response isn't making much sense to me.
I say I sympathize with the plight of airline pilots. The whole freaking system is broken from top to bottom and desperately in need of fixing.
And your response is My job is worse than your job!
It isn't just you. Everyone who works for a living is being squeezed for every penny. The mechanics who fix the planes you fly... The doctors and nurses in our hospitals... The truckers driving tons of metal down the highway... The electricians wiring up our homes and offices... The lowly Wal-Mart employee up the street...
No, not everyone has somebody's life in their hands, but that doesn't make their plight any less important.
Slashdot Mirror
No, you need new politicians. Which, in the UK's case, means you're due for another round of governance by the Tories. So you're basically fucked.
The problem with that is, if the UK is anything like the US, a new batch of politicians isn't going to be any better than the old batch.
Sure, each party is going to have its own pet ideological projects... They'll push for some kind of reform or regulation, or less of those, or whatever. But, ultimately, politicians really don't seem to be terribly interested in what the average citizen has to say. They just wind up doing whatever their lobbyists and corporate interests tell them to.
Is this some kind of hit piece to try and convince people not to use Verizon instead of AT&T? If you use data, it seems reasonable to me to charge a fee even if you just made "a mistake". It's not like international roaming is any more lenient.
I don't have a problem actually paying for data use. If I fire up a web browser and surf around a bit, go ahead and bill me.
The problem I have is that on my phone the web browser is bound to the up direction on the circular directional wheel... With the OK button in the middle. I have frequently hit the up direction accidentally when I meant to press OK. And that launches the web browser. It doesn't ask for confirmation... Just pops up the web browser and immediately starts loading a page.
Obviously I hit another button to cancel the web browser and go back to what I'm doing... But Verizon rounds pretty much any data transfer up to the nearest MB. So I'm billed for at least 1 MB even though I only actually transferred a couple K of data.
This was enough of a nuisance, not just for me but also my wife and son, that I had to block data entirely on our account. It would be nice to have it available if I needed it, but that just isn't possible. It's entirely too easy to wind up with a pile of little charges.
I believe most of those adapters have a metal contact that can touch the screw in the middle of the outlet, which might be grounded
There you go.
Sounds like the UK ones are massively overengineered, inconvenient, and introduce extra points of failure unnecessarily.
Hm?
I don't know that I'd say that...
The UK ones typically have a bit of insulation on the prongs. This prevents you from accidentally touching live wires or shorting anything if the plug isn't fully inserted. And I doubt if it costs too much just to add a half-inch of plastic/rubber to the prongs.
The prongs themselves are much thicker and sturdier, they aren't just metal blades. They don't fold over without a lot of effort. I'm sure those cost more than the flimsy things I've got in my house... But just about every plug in my house is at least slightly bent from use.
The fuse in the plug is very nice. For some reason we here in the US don't worry too much about that... About the only GFI outlets you'll see are in bathrooms. A lot of times you'll see outlets that aren't properly grounded. You can buy all sorts of adapters to convert lightbulb sockets into electrical outlets... Or to plug a 3-prong cord into a 2-prong outlet... It's fairly easy to do something unsafe and, at best, trip a breaker - at worst, do some real damage. Putting a fuse in the cord/outlet itself means you can stop the damage before it even gets into your wall. Again, I guess this probably costs more... But I'd gladly pay a few cents extra for the safety.
UK outlets also usually have some kind of safety flap thing, that prevents you from sticking a fork in the outlet. Again, I'm sure this extra bit of plastic costs a bit more... But I think I'd be willing to pay for that added safety.
I agree that plenty of devices in the U.S. don't use a ground pin, but I've rarely seen appliances with no ground. Have you really seen a refrigerator or a microwave or something with no ground pin?
I have.
Sure, usually the appliance cord has a ground pin on it... But you wouldn't believe how many times I've seen those appliances plugged into an adapter and then into a groundless outlet.
Our old apartment had horribly frightening wiring... None of the outlets had group plugs. We went through lightbulbs on a weekly basis. We couldn't run the microwave at the same time as the stove, because we'd trip a breaker. We complained to the landlord a few times, but they weren't interested in fixing it. We moved out as soon as it was possible. I'm kind of surprised the place is still standing... I really sort of thought it would have burned down from an electrical fire by now.
