Crap I had this great post differentiating utilitarianism from relativism but it was swallowed by the internet and I don't feel like retyping it. It would now appear that it is I who is the lazy asshole parasite. The gist of what I said was the Utilitarianism is not particularly relativist. Though utilitarian arguments are required to rely on some assumptions about people's subjective preferences in addition to objective economics and sociology, any normitive philosophy system must have some subjective component--atoms and molecules have no ethics, after all.
In any event, although I too have no credit card, I see no difference between getting "ripped off" by a merchant who pays money to a credit company and getting "ripped off" by a merchant who pays money for air conditioning I don't like. I also see no difference between your having to deal with merchants who accept credit cards and other people having to deal with credit reports.
Thus, when you pay in cash at a business that accepts credit cards, the cash price is still slightly higher because you are paying for an insecure form of financial transactions THAT YOU DON'T EVEN USE. now these parasites have found a new way to sensationalize a part of their costs and try to get the whole world to pay for them.
And here is where you prove yourself to be an retarded fuck. Why don't you just shop at places that don't deal with credit cards? Just because you can't find any, you complain about getting ripped off? Well, aren't you just a little self-contradicting parasite.
Surely, if you have even one iota of right to complain about getting ripped off because you choose to shop at locations you believe rip you off, everyone else has infinitely more right to complain about unregulated tyranny of credit agencies. At least everyone else is being a reasonable parasite instead of an asshole self-righteous parasite.
I used to be a libertarian, but then I realized that we live in an economy of scum bags, and you either deal with the scum bags or you starve to death. Any government action to limit the power of large corporate scum bags is A-OK in my book. You don't like it? Then go back to the state of nature and leave me alone.
It makes perfect sense when you think about who they go up against. Big media, big industry, big government, big money. Swift, underpaid non-profit lawyers have a far better chance in the courtroom than swift, underpaid lobbyists would have in Gucci Gulch.
The problem with this thinking is that the judges these swift underpaid folks must appeal to are chosen in Washington. Because EFF (and the ACLU as well) have dismissed democracy and legislative process as a lost cause, the judiciary of our nation keeps drifting slowly to the right, especially in the Supreme Court.
Makes absolutely no goddamned sense not to be in Washington, if you ask me.
Well, I must I have replied to something about Ethnocentrism in some long ago forgotten era, and mozilla now thinks all subject lines should be ethnocentrism.
From now on I do my web browsing with power point like everyone else.
What this article really explains is why we are so wrong about the Prisoner's Dilemna. You know, the police interrogator offers to co-conspirators the chance to confess--if neither confesses they both get 5 years of jail, if one confesses he goes free while his associate gets 20 years, and if both confess they both get 10 years.
The Beta VCR, Linux, and Apple fans say a cooperative strategy of mutually refusing to confess is the best strategy that maximizes the cumulative outcome of everyone. But this article and most consumers evaluate the "whole product" of confession and incarceration, realizing that they are better off confessing no matter what their associate does, and goes out to buy Office XP.
At least most of their stuff is consistent and makes sense.
Um, isn't basically every comment in this discussion of strange technologies that the one might not expect the Amish to permit, including your explanation, another example of their inconsistency. What are they consistent with? They pick and choose what technologies they use, they all pick different technologies, and they condemn as corrupt anyone who uses non-approved technologies. You declare me ignorant for finding this odd? Pot, Kettle, Black.
I think you've got it. If Moore had said the value of processors doubles every 18 months (which is probably how a lot of dotcoms interpreted him) it would be just as ridiculous.
"Hey don't change my random number generator! Now every number is 666!"
"Well, if I'm able to change all the numbers to 666, it wasn't really random, was it?"
That's basically what I think is going on here--brains and random number generators are both implemented in deterministic atoms (I guess), and though that means neither true free will nor true randomness can exist, there is still a very valid concept of pseudorandom, likewise I suppose when someone claims bizarro MRI technology will take away your free will, they really mean it takes away your "pseudo-free will", or something like that. A good stab a definition for pseudo-free will might be "the quality of being free from manipulation by other minds"
Games are getting so costly to make, and only the really big names can afford to make them.
