"A free economy cannot exist without competition. Therefore, men must be forced to compete. Therefore, we must control men in order to force them to be free."
It's scary to read that book now... much of the dialog sounds like it was written in the last 10 years... not in the 50s.
You wouldn't happen to be their defense lawyer, would you? Because that's exactly the argument I'd take to try to make to weasel out of this. "It's ahl a gubmint cohnspeerasee yah honah! These heah rocket wizahds was TRICKED into a life ah crime!"
I'm not a lawyer, but if I recall correctly, entrapment only occurs when the enforcement organization actively initiates the transaction or crime.
For example, let's say that the FBI puts two and two together (as they're apparently good at doing) and thinks that Senator Hollings is on the take. They call him up, offer him some money in return for some legislation, and pay him off. Well, ok, that's not a great example because we already know he's on the take, so this is just a sting proving his behavior.;-)
Instead, let's say your local police force sends an undercover officer to your house and the cop convinces/coerces you to take his gun and hold up the convenience store down the street. He goes with you and arrests you when you pull out the gun in the store. That's entrapment.
If, however, I start asking around about where I can get a gun fast and the police get tipped off and start an undercover operation to catch me doing whatever it is I'm planning, that's not entrapment.
Regardless of their original intent, at least one of these four posted an email saying they had lunar materials for sale on a web site and subsequently followed through with the theft and attempted sale. Their intent could conceivably have bearing on sentencing, but shouldn't on whether or not they're guilty of the crime. They said they had moon rocks for sale, they stole moon rocks, they tried to sell the stolen moon rocks. Period.
One of these things is not like the other... tell me, can you guess which one?
(Scroll down and look at the photos and descriptions)
When I first saw the lineup I laughed out loud:
Thad Ryan Roberts, NASA co-op, Age: 25, Worked at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab Mission Operations Directorate. Triple major at University of Utah.
Tiffany Brooke Fowler, NASA intern, Age: 22, She worked in Biological Systems in Space and Life Sciences. Recent graduate of Texas Lutheran University. From Odessa.
Shae Lynn Saur, NASA intern, Age: 19, Worked in Structural Engineering with Thermal Design. Worked last summer in the X-38 program. Pursuing a B.S. in engineering from Lamar University.
Gordon Sean McWorter, Age: 26
Just look at those photos and descriptions and then try to guess which one was saying (in his best Steve from Dell voice), "DUDE! Like, if you could get some of those rocks, we could make... like... I bet at least 200 bucks!" (Suppressed laughter to hold his smoke)
Incidentally, I bet the University of Utah, Texas Lutheran University, and Lamar University are oh so happy with having their names displayed so prominently. Shining alumni indeed!
I may be wrong, but from what I've read, Verant seems to be taking steps to prevent SWG from having some of the most glaring problems in EQ. Hopefully they'll implement things like multi-spawn dungeons (a la Anarchy Online) so that we aren't stuck with those kinds of issues.
My pet peeve with Verant is that they've resorted to lazy game design techniques in EQ - rewards are always at least 5 levels too late for the level you need to be to accomplish the task, meditation/healing time with no alternatives such as potions... These are all there simply to make the game longer. They could keep us hooked by providing more compelling content, but instead they chose to just make us sit. I suppose it's an ok decision from an economic standpoint...
The attitude seems to have changed in the last few months, though. They're not trying quite as hard to tell me I'll enjoy the game more if they make it more difficult to progress.
Personally, I'm looking forward to the more open-ended nature of SWG. I just want to buy a little plot of land, run some vaporators, have a few droids to call my own...
What does this have to do with the article? Nothing. But I couldn't read the review because it's been/.ed already.
I really don't understand the knee-jerk objection many slashdotters seem to have with non-personalized, aggregated usage data collection and sales... as long as privacy is maintained and there's no identifying information collected, I think it's a great idea and I'd be doing the same thing in their place.
And quite franky, I also don't really understand the objection people have to CDDB taking information voluntarily provided by users and licensing their collection to other sources. Seems like a pretty smart way of making money to me: get your product produced as cheaply as possible, provide a service to millions of people for free, and charge the people who want to make money off the service a licensing fee.
Now if CDDB had said "we're a free service and we'll always be a free service" then changed their tune (like Microsoft saying they would never ever ever ever ever never never ever ever ever never never sell personal information collected from their free web services), well... that's a slightly different story, but the end user is still getting a good deal. I've submitted tracks for about 10 or 15 albums. I've downloaded the track listings for nearly all of my 1500+ CDs. I think I got a pretty good deal.
What is so evil about wanting to make money? The way I see it, there are four reasons to invent something cool:
Laziness
Profit
Natural inventive drive
Complete selflessness and a desire to make things better for all mankind.
Number 4 generally requires that you have some other means of supporting yourself, though.
If Gracenote were selling personalized marketing info so that Sony/Vivendi/UltraMegaCorp could send me targeted spam, well then I'd drop that like a hot potato (and I will drop it if you ever start, so watch it, Gracenote). But all they're doing is counting up how many times certain albums get played, and I don't see a big, bad, evil plot in that. Labels want that info and are willing to buy it, Gracenote has that info. Why shouldn't they sell it?
One more reason to fight against the royalty scheme on internet streaming... quality stations that provide diverse choices shouldn't be silenced because of unrealistic fees and monopolistic controls by the majors.
Perhaps I was involved in college radio at exactly the right time when so-called "alternative" was making larger inroads into the mainstream market, but I recall that during my time as a college radio DJ, approximately 75% of what was on our non-discretionary playlist ended up on commercial radio about a year later.
CMJ's purpose in life is to break new music and new artists, so it's no surprise that they're listing artists on smaller labels. What I'd be much more interested in is a breakdown of who owns/runs those labels and who they worked for previously. There are several independent promotion companies made up of previous A&R reps who work solely on promoting to the college market, and many of these have majors as clients because of back-connections.
I agree that there's a lot of good music out there on college radio, especially during the cyclical pop-retreat (you know, the wave of bubblegum we get every 4-5 years after the industry has milked the latest fad (e.g. grunge)). That's when college radio has a chance to shine because they're not just playing it safe and they have the freedom to play things that centrally programmed stations are too conservative to play.
And maybe you were fortunate enough to run one of the stations that for whatever reason didn't deal at all with the major reps when they came around throwing free cds, posters, and t-shirts around - good for you. But many college stations do, and the larger the transmitter, the more interested the majors are in renting some time on it. I'm not just pulling this out of my... er... hat - this is what I've learned from A&R reps at the majors and producers that I've worked with.