Alright, I guess I made about as much sense yesterday as you did.
My point, though badly made, is that you are drawing lines where they don't belong and blurring lines that should be there.
You suggest that Advil is a product, while The Terminator is not. I disagree.
The initial development costs for both are exorbitant. You've got years of work before the first Advil is ever produced, and you've got years of work before the first screening of The Terminator.
After that first run, however, both products become very cheap and easy to make. Their production costs approach, but do not actually become, $0. In the case of Advil, it isn't fee because you have to mix various chemicals, shape them into pills, put them in bottles, slap labels on those bottles, and ship them out to stores.
In the case of The Terminator, it depends a little bit on how you're consuming the product... You might have DVD manufacturing costs, packaging costs, and shipping costs. Or you might have HDD space and bandwidth. Or you might have celluloid and all the labor involved in running a theater.
Either way, it costs something to produce additional products.
With both products, I couldn't care much less about the labor involved. I may care about the brand name or maybe the director involved... Possibly. But I don't care who ran chemical tank #3 or which lighting guy worked on Thursday or who did the QC or the editing or whatever. The labor is necessary to produce both products, but is not what I as a consumer am interested in paying for.
By your logic - labor is a means to an end - there are no actual products at all. Because both Advil and The Terminator are piles of labor applied to some real production costs to produce an end result that people want to pay for.
As for the therapist thing... You are obviously paying your therapist for services/labor. I don't know why you would suggest it is a product. Especially since you seem to think that everything is just labor.
Yes, the end result that you want is a painted house, or lack of fear, or a fixed car - but that isn't what you're paying for. There are many ways to achieve that end result. You could buy a book, or a pre-recorded disc, or you could pay somebody to do it for you.
If you choose to pay somebody to do it for you, you are obviously paying for their labor. If you didn't want to pay for their labor you would do it yourself.
As far as there being competing publishers of Stephen King's works... I doubt if people would care that much. There are currently books that have fallen into the public domain and pretty much anyone can publish them. If you go to your local bookstore, however, you aren't going to see 10 different copies of the same thing competing against each-other.
People don't really care too much about how the book was bound, or what font was used, or what picture is on the cover. They care about the story. And one copy of The Raven is just as good as any other.
However, again, The Stand is a finished product that I'm interested in buying - not the labor involved along the way. The R&D on Stephen King's part may very well be truly essential. It may be impossible to produce The Stand without him. But his manuscript isn't going to do me much good. I still need somebody to edit the thing, typeset it, print it, bind it, ship it, etc. I just don't really care who does all that labor. It doesn't matter if Joe or Sam or Tammy is running the printing press - just that someone is.
Sure, if you want to, you can boil pretty much everything down to pure labor - even your Advil.
I'm not paying for an Advil pill, I'm paying for the labor to make it. And the costs of the plastic bottle it's in? Those aren't the costs for the plastic... Those are the costs for the labor involved in gathering the crude oil, refining it, molding the plastic bottle, and shipping it to the factory.
Valve claims they've got a plan in-place to unlock everything if they go under...
If Valve were to 'go under' part of the process of 'going under' usually involves creditors sailing in and seizing assets. If you think they could just 'set loose' all the licensed content/products they've got tied to their scheme, you've got another thing coming. The 'keys to the treasury' would be passed along to a new owner. Don't kid yourself.
I'm not. That's why I said Steam isn't nearly as good.
I think I was having a bit of an off day yesterday... I was not holding up two shining examples of good digital distribution. I was holding up one good example (iTunes, no DRM on much of their content, trivially bypassed DRM on the rest) and one fairly bad but heading in the right direction example (Steam, DRM and possible-to-ban accounts).
First of all, Panasonic has an accidental damage replacement plan. You just have to buy it. Pretty much all the manufacturers have such a plan if you're willing to pay for it. So your point is pretty much moot.
Second, a Toughbook isn't really purchased because it will stand up to occasional catastrophic damage. It is purchased because it will stand up to the everyday wear and tear that would eat other laptops alive.