I'm not convinced it has to be this way. The problem as I see it is that every game is made as if its going to be the number one hit game of the year. Which it never is, because it looks exactly like the number one hit game of last year, and there are now 10 different titles that look exactly like it. The business people who run everything are simply looking at other successful companies and doing what they do--but doing exactly what your competitors have already done is a recipe for failure in video games (and probably most software) as the economic picture you describe proves.
The solution is to start making cheaper games that appeal to fringe, niche groups. The game of the year may require the latest graphics technology and oodles of expensive artwork and massive marketing push--but a great game can still be made without the absolute best visuals. How much do you think these games cost to make? How much do you think the Pokemon games cost to make? How many units does the average GBA game need to sell to break even? Cheap, successful games are possible, and I suspect we'll see way more of them in the future.
And we're all guilty of it, even the die-hards amoung us. Have any of you ever played a Pokemon game? Do you truely, HONESTLY know what it's about? Do you care? Probably not. Given a choice between being given the next Pokemon game for free, or BUYING the next installment of Grand Theft Auto most of our minds are already made up. It doesn't matter if the Pokemon games are fun or not. I wouldn't know, personally, and I doubt many of you do, either. That just illustrates my point further.
I'm not disputing your main point here, but to me at least, there isn't much difference between free and $50 relative to the true cost of the game, which is the time I invest in playing it. I'm sure if I took all of my Pokemon or Grand Theft time and worked at something productive instead I'd make enough to make actual cost of the game meaningless. If you like console RPGs, I highly recommend Pokemon. It has the depth of PC RPG with the simplicity of the console RPG. The battle system is much better thought out than, say, any Final Fantasy game. There isn't really any serious story, but its pretty fun to collect and build up the Pokemon.
That's kind of the point--if the police and mall security aren't doing anything wrong, why do they object to ordinary citizens taping them?
What I can't wait for is when every day becomes World Sousveillance Day. It'll be like living in a Transmetropilitan comic book! Who wouldn't love that?
The same rights that give the GPL power also allow these companies not to GPL their software.
Why do you mention that? If there was no right to create proprietary software, meaning no government control or regulation of ideas, then the GPL wouldn't be necessary. The purist free software advocate would gladly give up the GPL if it meant the end to all copyright holder rights to restrict information.
I didn't say story doesn't matter, I said it's not the only thing. There are some awesome comics without really significant plots (in fact, I can't think of any truly great comic strips with particularly strong plots.)
In fact, unless you count humor as story (quite a stretch), I'd have to say, no, comics are not a storytelling medium--some of them tell a great story, for some of them the story is merely a device for great imagery/humor/whatever.
How do authors of free as in beer comics pay for themselves? They get a real job. That's what I find exciting about free comics--the idea that drawing comics is something that EVERYONE can do, not just the very few artists (either the best of the best or the lowest common denominator, depending on your point of view) that the web comics economy could actually support.
I think the best webcomics (some of which have already been mentioned, BTW) have no revenue model whatsoever. They don't cater to fans, they offer no apology, they don't feel obligated to release more comics after their inspiration has run out--they're made by people who have a vision, implement the vision, and let the art stand on its own without tethering it to some commercial effort.
Modern Tales is about super-elite artists producing content to sell to the proletariat stuck working real jobs. Free comics are about everyone producing comics for everyone. Basically, the same do-it-yourself movement that drives Free Software.
And you can have amazing art and have total crap for stories.
Yes, and if you have that, that might be a good comic. You see, comics are a VISUAL medium. They contain both image and story (ideally, the image IS the story). If all you care about is story, then you should make a book instead of a comic.
And in my not so humble opinion
WTF?
(Who else would have the courage to have a llama as a character?!?)
Hey, Angst Technology is cool, but is there something about a Llama that makes it significantly more courageous to include it in your comic as opposed to the thousands (millions?) of other animals in comics?
