A much more interesting question is, what would happen if some strange holocause killed IRC, Usenet, DC, and all the other "sharing" tools.
It is the wrong question. It is still the case that pirates have no effect on your business-it is like they do not exist. It is well known that there are more legitimate users that there were in the past, therefore things should be better than they used to be for developers--whether there are more pirates than before does not enter into this equation.
Your question is basically "what if something forces pirates to have an effect on the industry like other consumers." Well, seeing as how the small developers are suffering so much now with a larger user base, I fail to see why they'd do any better with an even larger user base. More money would be spent on the big corporate games, the "natural monopoly" effect becomes even more powerful, and more small developers are crowded out.
People don't just use their computers to entertain themselves. Are we going to have the entire family stop watching television while Junior does his homework or Mom checks email? People want to play on their televisions and work on their computers--any attempt to build a single device for both of those purposes is somewhat silly.
Right, management is at the top of the hierarchy, so its the one that does the outsourcing--you can't outsource yourself. But that won't stop completely new managements from forming overseas, employing workers over there (or even workers over here. Essentially, customers and shareholders can outsource management by shopping and investing elsewhere. Then once all of the dollars have left our country, we can finally outsource the customers and shareholders, and finally the ultimate dream of efficient outsourcing will be achieved--absolutely no economic activity in America. A zero gross national product is our manifest destiny! Long live capitalism!
You are mistaken. The chem software has cracks available for it. A simple google finds many sites offering it.
Look, I steal a lot of software, so while I may be mistaken in this specific case (although since you haven't named the program, there really isn't a specific case to be mistaken about) I'm not mistaken about the general case. Even if the crack available, it's still vastly easier to exchange software by trading cds around IN A CLASSROOM--i.e. your example still is not generally applicable.
One pirate kiddie turning another pirate kiddie onto a game doesn't really help anyone.
Doesn't really hurt anyone either. A non-sale is a non-sale. If we're talking about obscure software, then the probability of a pirate turning a legit customer to the dark side is low, because the number of intersections between your legit and pirate set of people are smaller. This rationalization has been TRUE for decades. That even in the post-linux era people still don't understand this is mind-boggling fucking stupidity. IBM doesn't see all these desktop running linux with no IBM hardware and start bemoaning "geezus, those stupid hackers are STEALING all of our Linux research and development costs!" It sure seems like major corporations aren't buying into your "debunking".
On the other hand, encouraging legit users to be pirates by forcing them to download cracks to make their product work at all, as has happened to me with several games, definitely decreases the number of legit users in the future, by getting people in the habit of piracy--or driving them away from the PC onto the consoles, where games just freaking work. Surely consoles are vastly more small-developer hostile than PC, piracy or no piracy.
It seems to me people selling information need to remember that prayer about "the courage to change what I can, the serenity to accept what I cannot." By trying to get every last possible sale from the last few holdouts, sellers of games are alienating those who DO purchase their products. I've got no sympathy for them.
Well, fine, there's two types of piracy, social network and computer network. Software required for a Chemistry class is a bad example, because a very small user base is concentrated into a very small area--a single classroom. Social network piracy is easy--just trade a disk among your classmates. Computer network piracy is very hard--who the heck is going to bother releasing a crack for such a limited audience? How much luck are you going to have finding it on warez sites?
Computer network piracy is difficult for obscure software (which sort of nullifies the "piracy attacks smaller developers" argument).
In any event, if trivial piracy is the bigger problem, then it's the bigger problem, period. Remember, the goal is maximize sales, not eliminate pirates. (It's really easy to eliminate pirates, just don't release any software.) Anyone selling information--be it games, newspapers, movies, or music, is just going to have to get over the fact that some percentage of people are going to be able to use your information without filling your wallet, and you're going to have to settle for selling to those people who actually do pay.
Look at it this way, there may be millions of people out there using your program illegally. But there are billions of people out there who have never heard of your program. I suspect you will have more luck increasing sales by targetting the latter group. Indeed, the pirates might actually be helping you by spreading word of your great yet obscure products to non-pirates.
Jesus, when am I going to learn to preview before submit?
Inserting the word "magically" into an assertion doesn't automatically make it dumb.
You're right, it's pretty fucking retarded all by itself with no insertion of words necessary.
Software sales generally come from people who meet both of the following criteria: "want the software," and "don't already have the software." If you pirated a game, you obviously met the first criterion, but you've removed yourself from the second one. That's one potential sale down the drain. The company has lost value. Not $20, but some percentage of it.
So if I remove myself from the second criteria, then it's like I never existed at all. See? If some strange holocaust killed all software pirates, it wouldn't change the revenue of software companies at all.
You need to add one more criteria: "willing to pirate software". There are people who are willing to pirate, there are people who will only use software they have acquired legally. There are probably a whole lot MORE legitimate users than pirates, not because users are particularly scrupulous, but because pirating executable code is more inconvenient and dangerous than pirating music or movies.
And looking at the sales figures, there are fantastically more legitimate users today than there ever were at any time in the past.
Not if production costs are increasing faster.
