We might think that browsing Facebook on your phone is cool, but that's obviously not the case for most consumers.
I often browse Facebook on my phone. It's a Sony Ericsson K800i - high end 18 months ago, nowadays it's getting to be the standard issue free-with-cheap-contract phone that everyone in the world seems to have. Certainly it doesn't compete with the iPhone as a web browser, but it's capable enough, and Facebook has a perfectly good mobile-optimised site. And you can always install Opera Mini.
Many people, and to my experience *most* people have learned the game with house rules that were aimed at redistributing tax money with the goal of staving off bankruptcy, and this has a side effect of making the game much more random, and also, tends to force the game to run much longer than the design intends.
The Free Parking Jackpot. The single worst idea since 'Hey, let's invade Russia'.
Monopoly, for all its faults, is a cunningly designed economy. Early on, money flows freely into the game. 200 pounds per player per circuit. Money exits the game in small quantities: speeding fine £10, Drunk in Charge £25, doctor's fee £50, and the two tax spaces. So people build up wealth, and buy up much of the board, and build houses and hotels.
As they do so, however, money leaves the game more quickly. A house or hotel can only be sold back for half its original price. That's a loss of £100 per house for a green or dark blue. And God forbid you get the 'Make General Repairs' or 'Assessed for Street Repairs' card! Money now leaves the game more quickly than it arrives, and bankruptcy is inevitable in short order; the question is, who will be the last man standing?
But the Free Parking rule keeps that money in the game. Every fine and every fee that gets paid, every bribe to get out of jail, every Income Tax or Super Tax, all go to the centre of the board and are handed out in a vast treasure trove to whoever lands on Free Parking first.
End result: the last two or three players in the game are sitting on £7000 in cash. 'Oh, I landed on Mayfair, and you have a hotel. £2000, isn't it? Here you go. Your turn.' Thus the legend of the endless Monopoly game is born.
It simply feels like Nintendo is giving licenses to every half-breed on the planet. They used to guard them carefully, and all the games had to get approved by Nintendo's QA staff before they could release.
You are fifteen years old.
Must be. You don't remember the last time Nintendo had the bestselling console. You don't remember the SNES - or worse, the NES... The Nintendo Seal Of Quality just meant the game would run, and maybe that it didn't have any bugs that would prevent it being completed. It didn't mean the game was any good. Not a bit of it. There was so very much utter crap back then.
When you look at board games which do you think do better, the really complex Avalon Hill games that target a very select audience or Candy Land and Life? As much as I live Settlers of Cattan and Axis and Allies, I see Monopoly on more shelves at homes than of the previous.
On the basis of many recommendations (mostly here) I got my dad Catan for Christmas. It's far simpler than Monopoly, shorter, faster-paced, and the trading game is vicious. Or maybe that's just me and my dad. It's less commonly seen because no bugger's heard of it - I had to buy it at Forbidden Planet. It was on the shelves below a Colossal Red Dragon figure and next to a rack of CCG sets, and on the other side a bunch of D&D rulebooks. Normal people don't go to those shelves. But the game itself is easy to pick up in the afternoon, especially when everyone's well fed and not keen to move about much and the alternative is watching the Queen's Christmas Message - and it's perfect for the cut-throat little bastard there always is at every such party who's been allowed to stay up late and who promptly swindles everyone out of everything they own. And can provide plenty of material for post-mortems over who cheated whom, and just what the exchange rate ought to be between sheep and bricks.
Catan could easily become massive in time. Good board games have forever to grow, and remember, Monopoly's had most of a century to reach the recognition it has today. I wouldn't be surprised to see Catan or something like it becoming as recognisable as, say, Sorry! or Game of Life before too long. These things have a way of going viral, and spreading slowly, year on year, through Christmas parties and suchlike.
You still don't get it! If people can just download it, in full fidelity ( musically ) then why would they buy it?
I haven't a fucking clue, to be quite honest. I suppose they must like having a pretty physical artefact rather than just abstract data - or perhaps they have some kind of personal honour code which includes respect for government-enforced monopolies on information. But the point of the original post seemed to be that there always would be a core of people who would always pay, so given that assumption, it doesn't matter how many pirate as long as those who pay are enough to turn a profit.
I doubt the original poster is correct in this, mind; I think that most people will freeload given the chance, even those who otherwise would have paid, and that the new music economy won't support the bazillionaire rock star lifestyles we've seen in the past - the Heather Mills of the future must look elsewhere.
Say this trend continues...illegal downloading of music, movies, books, games, etc. There will ALWAYS be people that will buy their media, or at least some of it. What happens when the number of people stealing outnumbers those buying to the point where these corps are actually losing money? I don't just mean their sales have gone down, I mean to the point where they are in the red, no longer making any profit.
