Or you could, you know, be positive and post a nerdy story or contribute a worthwhile comment on another story instead of giving more air to one you apparently hate. If that doesn't take valuable time out of your obviously busy day, of course.
If this goes on, will the major labels and studios actually need musicians and actors? In the future, it could be harder to make money playing guitar with all of the competition from dead or retired artists."
What makes you think musicians and actors aren't already competing with dead or retired artists? Do you think labels and studios wouldn't jump at the chance to cut them out?
It's not actually about money but control of distribution. If retailers have a separate income from games, they're more independent of the game industry. Compare game distribution to the movie industry, because that's the model they're pursuing. You don't have so much a market for used movies as you have a video/dvd market, which suits the MPAA because they still get a cut (ask a video store owner how their distribution works, it'll open your eyes).
The games industry wants similar control. They can't legally stop resale of games due to the various forms of first sale doctrine around the world. But they can make it less remunerative to retailers by lessening the value of a used game. This is a direct challenge to the EBs. Ultimately they want to cut out the resellers altogether by digital distribution/DLC. I have a copy of ME2 I intend to resell. I made certain NOT to use the code or the cerberus network, but it will be interesting to see whether my local EB will give me a good trade-in price.
I can see where you're going with this. But money is still the barrier to media entry. If they can, they'll invent a way to keep control of the culture. I always use DAT as my example. We could have had this superior technology go mainstream years ago, but the content controllers smelt danger, and only recording studios could afford them. Now of course anyone can produce high quality media, but the fences being erected now are different. We have copyright, DMCA, Trusted Computing, HDMI, and good old money to prove that the old guard still got it bitches. Most of the media we're using for community content are money bitbuckets, in the red and unlikely to change. It's becoming much more the individual success story until the media landscape hardens again and we get a new oligarchy of mindshare. That's just the way we white niggers are.
Check the tables at the end of this Comes exhibit, its Linux/OO (when it was still StarOffice) in every region. Because the target is future developers and government contracts, obviously.
Half of my twitter followers are either commercial (I have an airline following me ffs) or data-mining spammers. Most of them know better than to tweet me and get blocked. I used to block them initially but they just find a different nick and rejoin. I call it twittercrud.
The money's going to run out, paywalls won't save you. I make the same argument about energy risk management: unless you spend the resources now to transition, by the time you need an alternate source, you can't exploit it. Someone else will take that opportunity for you.
I've been quite depressed about the state of the climate change debate. Given the CRU incident and the fresh impetus found by AGW-sceptics I've gotten tired of the same arguments that go nowhere. Now the sceptics want all the data and all the code to check. To me, that implies that climate science is effectively dead, since no science can be done unless and until it has been verified by sceptics, and if it happens that AGW is real, we will have no time to deal with it during the process of verifying AGW science itself, if we accept that 'risk management' is another canard of AGW alarmists.
But let's take AGW sceptics arguments at face value and see what that implies. I am going to make some basic statements about what I think AGW sceptics see as the core issues and the remedies they demand. Please remember that as a AGW supporter, you must view any statement I make with great caution as nothing I propose can likely be trusted due to my bias. Feel free to correct me and to suggest more correct statements; as I will explain, this is a most necessary part of the process by which we can heal this divide. I hope the foregoing will be taken in the spirit of reconciliation, but accept that my thesis must be viewed with wary suspicion. For this reason, I am putting this olive branch in the most general forum for all to take part, the better to protect against any alarmism of mine.
fact 1. AGW science is effectively a religion, therefore: fact 2. AGW scientists and their supporters can not be trusted with any statement about climate science. fact 3. AGW science cannot be trusted until it is verified by non-AGW scientists therefore: fact 4. ALL AGW science data and code must be turned over to non-AGW scientists to verify.
Now I am not going to go into much more detail than that. I hope such a basic coverage of the state of AGW scepticism is sufficient and non-offensive. Given the logic of these 4 points, I can (from my admittedly biased standpoint) only make these implications/assumptions:
implication 1. All AGW scientists must immediately be stood down and their projects be locked down pending a full and detailed re-examination of their work. implication 2. No policy can be made until the full evaluation of all climate science can be done.