Right, something other than piracy is the source of independent developer's woe. You could blame the increasing costs of production--though I'm not sure that's really true. It costs a whole lot more to make the state of art 3d shooter than it cost to make a 2d platform game back in the day, but it's way the heck easier/cheaper to make a 2d platform game today then it has ever been in the past. I suspect that as time goes on, making 3d games is going to be easier and cheaper. 3D models will always be more expensive to build than 2D sprites, but the diminishing marginal returns of 3D graphics are starting to kick in, as games displayed on televisions and computer monitors aren't going to be able to look too much better than they do now. Which means that games using cheap, easy to use pre-packaged 3d engines will become visually indistinguishable from games developed with expensive 3d programmers.
You could blame users for growing sick of the desktop computer as a gaming platform--consoles are a much larger percentage of the marketplace than they used to be, but are vastly less friendly to independent developers. (The web is more friendly to indies, but users aren't as willing to pay.)
You could blame the thousands and thousands of available classic titles, usually available at low cost somewhere or another. Whether I choose to pirate Warcraft III or keep playing my old copy of Command and Conquer Red Alert, I'm definitely not going to buy your new independent strategy game.
You could blame the power law. As the number of users and developers increases, it's just plain natural for a small set of powerful developers to make most of the sales.
Or you could blame users again for wanting big, complicated games, instead of small innovative games.
You could realize that computer software is what microeconomics textbooks call "a natural monopoly"--the marginal costs of producing new copies is near zero, so the market gravitates toward a few dominant players.
That's not to say that a pirate shouldn't think twice about stealing an indy game they like if they'd like to see more of that sort of game in the future. But that's no more true today than it was in the past, and piracy is definitely not the reason large game developers are winning.
No, piracy takes money out of the pockets of developers through thoroughly non-magical means. Inserting the word "magically" into an assertion doesn't automatically make it dumb.
You're right, it's pretty fucking retarded all by itself with no insertion of words necessary.
Software sales generally come from people who meet both of the following criteria: "want the software," and "don't already have the software." If you pirated a game, you obviously met the first criterion, but you've removed yourself from the second one. That's one potential sale down the drain. The company has lost value. Not $20, but some percentage of it.
So if I remove myself from the second criteria, then it's like I never existed at all. See? If some strange holocaust killed all software pirates, it wouldn't change the revenue of software companies at all.
You need to add one more criteria: "willing to pirate software". There are people who are willing to pirate, there are people who will only use software they have acquired legally. There are probably a whole lot MORE legitimate users than pirates, not because users are particularly scrupulous, but because pirating executable code is more inconvenient and dangerous than pirating music or movies.
And looking at the sales figures, there are fantastically more legitimate users today than there ever were at any time in the past.
Not if production costs are increasing faster.
Right, something other than piracy is the source of independent developer's woe. You could blame the increasing costs of production--though I'm not sure that's really true. It costs a whole lot more to make the state of art 3d shooter than it cost to make a 2d platform game back in the day, but it's way the heck easier/cheaper to make a 2d platform game today then it has ever been in the past. I suspect that as time goes on, making 3d games is going to be easier and cheaper. 3D models will always be more expensive to build than 2D sprites, but the diminishing marginal returns of 3D graphics are starting to kick in, as games displayed on televisions and computer monitors aren't going to be able to look too much better than they do now. Which means that games using cheap, easy to use pre-packaged 3d engines will become visually indistinguishable from games developed with expensive 3d programmers.
You could blame users for growing sick of the desktop computer as a gaming platform--consoles are a much larger percentage of the marketplace than they used to be, but are vastly less friendly to independent developers. (The web is more friendly to indies, but users aren't as willing to pay.)
You could blame the thousands and thousands of available classic titles, usually available at low cost somewhere or another. Whether I choose to pirate Warcraft III or keep playing my old copy of Command and Conquer Red Alert, I'm definitely not going to buy your new independent strategy game.
You could blame the power law. As the number of users and developers increases, it's just plain natural for a small set of powerful developers to make most of the sales.
Or you could blame users again for wanting big, complicated games, instead of small innovative games.
That's not to say that a pirate shouldn't think twice about stealing an indy game they like if they'd like to see more of that sort of game in the future. But that's no more true today than it was in the past, and piracy is definitely not the reason large game developers are winning.
There's a number of serious logical difficulties in this article. Foremost, the article only makes sense if you think that piracy somehow magically takes money out of the pockets of developers. Like, I download a copy of your game, and your bank account balance automatically decreases $20.00. Obviously, this is crap. If I choose to buy your game, then you get $20.00. If I choose to pirate your game, then from your perspective as a seller, it's like I never existed at all.
The thing is, the total number of video game users has been escalating for a very long time. Piracy or not, that means the number of paying video game customers has been increasing. Is anyone here going to seriously doubt this assertion? The sales figures are through the roof. There is a whole lot more money being spent on games right now than there used to be. And, after all, the name of the game isn't to decrease piracy, it's to increase sales. So if sales are increasing, then piracy or no piracy, developers should be better off now than they used to be.
Why are the gaming companies becoming larger and more risk-averse? I dunno, we can all speculate plenty of reasons for this, but there's no possible way you can blame piracy--consumers are spending a mind-boggling amount of money on video games, more than the world has every spent on video games ever before.
A: Too much piracy
B: Lack of sales
A->B
not B
Therefore, not A.
Sorry, anti-piracy zealots, but modus tollens says you suck. Really, the whole idea of competing in a games marketplace on the basis of price is ridiculous--the price of a video game is the time I invest playing it, not the paltry $50 I plunk down to pay for it.
