No doubt they've run the numbers, and are pricing 'em at the market sweet spot. Even so, I agree that's too high relative to their value, not to mention the few cents the artist gets from it.
I've noticed that my personal sweet spot for DVDs is about $8 for movies, and $1 per episode for TV. I've bought a whole lot more of 'em since they started showing up in that range.
Similarly, I seem to be willing to pay about $1 per song for stuff I REALLY like, and about 25 cents per song for stuff I like well enough but could live without.
I like that. And the key part is "noncommercial". The moment money enters the equation, then they're free to either stomp your head or (if they have any sense) demand a cut.
I've had the thought that there's a goldmine waiting to be tapped in P2P, using (unencumbered) MP3s tagged so that people could try low-bitrate for free, and micropurchase high-bitrate as desired, and flagged so that the hosting peer could take a cut for his trouble and bandwidth. In short, where one could legally distribute far and wide, to the profit of all concerned, and at no cost to the RIAA members.
Similarly, I don't buy DRM'd shit, and tho I'll sometimes download, I don't distribute. I buy CDs mainly to have a pristine-quality backup of the MP3s that are my everyday fare.
Given that, here's my marketing thought for the day: Buy a whole album worth of unencumbered MP3s, and get the CD as a free bonus.
Exactly... and given that, I'm wondering what could be done to tie an online SIM game to this Fantasy Congress, where life in the SIM reacted to legislation the way we all WISH we could/dared react.
Would probably be enlightening, from a French Revolution point of view;)
Um... so if I released my own original source code under GPL2, someone else could add stuff to it and re-release it under GPL3, thus preventing ME from having access to the improvements, unless I accept GPL3 for my original code?
My brain hurts.
While the GPL's anti-code-hoarding feature has its uses, I agree that the BSD style license is much "freer" in that it's not only libre, it doesn't force a particular behaviour on other people.
Very true. And even tho per some folks on the spot, *this* story is rather overblown, I readily can see the concept getting into Law Enforcement's collective little heads and becoming their Next Big Crime Preventer.
Back in the MacOS 6-7-8 era, you'd always hear from Mac users that their machines NEVER crashed. That's because in the Mac lingo of the era, "crash" meant "the hardware DIED". But as to "freezes", my Mac friends told me "oh, that happens all the time". Hmm, I see...!!
Anyway, count me as a vote for "Thanks, but I like my WinBoxen just fine, and they never crash (by either definition) so where's my motivation??", or Mandrake as my next choice. And I do have a Mac G4 here... I *tried* to like it, I really did, but never have I seen so much awkwardness in one UI... well, at least it hasn't crashed on me, which I gather is a fair feat for OS9.2; I could crash OS8.5 at will.
Amen... exactly my own experience. Actually, I do much less tweaking than that, and my WinBoxen are slick and stable, with uptimes routinely measured in months.
Another point to add to yours -- you gotta run your OS on decent hardware. People talk about how Apple controls the Mac hardware (and how "good" it is), so MacOS always knows what to expect and always has the exactly correct drivers. But Windows has to make do with every sort of randomly-shitty hardware... how well would MacOS run on equally-bad and equally-random hardware, with drivers from gods know where??
If you invest just a little more in quality parts, it makes a world of difference. Doesn't even have to be top-end, just halfway-decent and with stable drivers.
Exactly. Good interface means "user doesn't have to think too much about using it". A good screwdriver is an extension of your arm; a good GUI is an extension of your brain. If it throws your hand out of balance or your brain out of sync with the task at hand, it's either not correctly designed, or is not the interface for YOU. (Or perhaps both.)
Since brains vary, what's seen as "good UI" varies, but the good ones (whatever mindset they're geared toward) all have *internally-consistent* FLOW in common; that is, when you're doing some task, each action leads you along the necessary path to accomplish that task, because any given action is a logical extension of the previous action.
Personally, I find that Windows and KDE both "flow" for my brain, whereas the Mac and Gnome UIs cause endless abends and restarts. Your brain may vary.:)
I agree. And "polish" is often represented by very small tunings.
My fave example is a comparison of naked linux and naked BSD (from some years ago; doubtless different by now). When using MAN in linux, I had to know enough to "Quit" when the page display ended, otherwise I was "stuck" in MAN. In BSD, MAN Quit by itself at the logical point to do so; the user need not know to do anything.