I would add, if I may, two teeny tiny conditions of such a revolution, should it come to pass. You will see they are obviously implications of the previous points, if my logic is not flawed by my obvious bias.
condition 1: since, from facts 1 and 2, no AGW scientist or supporter can ever be trusted with any statement regarding climate science, all scientific methods and data collection will have to be done in clean-room conditions lest faulty assumptions distort the science. Therefore non-AGW scientists will have to work out the science themselves as per facts 3 and 4 without any help or guidance by their biased colleagues. It is no good hoping that AGW alarmists will do as they're told, by their very nature they will bias and distort the science.
condition 2: following from implications 1 and 2, we must totally rely on non-AGW scientists and their supporters for determining whether we act at all, and such decisions must be completely their responsibility, since we have so obviously abrogated ours by shameless bias. Business must be reassured that silly ideas like 'risk management' are tools of alarmism and are economically harmful. The sceptics will and should take their time with this rebuilding of climate change science regardless of the dithering masses who have been led astray by myself and my fellow conspirators.
If this program meets with your carefully sceptical approval, I will openly allow it to be promulgated far and wide: by this perhaps we can finally progress towards a happier, less alarmist future. To reiterate, corrections gladly accepted, but please, make them public to allow us all to reach consensus.
Man I'd do it just to watch Ballmer's face change colours. In widescreen HD.
But seriously, why not? He's enabled the less fortunate to participate in a world-wide community. It doesn't have obvious effects, but it is no less important a contribution
It's not even a specifically American problem. Simply put, our so-called heroic leaders have no idea what to do with their power, a bit of a problem since we have no intention of doing anything to help.
Jefferson put it that men by their constitution were naturally divided into two parts -- those who fear and distrust the people versus those who identify with the people and have confidence in them. Our civilization has increasingly put those who fear and distrust in power over us. Those who have confidence have always argued that consciousness is the key to improvements in the human condition. But power structures have always treated consciousness in the citizenry as a danger which must first be lulled, then channelled towards the inoffensive through the mechanisms of language, mythology and structure.
We are profoundly conformist and authoritarian, the biggest cowards in history. We wait for a disaster so we can fix it, rather than taking preventative measures, all the while hoping someone else will do it for us.
Unfortunately it's mere incompetence. They actually want to have all the fun "security" bells and whistles you have in the UK, they're just hopeless at getting it through without being noticed. Our politicians are no less sneaky and dishonest than anywhere else, but perhaps the apparatus to hide such intentions isn't as well developed here. We don't have that grand tradition of bill riders as in the US or the UK in our legislative conventions, so far.
The tradition we do have is assigning problematic (read: politically ambitious) ministers to a complicated technology-based portfolio where they can make fools of themselves while their rivals go on to bungling something else. The opposition did something good for a change and appointed the politically astute Nick Minchin as shadow minister and he's been ripping truck-sized holes in Senator Conroy's plans from day one.
The fatal mistake Conroy made was not to make sure this couldn't be done by bypassing legislation and farming it out to a statutory body beyond the reach of public opinion. And even that body is incompetent at censorship, so it's truly is a case of don't ascribe to malice what is adequately explained by idiocy.
What bothers me most is how difficult it was to get the story out in the media, its been relegated to tech pages and my efforts to raise the alarm among my non-techy friends met with disinterest. This isn't going to go away, they will try it again.
Perfect description of the problem, since the internet is a competing distribution network. Trouble is, the existing distribution network (ie theatres) costs too much. The intelligent approach would be to switch networks. Why don't shareholders reward intelligence?
Recycling the whole consumable is possible: http://www.closetheloopusa.com/ actually uses toner to make a wood substitute among other things. They have agreements with many of the printer manufacturers. The aim is zero waste to landfill, and eventually to make printer/photocopier consumables totally recyclable in the sense of returning the materials back to their manufacturers.
Slashdot Mirror
...I'm not.
This is a government that doesn't want to be reelected, fine by me. I've had it with them.
Yeah it's wonderful. Until it breaks. And it will. For no reason at all.
There has already been a Max Q
guest@xkcd:/$ look
You are at a computer using unixkcd.
Exits: west, south
guest@xkcd:/$ go west
Life is peaceful there.
Exits: east, west
guest@xkcd:/$ go west
In the open air.