More often than not someone tries a burned copy of a game, can't get it to work, and then goes out and buys the cd.
More often than not someone just downloads the cracked copy from their favorite P2P network and bypasses the whole mess. That's what I started to do when I got one too many game with a completely broken CD-check. Pay less money, get a non-broken product. Practically all games have some limited copy protection these days (or at least that seems to be the case to me judging from the trouble I'd have running completely legitimate copies) so if casual piracy like the type you describe were truly the source of the problem, there wouldn't be a problem, would there?
Okay, it's several days later, I actually watched the show. I did not like it. The show's plot revolved around the firm's convincing a jury that it was okay to let a man use a fertilized egg cloned from his son to save his son's life even though cloning was illegal.
It didn't work for me as sci-fi, because it offers people this comfortable notion of human beings saying yes-or-no to new technologies in an organized legal manner. Technology submitting to bureaucracy--perfect for the post-dot-com era, but not entertaining to watch unless you hate nerds, and why would you watch Future Law and Order if you hate nerds?
It didn't work as a law show, because it was asking a jury to decide issues of law rather than issues of fact. (Yeah, I know about Jury Nullification, but everyone on the show kept talking about how the jury would set a pro-cloning precedent, and jury nullification doesn't set precedents.)
There was some cloned super-attorney who apparently plans to spend any more episodes they decide to air whining about how much it sucks to be genetically engineered with superior intelligence and strength.
I find it unlikely this show will become something worth watching. If they had a Law and Order show set in the Paleolithic era, a Flintstones to this Jetsons, I that would be much more entertaining.
I agree, Monk totally rules. One of the few reasons I miss cable.
For years I've been hearing that P2P wasn't responsible for declining sales, and crappy music was. Now that the trend has reversed, I'm expected to believe that P2P is responsible for the increase?
You say that as though there's some kind of contradiction. But really, they were just saying P2P didn't hurt sales, they've always been saying that, and now it turns out that's the only possible explanation that fits the data. After all, there's more P2P now then before. But sales are better now then before. And sales started to decline when they knocked Napster off the air. Any contradiction or inconsistency in this point of view only exists in your misreading.
But the question is--is Fedora or any other Linux platform large enough to become a viable desktop platform? Software is what's called a "natural monopoly"--most of the development costs are fixed costs, with extremely small marginal costs (specifically, the cost of burning a CD). That means that whether your software has a billion users or a hundred, it still costs the same amount to program. More users means you can spread the cost among a larger group of people.
This is why desktop people want to think of GNU/Linux as a platform--because the sum total of all Linux might be large enough to be viable as a desktop against Microsoft, especially as anti-American software sentiment builds overseas. Do I expect the same to be true of Fedora or any other particular distro of GNU/Linux?
It's not correct to say "No one wants to see GNU/Linux on the desktop" because anyone developing Linux software would rather sell to (or support or whatever) one Linux market/platform than any particular distribution. GNU/Linux is/is not a platform in the same way that light is/is not a wave.
Hey, I'm glad your company is glad with this state of affairs (although the whole point of this Slashdot article is a change in today's state of affairs). That doesn't mean "the only thing holding back Linux on the desktop is distribution and supply channels"--it's just not true. Just because Linux fulfils your desktop needs doesn't mean it fulfills everyone's. (I'm not saying it has to fulfill everyone's needs, just that it does not.) There are many times when diversity is very harmful. In fact, choice is nothing but an annoyance if you have no preference for the thing to be chosen. Being able to choose your X server is great if you give a damn about what X server you're running--but the only people who do are themes.org junkies and X server developers. Linux is sometimes very aggravatingly good at giving me choices about things I couldn't care less about.
Remove the last S from OSS. Sure, whether I can construct my own OS or web browser in the future is completely boring. But start applying Open Source to hardware--can I construct my own robot? My own von Neuman machine robot? My own nanomachines? Can I genetically engineer my own pets? Can I synthesize my own medicine? My own drugs?
Really, making it a legal drama kind of presupposes an answer to all of these questions: "only if the government says you can." Which is why Century City sounds boring to me--by dissing "Blade Runner", it cuts itself off from a vast world if illicit technology.
does this make a good game, or does this make a commercially successful game? And is there a difference?
This is definitely a good question--especially considering his analogy. I've read plenty of awesome books which are difficult to sum up into one line--one is going to have trouble doing this with any modern non-genre book.
I don't see how Visual Studio.net and.Net Framework users can be considered a small minority. The thing is, Microsoft releasing a service pack that breaks everything is very different from a linux distribution breaking when the use decides to try to compile and install new software completely on their own--Microsoft is the equivalent of the whole open source community of programmers and distributors combined, so a new service pack isn't analagous to a new major release of the Linux kernel, it's more like a new minor release of a Linux distribution. And I'm not sure it's even like that, since a service pack upgrade is supposed to be a lot easier to do then installing a Linux distribution release--so it's more like an distro-released security fix. Which isn't supposed to break everything.
I don't know anything about the specifics, but there are memory-protecting kernel patches out there for linux, like PAX and grsecurity and probably a bunch of others. You have to disable them when running Java and X, so I imagine Java will be effected by this update.
The headline suggests the engine is completely sealed off to prevent anyone but the manufacturer from touching the insides.
So does the BBC article:
The whole front of the car is moulded in one piece which can be removed only by a Volvo mechanic.