College radio has its place and its functions - one of its functions is test market for the majors.
I thought about mentioning college radio, but didn't because it wasn't really related to my initial gripe. Since you bring it up, however...
With the exception of smaller schools whose transmitters are very low power or cable-broadcast only, even college radio has become increasingly programmed and wooed by major label interests. On the one hand, they aren't really beholden to anyone yet, so you do sometimes get unique and alternative music. More and more, though, I've found that most college radio is simply playing the stuff that's on its way to Clear Channel because the labels swoop in and throw a bunch of swag at the students who gleefully go along because they're now talking with the "big boys." The majors use College as a test bed for new albums. It's the minor leage of commercial radio.
I highly recommend the book "Confessions of a Record Producer" by the pseudonymous Moses Avalon. He outlines what really happens when you get signed. Here's a rough paraphrase from memory:
Compete with 100,000 other bands to get a contract.
Get signed.
Now you get to compete for label attention with all of the artists already on the label - Madonna, U2, etc. Assuming you make the cut...
Record and press the album. It gets released to college radio as a test balloon. If it flops, your career is over. If it does ok...
Commercial release to limited major markets. If it does ok...
Mass release to multiple outlets and a full-blown PR blitz.
If you want proof of concept, go to your closest major university station (UCLA, NYU, UT, whatever) with your latest album and try to get it on the playlist. It won't happen except at schools that are too small for labels to bother with, or schools that have a fierce indepent streak in their culture (e.g. Berkeley).
Yes there are college stations that are still diverse. I think San Jose State is one of those (I never knew if I was going to hear thrash metal, techno, or yodeling), but they are getting fewer and farther between, and with the increasing economic pressure on Universities, look for additional "corporate sponsorship" to bleed over from the football program.
I'm assuming you meant the part about "a company willing to wade throught the crap and provide some hard numbers on sales" comment.
An initial caveat: I don't know specifics of fightclouds model or practices, so I'm making some assumptions.
The numbers you get from an "unregulated" source like MP3.com are suspect. The number one songs are normally there because it's a self-perpetuating system. A song somehow gets to number one, then stays there because everybody downloads it to see why it's number one.
It can serve to weed out some of the obviously unworkable stuff, but A&R still has to do a lot of work, especially given the huge number of artists with tracks on MP3.com.
A company like fightcloud.com, on the other hand, probably has a slightly more selective system. I'm assuming that they do some review and don't take just any CD (although their standards are probably fairly loose because they're trying to build brand). So lets assume we've already had one round of weeding amounting to around 30% of the content on MP3.com: the absolute dregs put together by someone who can't sing and used a soundblaster to record their out of tune guitar and friend who plays kazoo.
Now, we come to one of the big differences. On MP3.com, I have to download a track in some form to see if I like it, and that download counts toward the track's chart position. With fightcloud, track auditions don't equal sales. I have to like something enough to go through the hassle of ordering it in order to get it. There's round 2 of the weeding and let's call that another 30% of MP3.com: stuff that's not that bad, but not compelling enough for me to order it. Definitely not worth a label's time.
So continuing with my assumptions, let's say that fightcloud maintains sales records and is willing to provide those to A&R (which I'm sure they are, because a major label success would prove the fightcloud model and they'd get even more submissions). An A&R person is normally looking for something fairly specific (not always, but normally) that's not too risky and will result in big sales at minimum cost. This is why we get 18 boy bands and 15 Britneys in a 3 year period - it's a safe bet.
So the A&R dude(tte) asks fightcloud for the top 5 sellers in the pop/dance genre. They've now got very narrow selection that's got a proven sales history, something that independent artists selling CDs at gigs don't necessarily have. The A&R rep (whose job is riding on the success of the artists he/she brings in) has hard numbers to show the suits, and some confidence that the groups have an established fan base.
Additionally, fightcloud can provide numbers like sales rates, performance over time, etc. that may give a rep a more accurate picture of an album/artist's true performance potential.
My final assumption would be that fightcloud will have some sort of feedback system so that purchasers can rate albums they've purchased. This would be an additional data point - sort of a guerrilla focus group.
These aren't things that I know fightcloud is doing or can do, but the general model lends itself nicely to this type of research assistance for the labels, and most importantly, doesn't really cost the majors anything... Anything that reduces costs will probably increase profit, and that's what the majors are all about.
I lost my last shred of faith in commercial radio when the 80s stations showed up. I really like 80s music, and you would think that with an entire decade to choose from, I wouldn't hear "Come on Eileen" and "Too Shy" every single day! But I do.
Oh, they do give us the all-request lunch hour. As long as your request is on their "approved" list. I actually had a dj tell me that they couldn't play a tune (that he liked a lot and even had in the library) because New York wouldn't let them.
While you are technically correct, I'd say that making $1.32 per CD (the other $1.32 goes to the artist) isn't exactly reaming the consumer.
It's actually not a bad model: the artist takes on the responsiblity of creating the content, the consumer takes a partial risk on an unknow artist, although it's less of a risk in many cases than major label releases:
You will almost never hear more than a 30 second clip of any song from a major label release (at CDNow.com for example) and thus can't get a good idea if that new album you want is chock full of interesting tunes or a "one hit with filler" coaster. And since none of the major retailers will allow you to return an opened CD except to exchange due to defect, you're taking a pretty big risk, especially since there are very few albums where more than 20% of the songs are more than just "ok."
So in the big picture, this company is making less per CD than a major, but with very little overhead, the artist makes more per CD and is free from overbearing contractual obligations, but with more up-front responsibilities and costs, and the consumer pays less per CD, but doesn't get Britney, Christina, or Celine. Not a horrible tradeoff unless you're a 14 year-old media zombie or a baby-boomer with disposable cash and VH1.
I think the cost is reasonable (if they didn't make some money, they wouldn't be in business after all), and that the "free" angle, while not completely accurate, isn't any worse than advertising a price in big, bold letters with "price after rebate" in 6 point type, or much different from "free email," "free web hosting," or "free car wash with 10 gal. minimum purchase."
Re:I guess the question to ask is....
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CDs Want To Be Free
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Assimilation would be the better of the two choices, although I don't think they'll do that either.
The majors have become less and less interested in artist development, and more and more interested in risk management. You need someone to wade through all the crap, and believe me, there's a whole lot of crap out there.
Labels are banks that loan money at really high interest rates. The benefit to the artist is that if you default on the loan (walk away from the deal or get dropped) there's not really any financial penalty - the label has taken all of the financial risk. You probably won't ever get another deal on any major, but you don't owe anybody any money. They've given you money in return for you signing away your copyrights, name, likeness, etc. For some people this is a good deal.
