Suppose the reason that Microsoft purchased the company was not the expertise of the employees, but the leverage that ownership of the company would provide them should they wish to pressure the European Community into passing laws that Microsoft favours.
Not entirely pointless -- if this friend is an adult, then there's a reasonable chance that he or she will be more likely to respect my authority as a parent and not buy my child something to which I object. I'm not saying it's a perfect fix -- after all, there are people who will buy kids cigarettes, even though it's illegal, while under this law, they'd be committing no crime. Obviously, the only way a parent can be absolutely certain their kids aren't misbehaving is to supervise them 24/7. That is neither feasible nor healthy for the kids. I certainly don't object to a legal measure to assist parents in performing their difficult jobs.
Most parents would rather not have to resort to draconian measures to enforce this kind of rule, though. Suppose my child's friend purchases Grand Theft Auto for my child for a birthday gift (in the absence of this proposed law.) My child, so eager to play the new game, runs home, opens it up, and starts playing it before I get home from work. When I come home and realize that my child has a video game I don't want him to have, my options at this point are few. Chances are, the best option I will have will be to take the video game away and try to return it to the game store. It's opened software though, so there's no guarantee there. Nonetheless, I don't just want to take away my child's birthday gift -- I'm probably going to buy a replacement game, in addition to whatever else I got my child for his or her birthday.
Okay, so in the above situation, the cost to me is not excessive. $50 to buy a new game and an hour or so to explain to my child why I don't want him or her playing GTA -- offset by the fact that I'd probably enjoy GTA myself. Nonetheless, if such a law existed, I could more readily count on my child not even acquiring the game without my permission -- saving those involved a lot of trouble.
There seems to be two prevailing attitudes here and they work at odds to one another. The first is that parents are responsible for overseeing the behaviour of their children. If parents doesn't want their children playing violent video games or smoking cigarettes, it is the parents' responsibility to prevent them from doing so. That is a perfectly fair attititude, in my opinion. If parenting were that good, we wouldn't need movies or video games to be rated.
On the other hand, I see the persistent argument that comparing violent video games to alcohol and tobacco isn't right because alcohol and tobacco are clearly harmful. How, then, can anybody insist that the parents have as much authority as they supposedly should? When kids can operate below the radar to acquire video games of which their parents would disapprove (or cigarettes, or beer), parental authority is undermined. Certainly, parents shouldn't have to be fascists -- and yet, if there are people who will shrug and say, "Eh, I don't care what your parents think. Here's a copy of Grand Theft Auto," what recourse is there?
Just because you hold the opinion that video games aren't that bad, it isn't right for you to make that decision in lieu of a child's parents. The argument, posted by the [great?] grandparent of this thread, was that he wanted to free children from the ignorance of their parents. Why shouldn't that same attitude be used for alcohol and tobacco? I'm sure there's somebody out there who holds the opinion that since they're clearly not as harmful as cocaine or LSD, there's nothing wrong with them being legal for everybody -- let kids have them -- free them from the ignorance of their parents.
We can't simultaneously support the legitimate authority of parents and at the same time circumvent that authority.
In this specific instance, though, a bubble of peanut butter houses the jelly. The peanut butter is very viscous and therefore has a smaller diffusion coefficient relative to the bread. As a result this particular design not only mimics the pasty, but also, though novel arrangement of the fillings, prevents the jelly from diffusing into the bread, making it soggy.
As somebody who is going to graduate from university soon, I have to admit that I can see in my own education some of the plug in/download methodology that you describe. Although I think that my courses do stimulate critical thinking, it's nearly all on the analysis end of the spectrum. When I reflect on the laboratory courses I've had, for the most part the experiments were built for us. We had a little bit of control over how the experiment was run, but even at that, we were given fairly limiting guidelines as to what would yield "good" data. In part, I blame the perception that throwing six experiments at a class is more beneficial than throwing two.