The headline was only misleading to the extent that it didn't mention the "designed for women by women" angle--that it's not Volvo wanting to seal everyone's hood, just those of women. So they aren't attacking open source, they're attacking respect for women. Which is kind of worse if you stop and think about it.
From a programming standpoint, 20 hours of high quality game play is just as difficult as 60 hours. The bulk of the work for an additional 40 hours is done by artists and level designers creating the additional content.
But whether we're talking about the forementioned Lone Wolf or a Huge Company, level design and art are still expensive, no?
I would rather play one long well made game, then 1 short well made game and 4 short crappy games tossed off with the aim of turning out a profit.
I'd rather play the one short boldly innovative game, let the other 4 rot on the shelf, then play the one huge game that's exactly like last year's one huge game but with better graphics because management refused to take any risks with their multi-million dollar project. The reason for short games isn't because short is better, but because innovation is proportional to risk-taking which is inversely proportional to cost which MIGHT be proportional to length?
By that logic every pharmicist in the United States would be a "monopoly" for selling goods at much cheaper rates to insured customers. It actually makes more sense for Microsoft, because their product has high fixed costs and extremely low marginal costs. (Which means there really isn't any connection between the "competitive price" and Microsoft's costs, except that the total revenue must be strictly greater than the fixed cost or MS would be out of business--but in reality we know it's not just greater it's MUCH greater.)
I think Microsoft is a monopoly, but the price differentiation in software prices is no evidence of that--it's fairly common practice. Apple does or used to do it with schools, are we now to believe that Microsoft's competitor is also a monopoly?
I define a democratic legal system as a set of laws setup by the public (or, in this case, their representatives) in order to enforce the public's best interests, to maintain order in society, and to provide a common ethical and moral framework for a nation. You may believe (as I do not) that current copyright law is immoral, that is, it is not geared towards the greater survivability of the copyright holders. If you do, then violating the law is certainly a correct action for you. However, I hardly think anyone would argue that current copyright law is unfavorable to the copyright holders.
You may believe (as I do) that current copyright law is unethical, that is that it harms society as a whole. The correct way to fix immoral legal situations IS civil disobedience. However, the correct way to fix unethical legal situations is to change the law. One cannot enact sweeping ethical legal changes without changing the law. Therefore I believe that the correct action here is not to violate the law, but to ask the lawmakers to change it. FWIW, I have corresponded with all of my state senators and representatives on this matter and made my opinion known. Most of them were in agreement to some degree or another.
There's no way I'm going to accept that the definitions of
immoral and unethical are anywhere near precise enough for the distinction you're making. The only examples I can think of that immoral would apply to that unethical would not would be religious sins--i.e., you could say "idolatry is immoral", but you certainly couldn't say "idolatry is unethical."
Now perhaps if you believe Utilitarianism is the only ethical system, your distinction would make sense. On the other hand, I happen to think current copyright law is immoral, because by default human communication should be unrestricted--any undue restriction thereof is tyranny, and any means necessary to overthrow or bypass (de facto law being my only concern) such restriction is justified. Few things are more offensive to me than telling a particular artistic work that it has no right to exist. The White Album, being rather aged and with half its performers dead, is ripe for civil disobedience.
There is also the issue of being unfair to creators while being fair to copyright holders--you can say "transferable" all you want, but if by making the right transferrable you have reduced the benefits to artists (highly probable), then transferability is wrong.
My point being, if I believe that pickpocketing should not be a crime, that doesn't give me the right to pick your pocket.
True, because rights come from neither beliefs nor laws. If you believed you had a right to pickpocket, surely you would also believe that everyone had a right to pickpocket, regardless of their beliefs on pickpocketing.
If ASL doesn't play nice with the GPL, that is unfortunate... and we might have to look at something else.
Look: all of this bitching (though in this case the bitching is apparently ignorant, because it looks like the licenses are compatible) is the process of determining whether it's worth looking at something else! Your code is your own fucking business, but my usage of your code, and my reasons for such, are MY fucking business, and I can choose to make those as bitchy as I want.
There's plenty of interesting and creative mods and total conversions--which suggests that its the difficulty of building a competitive 3D gaming engine thats holding back truly independent gaming development--if at some point a free (LGPL or similar) gaming engine on par with currently released commercial games came to exist, one might expect to see a rebirth of independent commercial development.
Actually, you don't have to testify against yourself in any criminal case, at least according to the amendment text. Whether it's "incriminating" or not is quite irrelevent to the exact wording in the constitution--needless to say, the exact text in the consitution is not always the law you and I have to follow on the street. The government's point is bullshit, though--yes, I GIVE my name all the time--people do not TAKE my name all the time. I can choose to ignore ordinary requests for my name. There are plenty of times when the courts have upheld the right of individuals to remain completely anonymous from the government--see the KKK's right to protest with masks as an example. The original poster said courts say I have to give my name--any citations?
and all this talk about "lost jobs" ignores all the new businesses which have been started in the last two years
What the heck are you saying here? Look at the change in the payroll figures and remove the your scare quotes--the lost jobs are real. Why wouldn't anyone employed in new businesses be counted in the payroll figures? Ask anyone who's actually tried to get a job and you'll get the same answer--it sucks.