I like both OS X and Linux better than Windows, but I probably run each of them about the same amount. I'll probably always have a Windows box because I'm sure if I ever got rid of it, there'd be lots of stuff I'd suddenly be unable to do. Like using a particular obscure piece of hardware, or playing a certain game (as a general rule it seems like anything involving 3D is best supported under Windows), or using a certain application. That would be a bit unlikely if I got rid of Linux, and almost certainly would never happen if I got rid of my Mac.
And I'm even more hesitent to set members of my family up with non-Windows computers--because I don't ever want to hear "I'd like to do that, but I can't because you stuck me with a Mac and I can't get the same programs everyone else can". It's a case of "No one gets uninvited from Thanksgiving for buying Microsoft", I suppose.
There are definite advantages to running the "default" computer that everyone else runs. Network effects are real, no matter how much we hate them.
One thing to note--so many people are here are pointing to games as the one reason they run Windows. I imagine once the entertainment-industry gets started with DRM, a whole lot of movies and music are going to be just as Windows-only as most games are. Seeing how Apple keeps trying to sell their computers as an entertainment hub, you'd think they'd be somewhat worried.
People will stop purchasing entertainment if they can get unrestricted music for free. If the only way to get songs for your iPod is P2P networks, well, tough shit for BMG. There simply isn't as much incentive for consumers to have unrestricted access to movies as there is to music--not as many people are interested in viewing movies away from their television as playing music away from their home stereo system.
I agree good things can come from some DRM-type solutions in theory--the problem is that outside of theory the asymmetries of the marketplace mess everything up.
Theoretically, if anyone doesn't like this-or-that DRM enabled feature of a product, they just shouldn't buy the product. But there's a flaw in this reasoning--just as everyone here who screams bloody murder about TCPA is probably going to have to buy a TCPA computer at some point (because that's the only kind they'll sell). Large well-organized corporations simply have vastly more negotiating power than individual consumers in deciding these sorts of things. You deciding not to buy the latest songs from the record companies doesn't phase them, but if large corporations decide not to sell products with feature X, then you'll just do without feature X, period.
Which means, left to its own ends, the marketplace will encourage software/hardware suppliers to set anti-fair use restrictions once DRM is common. Basically they'll turn their paper EULAs into draconian DRM restrictions.
Now, one can get on a high horse and just say "well I'll just run Linux and not purchase DRM content and never have to put up with any of that!" Yeah, we'll see how long that makes sense once all music, all movies, and many e-mails require Palladium. Most people use computers for communication--so if they refuse to buy the kind of computer that allows them to send and receive information from the kinds of computers other people buy, then your computer is going to become very useless. Palladium has far more potential to make this a reality than Microsoft Office file formats or Internet Explorer ever could. Remember, in a world of network effects, you're only as free as your neighbor.
So, while it may be true (if we're lucky) that TCPA can be used from any OS (though as you say, applications and content would need to be re-written to support it), from a utilitarian view things are going to start sucking for ordinary users unless one of two things takes place:
1. The government or some other entity outside the marketplace has veto power over allowable DRM policies, and uses it liberally.
2. We can encourage all consumers to say "palladium is the devil!", because even with the advantages you describe, it would still be a very bad thing from the users point of view.
In case you haven't noticed, most of the big attacks that really impact ordinary users seem to be with code that the user has agreed to run--be it an email forwarding virus or spyware, the user instructed the computer to run the offending code. So how is Palladium supposed to help? If it blocks non-Microsoft endorsed code, it's as evil as Slashdot claims it is. If it runs the offending code, as instructed to by the Outlook or Internet Explorer user, then all of that fancy hardware security added up to exactly nothing.
And is still continued today... the difference? The components are no longer split along process lines and don't communicate using pipes and stdin/stdout. They use the fantastically more powerful mechanisms of XPCOM/CORBA etc.
Those are more powerful for development, but I as a user don't gain any customization benefits from everything being written in your wonderful distributed object model, as I do with separate processes and pipes.