I would probably be happier and better educated by my lab courses if instead of running an experiment every two weeks, with reports due on alternate weeks, they had us run only two experiments and held those experiments to higher standards. Even if just one of three or four laboratory courses really emphasized this method (which would probably be more appropriate to research than to industry), it would yield a more comprehensive view of the laboratory experience and would provide valuable experience in researching the background material necessary to perform an experiment and to prepare a well-reasoned report.
I haven't yet had to fix my grandparents' computer. It helps that as soon as my grandfather's free two months with AOL expired, he decided the internet wasn't worth all that much to him. Not being online is like abstinence for computers, so their machine is clean. I've had several other people come to me for help though and their computers were simply filthy with junkware.
Like your experience with your grandparents, when I started to explain to them what had gone wrong and what I had done to fix it, they wanted to tell me, "I don't really care." I'm sure it would be uncomfortable doing what I did to one's grandparents, but I let those people have it. I told them that they'd better start caring because the sorts of problems they were experiencing could be prevented with a little bit of due caution. Further, since I never demanded payment and actively tried to turn down compensation (since these people are friends of the family), I refuse to fall into the trap of being obligated to repair their computers when they break them. Obviously, I can't teach all of them everything there is to know about computer maintenence, but I've managed to train several of them on the use of Ad Aware and on responsible internet use.
As an aside to that, I'd like to note that sometimes the problem isn't apathy, but nor is it strictly . I suppose it's a kind of ignorance, but it takes the form of naivety. These people don't realize that the offer for free games or assisted browsing aren't benevolent offers or even just benign advertisements. They trust that whomever has caused these offers to appear on their screen is dealing with them fairly. A little bit of cynicism is valuable in this case. The first thing I've taught my users is that if they haven't asked for something to appear on their screen, don't trust it; and if they haven't specifically sought a good or service, don't accept it.
One thing the article does not make clear is whether or how Vivendi wants Valve to deal with these premature requests for authentication. If it's purely a legalistic matter - demanding that Valve delay the authentications until the agreed-upon date, I'd say that it is probably a fair, if unpopular, request. If it's to be a punative measure - demanding that Valve blacklist any DVD key that requrested early authentication, I'd say Vivendi can go soak their heads.
It is a matter of principle. Granted, it is a principle with which many people here vehemently disagree, but the estate holders see their copyrights being infringed. Whether they make any significant profit from fighting the infringement, I don't know. Nonetheless, no less than some people (myself among them) would attack an injustice, whether it profited us, personally, to do so or not, they are going to attack this violation of their rights.
It's kind of ironic that at my freshman orientation at Case Western Reserve in 1999, they told us that chain locks were unreliable and that if we were going to have a bicycle on campus, we ought to use a U-lock from Kryptonite or some other reputable manufacturer. With all the Slashdot readers there, though, I'm sure that nobody's going to trust anything less than an armed guard from now on.
Re:I am also wondering how this got on Slashdot.
on
The Age of the Essay
·
· Score: 1
I sympathize with your experience. My A.P. Literature teacher in high school was inscrutable. Now, understand, as I've grown older, I've come to recognize that I am a good writer. What I have discovered is that I have a phenomenal command of the language and a very poor ability to direct my writing at a particular audience. In APLit, I was constantly plagued by less-than-perfect scores. Furthermore, a friend of mine in the class consistently one-up'd me. If he scored a five (scale: 1-5), I'd get a four. If he got a four, I'd get a three-point-five. I went through that entire class believing that my writing skill was actually inferiour to his. It was only after the A.P. exam, on which I scored a five and he scored a four, that I realized that our marks were almost certainly the result of the teacher's bias. In retrospect, this is almost painfully obvious. My approach to literary interpretation and writing may be described politely as "iconoclastic." My teacher was a moderate writer/reader with conservative leanings. Naturally, my persistent rejection of literary authority caused us to butt heads. On the other hand, my friend, who was more inclined to toe the line, always received good marks. I suppose I can only be grateful that the marks on the papers did not actually translate into letter grades or I would have done quite poorly in that class. On some level, the teacher must have realized that my writing was effective, even if it did rub her the wrong way.
