From TFA: "And academic papers are unlikely to sway those who have either made up their minds on the issue or simply want to justify behavior they think think should be legal."
Kudos to to Ars Technica for presummarizing the Slashdot discussion in TFA. We can all go home now.
If they offer a version with all the recent features stripped out, there will be an unintended consequence. It will finally prove conclusively whether users cared about anything that was added after Word for Windows 2.0.
Not really, no. I would suggest that what we're trying to do is be "right". Barring a reliable transcript or a time machine, the best we can do as to this fact is to try to approximate "right". One approximation of "right" is "generally accepted"; it's not too bad an approximation. "Generally accepted by people whose opinion is worth hearing" is a somewhat better approximation.
The criteria that make a person's opinion "worth hearing" are not, of course, "generally accepted".
Admittedly, I've not read Ambler's "The Light of Day", nor seen Topkapi, but my impression was that the 1999 Thomas Crown Affair presents him as a talented first-timer.
Brosnan, Russo, and McTiernan made that film all about trust and vulnerability. I'm sure that the action can be replicated in a sequel (elaborate crimes, chases, checkmates), but I don't see how the emotional state of the characters can be as at risk. In a sequel, they're veterans.
Another interesting difference between the PC platform and a console platform is a dictated controller. A platform company can design and mandate a new controller while PC games must write to a the controllers (mouse, keyboard, joystick) that the marketplace has accepted. It's a real case of the Cathedral v the tragic commons.
One major difference between the PC segment and the console segment is that console makers have an incentive to promote their platform. The PC gaming platform has no advocate spending $$speech$$ and tracking ROI.
Come to think of it, if I wanted to promote my console, it would help immensely if the PC platform were declared a "niche."
Sure, a man who is no longer on Her Majesty's secret service needs a new gig, but some roles you can can't live twice.
What are they going to do? Have Russo take the spy who loved her to Russia to test his nimble fingers at lifting a golden gun or some diamonds. Yeah, that's just what the doctor ordered, no? If they keep on stealing stuff forever, soon they'll be trying to rake in the moon!
That may be fine for your eyes, but I predict a thunderous ball of poo. Just live and let it die already.
The story of the Thomas Crown affair is: Thomas and Catherine tear loose from their safe, mundane lives. Sure, you can write a story about the 'adventures' they had afterwards, but how is anything they do going to matter by comparison?
If we've descended to using Ask the Audience to decide the proper translation of a 800-year-old quote, the intent of which was apparently in doubt from the moment it was uttered, then we are truly lost.
How about captchas that require cultural background knowledge to solve?
If the captcha does not itself contain all the information required to solve it, some legitimate users will be unable to solve it.
Now, simple riddles would at least require mastery of the language instead of mere character recognition skills. However, requiring language only raises the $/hour cost of solving them a little. More importantly, even easy riddles are much harder to generate for captchas than random strings. E.g., "What word is fourth in this sentence?"
Yup. The Toledo Blade is a 'real newspaper.' It is the major daily in that city. It is an actual, honest-to-god brick-and-mortar general circulation newspaper. It has a newsroom and reporters and everything. It is one of the 7 largest newspapers in Ohio (Cleveland Plain Dealer, Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Inquirer, Cincinnati Post, Arkon Beacon-Journal, Toledo Blade, Dayton Daily News).
If you've never heard of it, that's just because the city in question happens to be Toledo.
As it is, with that gold disc in the voyager spacecrafts showing the planets of our system, it's doubtful ET will find us now since he'll see our system has only 8 planets but his directions said there would be 9.
ET may, of course, have a better picture of this solar system when hesheit arrives than we have today. If so, it'll be the things not listed on the Pioneer 10plate (e.g., Kuiper belt objects) that throw himherit more than the fact that the ninth thing that was listed is some insignificant little pair of rocks.
Please account for the free rider problem. Since all potential purchasers in this scenario know that the work will become free after it is made (i.e., no DRM exists), each has an incentive not to pay in advance in the hope that some one else will pay.