Unless you've been groomed by the Disney machine for stardom, you can't really even get a foot in the door unless you've already self-released at least one or two CDs, have an established fan base, and are more or less self-sufficient. An independent artist who has achieved this doesn't really need a label deal anymore unless they want a more widespread audience/fame and are willing to take a paycut (for 90% of them anyway) to get it.
So if there's a company willing to wade through the crap and can provide the labels with some hard numbers on sales, it makes the label's job that much easier and less risky. It also provides talented independents with a potentially good source of exposure and distribution which is, after the creation of quality works, probably the hardest part of any artist's job.
Remember that the majors no longer as interested in long-term sales as in increasing quarterly profits - they have stockholders and parent companies to keep happy, and let's face it - the majority of the top selling music today is disposable. There are a few standout tracks that might be popular 10 years from now, but those are getting fewer and farther between.
Assuming that this company can stay afloat, I think the majors will treat it as a semi-weeded flower bed. I know for a fact that mp3.com is surfed by several major A&R reps - think how happy they'll be if they can deal with a company that actually has some quality control going on.
That's it. I knew that I wasn't using the correct term, but "rider" was escaping me somehow.
If there's a valid reason to study the purple-nosed shrew, then fine - I don't have a huge problem with that (although I still think that if the state wants to know about the shrew, then the state should pay for it... not the feds). There's absolutely no reason for my taxes to pay for the restoration of the statue of Vulcan in Birmingham, Alabama (actual pork that recently passed).
As long as I'm griping, I think it's really shady to attach federal "social engineering" laws (e.g. drinking age or speed limits) to things like highway funds. The process goes something like this:
FEDERAL GOVT: Hey there, states, we're going to tax your citizens and then hold the money hostage until you pass laws that we think you should pass. Want money for education? Roads? Then get in line and do what we say, otherwise we'll give all your money to Rhode Island instead. They play ball.
And no, I'm not arguing for abolishment of federal taxes completely (the military and other programs are needed and valuable), but I really object to the holding money hostage thing.
In the spirit of my original post, here's my "social engineering" solution: Every federal taxpayer should be able to direct where 50% of their tax money goes (in fairly general terms:military, welfare, social security, infrastructure, scientific research, etc.).
For example, If I think that welfare is more important than the military, I can put my 50% there. If I feel that the military and highways are more important, I can put 30% to the military and 20% to highway funds.
The other 50% would be at the discretion of the govt to spend. I bet if people had a little more direct control over where the money went, congress might get a clue about what the populace actually wants. Heck, throw a "Pork" category in there and see how many people give money to it.
Speaking as a content creator (music, literary, and fine art):
1. Revert copyright lengths to a reasonable amount of time. A maximum of 17 years in which financial interest in the copyright could be assigned to another person and another 17 year period during which the copyright would mandatorily revert back to the original author(s). This would provide corporations an incentive to fund content creation, and still provide opportunity for the author to receive continued monetary advantage without corporate interference.
2. Examine the possibility of prohibiting a corporation from holding a copyright. As an earlier post mentioned, if corporations had to license the work, they might behave in a more civil manner.
3. Remove the possibility of creating a "Work for Hire." The author of a piece is the author of a piece. If an author is caught falsifying a copyright registration (e.g. he has a contract saying that someone else (like a corporation) is the author, the work immediately and irrevocably falls into the public domain.
4. (Here's one dream item...) Amend the Constitution to say that Congress shall not pass any law containing an amendment. This is how the majority of our pork and shady dealings come about, and it's time for it to stop. There's no reason to attach an amendment giving $500,000 to Topeka for studying the mating habits of the purple-nosed shrew to a law covering federal highway funds. This kind of thing happens all the time, and it's often how bad copyright and patent laws get through - 11th hour additions to bills that have absolutely no relation.
5. In that same constitutional amendment, make it a law that Congress shall make available in multiple formats, for no less than 30 days prior to the vote, a common language "impact statement" for any law. If I have to file an Environmental Impact Statement for something I'm doing on my own property, then the government should damn well have to file an impact statement when passing laws that change the way I live my life.
Lawyers are human modems: you need one on each end of a bill/law figure out what the hell it actually means. I understand the need for legal language to eliminate ambiguity, but when it ceases to be understandable to a person of even above-average-intelligence, things have gotten out of hand.
Before I explained the DMCA's impact to many of my friends and family, they didn't see the big deal. And I have to rely on other people's interpretations of the law because it's a pain to wade through it: too long, too obscure, and uses phrases I'd need to be a 2nd year law student (at least) to understand. I shouldn't need a law degree to know whether a bunch of people (most of whom are not from my state) are about to tell me I can't do something anymore.
Whew. Sorry for the rant. I think that the current "Who Wants to Pay Off A Senator" method of buying legislation is largely responsible for these seeming nonsensical laws. Back to copyright...
6. Remove the "legal entity" status for corporations that Santa Clara County in California helped us bring into the world. Dissolve Santa Clara county and give it to Gilroy as punishment for inflicting a really stupid decision on the rest of the country. (tongue in cheek, folks... but with a grain of sincerity).
It's hard to come up with specifics because the system is so overwhelmingly broken. But I think that a combination of reexamining the ability for a corporation to own a copyright and significantly reducing copyright terms would be a great start.
If the government is truly interested in upholding the Constitution (and I get more and more skeptical of that every day), then they need to go back and read the damn thing. I seriously doubt that the copyright provision was put in place so that 5 multinational corporations could run amok.
Wow... I've really rambled on. Sorry for that. This is an issue with few easy answers, but it's definitely easy to identify that there's a problem.
That scenario never occured to me before reading your post, but it is a pretty cool one... they could have tied it in well with the whole "you're only using 3% of your brain... ever wonder why?"
Uh oh, I hope whoever's farming that other 97% doesn't figure out that I'm on to them... they might try to elimi... urrrgh!!!
Excellent points, and thanks for pointing out my oversights. I wonder if TiVo is exploring some way to leverage their aggregated viewer habit demographics. I think advertisers might be interested in that information (assuming it doesn't violate the TiVo privacy policy).
It's unfortunate that we've somehow managed to get ourselves a government that thinks it's responsible for protecting business models (I don't have the exact related Heinlein quote in memory, but apparently, neither does anyone in the legislative or judicial branches.) If a company can build a model on providing "free" content, then great - but it's not the government's place to keep that model afloat and it sure as hell isn't some overpaid suit's place to accuse me of stealing.