I would posit that the loss of proof reading skills predates the explosion of the internet. In my case, I quit proof reading when reliable spell-check software became available. Microsoft Word has only worsened this trend by providing realtime spell-checking. Although it is less of an issue (much less!) with a computer keyboard than with a typewriter, I constantly commit the heinous typing crime of inline correction. Why? Because it is easier to edit my thoughts, either for content or for delivery, as I'm thinking them. As a result, I've grown to depend on I) a red, squiggly line underneath misspelled words and II) the EDIT button in message forums. My posts on Slashdot are far more likely to be riddled with errors, since by the time I get around to proof reading my own post, it's already up. Likewise, my spelling on IRC is far worse than my spelling on a message board with an EDIT button.
Not so. Select was indeed part of the code. I remember this because to get to a two player game you hit select twice. I'm pretty sure I'm correct about this because I have a warped recollection of the Konami code - having never played Contra except 2 player, I always mentally insert two select into the code.
To add another example, Jak 2 plays much differently than Jak and Daxter: the Precursor Legacy. It feels approximately the same until you get the first gun and I've found it more or less completely different from then on. You get to pilot zoomers everywhere (and you get to steal them - very GTA) and the local Fuzz will give you a run for your money if you tick them off. You get guns, in addition to the melee moves from the original, plus there's Dark Jak. There's a lot of new gameplay elements in Jak 2. Even the familiar characters have a new attitude. I mean, about the first thing that Jak says in the game is "I'm going to kill Baron Praxis." Not so happy-go-lucky anymore.
I've recently acquired Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. It's a tactical RPG - in other words, a board game on steroids. So far, I have enjoyed it a great deal. Your sassy partner in crime, Etna and a bunch of demonic punk penguins called"prinnies" who shout "d00d!" are a lot of fun.
So far, I haven't really seen any big innovations to the Tactical RPG genre, but it seems that politicking becomes important later in the game, which ought to be fun. As it is, cool characters and a simple, but clever training/leveling system are very appealing.
Oh, it also bucks the trend of levels that span from 0 to 99. No, this game doesn't stop until level 9999. I glanced at some FAQ's and unlocking some of the character classes requires characters of level 100 or 200.
Neither analogy is good, but yours is worse. If you create gasoline out of thin air, your new gasoline is just as good as the old gasoline. They're the same stuff. Now, if you'd like to commit to the idea that all new music is identical to old music (please, no boy band/Britney Spears comments), then perhaps this argument holds. However, the reason that music is valuable isn't because it is scarce, which is why gasoline is valuable, but because it is new, unusual, different. If it were cliche and uninnovative, it wouldn't be worthwhile music. Now, what are scarce are sources of worthwhile music. If you decide that music isn't worth paying for since, after all, it can be reproduced for free, then you'll lose the interest of those sources of music. They'll go do something else that puts food on the table, instead. So, to answer the question, I want to pay for music, since I enjoy having something new to listen to, every once in a while.
I often ask for older games, on my Christmas list. At least, I seldom ask for games that are brand-spanking new. Jak 2 and the transportation expansion for Sim City 4 are fairly new, but established. Diablo 2 is old news. Not only are the products usually a little bit less expensive, but I have had plenty of time to read reviews and check out the game in advance.
I think you're right about the analogy, but I think that it still applies as the author seems to have applied it. From a non-blind perspective, we can see that each of the blind men really is perceiving the same thing. In the same way, each member of a development team is perceiving the same project. However, each of them may disagree about what the project really is. In that situation, it is important for the manager to provide the members with enough information to unify their perceptions, so that even though they only have contact with a small portion of the project, themselves, they have some understanding of that part's importance to the whole.