Toughbooks are designed to work in extreme heat and cold, in dirty, dusty, wet environments. They work in places that other laptops would simply choke and die.
Sure, you could buy a Dell with an accidental damage plan... And then it would die after a week of use. Of you could buy a Toughbook with an accidental damage plan... And have it keep working for a couple years until someone accidentally destroys it.
I've seen Panasonic Toughbooks in police cars, fire trucks, and in the vehicles of industrial companies, but I guess I don't get why; the laptops are well protected in the car or truck, and it's not like a cop is going to use it as a shield in a shoot out, or a fireman is going to be typing something inside a burning building.
It is possible that they really don't need the Toughbooks and were just oversold. It wouldn't be the first time that has happened.
It is also possible that those are the semi-rugged Toughbooks. They're more durable than your average laptop, but they aren't really built to take the abuse that a fully-rugged Toughbook is.
It is most likely that they actually need some form of ruggedization in those laptops. A Toughbook isn't just built to take physical abuse like bullets and being dropped down stairs... They also handle shocks very well, like you might get in a vehicle if you hit something or had to stop suddenly. They handle temperature extremes very well, which you might see in a vehicle on a cold winter morning, or after sitting in the sun all day long. They handle dust and humidity well, which you might see at the scene of a fire.
This is pure ignorance on my part...I can appreciate there is very likely a need, or they wouldn't make them, but I really don't know what that need is; especially, under what circumstances would it be possible to get my laptop run over by a truck as part of a normal day?
Construction is a big one.
We do work for a couple different building contractors and they love their Toughbooks. They're definitely worth the money. I've seen those things get dropped in muddy puddles and snowbanks a dozen times. I've seen fairly heavy chunks of masonry fall on them. And even under the best of circumstances they're operating in fairly dirty, dusty, and wet environments.
When a plumber came over to fix some pipes, he brought with him a battered Compaq laptop that was missing several keys, looked like it'd gone through hell, but was still working and wasn't "ruggedized" in any way I could tell.
Older laptops are halfway-rugged anyway... The old processors used to run cooler, the GPU was simple and basic, the HDDs weren't all that dense... There was more margin for error in just about everything. With the current emphasis on thin, light-weight laptops that perform as well as a desktop, there's very little margin for error.
Having said that, however, I doubt if that plumber's laptop would work very well at 30 below zero... Or 100+... Or in truly dirty, wet environments...
But as for ruggedness testing, do you think that they were going a little overboard? I have been using my Latitude D810 for about four years now, have dropped it multiple times at the airport, the wife stepped on it while the lid was shut, and my aging cat urinated on the keyboard. Thing is that it still works. I am impressed with Dell's quality for the higher-end models made to withstand abuse. I would have bought two or three HPs in the time that I have had my Latitude. End of story for me.
Overboard?
You do understand what a "rugged laptop" is, right?
These are things like the Panasonic Toughbookdaily basis. They're supposed to be used at construction sites, or by the military.
I've seen Toughbooks get run over by cars and keep working.
They've typically got a metal case, as opposed to plastic. They've usually got plenty of vibration dampening and shock absorption built in. Their ports are usually somehow protected from foreign objects and/or moisture. They're usually underclocked or cooled at least partly passively, so they don't have as much trouble with dusty environments.
Fine, your Dell is fairly durable for a more-or-less normal home/office environment. That's great. But when you call a laptop "rugged" people expect a bit more than resistance to cat urine.
I like your suggestions below, like investing in the creation of a movie ahead of time instead of paying for a ticket after the fact. That actually sounds like a pretty good idea. But your response here just doesn't make much sense.
Or, even better, to abandon the idea that you're manufacturing a product in the first place.
While I'll agree that they aren't turning out a physical product that is inherently consumable and limited, you are still turning out a product.
You suggest calling it what it is - designing stuff - but nobody is just designing stuff. Well, ok, maybe the screenwriters are just designing stuff... Everyone else is setting up lights, and doing makeup, and editing the movie, and pretending to be someone else. These people aren't just designing stuff. They're doing real work.
But we aren't really paying for their work, we're paying for the end product we eventually get. The labor involved in acting is pretty much useless to me without the special effects, editing, makeup, and whatever else.