I think Bush deserves a massive amount of blame. The foreign borrowing required to finance his gigantic spending increases and deficits prevented our huge trade deficits from pushing down the dollar until recently, his huge supply-side tax cuts were exactly the wrong solution to an economy that had grown too much capacity during the Internet Boom, and his useless "War on Terror" and elective war on Iraq have left investors in a state of panic until the last couple of months. His measures to reassure investors that American stock markets are operating honestly have been non-existent.
Sure, there would have been some market correction in 2001. It didn't have to be as massive as it was. If the tax cuts were focused to the middle and lower class to increase demand, if there were a serious effort to fight Wall Street corruption, if we hadn't alienated all of our allies over the Iraq war and been forced to pay for it ourself, then things would be incredibly good right now. And if we'd done something serious to limit the skyrocketing cost of healthcare, we'd have a freaking new Golden Age on our hands.
Now, the best we can hope for is someone to clean up Bush's mess.
Slashdot Mirror
It is the wrong question. It is still the case that pirates have no effect on your business-it is like they do not exist. It is well known that there are more legitimate users that there were in the past, therefore things should be better than they used to be for developers--whether there are more pirates than before does not enter into this equation.
Your question is basically "what if something forces pirates to have an effect on the industry like other consumers." Well, seeing as how the small developers are suffering so much now with a larger user base, I fail to see why they'd do any better with an even larger user base. More money would be spent on the big corporate games, the "natural monopoly" effect becomes even more powerful, and more small developers are crowded out.
People don't just use their computers to entertain themselves. Are we going to have the entire family stop watching television while Junior does his homework or Mom checks email? People want to play on their televisions and work on their computers--any attempt to build a single device for both of those purposes is somewhat silly.
Right, management is at the top of the hierarchy, so its the one that does the outsourcing--you can't outsource yourself. But that won't stop completely new managements from forming overseas, employing workers over there (or even workers over here. Essentially, customers and shareholders can outsource management by shopping and investing elsewhere. Then once all of the dollars have left our country, we can finally outsource the customers and shareholders, and finally the ultimate dream of efficient outsourcing will be achieved--absolutely no economic activity in America. A zero gross national product is our manifest destiny! Long live capitalism!
Look, I steal a lot of software, so while I may be mistaken in this specific case (although since you haven't named the program, there really isn't a specific case to be mistaken about) I'm not mistaken about the general case. Even if the crack available, it's still vastly easier to exchange software by trading cds around IN A CLASSROOM--i.e. your example still is not generally applicable.
One pirate kiddie turning another pirate kiddie onto a game doesn't really help anyone.
Doesn't really hurt anyone either. A non-sale is a non-sale. If we're talking about obscure software, then the probability of a pirate turning a legit customer to the dark side is low, because the number of intersections between your legit and pirate set of people are smaller. This rationalization has been TRUE for decades. That even in the post-linux era people still don't understand this is mind-boggling fucking stupidity. IBM doesn't see all these desktop running linux with no IBM hardware and start bemoaning "geezus, those stupid hackers are STEALING all of our Linux research and development costs!" It sure seems like major corporations aren't buying into your "debunking".
On the other hand, encouraging legit users to be pirates by forcing them to download cracks to make their product work at all, as has happened to me with several games, definitely decreases the number of legit users in the future, by getting people in the habit of piracy--or driving them away from the PC onto the consoles, where games just freaking work. Surely consoles are vastly more small-developer hostile than PC, piracy or no piracy.
It seems to me people selling information need to remember that prayer about "the courage to change what I can, the serenity to accept what I cannot." By trying to get every last possible sale from the last few holdouts, sellers of games are alienating those who DO purchase their products. I've got no sympathy for them.
Computer network piracy is difficult for obscure software (which sort of nullifies the "piracy attacks smaller developers" argument).
In any event, if trivial piracy is the bigger problem, then it's the bigger problem, period. Remember, the goal is maximize sales, not eliminate pirates. (It's really easy to eliminate pirates, just don't release any software.) Anyone selling information--be it games, newspapers, movies, or music, is just going to have to get over the fact that some percentage of people are going to be able to use your information without filling your wallet, and you're going to have to settle for selling to those people who actually do pay.
Look at it this way, there may be millions of people out there using your program illegally. But there are billions of people out there who have never heard of your program. I suspect you will have more luck increasing sales by targetting the latter group. Indeed, the pirates might actually be helping you by spreading word of your great yet obscure products to non-pirates.
Inserting the word "magically" into an assertion doesn't automatically make it dumb.
You're right, it's pretty fucking retarded all by itself with no insertion of words necessary.
Software sales generally come from people who meet both of the following criteria: "want the software," and "don't already have the software." If you pirated a game, you obviously met the first criterion, but you've removed yourself from the second one. That's one potential sale down the drain. The company has lost value. Not $20, but some percentage of it.
So if I remove myself from the second criteria, then it's like I never existed at all. See? If some strange holocaust killed all software pirates, it wouldn't change the revenue of software companies at all.
You need to add one more criteria: "willing to pirate software". There are people who are willing to pirate, there are people who will only use software they have acquired legally. There are probably a whole lot MORE legitimate users than pirates, not because users are particularly scrupulous, but because pirating executable code is more inconvenient and dangerous than pirating music or movies.
And looking at the sales figures, there are fantastically more legitimate users today than there ever were at any time in the past.
Not if production costs are increasing faster.