The "open" nature of open software really isn't apparent to non-developer users. For example, I am aware of what the openness of OSS entails and it is the reason for many of the laudable strengths of OSS. However, by merit of not being a computer programmer, OSS is just as closed to me as any closed-source, propriety software. The fact that it is open is of no direct benefit to me.
Unfortunately, this mentality will turn open source software users into a closed community. For example, I would like to use open source software. Obviously, the 'free as in beer' aspect appeals to me, but as a non-developer, I find that I am not welcomed into the community. Now, I undeerstand that I have nothing to contribute in the way of code, which may sometimes make me a burden to the rest of the community. However, I think that many (certainly not all) OSS developers are two-faced in their approach to the community. On one hand, they don't want to embrace "clueless" (meaning less clueful than a typical OSS developer) users, but they also want to encourage the expansion of OSS. These attitudes are opposed to one another and make a very poor impression. I don't appreciate having somebody suggest OSS software and then tell me to RTFM when I ask for help.
There would need to be a way to ensure that even the little guys get some share of them money. Perhaps have a small, flat rate that applies to the first 100 or 1000 or some arbitrarily small number of downloads. Any music producer whose song is downloaded a number of times below that threshhold gets the flat fee. Anybody whose music is downloaded more times gets a percentage, based on statistics, of the remaining pool, which has probably been barely touched by the amount alotted to the small performers.
It isn't strictly a national industry. He compares the process to that of automobile insurance - and that is a private industry. As long as there is an accountable entity responsible for the collection and fair disbursement of the funds associated with the creation, distribution, and purchase of music, then it doesn't have to be a governmental entity at all.
I agree entirely with the second point. Rights that we once enjoyed have been taken away and it is indeed, very upsetting.
I'm not so sure about the first point, though. Your argument rests on the "market value" of a good. The market value of a song of which an MP3 exists is zero. The marginal cost of that song is zero, so the necessary sale price of the song is zero (by economic theory, the profit maximizing cost of a good is the marginal cost of that good). If music can be reproduced for free, then it is valueless, economically speaking. So yes, the sale price of the music is greater than the market value - and as long as the industry tries to sell the music for a non-zero price, this will remain true. It is because of this econonic truth that it is unfair to insist that music companies lower the price of music to its market value.
The problem is that people are demonstrating that the music industry is producing music worth owning, just that the music isn't worth paying for. Certainly, I would say that is unfair to the music industry. It's two-faced to claim on one hand that the music industry isn't producing anything of value and then claiming on the other hand that you want as much of it as you can get for free. From the standpoint of economics, people aren't strictly "honest." They're out to get the most utility from their money. According to economics, even if the music industry is producing something of value, if it's available for free, people will take it for free. Obviously neither of the extrema: economics or idealism, are going to correctly describe the system. Consumers will tend to err on the side of idealism, because it benefits them more, while the industry is going to try to err on the side of economics, since it benefits them more.
No single element makes a good game. However, any one of story, gameplay, or graphics can define the audience that is appropriate for the game.
Consider a game like Descent 3. The graphics and the story are pretty tame. Nothing there would prevent an 8 year old from playing the game. In order to play the game well, though a sophisticated grasp of controls is required. That is not to say that an eight year old can't have this level of control (and I'm sure it's becoming more common that they do). However, I've found that my experience with games is that I've become more skilled at adopting new and more complicated control schemes the longer I've played. So in this case, the gameplay alone probably dictates that Descent 3 is a game for a more mature audience.
Consider Duke Nukem 3D. The gameplay is elementary and the story is, with little censorship, perfectly appropriate for kids (at least, what I remember of it). On the other hand, the visuals presented by the game, with featured decapitations and scantily clad women everywhere, certainly make this a game for mature audiences.
Now, consider American McGee's Alice. The gameplay is elementary. The graphics are generally pretty tame. But the story is downright disturbing. Madness, fear, and angst are all prevalent themes. They would either be too frightening for kids or would be lost entirely, defeating the real appeal of the game.