The burden of proof is on you, not the parent. That burden was carried in the previous post, when the case in which the proposed solution fails was demonstrated. The burden thus returns to anyone who contends that the proposed solution overcomes that case. Of course, since its almost a certainty that the characteristics of zero-marginal cost goods have long sinse been thoroughly explored by economists, what we really need is an actual student of economics to stand up and explain things to us.
Art was funded by patrons and commissions for thousands of years before copyright laws existed. Perhaps a patronage system will work for creation of mass popular entertainment. However, there are several differences between mass popular entertainment and older patronage models that should make us nervous. As to paintings, sculpture, and the like, the patron was paying for creation of originals he would keep. In the oldest patronage models, the work could not be replicated by anyone but the artist anyway (that is, there were no marginal cost zero copies). The patron has less incentive to pay for creation where he might be able to ride free with a copy of work paid for by some one else. As to musical compositions, these were created for performance to paying audiences.
Most importantly, the patron decided what type of work would be created. If creation of entertainment tomorrow is to be funded by patrons, how will those who can afford to pay only small amounts get works that suit their tastes?
Plus, you ignore that this problem is self-correcting. If everyone follows your logic and refrains from donating, then the work will not be released. Is it self-correcting? Is demand high enough to overcome the free rider incentive? Will the group of works that gets made be larger, smaller, or the same? These problems take some actual market data to solve and I have no idea what the results will show. People who think they can make predictions with no data make me nervous.
Suppose the population contains 10000 potential purchasers and the creator and distributor need $5000 to justify creating and distributing the work. Under a fee per copy system, that work would have gotten made if 1000 purchasers would spend $5 for it. Now, suppose a world where the copies are free once the work gets made. Some of the 1000 that would have paid $5 will now refuse. With a smaller group of paying customers, the price goes up. Even if the distributor can be eliminated, will there be enough paying customers remaining to pay the creator? To be sure, there will be some few who want the work badly enough to pay a high price, but will there be enough? Works can fall through the cracks and not get made depending on the shape of the demand curve.
With no controls (no marginal cost, no effective copyright enforcement against the masses, no social mores against copying, no DRM), supply approaches infinity. The price for recorded works of all kinds falls to zero. Ya just can't charge for it.
So, the business model has to be to charge for something that is in limited supply. One thing that's in limited supply is live performances. Happily, free electronic distribution of recorded entertainment generates demand for live performances. The type of entertainment this seems to work best for is music.
However, there is a limited demand for viewing movies in theatres if the same movie is readily available the same day at home. Worse, novels aren't performed at all, so the only thing electronic novels can promote is hardcopy novels. If/when ebook readers reach acceptable performance, price, and compatibility, they may replace hardcopy novels.
Free electronic distribution of recorded entertainment will quickly create a world where the enormous sums now spent promoting a work cannot be recouped. It is possible that it will also make it impossible for creators to make a return on the time spent creating.
You assume DRM is necessary, but in actuality, it isn't. These people somehow make a profit without DRM (otherwise they wouldn't bother releasing the e-books). As does these people as well as these people.
[heresy] These examples are not drawn from the scenario we're discussing: a world with no restrictions on transmitting electronic copies. These examples come from today's world. These examples benefit from the overpricing of similar works of similar quality, unavoided advertising, and the largess of purchasers whose political convictions motivate them to pay these artists when it could be avoided. In a world where all potential purchasers customarily have trivially easy access to zero-price versions of all works, potential purchasers would cease to expect to pay for works of these kinds. Advertising is no more resistant than DRM to technological stripping. Thus, there is little reason to believe these examples would continue to prosper. [/heresy]
There will always be a demand for new content; . . . Charge interested parties, in advance, for creation of the work. If people aren't interested in funding its creation, it doesn't get made.
Please account for the free rider problem. Since all potential purchasers in this scenario know that the work will become free after it is made (i.e., no DRM exists), each has an incentive not to pay in advance in the hope that some one else will pay. Will anything get funded under these conditions? If so, will the price received by the creator match the demand price for the same work under the old system (where it was, at least in theory, impossible for potential purchasers to get the work for free)?