Right, something other than piracy is the source of independent developer's woe. You could blame the increasing costs of production--though I'm not sure that's really true. It costs a whole lot more to make the state of art 3d shooter than it cost to make a 2d platform game back in the day, but it's way the heck easier/cheaper to make a 2d platform game today then it has ever been in the past. I suspect that as time goes on, making 3d games is going to be easier and cheaper. 3D models will always be more expensive to build than 2D sprites, but the diminishing marginal returns of 3D graphics are starting to kick in, as games displayed on televisions and computer monitors aren't going to be able to look too much better than they do now. Which means that games using cheap, easy to use pre-packaged 3d engines will become visually indistinguishable from games developed with expensive 3d programmers.
You could blame users for growing sick of the desktop computer as a gaming platform--consoles are a much larger percentage of the marketplace than they used to be, but are vastly less friendly to independent developers. (The web is more friendly to indies, but users aren't as willing to pay.)
You could blame the thousands and thousands of available classic titles, usually available at low cost somewhere or another. Whether I choose to pirate Warcraft III or keep playing my old copy of Command and Conquer Red Alert, I'm definitely not going to buy your new independent strategy game.
You could blame the power law. As the number of users and developers increases, it's just plain natural for a small set of powerful developers to make most of the sales.
Or you could blame users again for wanting big, complicated games, instead of small innovative games.
You could realize that computer software is what microeconomics textbooks call "a natural monopoly"--the marginal costs of producing new copies is near zero, so the market gravitates toward a few dominant players.
That's not to say that a pirate shouldn't think twice about stealing an indy game they like if they'd like to see more of that sort of game in the future. But that's no more true today than it was in the past, and piracy is definitely not the reason large game developers are winning.
No, piracy takes money out of the pockets of developers through thoroughly non-magical means. Inserting the word "magically" into an assertion doesn't automatically make it dumb. You're right, it's pretty fucking retarded all by itself with no insertion of words necessary. Software sales generally come from people who meet both of the following criteria: "want the software," and "don't already have the software." If you pirated a game, you obviously met the first criterion, but you've removed yourself from the second one. That's one potential sale down the drain. The company has lost value. Not $20, but some percentage of it. So if I remove myself from the second criteria, then it's like I never existed at all. See? If some strange holocaust killed all software pirates, it wouldn't change the revenue of software companies at all. You need to add one more criteria: "willing to pirate software". There are people who are willing to pirate, there are people who will only use software they have acquired legally. There are probably a whole lot MORE legitimate users than pirates, not because users are particularly scrupulous, but because pirating executable code is more inconvenient and dangerous than pirating music or movies. And looking at the sales figures, there are fantastically more legitimate users today than there ever were at any time in the past. Not if production costs are increasing faster. Right, something other than piracy is the source of independent developer's woe. You could blame the increasing costs of production--though I'm not sure that's really true. It costs a whole lot more to make the state of art 3d shooter than it cost to make a 2d platform game back in the day, but it's way the heck easier/cheaper to make a 2d platform game today then it has ever been in the past. I suspect that as time goes on, making 3d games is going to be easier and cheaper. 3D models will always be more expensive to build than 2D sprites, but the diminishing marginal returns of 3D graphics are starting to kick in, as games displayed on televisions and computer monitors aren't going to be able to look too much better than they do now. Which means that games using cheap, easy to use pre-packaged 3d engines will become visually indistinguishable from games developed with expensive 3d programmers. You could blame users for growing sick of the desktop computer as a gaming platform--consoles are a much larger percentage of the marketplace than they used to be, but are vastly less friendly to independent developers. (The web is more friendly to indies, but users aren't as willing to pay.) You could blame the thousands and thousands of available classic titles, usually available at low cost somewhere or another. Whether I choose to pirate Warcraft III or keep playing my old copy of Command and Conquer Red Alert, I'm definitely not going to buy your new independent strategy game. You could blame the power law. As the number of users and developers increases, it's just plain natural for a small set of powerful developers to make most of the sales. Or you could blame users again for wanting big, complicated games, instead of small innovative games. That's not to say that a pirate shouldn't think twice about stealing an indy game they like if they'd like to see more of that sort of game in the future. But that's no more true today than it was in the past, and piracy is definitely not the reason large game developers are winning.
A: Too much piracy
B: Lack of sales
A->B
not B
Therefore, not A.
The thing is, the total number of video game users has been escalating for a very long time. Piracy or not, that means the number of paying video game customers has been increasing. Is anyone here going to seriously doubt this assertion? The sales figures are through the roof. There is a whole lot more money being spent on games right now than there used to be. And, after all, the name of the game isn't to decrease piracy, it's to increase sales. So if sales are increasing, then piracy or no piracy, developers should be better off now than they used to be.
Why are the gaming companies becoming larger and more risk-averse? I dunno, we can all speculate plenty of reasons for this, but there's no possible way you can blame piracy--consumers are spending a mind-boggling amount of money on video games, more than the world has every spent on video games ever before.
A: Too much piracy B: Lack of sales
A->B not B Therefore, not A.
Sorry, anti-piracy zealots, but modus tollens says you suck. Really, the whole idea of competing in a games marketplace on the basis of price is ridiculous--the price of a video game is the time I invest playing it, not the paltry $50 I plunk down to pay for it.