Slashdot Mirror
Suppose the reason that Microsoft purchased the company was not the expertise of the employees, but the leverage that ownership of the company would provide them should they wish to pressure the European Community into passing laws that Microsoft favours.
Not entirely pointless -- if this friend is an adult, then there's a reasonable chance that he or she will be more likely to respect my authority as a parent and not buy my child something to which I object. I'm not saying it's a perfect fix -- after all, there are people who will buy kids cigarettes, even though it's illegal, while under this law, they'd be committing no crime. Obviously, the only way a parent can be absolutely certain their kids aren't misbehaving is to supervise them 24/7. That is neither feasible nor healthy for the kids. I certainly don't object to a legal measure to assist parents in performing their difficult jobs.
Most parents would rather not have to resort to draconian measures to enforce this kind of rule, though. Suppose my child's friend purchases Grand Theft Auto for my child for a birthday gift (in the absence of this proposed law.) My child, so eager to play the new game, runs home, opens it up, and starts playing it before I get home from work. When I come home and realize that my child has a video game I don't want him to have, my options at this point are few. Chances are, the best option I will have will be to take the video game away and try to return it to the game store. It's opened software though, so there's no guarantee there. Nonetheless, I don't just want to take away my child's birthday gift -- I'm probably going to buy a replacement game, in addition to whatever else I got my child for his or her birthday.
Okay, so in the above situation, the cost to me is not excessive. $50 to buy a new game and an hour or so to explain to my child why I don't want him or her playing GTA -- offset by the fact that I'd probably enjoy GTA myself. Nonetheless, if such a law existed, I could more readily count on my child not even acquiring the game without my permission -- saving those involved a lot of trouble.
There seems to be two prevailing attitudes here and they work at odds to one another. The first is that parents are responsible for overseeing the behaviour of their children. If parents doesn't want their children playing violent video games or smoking cigarettes, it is the parents' responsibility to prevent them from doing so. That is a perfectly fair attititude, in my opinion. If parenting were that good, we wouldn't need movies or video games to be rated.
On the other hand, I see the persistent argument that comparing violent video games to alcohol and tobacco isn't right because alcohol and tobacco are clearly harmful. How, then, can anybody insist that the parents have as much authority as they supposedly should? When kids can operate below the radar to acquire video games of which their parents would disapprove (or cigarettes, or beer), parental authority is undermined. Certainly, parents shouldn't have to be fascists -- and yet, if there are people who will shrug and say, "Eh, I don't care what your parents think. Here's a copy of Grand Theft Auto," what recourse is there?
Just because you hold the opinion that video games aren't that bad, it isn't right for you to make that decision in lieu of a child's parents. The argument, posted by the [great?] grandparent of this thread, was that he wanted to free children from the ignorance of their parents. Why shouldn't that same attitude be used for alcohol and tobacco? I'm sure there's somebody out there who holds the opinion that since they're clearly not as harmful as cocaine or LSD, there's nothing wrong with them being legal for everybody -- let kids have them -- free them from the ignorance of their parents.
We can't simultaneously support the legitimate authority of parents and at the same time circumvent that authority.
In this specific instance, though, a bubble of peanut butter houses the jelly. The peanut butter is very viscous and therefore has a smaller diffusion coefficient relative to the bread. As a result this particular design not only mimics the pasty, but also, though novel arrangement of the fillings, prevents the jelly from diffusing into the bread, making it soggy.
As somebody who is going to graduate from university soon, I have to admit that I can see in my own education some of the plug in/download methodology that you describe. Although I think that my courses do stimulate critical thinking, it's nearly all on the analysis end of the spectrum. When I reflect on the laboratory courses I've had, for the most part the experiments were built for us. We had a little bit of control over how the experiment was run, but even at that, we were given fairly limiting guidelines as to what would yield "good" data. In part, I blame the perception that throwing six experiments at a class is more beneficial than throwing two.