In the end, I'm paying for a movie - which is a product as much as anything else. Again, maybe not something physical and inherently limited like a hammer or a pill... But it is still a product.
People whose business is making products don't have a piracy problem. Wyeth (maker of Advil) hasn't gone out of business just because you can find store-brand ibuprofen on the same shelf, and the store-brand manufacturers haven't gone out of business just because you can find Advil on the same shelf. They all make money by charging a little more per pill than it costs them to make. And the price doesn't fall to zero, because it actually does cost something to make a bottle of pills.
The key here is not that they're producing a physical product - that just makes things a little more obvious. The key is that there is some real competition and the prices are based on reality.
If you're charging some crazy, exorbitant price for your medication, somebody is going to come along and offer a cheaper alternative. Prices will drop until you get to the point where they can't really go too much lower and still make a profit. And the name-brand stuff will always be able to tack on a few extra dollars just because of the name recognition.
This doesn't work with creative works because there isn't really any competition or reality to base things on. Stephen King writes a new book... There are hundreds of other books for sale out there, but they aren't written by Stephen King. How much is his writing style and talent worth? How many more copies will his name sell? How much money is he going to demand from his publisher? You can't really write a book under the Kephen Sting pseudonym and pass it off as a generic version of The Stand.
Piracy is only a problem for people whose real business is designing stuff but who are afraid to embrace a business model in which they get paid for designing stuff. Instead they pretend that they're manufacturing a product, even though the marginal cost of each unit is approximately zero -- it'd be like a therapist charging you every time you went out in public without fear, for the rest of your life, instead of charging an hourly rate for the time she spent treating your agoraphobia. They treat their business like a lottery, hoping to hit it big by selling a ton of copies, rather than coming up with an honest valuation of their "designing stuff" labor and leaving distribution up to those who can do it more efficiently.
This example just doesn't make sense.
You pay a therapist for a customized treatment. For individual attention. For listening to you, understanding what you're saying, applying their knowledge and expertise, and coming up with a fix that works specifically for you.
If you're too cheap you can certainly buy a self-help book or a CD or something... And they might work just fine... But it isn't an individualized treatment.
You aren't paying for eventual lack of fear, you're paying for individualized treatment and their unique expertise.
But then you open Beemp3 and it's a tie again :)
Nice website. I didn't know it existed. Thanks for pointing it out - I've got it bookmarked now.
But it isn't a tie.
Ok, fine, I can go to one website and download just about anything... But that website won't keep my music library nicely organized. It won't burn my playlists to discs. It won't sync to my MP3 player. I can't even actually play the MP3s from that site.
For my personal use, BeeMP3 is probably going to be fine. I usually sync my device by manually dragging and dropping files on it. And I prefer Songbird for playback. But for my wife and kid? All they know is iTunes. It manages their library, it organizes their files, it plays their music, and it syncs their iPods. And I think there are far more people out there who are like my wife and kid, than are like me. Convenience is king.
Amen to that...
I have bought a lot on Steam in the past few years, just because it is easy, I don't have to find the CD/DVD, I won't lose the product key, etc.
Yea, yea, I can't resell it. Let me check... um, right... The last time I resold a game was... wait for it... never...
I can redownload it as much as I want, to any computer I want, forever... I can make local backups, play offline, etc.
Theft is too much work now... :)
The ease of Steam has been 100% responsible for my last three purchases.
I saw some favorable reviews for Torchlight, and I wanted to try it out. There was a demo available on Steam, so that's where I went to download it.
While I was logged into Steam, an ad popped up indicating that STALKER was on sale for $5 over the weekend. I've always wanted to play that game, but never got around to it. I've checked torrent sites a few times, but never found a working download. And I certainly wasn't going to shell out $50 for it... So, I paid $5 and got it on Steam. Purely an impulse buy. Something I probably would have never purchased if it hadn't been on Steam.
Turns out I liked Torchlight. To be completely honest, I probably would not have purchased it in the past. It's a good game, but there's no multiplayer and I'm not convinced I'll keep playing it all that long. Normally I'd go looking for a torrent. Normally I'd even wait for a torrent to become available. Normally, I would definitely not drive to the store and buy the thing.
