Why exactly is circumventing region locks a bad thing?
First off I didn't say it was bad, however from the media companies perspective I can see it as bad. From the audiences perspective it's good, at least in the short term.
why is the customer not allowed to use the global market too?
You are not a customer, you are a product that the network also sell to advertisers.
Most goods are not regionally licensed. It's bad for media companies, for now, because the region locks are there to protect revenues of the content creator. Current licencing is by region. That is a flawed model, but they are very tied into it. Many existing contracts between distributor and broadcaster, as well as some laws, are based around regional licencing.
There are real costs associated with creating content. Currently most of those costs are recovered by targeted advertising. By avoiding region locks, you're more likely to get irrelevant ads. That's wasted spend for the advertisers who will see their ratio of conversions fall. (A viewer who acts on an ad.) They will thereby reduce advertising by either negotiating a lower price per viewer, or buying less ad space. Under the current system, it takes time to line up shows with advertisers and audiences. In some cases expensive shows are broadcast to line up with other regions seasons. E.g. In summer shows do not do well as most people are outdoors. Shows produced in the northern hemisphere's winter are delayed 6 months to line up with the southern hemisphere's winter. This ensures a high number of viewers, which will likely lead to a higher conversion rate for advertisers. If the audience have already seen the content by avoiding region locks, there will be lower viewer numbers, advertisers will not spend as much, and the networks will look for less expensive content. The content producer sees less profit, and take fewer risks creating content.
In short, the media companies are tied up, and slow moving to keep pace with how fast content can now be delivered globally. The current distribution model is flawed as it was created in a world without the internet. It is written into laws and contracts that are hard to change. Circumventing the current model is bad for the media companies in the short term and bad for audiences in the long run as shows will have lower budgets (think reality tv). However it's great for the audiences in the short term as they get to see content whenever and wherever they like. Media companies need find a way for the audiences to enjoy the content delivered immediately to audiences who want it wherever they are, while maintaining their revenue and profits. This will require a large effort, with changes to regional laws, trade agreements, licencing contracts etc.
In my opinion the best way to avoid all of this is for content producers to sell directly to their audiences. This is hard because good content producers have high costs, and high risk. For every great show you see on TV or great movie you see at the cinema, far more were produced and failed. That cost is also currently paid for by advertisers and out of the profits of successful shows. Things like kickstarter might start to allow for those risks to be taken, but even producing a pilot to start a kickstarter is expensive. Some of the profit from successful shows needs to go into all the failures that will occur before another success. This is why we see crappy how to videos on youtube and not high production value dramas. It's also why the current media companies are the only ones to produce that type of content.
Shows are produced by production companies. That product is sold to networks. The networks sell the show to advertisers. The network is the customer of a show and the advertiser is a customer of the network, not you the audience, you are not a customer, you are a product that the network also sell to advertisers. The real customers of shows, networks and advertisers do use the global market.
You're crude and fail to understand simple arguments, and some key aspects of language and communication. You have inferred an opposite point of view to your own from my statements. This shows you see the world as black and white, and anyone's opinion as either with you entirely or against. This is simply not the case.
I do not have enough data to say anything more than what I guess. I could probably find some.
I am not willing to throw out anonymity and privacy for those who want to circumvent copyright.
The above is in bold so you can see I agree with you.
Ideally media companies would find another way to distribute content. One that suits the users who are prepared to pay for it and themselves.
I would bet that media companies protecting their current, quite flawed, distribution model is the motivation behind stopping payments. Not spying.
They did not make it harder to pay for content that earns them revenue. They die make it (not much, but a little bit) harder to avoid paying for content that does earn them revenue.
That is, they made it harder to pay for VPN's which do not give media companies revenue. They did not make it harder to pay for DVD's off Amazon, or downloads via iTunes etc.
That has to be one of the most heinous crimes, someone in another country watching a free** broadcast.... ** the broadcast might be paid for by advertisers, the advert may or may not be relevant to the country in which it is viewed.
The broadcast is paid for by advertisers. And if making decent content becomes more risky or lower profit giving rise to more reality tv... for a developed nations largely law abiding citizens day to day life, it is a pretty horrible outcome. Media companies need to find a better distribution model.
That people pay VPN services to bypass geo locks means they have money to pay *something* to watch that content. Media companies should take note and offer more reasonable pricing for content globally.
Yes.
All they are accomplishing by getting Visa and Mastercard to collude with them is forcing people to use even less legal methods to get content.
No. They are not forcing anyone to be less legal, that's probably your bias. They are removing one method, which may make some users not bother, some go a legal route, and some go another illegal route.
> 'It means that U.S. companies are forcing non-American companies not to allow people to protest their privacy and be anonymous, and thus the NSA can spy even more.'