Exits: east, west
guest@xkcd:/$ go west
Where the skies are blue.
Exits: east, west
guest@xkcd:/$ go west
This is what we're gonna do.
Exits: east, west
guest@xkcd:/$
Or you could, you know, be positive and post a nerdy story or contribute a worthwhile comment on another story instead of giving more air to one you apparently hate. If that doesn't take valuable time out of your obviously busy day, of course.
no..spotlight...or stool...how will...we interact?!
What makes you think musicians and actors aren't already competing with dead or retired artists? Do you think labels and studios wouldn't jump at the chance to cut them out?
It's not actually about money but control of distribution. If retailers have a separate income from games, they're more independent of the game industry. Compare game distribution to the movie industry, because that's the model they're pursuing. You don't have so much a market for used movies as you have a video/dvd market, which suits the MPAA because they still get a cut (ask a video store owner how their distribution works, it'll open your eyes).
The games industry wants similar control. They can't legally stop resale of games due to the various forms of first sale doctrine around the world. But they can make it less remunerative to retailers by lessening the value of a used game. This is a direct challenge to the EBs. Ultimately they want to cut out the resellers altogether by digital distribution/DLC. I have a copy of ME2 I intend to resell. I made certain NOT to use the code or the cerberus network, but it will be interesting to see whether my local EB will give me a good trade-in price.
you cannot hope to defeat the Reality Distortion Field!
I can see where you're going with this. But money is still the barrier to media entry. If they can, they'll invent a way to keep control of the culture. I always use DAT as my example. We could have had this superior technology go mainstream years ago, but the content controllers smelt danger, and only recording studios could afford them. Now of course anyone can produce high quality media, but the fences being erected now are different. We have copyright, DMCA, Trusted Computing, HDMI, and good old money to prove that the old guard still got it bitches. Most of the media we're using for community content are money bitbuckets, in the red and unlikely to change. It's becoming much more the individual success story until the media landscape hardens again and we get a new oligarchy of mindshare. That's just the way we white niggers are.
Check the tables at the end of this Comes exhibit, its Linux/OO (when it was still StarOffice) in every region. Because the target is future developers and government contracts, obviously.
Half of my twitter followers are either commercial (I have an airline following me ffs) or data-mining spammers. Most of them know better than to tweet me and get blocked. I used to block them initially but they just find a different nick and rejoin. I call it twittercrud.
Actually, I did read the TFA and you're missing my point completely. Learn to read.
The money's going to run out, paywalls won't save you. I make the same argument about energy risk management: unless you spend the resources now to transition, by the time you need an alternate source, you can't exploit it. Someone else will take that opportunity for you.
*waves goodbye*
In other news, publishers get their priorities right: At The Dallas News, a New "Bold Strategy": Section Editors Reporting to Sales Managers Says it all.
I've been quite depressed about the state of the climate change debate. Given the CRU incident and the fresh impetus found by AGW-sceptics I've gotten tired of the same arguments that go nowhere. Now the sceptics want all the data and all the code to check. To me, that implies that climate science is effectively dead, since no science can be done unless and until it has been verified by sceptics, and if it happens that AGW is real, we will have no time to deal with it during the process of verifying AGW science itself, if we accept that 'risk management' is another canard of AGW alarmists.
But let's take AGW sceptics arguments at face value and see what that implies. I am going to make some basic statements about what I think AGW sceptics see as the core issues and the remedies they demand. Please remember that as a AGW supporter, you must view any statement I make with great caution as nothing I propose can likely be trusted due to my bias. Feel free to correct me and to suggest more correct statements; as I will explain, this is a most necessary part of the process by which we can heal this divide. I hope the foregoing will be taken in the spirit of reconciliation, but accept that my thesis must be viewed with wary suspicion. For this reason, I am putting this olive branch in the most general forum for all to take part, the better to protect against any alarmism of mine.
fact 1. AGW science is effectively a religion, therefore:
fact 2. AGW scientists and their supporters can not be trusted with any statement about climate science.
fact 3. AGW science cannot be trusted until it is verified by non-AGW scientists therefore:
fact 4. ALL AGW science data and code must be turned over to non-AGW scientists to verify.