I'm not sure what the crap all you kids are talking about here. It's fast as heck here on my win2k box, with 256 megs. I don't remember the processor speed but it's nothing special--I'm at the office. Is your machine, like, virus infected or something?
Slashdot Mirror
There are already several "forks" or extensions of OpenGL that support shaders--but they aren't common to all hardware.
Crap I had this great post differentiating utilitarianism from relativism but it was swallowed by the internet and I don't feel like retyping it. It would now appear that it is I who is the lazy asshole parasite. The gist of what I said was the Utilitarianism is not particularly relativist. Though utilitarian arguments are required to rely on some assumptions about people's subjective preferences in addition to objective economics and sociology, any normitive philosophy system must have some subjective component--atoms and molecules have no ethics, after all.
In any event, although I too have no credit card, I see no difference between getting "ripped off" by a merchant who pays money to a credit company and getting "ripped off" by a merchant who pays money for air conditioning I don't like. I also see no difference between your having to deal with merchants who accept credit cards and other people having to deal with credit reports.
Thus, when you pay in cash at a business that accepts credit cards, the cash price is still slightly higher because you are paying for an insecure form of financial transactions THAT YOU DON'T EVEN USE. now these parasites have found a new way to sensationalize a part of their costs and try to get the whole world to pay for them.
And here is where you prove yourself to be an retarded fuck. Why don't you just shop at places that don't deal with credit cards? Just because you can't find any, you complain about getting ripped off? Well, aren't you just a little self-contradicting parasite.
Surely, if you have even one iota of right to complain about getting ripped off because you choose to shop at locations you believe rip you off, everyone else has infinitely more right to complain about unregulated tyranny of credit agencies. At least everyone else is being a reasonable parasite instead of an asshole self-righteous parasite.
I used to be a libertarian, but then I realized that we live in an economy of scum bags, and you either deal with the scum bags or you starve to death. Any government action to limit the power of large corporate scum bags is A-OK in my book. You don't like it? Then go back to the state of nature and leave me alone.
It makes perfect sense when you think about who they go up against. Big media, big industry, big government, big money. Swift, underpaid non-profit lawyers have a far better chance in the courtroom than swift, underpaid lobbyists would have in Gucci Gulch. The problem with this thinking is that the judges these swift underpaid folks must appeal to are chosen in Washington. Because EFF (and the ACLU as well) have dismissed democracy and legislative process as a lost cause, the judiciary of our nation keeps drifting slowly to the right, especially in the Supreme Court. Makes absolutely no goddamned sense not to be in Washington, if you ask me.
Well, I must I have replied to something about Ethnocentrism in some long ago forgotten era, and mozilla now thinks all subject lines should be ethnocentrism. From now on I do my web browsing with power point like everyone else.
What this article really explains is why we are so wrong about the Prisoner's Dilemna. You know, the police interrogator offers to co-conspirators the chance to confess--if neither confesses they both get 5 years of jail, if one confesses he goes free while his associate gets 20 years, and if both confess they both get 10 years.
The Beta VCR, Linux, and Apple fans say a cooperative strategy of mutually refusing to confess is the best strategy that maximizes the cumulative outcome of everyone. But this article and most consumers evaluate the "whole product" of confession and incarceration, realizing that they are better off confessing no matter what their associate does, and goes out to buy Office XP.
At least most of their stuff is consistent and makes sense. Um, isn't basically every comment in this discussion of strange technologies that the one might not expect the Amish to permit, including your explanation, another example of their inconsistency. What are they consistent with? They pick and choose what technologies they use, they all pick different technologies, and they condemn as corrupt anyone who uses non-approved technologies. You declare me ignorant for finding this odd? Pot, Kettle, Black.
I think you've got it. If Moore had said the value of processors doubles every 18 months (which is probably how a lot of dotcoms interpreted him) it would be just as ridiculous.
I'm curious--have you actually read any of Lem's stuff? He's certainly comparable to any of those guys.
"Hey don't change my random number generator! Now every number is 666!"