But it was on Steam... Just a couple clicks away from the full version... And since I had the demo installed, there wasn't even anything to download... Wouldn't have to search torrent sites, wouldn't have to wait for it to download, wouldn't have to find a crack... So, I paid my $20 and bought the full thing on Steam.
Then my wife saw me playing Torchlight. She got curious, wanted to try it out.
Now, in the past, we've typically shared a single purchase even when we went out to the store and bought a boxed product. One of us would install a no-CD crack... Or we'd only keep the disc in long enough to get past the copy protection... Or whatever.
But Steam ties the game to your login... So, if I wanted to play Torchlight, she couldn't log in as me to play it. So she made her own Steam account and grabbed the demo. She liked it. So she shelled out $20 and purchased the full game as well.
Three sales in about as many days solely because it was easier to buy the games on Steam than it was to pirate them.
It's only going to be easier to buy than to track down that torrent if the industry maintains a steady pressure to shut down torrent sites and force them into hiding. Therefore the industry has to do both - provide a reliable alternative, and also lots of FUD and takedown notices.
The success of iTunes has nothing to do with the industry maintaining steady pressure to shut down torrent sites.
There are plenty of torrent sites out there... And plenty of P2P clients as well... And plenty of friends who already have the MP3s on their computer and would happily email a copy out...
The reason iTunes is successful is because it is quick and easy. Just a couple clicks and you've got your music. You don't need to type in any credit card information... Don't need to surf to a torrent site... Don't need to specify any save locations... Don't need to keep a torrent client installed and up to date... Don't need to try to figure out how the title of the song might have been mis-typed... Don't have to scan anything to make sure it is virus-free...
Some of us havent forgotten the debacle of losing our DRM'd files legitimately purchased on previous platforms. I dont know if you have? This is why I either buy a physical CD/DVD/Blu-Ray and then find a pirated rip (usually of the DVD's/Blu-Ray's) to stream to my consoles. I will always want / need the physical media, because it can not be taken away, but can be shared between family and friends and even at a library when I pass away. Everyone should have this in their will, what books and media to leave to who and to your local library. ~Gabbi
Just because something is distributed digitally does not mean it is DRM-locked in some way.
Take a look at iTunes. You can purchase plain ol' MP3s on there - no DRM. Even if you purchase their DRMed files it is a piece of cake to convert them. In either case, you can easily dump a bunch of MP3s onto whatever medium you want and keep a backup. Apple could go up in a ball of flame tomorrow and you'd still have all your music.
Steam isn't nearly as good... Pretty much everything on Steam is wrapped in DRM. You do have the option of burning a backup disc, to re-install your product later if you want to, but you still need a working Steam account to activate that product. Valve claims they've got a plan in-place to unlock everything if they go under... But that would mean you'd have to get your hands on the patch (which might not be as easy as you'd like). And it is also possible to get your Steam account locked/banned/whatever... Which is also bad.
But, again, there's no reason that digital distribution has to be DRM-locked.
Digital distribution has the potential to lower costs by eliminating packaging.
And the right of first sale. If I buy a CD, and decide I hate it, I can sell it secondhand. Likewise for anything sold to me on a physical medium. If I shell out money for something sent digitally, even if the cost is minimal, it is forever a sunk cost, never to be recouped.
Fair enough. I did say "potential." But there's no reason that digital distribution has to eliminate the right of first sale. People sell WoW accounts and equipment all the time. Yes, I realize that is against the EULA... But they do it. So, just because something is digital, doesn't mean it cannot be sold.
It can expand the marketplace by making truly ancient and fringe titles available.
Yes, but only if the copyright holder deems it profitable enough to distribute in the first place. The costs may be lower than physical distribution, and the statistics of demand more immediate, but you are still at the mercy of the copyright holder, no matter how old the thing in question is. There's also the complicated situation of how to deal with everyone else who worked on what you're after (contract obligations and such) and well as licensing issues overseas (Hulu only being offered in the US).
Of course you're at the mercy of the copyright holder - this is true with physical media as well. Unless you're talking about secondhand merchandise... But, again, you could re-sell digital stuff too.