If a device exists that automatically deletes commercials, well tough noogies. Once that signal is in my house, it's nobody else's business what I do with it as long as I don't turn around and mass produce it or resell it.
Agreed. Given recent behavior, however, I wouldn't be surprised to see them find a legislative solution.
A point that I find interesting is that the networks are screaming bloody murder about ad skipping when it isn't really their concern. It's the concern of the ad agencies that produce and purchase ad time. These agencies already know the risks and return rates for broadcast advertising and assume fairly low ROI. Yet they buy ad time for millions of dollars a shot anyway.
All the network needs to be concerned about is how many TVs were tuned to their channel at a given time. What the networks should be concentrating on is creating really great content that my TiVO is going to think I want to watch and here's why:
Networks set ad prices based on the number of viewers they have. That's why sweeps periods get so annoying ("Tonight, on yet another very special Boston Public: Ally McBeal has to substitute teach as community service after dating a student in a chat room, but will Fox Mulder be able to pay attention in class when 7 of 9 turns up the heat?")
So - the number of viewers during a certain time period determines the price of ad time. Well guess what? I've now got a little robot that's watching TV for me 24 hours a day. My TiVO has the ability to bump up ratings in bad time slots for the networks allowing them to charge even more for ad time. And if the show is interesting, I'll watch it.
And my guilty secret is that I like many commercials. I laugh at the guy licking the handle of "his" Volkswagen. I'm glad Jack's Back. I love making fun of low-budget local ads that feature a guy on donkey-back shooting out truck windshields (and high, city prices) with a shotgun (I am not making that up). There are a lot of really interesting short films out there that just happen to be hawking a product, and I don't mind watching them.
But it's a pleasure to be able to skip ads for feminine hygiene products, Herpes medications, commercials I've already seen 32 times, diarreah spots, or anything featuring Shaq. Too bad I can't give thumb ratings to commercials and let TiVO select the ads it thinks I might like.
I used to FF at the 60x speed, but I now FF at 20x because I like to scan for interesting looking commercials which I'll then go back and check out. Not that the commercials have done a great deal to influence my buying habits, but they're capable of being really entertaining at times.
So ad agencies: start making better commercials. Networks: start making better shows that I want to watch and get the hell out of my living room. It's none of your business if I ad skip, only if I'm tuned to your channel at a specific time of day.
On the whole, I agree with what you've said. However:
If you're watching two hour of TV, you can easily see the same advert six or more times. If it didn't work as a sales pitch the first time, it won't work the second or the sixth time.
Actually, research has shown that most people won't register/remember a brand or product until they've been exposed to it at least three times. I'd love it if the ad companies would try to mix it up a little as you describe, but the unfortunate fact is that it's cheaper for them to produce a single commercial and saturate it.
The thing that I find interesting is that all of these networks are running around like headless chickens about ad skipping when ad agencies have already taken that behavior into account. The agencies already know the risks involved and buy the ad time anyway.
All the network should care about is the number of viewers so they can set ad time prices. It seems to me that a robotic recorder is actually increasing the number of viewers since it's effectively watching TV close to 24 hours a day. Networks should start concentrating on making compelling content that my TiVO will think I want to watch...
You have to realize, though, that you aren't Apple's target market. You're willing to take the time to futz around with putting a PC together piecemeal. After you spend $800 on hardware, you're still going to spend several hours installing and configuring the OS and apps. You're willing to track down and fix problems that occur when you want to add hardware, etc.
For you, time is less expensive than cash, and that's cool. You probably enjoy the process as well (I know I do) and most importantly, you have the ability to do the work.
Most of Apple's target market are people who don't have the ability or who don't want to spend the time screwing around with the OS and applications. They just want the computer to work.
With OS X, Apple has provided a fantastic system for people who "just want it to work" as well as providing the hood latch for people who want to get in and get their hands dirty. For you, that might not be worth the price, but the point of the article is that for a growing number of "alpha geeks" it is.
Yes, you can get a barebones Dell or build a FrankenPC for $800. But you won't get the Apple OS, all of the included applications, etc. Estimate the amount of time it would take you to build a system with all of the same features and applications as a $1200 iMac and multiply times standard consulting rates. The savings might not be as large as you think. Especially when you factor in the time it took you to learn the skills that allow you to assemble the box in the first place. It might still be cheaper, but not $400 cheaper.
An iMac with a DVD burner, 512 megs of RAM and its included software is very close in price to a similarly equipped brand-name PC. And both platforms have their strengths and weaknesses. And you could make the same argument for building your own $800 PC vs. buying a loaded Dell or Gateway.
I don't see the point in trying to compare a brand-name computer that's shooting for a seamless out-of-box experience with the roll-your-own crowd... the priorities and benefits are too dissimilar.
Had they talked to him before filing suit, they wouldn't have been setting an appropriate example for all of their students. Sue first. Ask questions later.
Yes, I'm being facetious (mostly) but kneejerk internet domain lawsuits seem to be the rule, not the exception. Why talk about it when you can probably bully the domain owner into a settlement?
That seems to be the rule for most corporate lawsuits anyway.
It does however raise interesting questions about "reasonable suspicion", evidence and culpability if someone is wrongly detained. Police would no doubt try to shift resonsibility onto the technology, as is their wont.
I would hope that trying to shift responsibility for wrongful detention/arrest/prosecution would be met with a resounding, "So what?" If you use a tool to do your job, you're still responsible for what you do with the tool. If a house I build collapses and kills people, I shouldn't be able to blame the hammer - even if it's a special prototype hammer with artificial intelligence and accelerometers. I decided to use that particular hammer, so I am responsible for the results of that decision. (I'll get around to suing the hammer manufacturer later).
Also, we hear time and time again about how police don't have the power to act until a crime is committed (e.g. domestic violence) so how will this stop crime? It might assist in arrest or conviction rates by capturing evidence, but unless we have even more fundamental rights taken from us by our "representatives" and "protectors..."
It does seem to be a cool technology, but the potential for abuse is so high that I have trouble supporting it. When a technology exists that has a high potential for criminal abuse (e.g. MP3 copying) legislators fall all over themselves trying to quash it. But they conveniently look the other way when it's something that government might abuse (e.g. radar guns, surveillance equipment, drunk driving check points, Patriot laws...).
Ah. So I fell prey to marketing hype. Where were all you guys when I was getting suckered? =-)
Seriously, though, the insurance break I get will pay for the LoJack in just over 3 years, so unless we lose the car due to unforseen circumstances (collision, theft) (better not be theft), it's still a worthwhile purchase.