"Well, if I'm able to change all the numbers to 666, it wasn't really random, was it?"
That's basically what I think is going on here--brains and random number generators are both implemented in deterministic atoms (I guess), and though that means neither true free will nor true randomness can exist, there is still a very valid concept of pseudorandom, likewise I suppose when someone claims bizarro MRI technology will take away your free will, they really mean it takes away your "pseudo-free will", or something like that. A good stab a definition for pseudo-free will might be "the quality of being free from manipulation by other minds"
I'm not convinced it has to be this way. The problem as I see it is that every game is made as if its going to be the number one hit game of the year. Which it never is, because it looks exactly like the number one hit game of last year, and there are now 10 different titles that look exactly like it. The business people who run everything are simply looking at other successful companies and doing what they do--but doing exactly what your competitors have already done is a recipe for failure in video games (and probably most software) as the economic picture you describe proves.
The solution is to start making cheaper games that appeal to fringe, niche groups. The game of the year may require the latest graphics technology and oodles of expensive artwork and massive marketing push--but a great game can still be made without the absolute best visuals. How much do you think these games cost to make? How much do you think the Pokemon games cost to make? How many units does the average GBA game need to sell to break even? Cheap, successful games are possible, and I suspect we'll see way more of them in the future.
And we're all guilty of it, even the die-hards amoung us. Have any of you ever played a Pokemon game? Do you truely, HONESTLY know what it's about? Do you care? Probably not. Given a choice between being given the next Pokemon game for free, or BUYING the next installment of Grand Theft Auto most of our minds are already made up. It doesn't matter if the Pokemon games are fun or not. I wouldn't know, personally, and I doubt many of you do, either. That just illustrates my point further.
I'm not disputing your main point here, but to me at least, there isn't much difference between free and $50 relative to the true cost of the game, which is the time I invest in playing it. I'm sure if I took all of my Pokemon or Grand Theft time and worked at something productive instead I'd make enough to make actual cost of the game meaningless. If you like console RPGs, I highly recommend Pokemon. It has the depth of PC RPG with the simplicity of the console RPG. The battle system is much better thought out than, say, any Final Fantasy game. There isn't really any serious story, but its pretty fun to collect and build up the Pokemon.
That's kind of the point--if the police and mall security aren't doing anything wrong, why do they object to ordinary citizens taping them? What I can't wait for is when every day becomes World Sousveillance Day. It'll be like living in a Transmetropilitan comic book! Who wouldn't love that?
Ain't that the truth! Verizon is fuckin' evil, but at least they aren't Comcast.
Why do you mention that? If there was no right to create proprietary software, meaning no government control or regulation of ideas, then the GPL wouldn't be necessary. The purist free software advocate would gladly give up the GPL if it meant the end to all copyright holder rights to restrict information.
I didn't say story doesn't matter, I said it's not the only thing. There are some awesome comics without really significant plots (in fact, I can't think of any truly great comic strips with particularly strong plots.)
In fact, unless you count humor as story (quite a stretch), I'd have to say, no, comics are not a storytelling medium--some of them tell a great story, for some of them the story is merely a device for great imagery/humor/whatever.
How do authors of free as in beer comics pay for themselves? They get a real job. That's what I find exciting about free comics--the idea that drawing comics is something that EVERYONE can do, not just the very few artists (either the best of the best or the lowest common denominator, depending on your point of view) that the web comics economy could actually support. I think the best webcomics (some of which have already been mentioned, BTW) have no revenue model whatsoever. They don't cater to fans, they offer no apology, they don't feel obligated to release more comics after their inspiration has run out--they're made by people who have a vision, implement the vision, and let the art stand on its own without tethering it to some commercial effort. Modern Tales is about super-elite artists producing content to sell to the proletariat stuck working real jobs. Free comics are about everyone producing comics for everyone. Basically, the same do-it-yourself movement that drives Free Software.