That's the difference between copyright infringement and stealing. If I steal something from you, you have to replace it somehow if you want to sell it to a paying customer. That's additional cost, and if I steal enough I can drive you into the red. If instead I copy your product, you still have the original and can sell it if you can find a buyer.
If, say, ten thousand people buy the product and that's enough to turn a profit, it doesn't matter if ten people pirate or if ten million people pirate - it's no cost to the producer. Even if the whole remainder of the earth's population pirated, it wouldn't affect the profit-loss sheet, as long as that hard core of buyers remains.
The remainder of your post I think is quite correct - that the middleman is going to become extinct in the future. But you seemed to imply that increasing the ratio of pirates to payers would produce losses. That's not true, as long as the absolute number of payers does not decrease. Reduce the payers to one tenth of their former number, that's a loss. Increase the pirates to ten times their former number, no difference at all.
So if techies want to understand what an upheaval it can be; imagine learning a new operating system that works to three state bits, stores its configuration in jpegs, uses venn diagrams and tonal whistles instead of WIMP and communicates with hardware not by interrupts, but by a "alphabetical sort queue" principle.
programs with really absurd/dorky names that make no sense to anyone but nerds who get the inside joke (if there even is one)
What does Excel do? How about Visio? And there's this thing here called Access, that's for configuring security I suppose? And Outlook is... I'd guess it's for video conferencing?
Judicial systems will generally take legal avenues for imposing penalties, rather than changing the rules just because they feel like it. Legal avenues would mean things like imposing fines, and if they're not paid, sending in the bailiffs (i.e. seizing assets).
'Intellectual property' isn't an asset that can be seized, then? When you're dealing with a debtor whose sole assets of value are intangibles like patents and copyrights, must you restrict yourself to only seizing physical assets?
The EU could try to pull this stunt, but watch what happens when/if the US retaliates. Say, the US blocks the merger of KLM/Air France, $1m landing fees and huge tarrifs on Airbus aircraft for illegal (in the US) launch aid, invalidate IP protections on Bayer, pull more US forces from Europe.. the list goes on.
Then the EU and US get stuck into another trade war, and someone in Beijing has a really good laugh. It's happened before. Remember Bush's short-lived steel tariff?
I doubt this particular issue would ever get to that point. Microsoft know they can't simply withdraw their products to strongarm Brussels. First, it wouldn't hurt Europe, because we can issue an emergency edict declaring Microsoft's entire corpus to be in the public domain, and then put up ftp.brussels.eu/windowsxp on a nice fat pipe. Sure, there are regulations and treaties and things, but as we've seen in many countries in recent years, you just have to say 'national security'. And second, it would kill Microsoft, whose shareholders in America would sue immediately they heard of the announcement that Microsoft was going to give up entirely on the largest market on the planet because of a quarrel over standards documentation.
Microsoft have to play by the rules if they want to play in Europe. So they have to put about propaganda, bribe representatives, the same kind of thing they do in America when they can't get their way. They're probably finding it harder here because regulation of the market is the primary function of the Brussels government - the rest is the domain of the member states. The Eurocrats are really keen on this sort of thing. Makes them feel important.
The treaty prevents governments from claiming ownership, not people or corporations.
Which is the line that guy selling land on the moon peddles. It won't stick either. It's stretching plausibility to claim, and sell, land you have never even visited and in fact are not capable of visiting. Traditionally you have to at least plant a flag - and normally, you have to live on the land a while and prove you can sustain your colony before anyone will recognise your claim. That, and have enough guns to argue your case the hard way if necessary.
... Why a maglev from NY to LA? We can do BETTER THAN THAT.
Build a vacuum tube from NY to LA. Then maximum speed is limited by, well... not much, actually. Accelerate to orbital velocity, go weightless for a few minutes while still on the ground, arrive. The technology exists; the cost is even more ludicrous, but while we're dreaming, eh?
In fact, hell, it's a vacuum tube. Damn thing's buoyant. Build it from London to LA.
Let me guess, you're one of the "information wants to be free" types who thinks that a work entering the public domain means that it will become freely shared and easily available.
Wrong.
What it means is that people can start making money off it without giving the original creators a dime.
It means that the content you've now dumped into the public domain will suddenly start showing up on TV, surrounded by ads, making money for the TV network but offering nothing back to the creators.
It means that it'll show up on boot-leg DVDs for $5/pop - with all $5 going to the person who ripped the disk and nothing to the creator.