A very small point, a very minor difference in "polish", yet I remember it 6 or 7 years later as "BSD seemed more finished".
. . . . .
[No smart remarks about how if I was stuck in MAN, I shoulda used more lube.;)
Sounds rather like the "copy to file" function that's been in Corel graphics software for at least 8 years now. I agree, it's handy. Didn't know it was in KDE, tho (it's my preferred linux desktop, but I don't run it enough to be expert at it) -- so thanks for the tip!
And I'm wondering... isn't the extreme extrapolation of this, oh, say, requiring all stores to fingerprint shoppers, to cut down on the number of shoplifters??
Oh, that's a good one... the message I get is that you're supposed to buy a house for god. Or maybe that your god is supposed to buy you a house.:D
The HSP images that bug me the most are on Godaddy and Edison's sites. Total waste of bandwidth, plus I've seen 'em in print ads and they were a waste of ink then, now a waste of some 200k of my very limited dialup straw PER PAGE. Yet the sites don't work with images turned off, so... suffer!
A good example of how if you have a sudden, unexplained, and *unresponsive* change in weight, hie yourself to a doctor and get yourself thoroughly checked out, because chances are something is seriously awry.
It can go the other way, too. I know someone who was obese, but miraculously lost all that extra weight with no change of habits. And kept right on losing til she looked anorexic and had fainting spells. Turns out she'd developed fullblown diabetes, and the main initial symptom was galloping weight loss.
Could be related to the insulin cycle and how much energy is available to the brain, vs how much is being stored as fat.
I know that for myself, even a few extra pounds makes me feel sluggish, both physically and mentally. And that's even tho I'm a "thin" person who has never been obese.
I've known retarded people who had eiditic memories, provided it was about something that interested them. So as you say, memory alone isn't necessarily a good guage of IQ.
IQ is really more about how well you're able to use the data that's put in front of you. I remember the IQ tests they gave me in the 1st grade -- most of it was about puzzling out how one thing related to another thing. My favourite part was the "exploded boxes" section. I had no idea boxes came apart like that, but it made sense the moment I saw it, and it was great fun working out what flattened shape equated which completed box. There was only one that I couldn't work out.
As to TFA, I've noticed that I'm mentally "sharper" and have a better memory when I'm thinner, and I've never been obese -- never more than "wish I had 10 less pounds". Even so little (about 8% of my correct-weight body mass) makes a big difference, in my experience.
In my experience, linux with a normal desktop is always slower than a concurrent Windows version on the exact same hardware, generally by a factor of 2 or 3. That's why I use the fastest machine I have for trying out linux disties -- I also hate to wait, and couldn't stand it on the same hardware that's fine for Windows, even for XP.
I was surprised and disappointed by this, having heard over and over how linux was great for older hardware.
Naked commandline linux is not a fair comparison to a Windows desktop, and for performance, should be compared to DOS instead.
(Note: I have a very good internal clock. I can spot performance diffs as small as 3%.)
As to layers of dialogs, in my observation linux tends to group/layer them according to the thought processes of the developer, rather than of the user, occasionally leading to "all at once" or "delve into the depths", depending on who wrote it. In Windows, dialog depth tends to be consistent for a given *type* of task -- with the exception of network config type things, which are often well-buried in strange places. Either way, so long as the process is logical enough and doesn't force needless backtracking, I don't think it's something to get all wired about.
Normally in Windows CTRL+TAB switches between windows within a given application, whereas ALT+TAB switches between application windows. So, Windows' CTRL+TAB is the same as the Mac ALT+~ (maybe that exists because CTRL isn't quite the same thing on a Mac, and isn't available for such a purpose?? I dunno.)
This works even with oddballs like tabbed applications, which didn't exist when the CTRL+TAB thing was invented. Generally with those, CTRL+TAB moves between tabs, which is essentially the same as moving between windows within a single app.
I thought CTRL+TAB worked on KDE too, tho it's been a while since I had the MDK box up, so I may be imagining things.:)
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No doubt they've run the numbers, and are pricing 'em at the market sweet spot. Even so, I agree that's too high relative to their value, not to mention the few cents the artist gets from it.
I've noticed that my personal sweet spot for DVDs is about $8 for movies, and $1 per episode for TV. I've bought a whole lot more of 'em since they started showing up in that range.