I would probably be happier and better educated by my lab courses if instead of running an experiment every two weeks, with reports due on alternate weeks, they had us run only two experiments and held those experiments to higher standards. Even if just one of three or four laboratory courses really emphasized this method (which would probably be more appropriate to research than to industry), it would yield a more comprehensive view of the laboratory experience and would provide valuable experience in researching the background material necessary to perform an experiment and to prepare a well-reasoned report.
I haven't yet had to fix my grandparents' computer. It helps that as soon as my grandfather's free two months with AOL expired, he decided the internet wasn't worth all that much to him. Not being online is like abstinence for computers, so their machine is clean. I've had several other people come to me for help though and their computers were simply filthy with junkware.
Like your experience with your grandparents, when I started to explain to them what had gone wrong and what I had done to fix it, they wanted to tell me, "I don't really care." I'm sure it would be uncomfortable doing what I did to one's grandparents, but I let those people have it. I told them that they'd better start caring because the sorts of problems they were experiencing could be prevented with a little bit of due caution. Further, since I never demanded payment and actively tried to turn down compensation (since these people are friends of the family), I refuse to fall into the trap of being obligated to repair their computers when they break them. Obviously, I can't teach all of them everything there is to know about computer maintenence, but I've managed to train several of them on the use of Ad Aware and on responsible internet use.
As an aside to that, I'd like to note that sometimes the problem isn't apathy, but nor is it strictly . I suppose it's a kind of ignorance, but it takes the form of naivety. These people don't realize that the offer for free games or assisted browsing aren't benevolent offers or even just benign advertisements. They trust that whomever has caused these offers to appear on their screen is dealing with them fairly. A little bit of cynicism is valuable in this case. The first thing I've taught my users is that if they haven't asked for something to appear on their screen, don't trust it; and if they haven't specifically sought a good or service, don't accept it.
One thing the article does not make clear is whether or how Vivendi wants Valve to deal with these premature requests for authentication. If it's purely a legalistic matter - demanding that Valve delay the authentications until the agreed-upon date, I'd say that it is probably a fair, if unpopular, request. If it's to be a punative measure - demanding that Valve blacklist any DVD key that requrested early authentication, I'd say Vivendi can go soak their heads.
It is a matter of principle. Granted, it is a principle with which many people here vehemently disagree, but the estate holders see their copyrights being infringed. Whether they make any significant profit from fighting the infringement, I don't know. Nonetheless, no less than some people (myself among them) would attack an injustice, whether it profited us, personally, to do so or not, they are going to attack this violation of their rights.
It's kind of ironic that at my freshman orientation at Case Western Reserve in 1999, they told us that chain locks were unreliable and that if we were going to have a bicycle on campus, we ought to use a U-lock from Kryptonite or some other reputable manufacturer. With all the Slashdot readers there, though, I'm sure that nobody's going to trust anything less than an armed guard from now on.
I sympathize with your experience. My A.P. Literature teacher in high school was inscrutable. Now, understand, as I've grown older, I've come to recognize that I am a good writer. What I have discovered is that I have a phenomenal command of the language and a very poor ability to direct my writing at a particular audience. In APLit, I was constantly plagued by less-than-perfect scores. Furthermore, a friend of mine in the class consistently one-up'd me. If he scored a five (scale: 1-5), I'd get a four. If he got a four, I'd get a three-point-five. I went through that entire class believing that my writing skill was actually inferiour to his. It was only after the A.P. exam, on which I scored a five and he scored a four, that I realized that our marks were almost certainly the result of the teacher's bias. In retrospect, this is almost painfully obvious. My approach to literary interpretation and writing may be described politely as "iconoclastic." My teacher was a moderate writer/reader with conservative leanings. Naturally, my persistent rejection of literary authority caused us to butt heads. On the other hand, my friend, who was more inclined to toe the line, always received good marks. I suppose I can only be grateful that the marks on the papers did not actually translate into letter grades or I would have done quite poorly in that class. On some level, the teacher must have realized that my writing was effective, even if it did rub her the wrong way.