Why, in all of this, would it not also be freely shared and easily available? Just about every public-domain written work you could name is to be found on Project Gutenberg - freely shared and easily available. The complete Dickens is there. So is Poe. You can freely read the complete adventures of Sherlock Holmes and pay not a penny to the descendants of Arthur Conan Doyle or to the Strand Magazine in which he published. Set copyright back to fourteen years, and we'll do the same with movies and music and software. It's not as if we don't have the infrastructure in place for the task. I believe there are some guys in Sweden who are doing it already...
I've voted in every election since I turned 18 (I'm 28) and try to be informed about candidates and issues. I think it would help if elections were held on weekends or if Election Day was a national holiday, but I still think that most people in their 20s just can't be bothered.
I've also voted every time the opportunity has arisen - not just the General Elections, but local council and Euro elections too - and make it a matter of principle. I don't see it as any problem. British elections by some unwritten tradition are held on Thursdays, and polling stations open early and close late; it's not hard to get to them if you care.
And that's the point: caring. Most people, it seems, do not. And if that's the case then I'm glad they don't vote. Make it compulsory to vote and these people will vote for whoever was wearing the nicest tie, or whose name just sounds right after the words 'Prime Minister'. That these people have voluntarily disenfranchised themselves... well, I see it as a damn good thing. It inflates the value of the votes of those of us who do turn up.
Slashdot Mirror
I often browse Facebook on my phone. It's a Sony Ericsson K800i - high end 18 months ago, nowadays it's getting to be the standard issue free-with-cheap-contract phone that everyone in the world seems to have. Certainly it doesn't compete with the iPhone as a web browser, but it's capable enough, and Facebook has a perfectly good mobile-optimised site. And you can always install Opera Mini.
Only the kernel of my Kubuntu system is Linux. It should perhaps be properly called Mozilla / OpenOffice.org / KDE / X.org / GNU / Linux.
The Free Parking Jackpot. The single worst idea since 'Hey, let's invade Russia'.
Monopoly, for all its faults, is a cunningly designed economy. Early on, money flows freely into the game. 200 pounds per player per circuit. Money exits the game in small quantities: speeding fine £10, Drunk in Charge £25, doctor's fee £50, and the two tax spaces. So people build up wealth, and buy up much of the board, and build houses and hotels.
As they do so, however, money leaves the game more quickly. A house or hotel can only be sold back for half its original price. That's a loss of £100 per house for a green or dark blue. And God forbid you get the 'Make General Repairs' or 'Assessed for Street Repairs' card! Money now leaves the game more quickly than it arrives, and bankruptcy is inevitable in short order; the question is, who will be the last man standing?
But the Free Parking rule keeps that money in the game. Every fine and every fee that gets paid, every bribe to get out of jail, every Income Tax or Super Tax, all go to the centre of the board and are handed out in a vast treasure trove to whoever lands on Free Parking first.
End result: the last two or three players in the game are sitting on £7000 in cash. 'Oh, I landed on Mayfair, and you have a hotel. £2000, isn't it? Here you go. Your turn.' Thus the legend of the endless Monopoly game is born.
You are fifteen years old.
Must be. You don't remember the last time Nintendo had the bestselling console. You don't remember the SNES - or worse, the NES... The Nintendo Seal Of Quality just meant the game would run, and maybe that it didn't have any bugs that would prevent it being completed. It didn't mean the game was any good. Not a bit of it. There was so very much utter crap back then.
Catan could easily become massive in time. Good board games have forever to grow, and remember, Monopoly's had most of a century to reach the recognition it has today. I wouldn't be surprised to see Catan or something like it becoming as recognisable as, say, Sorry! or Game of Life before too long. These things have a way of going viral, and spreading slowly, year on year, through Christmas parties and suchlike.
I haven't a fucking clue, to be quite honest. I suppose they must like having a pretty physical artefact rather than just abstract data - or perhaps they have some kind of personal honour code which includes respect for government-enforced monopolies on information. But the point of the original post seemed to be that there always would be a core of people who would always pay, so given that assumption, it doesn't matter how many pirate as long as those who pay are enough to turn a profit.
I doubt the original poster is correct in this, mind; I think that most people will freeload given the chance, even those who otherwise would have paid, and that the new music economy won't support the bazillionaire rock star lifestyles we've seen in the past - the Heather Mills of the future must look elsewhere.
That's the difference between copyright infringement and stealing. If I steal something from you, you have to replace it somehow if you want to sell it to a paying customer. That's additional cost, and if I steal enough I can drive you into the red. If instead I copy your product, you still have the original and can sell it if you can find a buyer.