More often than not someone tries a burned copy of a game, can't get it to work, and then goes out and buys the cd. More often than not someone just downloads the cracked copy from their favorite P2P network and bypasses the whole mess. That's what I started to do when I got one too many game with a completely broken CD-check. Pay less money, get a non-broken product. Practically all games have some limited copy protection these days (or at least that seems to be the case to me judging from the trouble I'd have running completely legitimate copies) so if casual piracy like the type you describe were truly the source of the problem, there wouldn't be a problem, would there?
Okay, it's several days later, I actually watched the show. I did not like it. The show's plot revolved around the firm's convincing a jury that it was okay to let a man use a fertilized egg cloned from his son to save his son's life even though cloning was illegal. It didn't work for me as sci-fi, because it offers people this comfortable notion of human beings saying yes-or-no to new technologies in an organized legal manner. Technology submitting to bureaucracy--perfect for the post-dot-com era, but not entertaining to watch unless you hate nerds, and why would you watch Future Law and Order if you hate nerds? It didn't work as a law show, because it was asking a jury to decide issues of law rather than issues of fact. (Yeah, I know about Jury Nullification, but everyone on the show kept talking about how the jury would set a pro-cloning precedent, and jury nullification doesn't set precedents.) There was some cloned super-attorney who apparently plans to spend any more episodes they decide to air whining about how much it sucks to be genetically engineered with superior intelligence and strength. I find it unlikely this show will become something worth watching. If they had a Law and Order show set in the Paleolithic era, a Flintstones to this Jetsons, I that would be much more entertaining. I agree, Monk totally rules. One of the few reasons I miss cable.
For years I've been hearing that P2P wasn't responsible for declining sales, and crappy music was. Now that the trend has reversed, I'm expected to believe that P2P is responsible for the increase? You say that as though there's some kind of contradiction. But really, they were just saying P2P didn't hurt sales, they've always been saying that, and now it turns out that's the only possible explanation that fits the data. After all, there's more P2P now then before. But sales are better now then before. And sales started to decline when they knocked Napster off the air. Any contradiction or inconsistency in this point of view only exists in your misreading.
But the question is--is Fedora or any other Linux platform large enough to become a viable desktop platform? Software is what's called a "natural monopoly"--most of the development costs are fixed costs, with extremely small marginal costs (specifically, the cost of burning a CD). That means that whether your software has a billion users or a hundred, it still costs the same amount to program. More users means you can spread the cost among a larger group of people. This is why desktop people want to think of GNU/Linux as a platform--because the sum total of all Linux might be large enough to be viable as a desktop against Microsoft, especially as anti-American software sentiment builds overseas. Do I expect the same to be true of Fedora or any other particular distro of GNU/Linux? It's not correct to say "No one wants to see GNU/Linux on the desktop" because anyone developing Linux software would rather sell to (or support or whatever) one Linux market/platform than any particular distribution. GNU/Linux is/is not a platform in the same way that light is/is not a wave. Hey, I'm glad your company is glad with this state of affairs (although the whole point of this Slashdot article is a change in today's state of affairs). That doesn't mean "the only thing holding back Linux on the desktop is distribution and supply channels"--it's just not true. Just because Linux fulfils your desktop needs doesn't mean it fulfills everyone's. (I'm not saying it has to fulfill everyone's needs, just that it does not.) There are many times when diversity is very harmful. In fact, choice is nothing but an annoyance if you have no preference for the thing to be chosen. Being able to choose your X server is great if you give a damn about what X server you're running--but the only people who do are themes.org junkies and X server developers. Linux is sometimes very aggravatingly good at giving me choices about things I couldn't care less about.
Remove the last S from OSS. Sure, whether I can construct my own OS or web browser in the future is completely boring. But start applying Open Source to hardware--can I construct my own robot? My own von Neuman machine robot? My own nanomachines? Can I genetically engineer my own pets? Can I synthesize my own medicine? My own drugs? Really, making it a legal drama kind of presupposes an answer to all of these questions: "only if the government says you can." Which is why Century City sounds boring to me--by dissing "Blade Runner", it cuts itself off from a vast world if illicit technology.
does this make a good game, or does this make a commercially successful game? And is there a difference? This is definitely a good question--especially considering his analogy. I've read plenty of awesome books which are difficult to sum up into one line--one is going to have trouble doing this with any modern non-genre book.
I don't see how Visual Studio .net and .Net Framework users can be considered a small minority. The thing is, Microsoft releasing a service pack that breaks everything is very different from a linux distribution breaking when the use decides to try to compile and install new software completely on their own--Microsoft is the equivalent of the whole open source community of programmers and distributors combined, so a new service pack isn't analagous to a new major release of the Linux kernel, it's more like a new minor release of a Linux distribution. And I'm not sure it's even like that, since a service pack upgrade is supposed to be a lot easier to do then installing a Linux distribution release--so it's more like an distro-released security fix. Which isn't supposed to break everything.
I don't know anything about the specifics, but there are memory-protecting kernel patches out there for linux, like PAX and grsecurity and probably a bunch of others. You have to disable them when running Java and X, so I imagine Java will be effected by this update.
So does the BBC article:
The whole front of the car is moulded in one piece which can be removed only by a Volvo mechanic.
The headline was only misleading to the extent that it didn't mention the "designed for women by women" angle--that it's not Volvo wanting to seal everyone's hood, just those of women. So they aren't attacking open source, they're attacking respect for women. Which is kind of worse if you stop and think about it.