With a physical product you've got to expect a decent return. You've got a boxed video game taking up shelf space that could be holding something much newer and more popular. You've got the expense involved in manufacturing, packaging, and shipping a product.
With digital distribution you just upload your game to the server and leave it there. You don't need to keep manufacturing or packaging anything. I suppose it is occupying a few GB of HDD space... But drive space is cheap. You can just leave it up there pretty much forever.
To put it in a little more perspective, the industry, whoever is fighting digital distribution and any kind of piracy... make it easier and more appealing to purchase your product than pirate it. It really is that simple.
iTunes and the likes are a perfect example. I consider my time pretty valuable to me, so when a song pops in my head that I haven't heard in 10 years, and I want to listen to it, to me, it is more beneficial to me to just spend the .99 cents on a song than it is to waste a good hour hunting down a torrent or similar and wait for it to download, just to possibly find out it wasn't what I was looking for.
Steam is another great example. I'd rather pony up $5 to buy The Dig than to scour the internet for hours trying to find a pirated version, just to wait hours/DAYS! to get it, only to find out that it was a CLASS release (remember those folks!?) with no sound and video compressed so bad that you can't make out what you are seeing.
This, I think, is going to be key to stopping piracy as we know it today.
Digital distribution has the potential to lower costs by eliminating packaging. It can expand the marketplace by making truly ancient and fringe titles available. It can facilitate impulse buys and periodic sales. And it can give you the instant gratification of getting something without having to go out to the store or wait on shipping.
It is genuinely easier for me to buy a song on iTunes - even if I won't use iTunes or an iPod to play it back - than it is for me to track down a torrent.
It is genuinely easier for me to buy a game on Steam than it is for me to track down a torrent and wait for it to download.
I dont think their purpose even is to completely win the battle, but to make it inconvenient enough for casual people to get stuff for free. It's the same thing with DRM - it doesn't keep the hardcore pirates off who are there to break it, but it surely keeps casual people from copying to friends and so on.
The fix is not to make it inconvenient to pirate stuff... I realize this is what they're trying to accomplish with DRM and whatnot. But that isn't the fix. The fix is to make people want to legitimately purchase your product.
You can do this by adding value to the paid product - with some kind of on-line subscription that gets you added goodies, for example. Something that can't simply be downloaded and installed. Something that can't be pirated.
You can do this by making the legitimate purchase even easier than piracy. Look at iTunes, or Steam - either of those is genuinely easier than tracking down a torrent of the thing.
The reason we have rampant piracy today is not because the DRM is somehow lacking, or because it is too easy to pirate something. The reason we have rampant piracy today is because folks don't feel that the price (in time, effort, money, etc.) is right.
It seems to me that it's more the large number of developers, and the diversity of games/apps, that could be a bigger issue. Sure, immediacy is nice, but...if Nintendo keeps up the policy of charging multi-thousands of dollars for a dev kit, with a requirement that it _must_ be a business location (no home offices), I don't see 3G as being much help...
I disagree.
Nintendo has always produced entertainment devices. Sure, there have been a few productivity apps shoehorned into the GameBoy in the past... But the vast majority of their software is games. I don't see Nintendo selling a device that is primarily a PDA or GPS or phone anytime soon.
The iPhone is competing in the smartphone arena. Folks with smartphones are used to being able to buy random apps on-line and install them. Folks with smartphones are used to being able to buy small little utilities for a couple dollars, or download free programs.
Nintendo does not compete in that market. Nintendo is competing in the console/handheld market. Yes, there are homebrew games and mod communities... But, for the most part, the console/handheld market is all about fairly large publishers, development kits, DRM, and licensing.
I think what we're seeing here is kind of a convergence of forces...
Nintendo is seeing devices like the Kindle, and thinking we could do that. The GameBoy has enough processing power to run an ebook reader for sure... And the hardware is getting cheap enough that there's no reason you couldn't stick a 3G modem in there. Maybe it wouldn't be the primary use of the GameBoy, but they could maybe steal some sales.
Nintendo is seeing devices like the iPhone, which is not primarily a gaming device, but is being used for gaming. Folks will be sitting at the DMV or whatever, bored, and grab some random $2 game for the iPhone just to kill some time. Nintendo would like to get in on this market. Maybe most of their sales would still be cartridges sold at a store...but they could probably get some impulse sales.