Good to know the potential downsides of LoJack as well, though.
But insurance numbers are based on more than theft. You're also paying for those other things I mentioned like accident rates, mortality rates, average repair costs, etc. More people driving a model statistically means more accidents and higher payouts.
Like I said before, if a Camry costs the insurance company more to insure, you'll pay higher premiums. Period. Everyone should check out what a car's insurance cost is before buying - it's just like mileage and resale value.
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Reminds me of a passage from Atlas Shrugged:
It's scary to read that book now... much of the dialog sounds like it was written in the last 10 years... not in the 50s.
You wouldn't happen to be their defense lawyer, would you? Because that's exactly the argument I'd take to try to make to weasel out of this. "It's ahl a gubmint cohnspeerasee yah honah! These heah rocket wizahds was TRICKED into a life ah crime!"
I'm not a lawyer, but if I recall correctly, entrapment only occurs when the enforcement organization actively initiates the transaction or crime.
For example, let's say that the FBI puts two and two together (as they're apparently good at doing) and thinks that Senator Hollings is on the take. They call him up, offer him some money in return for some legislation, and pay him off. Well, ok, that's not a great example because we already know he's on the take, so this is just a sting proving his behavior. ;-)
Instead, let's say your local police force sends an undercover officer to your house and the cop convinces/coerces you to take his gun and hold up the convenience store down the street. He goes with you and arrests you when you pull out the gun in the store. That's entrapment.
If, however, I start asking around about where I can get a gun fast and the police get tipped off and start an undercover operation to catch me doing whatever it is I'm planning, that's not entrapment.
Regardless of their original intent, at least one of these four posted an email saying they had lunar materials for sale on a web site and subsequently followed through with the theft and attempted sale. Their intent could conceivably have bearing on sentencing, but shouldn't on whether or not they're guilty of the crime. They said they had moon rocks for sale, they stole moon rocks, they tried to sell the stolen moon rocks. Period.
(And yes, I read the Chron article.)
One of these things is not like the other... tell me, can you guess which one?
(Scroll down and look at the photos and descriptions)
When I first saw the lineup I laughed out loud:
Just look at those photos and descriptions and then try to guess which one was saying (in his best Steve from Dell voice), "DUDE! Like, if you could get some of those rocks, we could make... like... I bet at least 200 bucks!" (Suppressed laughter to hold his smoke)
Incidentally, I bet the University of Utah, Texas Lutheran University, and Lamar University are oh so happy with having their names displayed so prominently. Shining alumni indeed!
I may be wrong, but from what I've read, Verant seems to be taking steps to prevent SWG from having some of the most glaring problems in EQ. Hopefully they'll implement things like multi-spawn dungeons (a la Anarchy Online) so that we aren't stuck with those kinds of issues.
My pet peeve with Verant is that they've resorted to lazy game design techniques in EQ - rewards are always at least 5 levels too late for the level you need to be to accomplish the task, meditation/healing time with no alternatives such as potions... These are all there simply to make the game longer. They could keep us hooked by providing more compelling content, but instead they chose to just make us sit. I suppose it's an ok decision from an economic standpoint...
The attitude seems to have changed in the last few months, though. They're not trying quite as hard to tell me I'll enjoy the game more if they make it more difficult to progress.
Personally, I'm looking forward to the more open-ended nature of SWG. I just want to buy a little plot of land, run some vaporators, have a few droids to call my own...
What does this have to do with the article? Nothing. But I couldn't read the review because it's been /.ed already.
I really don't understand the knee-jerk objection many slashdotters seem to have with non-personalized, aggregated usage data collection and sales... as long as privacy is maintained and there's no identifying information collected, I think it's a great idea and I'd be doing the same thing in their place.
And quite franky, I also don't really understand the objection people have to CDDB taking information voluntarily provided by users and licensing their collection to other sources. Seems like a pretty smart way of making money to me: get your product produced as cheaply as possible, provide a service to millions of people for free, and charge the people who want to make money off the service a licensing fee.
Now if CDDB had said "we're a free service and we'll always be a free service" then changed their tune (like Microsoft saying they would never ever ever ever ever never never ever ever ever never never sell personal information collected from their free web services), well... that's a slightly different story, but the end user is still getting a good deal. I've submitted tracks for about 10 or 15 albums. I've downloaded the track listings for nearly all of my 1500+ CDs. I think I got a pretty good deal.
What is so evil about wanting to make money? The way I see it, there are four reasons to invent something cool:
Number 4 generally requires that you have some other means of supporting yourself, though.
If Gracenote were selling personalized marketing info so that Sony/Vivendi/UltraMegaCorp could send me targeted spam, well then I'd drop that like a hot potato (and I will drop it if you ever start, so watch it, Gracenote). But all they're doing is counting up how many times certain albums get played, and I don't see a big, bad, evil plot in that. Labels want that info and are willing to buy it, Gracenote has that info. Why shouldn't they sell it?
One more reason to fight against the royalty scheme on internet streaming... quality stations that provide diverse choices shouldn't be silenced because of unrealistic fees and monopolistic controls by the majors.
Perhaps I was involved in college radio at exactly the right time when so-called "alternative" was making larger inroads into the mainstream market, but I recall that during my time as a college radio DJ, approximately 75% of what was on our non-discretionary playlist ended up on commercial radio about a year later.
CMJ's purpose in life is to break new music and new artists, so it's no surprise that they're listing artists on smaller labels. What I'd be much more interested in is a breakdown of who owns/runs those labels and who they worked for previously. There are several independent promotion companies made up of previous A&R reps who work solely on promoting to the college market, and many of these have majors as clients because of back-connections.
I agree that there's a lot of good music out there on college radio, especially during the cyclical pop-retreat (you know, the wave of bubblegum we get every 4-5 years after the industry has milked the latest fad (e.g. grunge)). That's when college radio has a chance to shine because they're not just playing it safe and they have the freedom to play things that centrally programmed stations are too conservative to play.
And maybe you were fortunate enough to run one of the stations that for whatever reason didn't deal at all with the major reps when they came around throwing free cds, posters, and t-shirts around - good for you. But many college stations do, and the larger the transmitter, the more interested the majors are in renting some time on it. I'm not just pulling this out of my... er... hat - this is what I've learned from A&R reps at the majors and producers that I've worked with.
College radio has its place and its functions - one of its functions is test market for the majors.
I thought about mentioning college radio, but didn't because it wasn't really related to my initial gripe. Since you bring it up, however...