If, say, ten thousand people buy the product and that's enough to turn a profit, it doesn't matter if ten people pirate or if ten million people pirate - it's no cost to the producer. Even if the whole remainder of the earth's population pirated, it wouldn't affect the profit-loss sheet, as long as that hard core of buyers remains.
The remainder of your post I think is quite correct - that the middleman is going to become extinct in the future. But you seemed to imply that increasing the ratio of pirates to payers would produce losses. That's not true, as long as the absolute number of payers does not decrease. Reduce the payers to one tenth of their former number, that's a loss. Increase the pirates to ten times their former number, no difference at all.
A moving image is 24 still images per second. Surely that's 24 times the blasphemy?
Take the argument further: NOTHING has inherent value. A thing is worth what an informed buyer will pay for it, no more, no less.
Which industries does Obama intend to nationalise?
You are a Pierson's Puppeteer and I claim my £5.
What does Excel do? How about Visio? And there's this thing here called Access, that's for configuring security I suppose? And Outlook is... I'd guess it's for video conferencing?
'Intellectual property' isn't an asset that can be seized, then? When you're dealing with a debtor whose sole assets of value are intangibles like patents and copyrights, must you restrict yourself to only seizing physical assets?
Then the EU and US get stuck into another trade war, and someone in Beijing has a really good laugh. It's happened before. Remember Bush's short-lived steel tariff?
I doubt this particular issue would ever get to that point. Microsoft know they can't simply withdraw their products to strongarm Brussels. First, it wouldn't hurt Europe, because we can issue an emergency edict declaring Microsoft's entire corpus to be in the public domain, and then put up ftp.brussels.eu/windowsxp on a nice fat pipe. Sure, there are regulations and treaties and things, but as we've seen in many countries in recent years, you just have to say 'national security'. And second, it would kill Microsoft, whose shareholders in America would sue immediately they heard of the announcement that Microsoft was going to give up entirely on the largest market on the planet because of a quarrel over standards documentation.
Microsoft have to play by the rules if they want to play in Europe. So they have to put about propaganda, bribe representatives, the same kind of thing they do in America when they can't get their way. They're probably finding it harder here because regulation of the market is the primary function of the Brussels government - the rest is the domain of the member states. The Eurocrats are really keen on this sort of thing. Makes them feel important.
Total energy, yes, but all machines whose purpose is anything other than producing heat waste some. For non-heaters, energy in energy out.
Which is the line that guy selling land on the moon peddles. It won't stick either. It's stretching plausibility to claim, and sell, land you have never even visited and in fact are not capable of visiting. Traditionally you have to at least plant a flag - and normally, you have to live on the land a while and prove you can sustain your colony before anyone will recognise your claim. That, and have enough guns to argue your case the hard way if necessary.
TQOTM, anybody?
Build a vacuum tube from NY to LA. Then maximum speed is limited by, well... not much, actually. Accelerate to orbital velocity, go weightless for a few minutes while still on the ground, arrive. The technology exists; the cost is even more ludicrous, but while we're dreaming, eh?
In fact, hell, it's a vacuum tube. Damn thing's buoyant. Build it from London to LA.
Why, in all of this, would it not also be freely shared and easily available? Just about every public-domain written work you could name is to be found on Project Gutenberg - freely shared and easily available. The complete Dickens is there. So is Poe. You can freely read the complete adventures of Sherlock Holmes and pay not a penny to the descendants of Arthur Conan Doyle or to the Strand Magazine in which he published. Set copyright back to fourteen years, and we'll do the same with movies and music and software. It's not as if we don't have the infrastructure in place for the task. I believe there are some guys in Sweden who are doing it already...
Damn. Well, there goes Shakespeare, then.
Elite 4.
Children, to whom Duke's incredibly juvenile character is intended to appeal. Old people, who remember Duke Nukem 3D.
Get another IP? It's not as if it's hard to do; spammers seem to manage. Let the Danish courts play the same game of whack-a-mole that mail admins do.
Don't do that, it'll confuse people :) Call yourself an Inquisitor or a Templar or Deacon Malleus or just good old Brother Lasher...
I've also voted every time the opportunity has arisen - not just the General Elections, but local council and Euro elections too - and make it a matter of principle. I don't see it as any problem. British elections by some unwritten tradition are held on Thursdays, and polling stations open early and close late; it's not hard to get to them if you care.
And that's the point: caring. Most people, it seems, do not. And if that's the case then I'm glad they don't vote. Make it compulsory to vote and these people will vote for whoever was wearing the nicest tie, or whose name just sounds right after the words 'Prime Minister'. That these people have voluntarily disenfranchised themselves... well, I see it as a damn good thing. It inflates the value of the votes of those of us who do turn up.