That's rather bias. It also means that people are no longer able to circumvent geo locks on media content, avoiding the current media distribution models and laws. Some people are protecting their privacy, but I would guess the vast majority just want to watch Game of Thrones.
While I wouldn't argue the carriers charges are reasonable there are some costs that are being overlooked by the majority of the comments.
In order to understand the charges you must account that fact that SMS uses SS7 transport and not TCP/IP, technologies nearly 25 years old. GSM air Interface and channel allocation for SMS is different to the interface for data. Any channels set up for SMS are used for pretty much just that and thats it, so any channel set up for SMS can not be used for voice or data traffic whereas certain cell towers can be set up to use data channels for either voice or data. The channels used for SMS are control channels (SDCCH or Standalone Dedicated Control Channel) and as their name implies must be dedicated to this task which means that a carrier that has more SMS transmission capability loses some voice/data transmission capability. Add to this that not all towers support the swapping between voice and data channels (meaning you have to dedicate channels to either one or the other) figuring out how to set up your spectrum allocation gets complicated.
Because of the legacy systems that support SMS you can't compare SMS data with other data. You must consider the infrastructure costs where not only the carriers make ridiculous profits but also their suppliers like Nortel and Lucent do also. When a carrier sends a text to another carrier there is a cost involved to the carrier. There must be joins between the carriers which both must pay for. Internationally this can get quite complex. Here in New Zealand this cost is more clearly reflected where you pay.03 cents provided the messages do not pass between carriers ie. where there no extra cost to the carrier. Messages to other carriers, in NZ there are three, are more expensive as each must pay the other for the function, if at a highly exorbitant rate. This is reflected in the charge to the customer as SMS between carriers are about 15 cents. Internationally texts are 22 cents again reflecting the number of different parties that must handle that message. This is not the internet, there is no Google, services cost money, all of which is reflected by what the customer pays. It is not just data like the internet. It must pass on the inside of the carriers network to other carriers using legacy protocols and private networks, this is where the extra cost is.
The carriers could easily bring the rates down, but it is not in their interest to do so while customers are still paying these rates.
Once they get totally caught up, there will only be two things that set MS office apart from it's competitors.
Three things, GUI also sets office apart from it's competitors. Office 12 will make this more obvious. This is one area IMO that is lacking in OOo and others. This is crucial to the end user, if Office 12 looks better, it works better, even if all the features exist in the competitors products. This will justify the price until the free alternatives catch up.
I support OOo and have implemented it in a few situations, How it works to the end user is my major problem. As you say they have caught up with Office Feature-wise. It is not that it works different to Office but that it suffers all the same problems. The designers did not try anything new, it looks the same but different. This to me seems to be a problem with Open development, inconsitancy in apperance and work flow to the end user. It does not take a developer to solve this, it take some of their time but a large amout of thinking by a designer. I am not a developer so if I am making little sense here try to read though to what I mean as it is important.
Current efforts already compete with Office, with some inovation they could be prefered.
Titles, credits, links, etc. are all shown encoded into the video. There must be a better way. Flash encoded video may have an answer already but I have never seen it implemented. QuickTime may also have a solution but again I have never seen it.
Has anyone done this? Is anyone pushing a standard? Fancy having a computer being interactive..
Titles, credits, links, etc. are all shown encoded into the video. There must be a better way. Flash encoded video may have an answer already but I have never seen it implemented. QuickTime may also have a solution but again I have never seen it.
Has anyone done this? Is anyone pushing a standard? Fancy having a computer being interactive..
With the large number of posts quoting statistics on this article (over 30 or so) I would remind people that almost 67% of statistics are made up on the spot.
Slashdot Mirror
Why exactly is circumventing region locks a bad thing?
First off I didn't say it was bad, however from the media companies perspective I can see it as bad. From the audiences perspective it's good, at least in the short term.
why is the customer not allowed to use the global market too?
You are not a customer, you are a product that the network also sell to advertisers.
Most goods are not regionally licensed. It's bad for media companies, for now, because the region locks are there to protect revenues of the content creator. Current licencing is by region. That is a flawed model, but they are very tied into it. Many existing contracts between distributor and broadcaster, as well as some laws, are based around regional licencing.
There are real costs associated with creating content. Currently most of those costs are recovered by targeted advertising. By avoiding region locks, you're more likely to get irrelevant ads. That's wasted spend for the advertisers who will see their ratio of conversions fall. (A viewer who acts on an ad.) They will thereby reduce advertising by either negotiating a lower price per viewer, or buying less ad space. Under the current system, it takes time to line up shows with advertisers and audiences. In some cases expensive shows are broadcast to line up with other regions seasons. E.g. In summer shows do not do well as most people are outdoors. Shows produced in the northern hemisphere's winter are delayed 6 months to line up with the southern hemisphere's winter. This ensures a high number of viewers, which will likely lead to a higher conversion rate for advertisers. If the audience have already seen the content by avoiding region locks, there will be lower viewer numbers, advertisers will not spend as much, and the networks will look for less expensive content. The content producer sees less profit, and take fewer risks creating content.