Yes, and if you have that, that might be a good comic. You see, comics are a VISUAL medium. They contain both image and story (ideally, the image IS the story). If all you care about is story, then you should make a book instead of a comic.
And in my not so humble opinion
WTF?
(Who else would have the courage to have a llama as a character?!?)
Hey, Angst Technology is cool, but is there something about a Llama that makes it significantly more courageous to include it in your comic as opposed to the thousands (millions?) of other animals in comics?
And I'm even more hesitent to set members of my family up with non-Windows computers--because I don't ever want to hear "I'd like to do that, but I can't because you stuck me with a Mac and I can't get the same programs everyone else can". It's a case of "No one gets uninvited from Thanksgiving for buying Microsoft", I suppose.
There are definite advantages to running the "default" computer that everyone else runs. Network effects are real, no matter how much we hate them.
One thing to note--so many people are here are pointing to games as the one reason they run Windows. I imagine once the entertainment-industry gets started with DRM, a whole lot of movies and music are going to be just as Windows-only as most games are. Seeing how Apple keeps trying to sell their computers as an entertainment hub, you'd think they'd be somewhat worried.
People will stop purchasing entertainment if they can get unrestricted music for free. If the only way to get songs for your iPod is P2P networks, well, tough shit for BMG. There simply isn't as much incentive for consumers to have unrestricted access to movies as there is to music--not as many people are interested in viewing movies away from their television as playing music away from their home stereo system.
I'm surprised that your comment isn't modded up since it makes more sense than my comment to which you replied. ;)
Theoretically, if anyone doesn't like this-or-that DRM enabled feature of a product, they just shouldn't buy the product. But there's a flaw in this reasoning--just as everyone here who screams bloody murder about TCPA is probably going to have to buy a TCPA computer at some point (because that's the only kind they'll sell). Large well-organized corporations simply have vastly more negotiating power than individual consumers in deciding these sorts of things. You deciding not to buy the latest songs from the record companies doesn't phase them, but if large corporations decide not to sell products with feature X, then you'll just do without feature X, period.
Which means, left to its own ends, the marketplace will encourage software/hardware suppliers to set anti-fair use restrictions once DRM is common. Basically they'll turn their paper EULAs into draconian DRM restrictions.
Now, one can get on a high horse and just say "well I'll just run Linux and not purchase DRM content and never have to put up with any of that!" Yeah, we'll see how long that makes sense once all music, all movies, and many e-mails require Palladium. Most people use computers for communication--so if they refuse to buy the kind of computer that allows them to send and receive information from the kinds of computers other people buy, then your computer is going to become very useless. Palladium has far more potential to make this a reality than Microsoft Office file formats or Internet Explorer ever could. Remember, in a world of network effects, you're only as free as your neighbor.
So, while it may be true (if we're lucky) that TCPA can be used from any OS (though as you say, applications and content would need to be re-written to support it), from a utilitarian view things are going to start sucking for ordinary users unless one of two things takes place:
1. The government or some other entity outside the marketplace has veto power over allowable DRM policies, and uses it liberally.
2. We can encourage all consumers to say "palladium is the devil!", because even with the advantages you describe, it would still be a very bad thing from the users point of view.
In case you haven't noticed, most of the big attacks that really impact ordinary users seem to be with code that the user has agreed to run--be it an email forwarding virus or spyware, the user instructed the computer to run the offending code. So how is Palladium supposed to help? If it blocks non-Microsoft endorsed code, it's as evil as Slashdot claims it is. If it runs the offending code, as instructed to by the Outlook or Internet Explorer user, then all of that fancy hardware security added up to exactly nothing.
Those are more powerful for development, but I as a user don't gain any customization benefits from everything being written in your wonderful distributed object model, as I do with separate processes and pipes.
I'm not sure what the crap all you kids are talking about here. It's fast as heck here on my win2k box, with 256 megs. I don't remember the processor speed but it's nothing special--I'm at the office. Is your machine, like, virus infected or something?
well geez why do u want numbers to call in places that dont exist UNLESS YOU DON'T EXIST?!!!!!