I would posit that the loss of proof reading skills predates the explosion of the internet. In my case, I quit proof reading when reliable spell-check software became available. Microsoft Word has only worsened this trend by providing realtime spell-checking. Although it is less of an issue (much less!) with a computer keyboard than with a typewriter, I constantly commit the heinous typing crime of inline correction. Why? Because it is easier to edit my thoughts, either for content or for delivery, as I'm thinking them. As a result, I've grown to depend on I) a red, squiggly line underneath misspelled words and II) the EDIT button in message forums. My posts on Slashdot are far more likely to be riddled with errors, since by the time I get around to proof reading my own post, it's already up. Likewise, my spelling on IRC is far worse than my spelling on a message board with an EDIT button.
Not so. Select was indeed part of the code. I remember this because to get to a two player game you hit select twice. I'm pretty sure I'm correct about this because I have a warped recollection of the Konami code - having never played Contra except 2 player, I always mentally insert two select into the code.
To add another example, Jak 2 plays much differently than Jak and Daxter: the Precursor Legacy. It feels approximately the same until you get the first gun and I've found it more or less completely different from then on. You get to pilot zoomers everywhere (and you get to steal them - very GTA) and the local Fuzz will give you a run for your money if you tick them off. You get guns, in addition to the melee moves from the original, plus there's Dark Jak. There's a lot of new gameplay elements in Jak 2. Even the familiar characters have a new attitude. I mean, about the first thing that Jak says in the game is "I'm going to kill Baron Praxis." Not so happy-go-lucky anymore.
I've recently acquired Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. It's a tactical RPG - in other words, a board game on steroids. So far, I have enjoyed it a great deal. Your sassy partner in crime, Etna and a bunch of demonic punk penguins called"prinnies" who shout "d00d!" are a lot of fun.
So far, I haven't really seen any big innovations to the Tactical RPG genre, but it seems that politicking becomes important later in the game, which ought to be fun. As it is, cool characters and a simple, but clever training/leveling system are very appealing.
Oh, it also bucks the trend of levels that span from 0 to 99. No, this game doesn't stop until level 9999. I glanced at some FAQ's and unlocking some of the character classes requires characters of level 100 or 200.
Neither analogy is good, but yours is worse. If you create gasoline out of thin air, your new gasoline is just as good as the old gasoline. They're the same stuff. Now, if you'd like to commit to the idea that all new music is identical to old music (please, no boy band/Britney Spears comments), then perhaps this argument holds. However, the reason that music is valuable isn't because it is scarce, which is why gasoline is valuable, but because it is new, unusual, different. If it were cliche and uninnovative, it wouldn't be worthwhile music. Now, what are scarce are sources of worthwhile music. If you decide that music isn't worth paying for since, after all, it can be reproduced for free, then you'll lose the interest of those sources of music. They'll go do something else that puts food on the table, instead. So, to answer the question, I want to pay for music, since I enjoy having something new to listen to, every once in a while.
I often ask for older games, on my Christmas list. At least, I seldom ask for games that are brand-spanking new. Jak 2 and the transportation expansion for Sim City 4 are fairly new, but established. Diablo 2 is old news. Not only are the products usually a little bit less expensive, but I have had plenty of time to read reviews and check out the game in advance.
I think you're right about the analogy, but I think that it still applies as the author seems to have applied it. From a non-blind perspective, we can see that each of the blind men really is perceiving the same thing. In the same way, each member of a development team is perceiving the same project. However, each of them may disagree about what the project really is. In that situation, it is important for the manager to provide the members with enough information to unify their perceptions, so that even though they only have contact with a small portion of the project, themselves, they have some understanding of that part's importance to the whole.