13. google.com - Search engines indeed changed the world, but Google has never claimed to be the first.
9. amazon.com, 1. eBay.com, 15. easyjet.com (Budget airline) - Online commerce is important, but there were many pioneers. Expedia.com or one of it's bretheren might deserve a mention, but the importance of budjet airlines like easyjet wasn't their websites.
5. blogger.com , 4. youtube.com - Content from the masses -- writing, video, and music, too. With the cost of publishing, distribution, and holding inventory reduced to near zero, change is indeed afoot.
6. friendsreunited.com (School reunion site), 8. myspace.com - Social networking sites certainly deserve a mention. The strength of their effect on social organization is not yet known.
2. wikipedia.com - Online collaboration in software is changing the world, but outside the software field it hasn't proven itself yet. The field is still young, though.
3. napster.com - Herald of the era of online music and of music -sharing lawsuits.
14. yahoo.com - Unable to point to a great iconic achievement, the portals will wind up sharing a footnote with AOL.
10. slashdot.org - A fine example of its kind, but 'changed history' is a little much.
12. craigslist.org - Ditto.
11. salon.com (Online magazine and media company) - Ditto.
The troll - The evolution of this species has more to do with Godwin's Law than Darwin's.
The/. humorist - All his post are belong to his welcome new Natalie-Portman-covered-in-hot-grits overlords.
The tag-along - Though incapable of original thought, this poster can flog any subject through mimicry until all humor and purpose has been beaten out of it.
...they know that attempting to go after the jock/frat crowd too much is likely to have a negative impact on the rest of their fan base (mostly people who hate that culture)
Really? Has Nintendo's player base really been all that different that PS or XBox's? N64 had NFL, MLB, NHL, FIFA, WLS, and boxing titles for many years.
To be sure, there is a video game crowd that is not jocks. However, there is also a video game crowd that loves sports. The notion that to please one of them, the company would have to abandon the other seems to be a false dichotomy. Obviously, a game platform can accommodate both crowds with different titles. Why deny yourself either market segment when you could sell to both?
Slashdot Mirror
From TFA: "And academic papers are unlikely to sway those who have either made up their minds on the issue or simply want to justify behavior they think think should be legal."
Kudos to to Ars Technica for presummarizing the Slashdot discussion in TFA. We can all go home now.
If they offer a version with all the recent features stripped out, there will be an unintended consequence. It will finally prove conclusively whether users cared about anything that was added after Word for Windows 2.0.
Not really, no. I would suggest that what we're trying to do is be "right". Barring a reliable transcript or a time machine, the best we can do as to this fact is to try to approximate "right". One approximation of "right" is "generally accepted"; it's not too bad an approximation. "Generally accepted by people whose opinion is worth hearing" is a somewhat better approximation.
The criteria that make a person's opinion "worth hearing" are not, of course, "generally accepted".
I know I'll burn in bad parent hell, . . .
he hates to play deathmatch mode with me.... he dies a lot...
For that, if for nothing else, you deserve to burn. Let the kid win some, already!
Admittedly, I've not read Ambler's "The Light of Day", nor seen Topkapi, but my impression was that the 1999 Thomas Crown Affair presents him as a talented first-timer.
Brosnan, Russo, and McTiernan made that film all about trust and vulnerability. I'm sure that the action can be replicated in a sequel (elaborate crimes, chases, checkmates), but I don't see how the emotional state of the characters can be as at risk. In a sequel, they're veterans.
Another interesting difference between the PC platform and a console platform is a dictated controller. A platform company can design and mandate a new controller while PC games must write to a the controllers (mouse, keyboard, joystick) that the marketplace has accepted. It's a real case of the Cathedral v the tragic commons.
One major difference between the PC segment and the console segment is that console makers have an incentive to promote their platform. The PC gaming platform has no advocate spending $$speech$$ and tracking ROI.