Now I am not going to go into much more detail than that. I hope such a basic coverage of the state of AGW scepticism is sufficient and non-offensive. Given the logic of these 4 points, I can (from my admittedly biased standpoint) only make these implications/assumptions:
implication 1. All AGW scientists must immediately be stood down and their projects be locked down pending a full and detailed re-examination of their work.
implication 2. No policy can be made until the full evaluation of all climate science can be done.
I would add, if I may, two teeny tiny conditions of such a revolution, should it come to pass. You will see they are obviously implications of the previous points, if my logic is not flawed by my obvious bias.
condition 1: since, from facts 1 and 2, no AGW scientist or supporter can ever be trusted with any statement regarding climate science, all scientific methods and data collection will have to be done in clean-room conditions lest faulty assumptions distort the science. Therefore non-AGW scientists will have to work out the science themselves as per facts 3 and 4 without any help or guidance by their biased colleagues. It is no good hoping that AGW alarmists will do as they're told, by their very nature they will bias and distort the science.
condition 2: following from implications 1 and 2, we must totally rely on non-AGW scientists and their supporters for determining whether we act at all, and such decisions must be completely their responsibility, since we have so obviously abrogated ours by shameless bias. Business must be reassured that silly ideas like 'risk management' are tools of alarmism and are economically harmful. The sceptics will and should take their time with this rebuilding of climate change science regardless of the dithering masses who have been led astray by myself and my fellow conspirators.
If this program meets with your carefully sceptical approval, I will openly allow it to be promulgated far and wide: by this perhaps we can finally progress towards a happier, less alarmist future. To reiterate, corrections gladly accepted, but please, make them public to allow us all to reach consensus.
Man I'd do it just to watch Ballmer's face change colours. In widescreen HD.
But seriously, why not? He's enabled the less fortunate to participate in a world-wide community. It doesn't have obvious effects, but it is no less important a contribution
It's not even a specifically American problem. Simply put, our so-called heroic leaders have no idea what to do with their power, a bit of a problem since we have no intention of doing anything to help.
To quote (as I often do) Voltaire's Bastards:
We are profoundly conformist and authoritarian, the biggest cowards in history. We wait for a disaster so we can fix it, rather than taking preventative measures, all the while hoping someone else will do it for us.
"farm machinery"
Them Ir-anians. Ya can't trust 'em!
I'm another Australian.
Unfortunately it's mere incompetence. They actually want to have all the fun "security" bells and whistles you have in the UK, they're just hopeless at getting it through without being noticed. Our politicians are no less sneaky and dishonest than anywhere else, but perhaps the apparatus to hide such intentions isn't as well developed here. We don't have that grand tradition of bill riders as in the US or the UK in our legislative conventions, so far.
The tradition we do have is assigning problematic (read: politically ambitious) ministers to a complicated technology-based portfolio where they can make fools of themselves while their rivals go on to bungling something else. The opposition did something good for a change and appointed the politically astute Nick Minchin as shadow minister and he's been ripping truck-sized holes in Senator Conroy's plans from day one.
The fatal mistake Conroy made was not to make sure this couldn't be done by bypassing legislation and farming it out to a statutory body beyond the reach of public opinion. And even that body is incompetent at censorship, so it's truly is a case of don't ascribe to malice what is adequately explained by idiocy.
What bothers me most is how difficult it was to get the story out in the media, its been relegated to tech pages and my efforts to raise the alarm among my non-techy friends met with disinterest. This isn't going to go away, they will try it again.
Perfect description of the problem, since the internet is a competing distribution network. Trouble is, the existing distribution network (ie theatres) costs too much. The intelligent approach would be to switch networks. Why don't shareholders reward intelligence?
Recycling the whole consumable is possible: http://www.closetheloopusa.com/ actually uses toner to make a wood substitute among other things. They have agreements with many of the printer manufacturers. The aim is zero waste to landfill, and eventually to make printer/photocopier consumables totally recyclable in the sense of returning the materials back to their manufacturers.
With just two minor flaws:
1. the bad guys won't tell you about any flaws and
2. the bad gusy won't tell you about any flaws!
Now, I realize that's just one flaw but it was such a BIG one I thought it worth mentioning twice!
where capping is the norm here in Australia. It's just a wild guess but maybe this is just an ambit claim to make more money, you think?
Next they'll be filtering the internets...