But, I think, the biggest factor is that people are getting used to having always-on access to the Internet in some capacity.
Pretty much every cell phone these days is capable of Internet access. You don't even need to buy a smartphone anymore. And most cell phones can run some sort of games. People are used to being able to just push a couple buttons on their phone and get a ringtone or a game or some wallpaper.
Smartphones are offering application marketplaces on-line. No need to go to a store and buy a physical product. Just push a couple buttons and you've got your software delivered right to your phone, no matter where you are.
Folks are using DVRs to watch TV when and how they want it. Or they're watching TV on Hulu or something similar. Again, on-demand and pretty much wherever you are.
The idea that you have to go to a store and buy a physical item, even for a simple pile of minigames like Brain Age, is a bit outdated. Maybe it wouldn't make sense to download 5+ GB of data wirelessly... But we're not talking about a PS3 here - this is a GameBoy. I'd be surprised if the games are much bigger than 1 GB.
So, Nintendo is looking at this instant-gratification marketplace... Where people want to be able to get a new game just by pushing a couple buttons, wherever they are. They're seeing the iPhone steal some of their thunder not because it is a spectacular gaming platform, but just because it's got that instant-gratification marketplace. They're looking at the Kindle and thinking we could steal some of their thunder. And they're looking at the actual costs of putting that hardware into their next device and thinking why the hell not?
Sure, a more open marketplace would be nice... It'd be great if you could publish games for free on the GameBoy... It'd be nice if they didn't require so much just to get developer access... But I really don't think that's going to be as much of a hindranc
Does he mean "in Japan" or "everywhere in the world"?
This sure won't work in Canada, where the cellphone providers have a stronghold on almost anything wireless.
It'll probably work much like the Kindle does...
Amazon has partnered with various wireless providers for the Kindle. The wireless isn't exactly free... You're paying for the Kindle, and you're using your wireless to download content purchases - part of that money goes to pay for the wireless access. So the wireless providers are getting paid for your usage. And it is in Amazon's (or Nintendo's) best interest to get as many wireless providers on-board as possible.
But to you, the user, it appears to be free because you aren't paying a monthly fee for a wireless plan.
"...if you can't follow the speed limits and whatnot - you are a bad driver."
Ridiculous, and your post isn't even internally consistent.
Did you actually read my post?
Seriously, did people get stupid, or are you just being an ass?
My original post (with emphasis added, for the comprehension impaired):
But, regardless of how well you handle a vehicle, if you can't follow the speed limits and whatnot - you are a bad driver.
The speed limits, turn restrictions, signage, whatever is all there for a reason. It's to create a safe and predictable driving environment for everyone. Generally speaking, you aren't the only person on the road. A speed limit of 30 mph isn't there to make it take longer for you to get to work - it's there to ensure that everyone is traveling at roughly 30 mph. Which makes it possible, for example, to enter and exit the flow of traffic from parking lots relatively easily.
Sure, you may be able to handle your vehicle well... But if you're speeding up the road at 60 mph, in a 30 mph zone, somebody else may very well try to pull out in front of you and cause an accident.
Surprises cause accidents. Traffic laws and signage are there to reduce surprises. If you cannot follow the laws and signage, you are creating surprises. You may be able to deal with the surprises, or you may not - but that isn't the big problem. The big problem is how all the other drivers are going to deal with your surprises.
Where did I state that you were supposed to blindly follow the speed limit regardless of what was going on around you? Where did I suggest that you should be doing 55 mph while everyone around you travels at 65+ mph?
Since I apparently have to spell it out very carefully, line-by-line...
Individual judgment is an important part of driving. Regardless of what the posted speed limit may be, you need to travel at a safe speed. In inclement weather, for example, it is generally a good idea to slow down. Even if the posted speed limit is 55 mph, you probably shouldn't be traveling that fast on glare ice.
A safe speed may also exceed the posted speed limit as a vehicle moving significantly slower than the flow of traffic is as effective an obstacle as one completely stopped in the middle of the road. This is sometimes reflected in road signage that indicates a minimum speed, as well as a maximum. Even without such signage, it is generally advisable to travel at roughly the same speed as those around you.