I didn't say Microsoft wasn't a monopoly, I just said price differentiation was no evidence of monopoly.
From a programming standpoint, 20 hours of high quality game play is just as difficult as 60 hours. The bulk of the work for an additional 40 hours is done by artists and level designers creating the additional content. But whether we're talking about the forementioned Lone Wolf or a Huge Company, level design and art are still expensive, no? I would rather play one long well made game, then 1 short well made game and 4 short crappy games tossed off with the aim of turning out a profit. I'd rather play the one short boldly innovative game, let the other 4 rot on the shelf, then play the one huge game that's exactly like last year's one huge game but with better graphics because management refused to take any risks with their multi-million dollar project. The reason for short games isn't because short is better, but because innovation is proportional to risk-taking which is inversely proportional to cost which MIGHT be proportional to length?
By that logic every pharmicist in the United States would be a "monopoly" for selling goods at much cheaper rates to insured customers. It actually makes more sense for Microsoft, because their product has high fixed costs and extremely low marginal costs. (Which means there really isn't any connection between the "competitive price" and Microsoft's costs, except that the total revenue must be strictly greater than the fixed cost or MS would be out of business--but in reality we know it's not just greater it's MUCH greater.) I think Microsoft is a monopoly, but the price differentiation in software prices is no evidence of that--it's fairly common practice. Apple does or used to do it with schools, are we now to believe that Microsoft's competitor is also a monopoly?
You may believe (as I do) that current copyright law is unethical, that is that it harms society as a whole. The correct way to fix immoral legal situations IS civil disobedience. However, the correct way to fix unethical legal situations is to change the law. One cannot enact sweeping ethical legal changes without changing the law. Therefore I believe that the correct action here is not to violate the law, but to ask the lawmakers to change it. FWIW, I have corresponded with all of my state senators and representatives on this matter and made my opinion known. Most of them were in agreement to some degree or another.
There's no way I'm going to accept that the definitions of immoral and unethical are anywhere near precise enough for the distinction you're making. The only examples I can think of that immoral would apply to that unethical would not would be religious sins--i.e., you could say "idolatry is immoral", but you certainly couldn't say "idolatry is unethical."
Now perhaps if you believe Utilitarianism is the only ethical system, your distinction would make sense. On the other hand, I happen to think current copyright law is immoral, because by default human communication should be unrestricted--any undue restriction thereof is tyranny, and any means necessary to overthrow or bypass (de facto law being my only concern) such restriction is justified. Few things are more offensive to me than telling a particular artistic work that it has no right to exist. The White Album, being rather aged and with half its performers dead, is ripe for civil disobedience.
There is also the issue of being unfair to creators while being fair to copyright holders--you can say "transferable" all you want, but if by making the right transferrable you have reduced the benefits to artists (highly probable), then transferability is wrong.
My point being, if I believe that pickpocketing should not be a crime, that doesn't give me the right to pick your pocket.
True, because rights come from neither beliefs nor laws. If you believed you had a right to pickpocket, surely you would also believe that everyone had a right to pickpocket, regardless of their beliefs on pickpocketing.
Look: all of this bitching (though in this case the bitching is apparently ignorant, because it looks like the licenses are compatible) is the process of determining whether it's worth looking at something else! Your code is your own fucking business, but my usage of your code, and my reasons for such, are MY fucking business, and I can choose to make those as bitchy as I want.
There's plenty of interesting and creative mods and total conversions--which suggests that its the difficulty of building a competitive 3D gaming engine thats holding back truly independent gaming development--if at some point a free (LGPL or similar) gaming engine on par with currently released commercial games came to exist, one might expect to see a rebirth of independent commercial development.
Actually, you don't have to testify against yourself in any criminal case, at least according to the amendment text. Whether it's "incriminating" or not is quite irrelevent to the exact wording in the constitution--needless to say, the exact text in the consitution is not always the law you and I have to follow on the street. The government's point is bullshit, though--yes, I GIVE my name all the time--people do not TAKE my name all the time. I can choose to ignore ordinary requests for my name. There are plenty of times when the courts have upheld the right of individuals to remain completely anonymous from the government--see the KKK's right to protest with masks as an example. The original poster said courts say I have to give my name--any citations?
What the heck are you saying here? Look at the change in the payroll figures and remove the your scare quotes--the lost jobs are real. Why wouldn't anyone employed in new businesses be counted in the payroll figures? Ask anyone who's actually tried to get a job and you'll get the same answer--it sucks.
I think Bush deserves a massive amount of blame. The foreign borrowing required to finance his gigantic spending increases and deficits prevented our huge trade deficits from pushing down the dollar until recently, his huge supply-side tax cuts were exactly the wrong solution to an economy that had grown too much capacity during the Internet Boom, and his useless "War on Terror" and elective war on Iraq have left investors in a state of panic until the last couple of months. His measures to reassure investors that American stock markets are operating honestly have been non-existent.
Sure, there would have been some market correction in 2001. It didn't have to be as massive as it was. If the tax cuts were focused to the middle and lower class to increase demand, if there were a serious effort to fight Wall Street corruption, if we hadn't alienated all of our allies over the Iraq war and been forced to pay for it ourself, then things would be incredibly good right now. And if we'd done something serious to limit the skyrocketing cost of healthcare, we'd have a freaking new Golden Age on our hands.
Now, the best we can hope for is someone to clean up Bush's mess.