The "open" nature of open software really isn't apparent to non-developer users. For example, I am aware of what the openness of OSS entails and it is the reason for many of the laudable strengths of OSS. However, by merit of not being a computer programmer, OSS is just as closed to me as any closed-source, propriety software. The fact that it is open is of no direct benefit to me.
Unfortunately, this mentality will turn open source software users into a closed community. For example, I would like to use open source software. Obviously, the 'free as in beer' aspect appeals to me, but as a non-developer, I find that I am not welcomed into the community. Now, I undeerstand that I have nothing to contribute in the way of code, which may sometimes make me a burden to the rest of the community. However, I think that many (certainly not all) OSS developers are two-faced in their approach to the community. On one hand, they don't want to embrace "clueless" (meaning less clueful than a typical OSS developer) users, but they also want to encourage the expansion of OSS. These attitudes are opposed to one another and make a very poor impression. I don't appreciate having somebody suggest OSS software and then tell me to RTFM when I ask for help.
There would need to be a way to ensure that even the little guys get some share of them money. Perhaps have a small, flat rate that applies to the first 100 or 1000 or some arbitrarily small number of downloads. Any music producer whose song is downloaded a number of times below that threshhold gets the flat fee. Anybody whose music is downloaded more times gets a percentage, based on statistics, of the remaining pool, which has probably been barely touched by the amount alotted to the small performers.
It isn't strictly a national industry. He compares the process to that of automobile insurance - and that is a private industry. As long as there is an accountable entity responsible for the collection and fair disbursement of the funds associated with the creation, distribution, and purchase of music, then it doesn't have to be a governmental entity at all.
I agree entirely with the second point. Rights that we once enjoyed have been taken away and it is indeed, very upsetting.
I'm not so sure about the first point, though. Your argument rests on the "market value" of a good. The market value of a song of which an MP3 exists is zero. The marginal cost of that song is zero, so the necessary sale price of the song is zero (by economic theory, the profit maximizing cost of a good is the marginal cost of that good). If music can be reproduced for free, then it is valueless, economically speaking. So yes, the sale price of the music is greater than the market value - and as long as the industry tries to sell the music for a non-zero price, this will remain true. It is because of this econonic truth that it is unfair to insist that music companies lower the price of music to its market value.
The problem is that people are demonstrating that the music industry is producing music worth owning, just that the music isn't worth paying for. Certainly, I would say that is unfair to the music industry. It's two-faced to claim on one hand that the music industry isn't producing anything of value and then claiming on the other hand that you want as much of it as you can get for free. From the standpoint of economics, people aren't strictly "honest." They're out to get the most utility from their money. According to economics, even if the music industry is producing something of value, if it's available for free, people will take it for free. Obviously neither of the extrema: economics or idealism, are going to correctly describe the system. Consumers will tend to err on the side of idealism, because it benefits them more, while the industry is going to try to err on the side of economics, since it benefits them more.
No single element makes a good game. However, any one of story, gameplay, or graphics can define the audience that is appropriate for the game.
Consider a game like Descent 3. The graphics and the story are pretty tame. Nothing there would prevent an 8 year old from playing the game. In order to play the game well, though a sophisticated grasp of controls is required. That is not to say that an eight year old can't have this level of control (and I'm sure it's becoming more common that they do). However, I've found that my experience with games is that I've become more skilled at adopting new and more complicated control schemes the longer I've played. So in this case, the gameplay alone probably dictates that Descent 3 is a game for a more mature audience.
Consider Duke Nukem 3D. The gameplay is elementary and the story is, with little censorship, perfectly appropriate for kids (at least, what I remember of it). On the other hand, the visuals presented by the game, with featured decapitations and scantily clad women everywhere, certainly make this a game for mature audiences.
Now, consider American McGee's Alice. The gameplay is elementary. The graphics are generally pretty tame. But the story is downright disturbing. Madness, fear, and angst are all prevalent themes. They would either be too frightening for kids or would be lost entirely, defeating the real appeal of the game.