In short, the media companies are tied up, and slow moving to keep pace with how fast content can now be delivered globally. The current distribution model is flawed as it was created in a world without the internet. It is written into laws and contracts that are hard to change. Circumventing the current model is bad for the media companies in the short term and bad for audiences in the long run as shows will have lower budgets (think reality tv). However it's great for the audiences in the short term as they get to see content whenever and wherever they like. Media companies need find a way for the audiences to enjoy the content delivered immediately to audiences who want it wherever they are, while maintaining their revenue and profits. This will require a large effort, with changes to regional laws, trade agreements, licencing contracts etc.
In my opinion the best way to avoid all of this is for content producers to sell directly to their audiences. This is hard because good content producers have high costs, and high risk. For every great show you see on TV or great movie you see at the cinema, far more were produced and failed. That cost is also currently paid for by advertisers and out of the profits of successful shows. Things like kickstarter might start to allow for those risks to be taken, but even producing a pilot to start a kickstarter is expensive. Some of the profit from successful shows needs to go into all the failures that will occur before another success. This is why we see crappy how to videos on youtube and not high production value dramas. It's also why the current media companies are the only ones to produce that type of content.
Shows are produced by production companies. That product is sold to networks. The networks sell the show to advertisers. The network is the customer of a show and the advertiser is a customer of the network, not you the audience, you are not a customer, you are a product that the network also sell to advertisers. The real customers of shows, networks and advertisers do use the global market.
You're crude and fail to understand simple arguments, and some key aspects of language and communication.
You have inferred an opposite point of view to your own from my statements.
This shows you see the world as black and white, and anyone's opinion as either with you entirely or against. This is simply not the case.
I do not have enough data to say anything more than what I guess. I could probably find some.
I am not willing to throw out anonymity and privacy for those who want to circumvent copyright.
The above is in bold so you can see I agree with you.
Ideally media companies would find another way to distribute content. One that suits the users who are prepared to pay for it and themselves.
I would bet that media companies protecting their current, quite flawed, distribution model is the motivation behind stopping payments. Not spying.
Furthermore, grow up.
Yes! As much as that sucks.
They did not make it harder to pay for content that earns them revenue.
They die make it (not much, but a little bit) harder to avoid paying for content that does earn them revenue.
That is, they made it harder to pay for VPN's which do not give media companies revenue.
They did not make it harder to pay for DVD's off Amazon, or downloads via iTunes etc.
That has to be one of the most heinous crimes, someone in another country watching a free** broadcast. ... ** the broadcast might be paid for by advertisers, the advert may or may not be relevant to the country in which it is viewed.
The broadcast is paid for by advertisers. And if making decent content becomes more risky or lower profit giving rise to more reality tv... for a developed nations largely law abiding citizens day to day life, it is a pretty horrible outcome. Media companies need to find a better distribution model.
That people pay VPN services to bypass geo locks means they have money to pay *something* to watch that content. Media companies should take note and offer more reasonable pricing for content globally.
Yes.
All they are accomplishing by getting Visa and Mastercard to collude with them is forcing people to use even less legal methods to get content.
No. They are not forcing anyone to be less legal, that's probably your bias. They are removing one method, which may make some users not bother, some go a legal route, and some go another illegal route.
Ideally media companies would find another way to distribute content. One that suits the users who are prepared to pay for it and themselves.
I would bet that media companies protecting their current, quite flawed, distribution model is the motivation behind stopping payments. Not spying.
> 'It means that U.S. companies are forcing non-American companies not to allow people to protest their privacy and be anonymous, and thus the NSA can spy even more.'
That's rather bias. It also means that people are no longer able to circumvent geo locks on media content, avoiding the current media distribution models and laws. Some people are protecting their privacy, but I would guess the vast majority just want to watch Game of Thrones.
3-D movie shows what happens in the brain as it loses consciousness...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzX7w2-FWAA (24 seconds)
Roentgenium is element #111, right below gold on the periodic table
So he boiled off the Gold from the top and was left with the Roentgenium below.
Makes perfect sense to me.
Your argument works, most of the time.
Bands that don't perform in any venue other than a studio deserve no money is what you are also arguing.. and that doesn't sound right.
While I wouldn't argue the carriers charges are reasonable there are some costs that are being overlooked by the majority of the comments.