With the exception of smaller schools whose transmitters are very low power or cable-broadcast only, even college radio has become increasingly programmed and wooed by major label interests. On the one hand, they aren't really beholden to anyone yet, so you do sometimes get unique and alternative music. More and more, though, I've found that most college radio is simply playing the stuff that's on its way to Clear Channel because the labels swoop in and throw a bunch of swag at the students who gleefully go along because they're now talking with the "big boys." The majors use College as a test bed for new albums. It's the minor leage of commercial radio.
I highly recommend the book "Confessions of a Record Producer" by the pseudonymous Moses Avalon. He outlines what really happens when you get signed. Here's a rough paraphrase from memory:
If you want proof of concept, go to your closest major university station (UCLA, NYU, UT, whatever) with your latest album and try to get it on the playlist. It won't happen except at schools that are too small for labels to bother with, or schools that have a fierce indepent streak in their culture (e.g. Berkeley).
Yes there are college stations that are still diverse. I think San Jose State is one of those (I never knew if I was going to hear thrash metal, techno, or yodeling), but they are getting fewer and farther between, and with the increasing economic pressure on Universities, look for additional "corporate sponsorship" to bleed over from the football program.
I'm assuming you meant the part about "a company willing to wade throught the crap and provide some hard numbers on sales" comment.
An initial caveat: I don't know specifics of fightclouds model or practices, so I'm making some assumptions.
The numbers you get from an "unregulated" source like MP3.com are suspect. The number one songs are normally there because it's a self-perpetuating system. A song somehow gets to number one, then stays there because everybody downloads it to see why it's number one.
It can serve to weed out some of the obviously unworkable stuff, but A&R still has to do a lot of work, especially given the huge number of artists with tracks on MP3.com.
A company like fightcloud.com, on the other hand, probably has a slightly more selective system. I'm assuming that they do some review and don't take just any CD (although their standards are probably fairly loose because they're trying to build brand). So lets assume we've already had one round of weeding amounting to around 30% of the content on MP3.com: the absolute dregs put together by someone who can't sing and used a soundblaster to record their out of tune guitar and friend who plays kazoo.
Now, we come to one of the big differences. On MP3.com, I have to download a track in some form to see if I like it, and that download counts toward the track's chart position. With fightcloud, track auditions don't equal sales. I have to like something enough to go through the hassle of ordering it in order to get it. There's round 2 of the weeding and let's call that another 30% of MP3.com: stuff that's not that bad, but not compelling enough for me to order it. Definitely not worth a label's time.
So continuing with my assumptions, let's say that fightcloud maintains sales records and is willing to provide those to A&R (which I'm sure they are, because a major label success would prove the fightcloud model and they'd get even more submissions). An A&R person is normally looking for something fairly specific (not always, but normally) that's not too risky and will result in big sales at minimum cost. This is why we get 18 boy bands and 15 Britneys in a 3 year period - it's a safe bet.
So the A&R dude(tte) asks fightcloud for the top 5 sellers in the pop/dance genre. They've now got very narrow selection that's got a proven sales history, something that independent artists selling CDs at gigs don't necessarily have. The A&R rep (whose job is riding on the success of the artists he/she brings in) has hard numbers to show the suits, and some confidence that the groups have an established fan base.
Additionally, fightcloud can provide numbers like sales rates, performance over time, etc. that may give a rep a more accurate picture of an album/artist's true performance potential.
My final assumption would be that fightcloud will have some sort of feedback system so that purchasers can rate albums they've purchased. This would be an additional data point - sort of a guerrilla focus group.
These aren't things that I know fightcloud is doing or can do, but the general model lends itself nicely to this type of research assistance for the labels, and most importantly, doesn't really cost the majors anything... Anything that reduces costs will probably increase profit, and that's what the majors are all about.
I lost my last shred of faith in commercial radio when the 80s stations showed up. I really like 80s music, and you would think that with an entire decade to choose from, I wouldn't hear "Come on Eileen" and "Too Shy" every single day! But I do.
Oh, they do give us the all-request lunch hour. As long as your request is on their "approved" list. I actually had a dj tell me that they couldn't play a tune (that he liked a lot and even had in the library) because New York wouldn't let them.
There is no local radio anymore.
Hmmm... my younger brothers are all bigger than me...
And if Echelon II is more capable of watching every aspect of your life, then doesn't that effectively make it Big Brother? ;-)
While you are technically correct, I'd say that making $1.32 per CD (the other $1.32 goes to the artist) isn't exactly reaming the consumer.
It's actually not a bad model: the artist takes on the responsiblity of creating the content, the consumer takes a partial risk on an unknow artist, although it's less of a risk in many cases than major label releases:
You will almost never hear more than a 30 second clip of any song from a major label release (at CDNow.com for example) and thus can't get a good idea if that new album you want is chock full of interesting tunes or a "one hit with filler" coaster. And since none of the major retailers will allow you to return an opened CD except to exchange due to defect, you're taking a pretty big risk, especially since there are very few albums where more than 20% of the songs are more than just "ok."
So in the big picture, this company is making less per CD than a major, but with very little overhead, the artist makes more per CD and is free from overbearing contractual obligations, but with more up-front responsibilities and costs, and the consumer pays less per CD, but doesn't get Britney, Christina, or Celine. Not a horrible tradeoff unless you're a 14 year-old media zombie or a baby-boomer with disposable cash and VH1.
I think the cost is reasonable (if they didn't make some money, they wouldn't be in business after all), and that the "free" angle, while not completely accurate, isn't any worse than advertising a price in big, bold letters with "price after rebate" in 6 point type, or much different from "free email," "free web hosting," or "free car wash with 10 gal. minimum purchase."
Assimilation would be the better of the two choices, although I don't think they'll do that either.
The majors have become less and less interested in artist development, and more and more interested in risk management. You need someone to wade through all the crap, and believe me, there's a whole lot of crap out there.
Labels are banks that loan money at really high interest rates. The benefit to the artist is that if you default on the loan (walk away from the deal or get dropped) there's not really any financial penalty - the label has taken all of the financial risk. You probably won't ever get another deal on any major, but you don't owe anybody any money. They've given you money in return for you signing away your copyrights, name, likeness, etc. For some people this is a good deal.
Unless you've been groomed by the Disney machine for stardom, you can't really even get a foot in the door unless you've already self-released at least one or two CDs, have an established fan base, and are more or less self-sufficient. An independent artist who has achieved this doesn't really need a label deal anymore unless they want a more widespread audience/fame and are willing to take a paycut (for 90% of them anyway) to get it.