However, none of that means that blatantly ignoring the rules of the road, turn restrictions, lane restrictions, speed limits, right-of-way, and speed limits is a good idea. Generally speaking, someone who does all that (blatantly ignoring the rules of the road, turn restrictions, lane restrictions, speed limits, right-of-way, and speed limits) is a bad driver.
Or are you honestly suggesting that driving the wrong way up a one-way street is a good idea as long as you don't collide with anything?
To make an analogy, imagine that traffic laws are like government mandated school curriculum, they are designed to be of the most benefit to the majority, they are by no means designed to define driving ability.
Bad analogy.
Traffic laws are like the code of conduct within a classroom. They prohibit someone from sitting in the back of the classroom and screaming at the top of their lungs while pelting the other students with rotten vegetables. The screaming/pelting kid may very well learn great like that, but they're a terrible distraction to everyone else and degrade the learning experience for the rest of the classroom.
Some of the best drivers I know are the ones who can't obey speed limits, make illegal turns, and ultimately are deemed as "bad" drivers. However these same folks maintain superior control of their vehicles and never get into accidents unless they are caused by another driver's lack of control.
So, perhaps this gene is more of a "disrespect for authority" gene?
Well, I'm not certain that this study is actually testing driving ability... Seems more to be about their memory than their ability to drive...
But, regardless of how well you handle a vehicle, if you can't follow the speed limits and whatnot - you are a bad driver.
The speed limits, turn restrictions, signage, whatever is all there for a reason. It's to create a safe and predictable driving environment for everyone. Generally speaking, you aren't the only person on the road. A speed limit of 30 mph isn't there to make it take longer for you to get to work - it's there to ensure that everyone is traveling at roughly 30 mph. Which makes it possible, for example, to enter and exit the flow of traffic from parking lots relatively easily.
Sure, you may be able to handle your vehicle well... But if you're speeding up the road at 60 mph, in a 30 mph zone, somebody else may very well try to pull out in front of you and cause an accident.
Surprises cause accidents. Traffic laws and signage are there to reduce surprises. If you cannot follow the laws and signage, you are creating surprises. You may be able to deal with the surprises, or you may not - but that isn't the big problem. The big problem is how all the other drivers are going to deal with your surprises.
That last part is illegal. You should have continued to clock in on time and read the newsletter (or not) afterwards. If you got fired for not reading the newsletter, you get unemployment. If you got fired for reading it on company time, you get unemployment. Either way the company gets some scrutiny from your local version of the labor standards board.
Again, this is not an isolated incident.
There have been dozens of horror stories about how Wal-Mart treats employees. I'm sure a quick Google search will turn up plenty. Yes, they've been investigated - because they're such a large target - but that doesn't mean the problem has gone away.
The only reason my particular anecdote was illegal is because I was an hourly employee, and there are laws specifying you must get a break every so often. If you're a salaried employee, all bets are off.
And every place I've worked for hourly wages, there's been a very strong implication that you should keep working until the job is done - but clock out when your shift is over. It's called "being a team player" or some such nonsense.
Folks who insist on working just their shift and then going home often get less-than-favorable reviews, frequently with comments like "not a team player." They'll be passed over for promotions or raises if not replaced outright.
Hell, just look at the recent discussion here on Slashdot about hiring people who don't code in their spare time... There was a very strong theme running through that entire discussion that you want to hire people who are passionate about their work and willing to go the extra mile to get things done.
Maybe the tone of my post was off... Maybe I wasn't clear... Maybe you misunderstood me... But your response isn't making much sense to me.
I say I sympathize with the plight of airline pilots. The whole freaking system is broken from top to bottom and desperately in need of fixing.
And your response is My job is worse than your job!
It isn't just you. Everyone who works for a living is being squeezed for every penny. The mechanics who fix the planes you fly... The doctors and nurses in our hospitals... The truckers driving tons of metal down the highway... The electricians wiring up our homes and offices... The lowly Wal-Mart employee up the street...
No, not everyone has somebody's life in their hands, but that doesn't make their plight any less important.