Come to think of it, if I wanted to promote my console, it would help immensely if the PC platform were declared a "niche."
Sure, a man who is no longer on Her Majesty's secret service needs a new gig, but some roles you can can't live twice.
What are they going to do? Have Russo take the spy who loved her to Russia to test his nimble fingers at lifting a golden gun or some diamonds. Yeah, that's just what the doctor ordered, no? If they keep on stealing stuff forever, soon they'll be trying to rake in the moon!
That may be fine for your eyes, but I predict a thunderous ball of poo. Just live and let it die already.
The story of the Thomas Crown affair is: Thomas and Catherine tear loose from their safe, mundane lives. Sure, you can write a story about the 'adventures' they had afterwards, but how is anything they do going to matter by comparison?
If we've descended to using Ask the Audience to decide the proper translation of a 800-year-old quote, the intent of which was apparently in doubt from the moment it was uttered, then we are truly lost.
How about captchas that require cultural background knowledge to solve?
If the captcha does not itself contain all the information required to solve it, some legitimate users will be unable to solve it.
Now, simple riddles would at least require mastery of the language instead of mere character recognition skills. However, requiring language only raises the $/hour cost of solving them a little. More importantly, even easy riddles are much harder to generate for captchas than random strings. E.g., "What word is fourth in this sentence?"
Yup. The Toledo Blade is a 'real newspaper.' It is the major daily in that city. It is an actual, honest-to-god brick-and-mortar general circulation newspaper. It has a newsroom and reporters and everything. It is one of the 7 largest newspapers in Ohio (Cleveland Plain Dealer, Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Inquirer, Cincinnati Post, Arkon Beacon-Journal, Toledo Blade, Dayton Daily News).
If you've never heard of it, that's just because the city in question happens to be Toledo.
As it is, with that gold disc in the voyager spacecrafts showing the planets of our system, it's doubtful ET will find us now since he'll see our system has only 8 planets but his directions said there would be 9.
ET may, of course, have a better picture of this solar system when hesheit arrives than we have today. If so, it'll be the things not listed on the Pioneer 10 plate (e.g., Kuiper belt objects) that throw himherit more than the fact that the ninth thing that was listed is some insignificant little pair of rocks.
See also Voyager 2 golden record.
The burden of proof is on you, not the parent.
That burden was carried in the previous post, when the case in which the proposed solution fails was demonstrated. The burden thus returns to anyone who contends that the proposed solution overcomes that case. Of course, since its almost a certainty that the characteristics of zero-marginal cost goods have long sinse been thoroughly explored by economists, what we really need is an actual student of economics to stand up and explain things to us.
Art was funded by patrons and commissions for thousands of years before copyright laws existed.
Perhaps a patronage system will work for creation of mass popular entertainment. However, there are several differences between mass popular entertainment and older patronage models that should make us nervous. As to paintings, sculpture, and the like, the patron was paying for creation of originals he would keep. In the oldest patronage models, the work could not be replicated by anyone but the artist anyway (that is, there were no marginal cost zero copies). The patron has less incentive to pay for creation where he might be able to ride free with a copy of work paid for by some one else. As to musical compositions, these were created for performance to paying audiences.
Most importantly, the patron decided what type of work would be created. If creation of entertainment tomorrow is to be funded by patrons, how will those who can afford to pay only small amounts get works that suit their tastes?
Plus, you ignore that this problem is self-correcting. If everyone follows your logic and refrains from donating, then the work will not be released.
Is it self-correcting? Is demand high enough to overcome the free rider incentive? Will the group of works that gets made be larger, smaller, or the same? These problems take some actual market data to solve and I have no idea what the results will show. People who think they can make predictions with no data make me nervous.