So if there's a company willing to wade through the crap and can provide the labels with some hard numbers on sales, it makes the label's job that much easier and less risky. It also provides talented independents with a potentially good source of exposure and distribution which is, after the creation of quality works, probably the hardest part of any artist's job.
Remember that the majors no longer as interested in long-term sales as in increasing quarterly profits - they have stockholders and parent companies to keep happy, and let's face it - the majority of the top selling music today is disposable. There are a few standout tracks that might be popular 10 years from now, but those are getting fewer and farther between.
Assuming that this company can stay afloat, I think the majors will treat it as a semi-weeded flower bed. I know for a fact that mp3.com is surfed by several major A&R reps - think how happy they'll be if they can deal with a company that actually has some quality control going on.
That's it. I knew that I wasn't using the correct term, but "rider" was escaping me somehow.
If there's a valid reason to study the purple-nosed shrew, then fine - I don't have a huge problem with that (although I still think that if the state wants to know about the shrew, then the state should pay for it... not the feds). There's absolutely no reason for my taxes to pay for the restoration of the statue of Vulcan in Birmingham, Alabama (actual pork that recently passed).
As long as I'm griping, I think it's really shady to attach federal "social engineering" laws (e.g. drinking age or speed limits) to things like highway funds. The process goes something like this:
FEDERAL GOVT: Hey there, states, we're going to tax your citizens and then hold the money hostage until you pass laws that we think you should pass. Want money for education? Roads? Then get in line and do what we say, otherwise we'll give all your money to Rhode Island instead. They play ball.
And no, I'm not arguing for abolishment of federal taxes completely (the military and other programs are needed and valuable), but I really object to the holding money hostage thing.
In the spirit of my original post, here's my "social engineering" solution: Every federal taxpayer should be able to direct where 50% of their tax money goes (in fairly general terms:military, welfare, social security, infrastructure, scientific research, etc.).
For example, If I think that welfare is more important than the military, I can put my 50% there. If I feel that the military and highways are more important, I can put 30% to the military and 20% to highway funds.
The other 50% would be at the discretion of the govt to spend. I bet if people had a little more direct control over where the money went, congress might get a clue about what the populace actually wants. Heck, throw a "Pork" category in there and see how many people give money to it.
Speaking as a content creator (music, literary, and fine art):
1. Revert copyright lengths to a reasonable amount of time. A maximum of 17 years in which financial interest in the copyright could be assigned to another person and another 17 year period during which the copyright would mandatorily revert back to the original author(s). This would provide corporations an incentive to fund content creation, and still provide opportunity for the author to receive continued monetary advantage without corporate interference.
2. Examine the possibility of prohibiting a corporation from holding a copyright. As an earlier post mentioned, if corporations had to license the work, they might behave in a more civil manner.
3. Remove the possibility of creating a "Work for Hire." The author of a piece is the author of a piece. If an author is caught falsifying a copyright registration (e.g. he has a contract saying that someone else (like a corporation) is the author, the work immediately and irrevocably falls into the public domain.
4. (Here's one dream item...) Amend the Constitution to say that Congress shall not pass any law containing an amendment. This is how the majority of our pork and shady dealings come about, and it's time for it to stop. There's no reason to attach an amendment giving $500,000 to Topeka for studying the mating habits of the purple-nosed shrew to a law covering federal highway funds. This kind of thing happens all the time, and it's often how bad copyright and patent laws get through - 11th hour additions to bills that have absolutely no relation.
5. In that same constitutional amendment, make it a law that Congress shall make available in multiple formats, for no less than 30 days prior to the vote, a common language "impact statement" for any law. If I have to file an Environmental Impact Statement for something I'm doing on my own property, then the government should damn well have to file an impact statement when passing laws that change the way I live my life.
Lawyers are human modems: you need one on each end of a bill/law figure out what the hell it actually means. I understand the need for legal language to eliminate ambiguity, but when it ceases to be understandable to a person of even above-average-intelligence, things have gotten out of hand.
Before I explained the DMCA's impact to many of my friends and family, they didn't see the big deal. And I have to rely on other people's interpretations of the law because it's a pain to wade through it: too long, too obscure, and uses phrases I'd need to be a 2nd year law student (at least) to understand. I shouldn't need a law degree to know whether a bunch of people (most of whom are not from my state) are about to tell me I can't do something anymore.
Whew. Sorry for the rant. I think that the current "Who Wants to Pay Off A Senator" method of buying legislation is largely responsible for these seeming nonsensical laws. Back to copyright...
6. Remove the "legal entity" status for corporations that Santa Clara County in California helped us bring into the world. Dissolve Santa Clara county and give it to Gilroy as punishment for inflicting a really stupid decision on the rest of the country. (tongue in cheek, folks... but with a grain of sincerity).
It's hard to come up with specifics because the system is so overwhelmingly broken. But I think that a combination of reexamining the ability for a corporation to own a copyright and significantly reducing copyright terms would be a great start.
If the government is truly interested in upholding the Constitution (and I get more and more skeptical of that every day), then they need to go back and read the damn thing. I seriously doubt that the copyright provision was put in place so that 5 multinational corporations could run amok.
Wow... I've really rambled on. Sorry for that. This is an issue with few easy answers, but it's definitely easy to identify that there's a problem.
That scenario never occured to me before reading your post, but it is a pretty cool one... they could have tied it in well with the whole "you're only using 3% of your brain... ever wonder why?"
Uh oh, I hope whoever's farming that other 97% doesn't figure out that I'm on to them... they might try to elimi... urrrgh!!!
Excellent points, and thanks for pointing out my oversights. I wonder if TiVo is exploring some way to leverage their aggregated viewer habit demographics. I think advertisers might be interested in that information (assuming it doesn't violate the TiVo privacy policy).
It's unfortunate that we've somehow managed to get ourselves a government that thinks it's responsible for protecting business models (I don't have the exact related Heinlein quote in memory, but apparently, neither does anyone in the legislative or judicial branches.) If a company can build a model on providing "free" content, then great - but it's not the government's place to keep that model afloat and it sure as hell isn't some overpaid suit's place to accuse me of stealing.
If a device exists that automatically deletes commercials, well tough noogies. Once that signal is in my house, it's nobody else's business what I do with it as long as I don't turn around and mass produce it or resell it.
Agreed. Given recent behavior, however, I wouldn't be surprised to see them find a legislative solution.
A point that I find interesting is that the networks are screaming bloody murder about ad skipping when it isn't really their concern. It's the concern of the ad agencies that produce and purchase ad time. These agencies already know the risks and return rates for broadcast advertising and assume fairly low ROI. Yet they buy ad time for millions of dollars a shot anyway.