Similarly, I seem to be willing to pay about $1 per song for stuff I REALLY like, and about 25 cents per song for stuff I like well enough but could live without.
I like that. And the key part is "noncommercial". The moment money enters the equation, then they're free to either stomp your head or (if they have any sense) demand a cut.
I've had the thought that there's a goldmine waiting to be tapped in P2P, using (unencumbered) MP3s tagged so that people could try low-bitrate for free, and micropurchase high-bitrate as desired, and flagged so that the hosting peer could take a cut for his trouble and bandwidth. In short, where one could legally distribute far and wide, to the profit of all concerned, and at no cost to the RIAA members.
Similarly, I don't buy DRM'd shit, and tho I'll sometimes download, I don't distribute. I buy CDs mainly to have a pristine-quality backup of the MP3s that are my everyday fare.
Given that, here's my marketing thought for the day: Buy a whole album worth of unencumbered MP3s, and get the CD as a free bonus.
Help! The server is on fire!!
Exactly... and given that, I'm wondering what could be done to tie an online SIM game to this Fantasy Congress, where life in the SIM reacted to legislation the way we all WISH we could/dared react.
;)
Would probably be enlightening, from a French Revolution point of view
Without those thousands of miles of farmland, you wouldn't be eating that Chicago hot dog. Or much of anything, for that matter.
In fact, Chicago exists primarily as a shipping point for farm products. The rest of the city grew up around the stockyards and railyards.
Goes to show there are a lot of different ideas as to what constitutes "polish" :)
Um... so if I released my own original source code under GPL2, someone else could add stuff to it and re-release it under GPL3, thus preventing ME from having access to the improvements, unless I accept GPL3 for my original code?
My brain hurts.
While the GPL's anti-code-hoarding feature has its uses, I agree that the BSD style license is much "freer" in that it's not only libre, it doesn't force a particular behaviour on other people.
About halfway down the list, I realised this sounds a great deal like a goa'uld exhorting his faithful Jaffa...
Very true. And even tho per some folks on the spot, *this* story is rather overblown, I readily can see the concept getting into Law Enforcement's collective little heads and becoming their Next Big Crime Preventer.
Back in the MacOS 6-7-8 era, you'd always hear from Mac users that their machines NEVER crashed. That's because in the Mac lingo of the era, "crash" meant "the hardware DIED". But as to "freezes", my Mac friends told me "oh, that happens all the time". Hmm, I see...!!
Anyway, count me as a vote for "Thanks, but I like my WinBoxen just fine, and they never crash (by either definition) so where's my motivation??", or Mandrake as my next choice. And I do have a Mac G4 here... I *tried* to like it, I really did, but never have I seen so much awkwardness in one UI... well, at least it hasn't crashed on me, which I gather is a fair feat for OS9.2; I could crash OS8.5 at will.
Amen... exactly my own experience. Actually, I do much less tweaking than that, and my WinBoxen are slick and stable, with uptimes routinely measured in months.
Another point to add to yours -- you gotta run your OS on decent hardware. People talk about how Apple controls the Mac hardware (and how "good" it is), so MacOS always knows what to expect and always has the exactly correct drivers. But Windows has to make do with every sort of randomly-shitty hardware... how well would MacOS run on equally-bad and equally-random hardware, with drivers from gods know where??
If you invest just a little more in quality parts, it makes a world of difference. Doesn't even have to be top-end, just halfway-decent and with stable drivers.
Exactly. Good interface means "user doesn't have to think too much about using it". A good screwdriver is an extension of your arm; a good GUI is an extension of your brain. If it throws your hand out of balance or your brain out of sync with the task at hand, it's either not correctly designed, or is not the interface for YOU. (Or perhaps both.)
:)
Since brains vary, what's seen as "good UI" varies, but the good ones (whatever mindset they're geared toward) all have *internally-consistent* FLOW in common; that is, when you're doing some task, each action leads you along the necessary path to accomplish that task, because any given action is a logical extension of the previous action.
Personally, I find that Windows and KDE both "flow" for my brain, whereas the Mac and Gnome UIs cause endless abends and restarts. Your brain may vary.
[BTW, interesting journal link..]
I agree. And "polish" is often represented by very small tunings.
;)
My fave example is a comparison of naked linux and naked BSD (from some years ago; doubtless different by now). When using MAN in linux, I had to know enough to "Quit" when the page display ended, otherwise I was "stuck" in MAN. In BSD, MAN Quit by itself at the logical point to do so; the user need not know to do anything.