Suppose the population contains 10000 potential purchasers and the creator and distributor need $5000 to justify creating and distributing the work. Under a fee per copy system, that work would have gotten made if 1000 purchasers would spend $5 for it. Now, suppose a world where the copies are free once the work gets made. Some of the 1000 that would have paid $5 will now refuse. With a smaller group of paying customers, the price goes up. Even if the distributor can be eliminated, will there be enough paying customers remaining to pay the creator? To be sure, there will be some few who want the work badly enough to pay a high price, but will there be enough? Works can fall through the cracks and not get made depending on the shape of the demand curve.
then sell something else.
With no controls (no marginal cost, no effective copyright enforcement against the masses, no social mores against copying, no DRM), supply approaches infinity. The price for recorded works of all kinds falls to zero. Ya just can't charge for it.
So, the business model has to be to charge for something that is in limited supply. One thing that's in limited supply is live performances. Happily, free electronic distribution of recorded entertainment generates demand for live performances. The type of entertainment this seems to work best for is music.
However, there is a limited demand for viewing movies in theatres if the same movie is readily available the same day at home. Worse, novels aren't performed at all, so the only thing electronic novels can promote is hardcopy novels. If/when ebook readers reach acceptable performance, price, and compatibility, they may replace hardcopy novels.
Free electronic distribution of recorded entertainment will quickly create a world where the enormous sums now spent promoting a work cannot be recouped. It is possible that it will also make it impossible for creators to make a return on the time spent creating.
You assume DRM is necessary, but in actuality, it isn't. These people somehow make a profit without DRM (otherwise they wouldn't bother releasing the e-books). As does these people as well as these people.
[heresy] These examples are not drawn from the scenario we're discussing: a world with no restrictions on transmitting electronic copies. These examples come from today's world. These examples benefit from the overpricing of similar works of similar quality, unavoided advertising, and the largess of purchasers whose political convictions motivate them to pay these artists when it could be avoided. In a world where all potential purchasers customarily have trivially easy access to zero-price versions of all works, potential purchasers would cease to expect to pay for works of these kinds. Advertising is no more resistant than DRM to technological stripping. Thus, there is little reason to believe these examples would continue to prosper. [/heresy]
Here's hoping they do!
There will always be a demand for new content; . . . Charge interested parties, in advance, for creation of the work. If people aren't interested in funding its creation, it doesn't get made.
Please account for the free rider problem. Since all potential purchasers in this scenario know that the work will become free after it is made (i.e., no DRM exists), each has an incentive not to pay in advance in the hope that some one else will pay. Will anything get funded under these conditions? If so, will the price received by the creator match the demand price for the same work under the old system (where it was, at least in theory, impossible for potential purchasers to get the work for free)?
Who cares about advertising, [user-beneficial application X] is even more important.
You're new to this capitalism thing, aren't you?
Touché.
The karma whore - If some one else has already block quoted TFA, he can always be counted on for a link to wikipedia.
/. humorist - All his post are belong to his welcome new Natalie-Portman-covered-in-hot-grits overlords.
+h3 1337-5p34k!|\|6 h4x0r - vvh4+3v3r !5 541) !|\| 7331 50|\|)5 pr0f0|\|).
The troll - The evolution of this species has more to do with Godwin's Law than Darwin's.
The
The tag-along - Though incapable of original thought, this poster can flog any subject through mimicry until all humor and purpose has been beaten out of it.
...they know that attempting to go after the jock/frat crowd too much is likely to have a negative impact on the rest of their fan base (mostly people who hate that culture)
Really? Has Nintendo's player base really been all that different that PS or XBox's? N64 had NFL, MLB, NHL, FIFA, WLS, and boxing titles for many years.
To be sure, there is a video game crowd that is not jocks. However, there is also a video game crowd that loves sports. The notion that to please one of them, the company would have to abandon the other seems to be a false dichotomy. Obviously, a game platform can accommodate both crowds with different titles. Why deny yourself either market segment when you could sell to both?
You obviously don't have all the expansions in play.
True. Usually just base + one.
Madden NFL 07
Wii Sports
A little thin for the audience that likes sports games, no? Madden will be solid, though.
On a phone call, you might figure out that we're dogs.