All the network needs to be concerned about is how many TVs were tuned to their channel at a given time. What the networks should be concentrating on is creating really great content that my TiVO is going to think I want to watch and here's why:
Networks set ad prices based on the number of viewers they have. That's why sweeps periods get so annoying ("Tonight, on yet another very special Boston Public: Ally McBeal has to substitute teach as community service after dating a student in a chat room, but will Fox Mulder be able to pay attention in class when 7 of 9 turns up the heat?")
So - the number of viewers during a certain time period determines the price of ad time. Well guess what? I've now got a little robot that's watching TV for me 24 hours a day. My TiVO has the ability to bump up ratings in bad time slots for the networks allowing them to charge even more for ad time. And if the show is interesting, I'll watch it.
And my guilty secret is that I like many commercials. I laugh at the guy licking the handle of "his" Volkswagen. I'm glad Jack's Back. I love making fun of low-budget local ads that feature a guy on donkey-back shooting out truck windshields (and high, city prices) with a shotgun (I am not making that up). There are a lot of really interesting short films out there that just happen to be hawking a product, and I don't mind watching them.
But it's a pleasure to be able to skip ads for feminine hygiene products, Herpes medications, commercials I've already seen 32 times, diarreah spots, or anything featuring Shaq. Too bad I can't give thumb ratings to commercials and let TiVO select the ads it thinks I might like.
I used to FF at the 60x speed, but I now FF at 20x because I like to scan for interesting looking commercials which I'll then go back and check out. Not that the commercials have done a great deal to influence my buying habits, but they're capable of being really entertaining at times.
So ad agencies: start making better commercials. Networks: start making better shows that I want to watch and get the hell out of my living room. It's none of your business if I ad skip, only if I'm tuned to your channel at a specific time of day.
On the whole, I agree with what you've said. However:
If you're watching two hour of TV, you can easily see the same advert six or more times. If it didn't work as a sales pitch the first time, it won't work the second or the sixth time.
Actually, research has shown that most people won't register/remember a brand or product until they've been exposed to it at least three times. I'd love it if the ad companies would try to mix it up a little as you describe, but the unfortunate fact is that it's cheaper for them to produce a single commercial and saturate it.
The thing that I find interesting is that all of these networks are running around like headless chickens about ad skipping when ad agencies have already taken that behavior into account. The agencies already know the risks involved and buy the ad time anyway.
All the network should care about is the number of viewers so they can set ad time prices. It seems to me that a robotic recorder is actually increasing the number of viewers since it's effectively watching TV close to 24 hours a day. Networks should start concentrating on making compelling content that my TiVO will think I want to watch...
You have to realize, though, that you aren't Apple's target market. You're willing to take the time to futz around with putting a PC together piecemeal. After you spend $800 on hardware, you're still going to spend several hours installing and configuring the OS and apps. You're willing to track down and fix problems that occur when you want to add hardware, etc.
For you, time is less expensive than cash, and that's cool. You probably enjoy the process as well (I know I do) and most importantly, you have the ability to do the work.
Most of Apple's target market are people who don't have the ability or who don't want to spend the time screwing around with the OS and applications. They just want the computer to work.
With OS X, Apple has provided a fantastic system for people who "just want it to work" as well as providing the hood latch for people who want to get in and get their hands dirty. For you, that might not be worth the price, but the point of the article is that for a growing number of "alpha geeks" it is.
Yes, you can get a barebones Dell or build a FrankenPC for $800. But you won't get the Apple OS, all of the included applications, etc. Estimate the amount of time it would take you to build a system with all of the same features and applications as a $1200 iMac and multiply times standard consulting rates. The savings might not be as large as you think. Especially when you factor in the time it took you to learn the skills that allow you to assemble the box in the first place. It might still be cheaper, but not $400 cheaper.
An iMac with a DVD burner, 512 megs of RAM and its included software is very close in price to a similarly equipped brand-name PC. And both platforms have their strengths and weaknesses. And you could make the same argument for building your own $800 PC vs. buying a loaded Dell or Gateway.
I don't see the point in trying to compare a brand-name computer that's shooting for a seamless out-of-box experience with the roll-your-own crowd... the priorities and benefits are too dissimilar.
Had they talked to him before filing suit, they wouldn't have been setting an appropriate example for all of their students. Sue first. Ask questions later.
Yes, I'm being facetious (mostly) but kneejerk internet domain lawsuits seem to be the rule, not the exception. Why talk about it when you can probably bully the domain owner into a settlement?
That seems to be the rule for most corporate lawsuits anyway.
Agreed.
After all, "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
It does however raise interesting questions about "reasonable suspicion", evidence and culpability if someone is wrongly detained. Police would no doubt try to shift resonsibility onto the technology, as is their wont.
I would hope that trying to shift responsibility for wrongful detention/arrest/prosecution would be met with a resounding, "So what?" If you use a tool to do your job, you're still responsible for what you do with the tool. If a house I build collapses and kills people, I shouldn't be able to blame the hammer - even if it's a special prototype hammer with artificial intelligence and accelerometers. I decided to use that particular hammer, so I am responsible for the results of that decision. (I'll get around to suing the hammer manufacturer later).
Also, we hear time and time again about how police don't have the power to act until a crime is committed (e.g. domestic violence) so how will this stop crime? It might assist in arrest or conviction rates by capturing evidence, but unless we have even more fundamental rights taken from us by our "representatives" and "protectors..."
It does seem to be a cool technology, but the potential for abuse is so high that I have trouble supporting it. When a technology exists that has a high potential for criminal abuse (e.g. MP3 copying) legislators fall all over themselves trying to quash it. But they conveniently look the other way when it's something that government might abuse (e.g. radar guns, surveillance equipment, drunk driving check points, Patriot laws...).
Ah. So I fell prey to marketing hype. Where were all you guys when I was getting suckered? =-)
Seriously, though, the insurance break I get will pay for the LoJack in just over 3 years, so unless we lose the car due to unforseen circumstances (collision, theft) (better not be theft), it's still a worthwhile purchase.
Good to know the potential downsides of LoJack as well, though.
Ah, ok. I see the point now.
But insurance numbers are based on more than theft. You're also paying for those other things I mentioned like accident rates, mortality rates, average repair costs, etc. More people driving a model statistically means more accidents and higher payouts.
Like I said before, if a Camry costs the insurance company more to insure, you'll pay higher premiums. Period. Everyone should check out what a car's insurance cost is before buying - it's just like mileage and resale value.