In order to understand the charges you must account that fact that SMS uses SS7 transport and not TCP/IP, technologies nearly 25 years old. GSM air Interface and channel allocation for SMS is different to the interface for data. Any channels set up for SMS are used for pretty much just that and thats it, so any channel set up for SMS can not be used for voice or data traffic whereas certain cell towers can be set up to use data channels for either voice or data. The channels used for SMS are control channels (SDCCH or Standalone Dedicated Control Channel) and as their name implies must be dedicated to this task which means that a carrier that has more SMS transmission capability loses some voice/data transmission capability. Add to this that not all towers support the swapping between voice and data channels (meaning you have to dedicate channels to either one or the other) figuring out how to set up your spectrum allocation gets complicated.
Because of the legacy systems that support SMS you can't compare SMS data with other data. You must consider the infrastructure costs where not only the carriers make ridiculous profits but also their suppliers like Nortel and Lucent do also. When a carrier sends a text to another carrier there is a cost involved to the carrier. There must be joins between the carriers which both must pay for. Internationally this can get quite complex. Here in New Zealand this cost is more clearly reflected where you pay .03 cents provided the messages do not pass between carriers ie. where there no extra cost to the carrier. Messages to other carriers, in NZ there are three, are more expensive as each must pay the other for the function, if at a highly exorbitant rate. This is reflected in the charge to the customer as SMS between carriers are about 15 cents. Internationally texts are 22 cents again reflecting the number of different parties that must handle that message. This is not the internet, there is no Google, services cost money, all of which is reflected by what the customer pays. It is not just data like the internet. It must pass on the inside of the carriers network to other carriers using legacy protocols and private networks, this is where the extra cost is.
The carriers could easily bring the rates down, but it is not in their interest to do so while customers are still paying these rates.
Better yet, there should be a slashdot mirror that updates 12 to 24 hours after slashdot at dupes.slashdot.org
Once they get totally caught up, there will only be two things that set MS office apart from it's competitors.
Three things, GUI also sets office apart from it's competitors. Office 12 will make this more obvious. This is one area IMO that is lacking in OOo and others. This is crucial to the end user, if Office 12 looks better, it works better, even if all the features exist in the competitors products. This will justify the price until the free alternatives catch up.
I support OOo and have implemented it in a few situations, How it works to the end user is my major problem. As you say they have caught up with Office Feature-wise. It is not that it works different to Office but that it suffers all the same problems. The designers did not try anything new, it looks the same but different. This to me seems to be a problem with Open development, inconsitancy in apperance and work flow to the end user. It does not take a developer to solve this, it take some of their time but a large amout of thinking by a designer. I am not a developer so if I am making little sense here try to read though to what I mean as it is important.
Current efforts already compete with Office, with some inovation they could be prefered.
Thanks for reading whoever you are.
Uh, I mean
Results 1-10 of about 459,942 for 'emo' (0.34 seconds)
Is the index growing really fast?
Results 1 - 10 of about 7,650,000 for "emo". (0.35 seconds)
Is the index growing really fast?
It's called sensationalism. Go to journalism school.
How about I wake up and try that again.
I am continually surprised to have never seen this implemented in online video. Not only for ads but for data other than the video stream.
Videos such as the ones in the flashy new h.264 codec or others.
Command N, Systm, Diggnation, Debcon, and Others.
Titles, credits, links, etc. are all shown encoded into the video. There must be a better way. Flash encoded video may have an answer already but I have never seen it implemented. QuickTime may also have a solution but again I have never seen it.
Has anyone done this? Is anyone pushing a standard? Fancy having a computer being interactive..
I am continually surprised to have never seen this implemented in online video.
Videos such as the ones in the flashy new h.264 codec or others.
Command N, Systm, Diggnation, Defcon, and Others.
Titles, credits, links, etc. are all shown encoded into the video. There must be a better way. Flash encoded video may have an answer already but I have never seen it implemented. QuickTime may also have a solution but again I have never seen it.
Has anyone done this? Is anyone pushing a standard? Fancy having a computer being interactive..
How long are you going to keep waiting and watch innovative companies pass you buy?
When I can afford not to.
Possible? Yes.
Likely? No.
With Microsoft researching P2P technology namely Avalanche, why would they use BitTorrent?
Also, I don't think MS have a problem with bandwidth costs.
Would you like to know more?
Oh My! really?
This is after all how Google started.
From Larry Page's speech to the 2005 graduating class of the University of Michigan College of Engineering...
"We basically downloaded the whole web, and we weren't quite sure what we were going to do with it. It seemed like a good project at the time."
Original Slashdot Story
IMO, the point isn't even the math. It's about teaching someone the basics of thinking through a problem without pulling the answer from somewhere.
/.er, You don't need to know how an OS works to use it, you can be productive without knowing that.
Had Newton needed to work this way he never could have said "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."
Or for the
CS vs. IT is the same.
Not everyone is a hacker, not everyone needs to be.
With the large number of posts quoting statistics on this article (over 30 or so) I would remind people that almost 67% of statistics are made up on the spot.