A very small point, a very minor difference in "polish", yet I remember it 6 or 7 years later as "BSD seemed more finished".
.
.
.
.
.
[No smart remarks about how if I was stuck in MAN, I shoulda used more lube.
Sounds rather like the "copy to file" function that's been in Corel graphics software for at least 8 years now. I agree, it's handy. Didn't know it was in KDE, tho (it's my preferred linux desktop, but I don't run it enough to be expert at it) -- so thanks for the tip!
And I'm wondering... isn't the extreme extrapolation of this, oh, say, requiring all stores to fingerprint shoppers, to cut down on the number of shoplifters??
Give me back my finger, you insensitive clod!!
That would have been a lot more fair to customers -- let them vote with their wallet. Ad-free game price $xx, Ad-supported game perhaps 50% of $xx.
Oh, that's a good one... the message I get is that you're supposed to buy a house for god. Or maybe that your god is supposed to buy you a house. :D
The HSP images that bug me the most are on Godaddy and Edison's sites. Total waste of bandwidth, plus I've seen 'em in print ads and they were a waste of ink then, now a waste of some 200k of my very limited dialup straw PER PAGE. Yet the sites don't work with images turned off, so... suffer!
Well, yeah. You just inhale the cookie dough. No flames needed. :)
A good example of how if you have a sudden, unexplained, and *unresponsive* change in weight, hie yourself to a doctor and get yourself thoroughly checked out, because chances are something is seriously awry.
It can go the other way, too. I know someone who was obese, but miraculously lost all that extra weight with no change of habits. And kept right on losing til she looked anorexic and had fainting spells. Turns out she'd developed fullblown diabetes, and the main initial symptom was galloping weight loss.
Could be related to the insulin cycle and how much energy is available to the brain, vs how much is being stored as fat.
I know that for myself, even a few extra pounds makes me feel sluggish, both physically and mentally. And that's even tho I'm a "thin" person who has never been obese.
I've known retarded people who had eiditic memories, provided it was about something that interested them. So as you say, memory alone isn't necessarily a good guage of IQ.
IQ is really more about how well you're able to use the data that's put in front of you. I remember the IQ tests they gave me in the 1st grade -- most of it was about puzzling out how one thing related to another thing. My favourite part was the "exploded boxes" section. I had no idea boxes came apart like that, but it made sense the moment I saw it, and it was great fun working out what flattened shape equated which completed box. There was only one that I couldn't work out.
As to TFA, I've noticed that I'm mentally "sharper" and have a better memory when I'm thinner, and I've never been obese -- never more than "wish I had 10 less pounds". Even so little (about 8% of my correct-weight body mass) makes a big difference, in my experience.
In my experience, linux with a normal desktop is always slower than a concurrent Windows version on the exact same hardware, generally by a factor of 2 or 3. That's why I use the fastest machine I have for trying out linux disties -- I also hate to wait, and couldn't stand it on the same hardware that's fine for Windows, even for XP.
I was surprised and disappointed by this, having heard over and over how linux was great for older hardware.
Naked commandline linux is not a fair comparison to a Windows desktop, and for performance, should be compared to DOS instead.
(Note: I have a very good internal clock. I can spot performance diffs as small as 3%.)
As to layers of dialogs, in my observation linux tends to group/layer them according to the thought processes of the developer, rather than of the user, occasionally leading to "all at once" or "delve into the depths", depending on who wrote it. In Windows, dialog depth tends to be consistent for a given *type* of task -- with the exception of network config type things, which are often well-buried in strange places. Either way, so long as the process is logical enough and doesn't force needless backtracking, I don't think it's something to get all wired about.
Normally in Windows CTRL+TAB switches between windows within a given application, whereas ALT+TAB switches between application windows. So, Windows' CTRL+TAB is the same as the Mac ALT+~ (maybe that exists because CTRL isn't quite the same thing on a Mac, and isn't available for such a purpose?? I dunno.)
:)
This works even with oddballs like tabbed applications, which didn't exist when the CTRL+TAB thing was invented. Generally with those, CTRL+TAB moves between tabs, which is essentially the same as moving between windows within a single app.
I thought CTRL+TAB worked on KDE too, tho it's been a while since I had the MDK box up, so I may be imagining things.