It looks like this might be a followup story or actual action taken upon a proposition for collective licensing of music for personal use from the Songwriters Association of Canada.
...I think you're missing the point. It's not to cut my off from other people- it's to let me move about more. In fact, because (if allowed, which is highly questionable) I would be able to use an ultra-mobile laptop at work I would probably be more likely to interact with "ppl" because I wouldn't be chained to a desktop in one place.
I can go to meetings and, if it's worthless/boring (one would hope it wouldn't then be held in the first place, but oh well), I can slowly do a bit more work, lightening my load at other times. Or I can use it to take notes, since my handwriting is atrocious.
And if I ever do light work from home (sick days, telecommuting) I can make it a dedicated work machine so I don't have to mingle it with my personal stuff.
I don't have an Eee myself, but I do hope that they take off and become a leader for a new "race to the bottom". I've been going the last ~5 years on a Compaq Presario 2100 that was bottom-of-the-line when I first bought it (roughly $1000). I use it mainly for taking notes in class, e-mail, surfing the web, etc.- basically stuff the Eee was meant for.
When I graduate this summer, I do plan on getting an Eee to take with me to work (if allowed). Something that I can easily use for porting things back and forth, bring with me to a restaurant to do some surfing/e-mail over lunch, etc. The low price means I don't worry as much if it gets stolen, the small dimensions make it very easy to fit in a briefcase with room to spare, and if someone puts a hinge on it to flip the screen around you can make a nice, small eBook reader.
It's better than a Crackberry because I don't have to think of having it on my person at all times and have better resolution; at the same time, it's better than a laptop because it's ultra portable and cheap.
While his games have never been huge hits or ground breaking, they almost always offer something unique and entertaining. His best known works are probably Killer7 and, much more recently, No More Heroes. He's trying new things and ideas, and perhaps he shouldn't make it to the top 25, but I think he should get at least honorable mention.
If anyone's not tried No More Heroes and enjoys over-the-top fighting games, I highly recommend it. The overworld (think GTA) really needs a lot of work, but the actual fighting more than makes up for it. Pretty crazy plotline and characters, too. (Each of the ten bosses you fight would be a major villain in their own right for any other game.)
Yeah, it really is the same thing. Suppose I controlled the local road maintenance. It would be unfair if I made placed road blocks in front of Red Lobster restaurants. It would be equally unfair for me to place road blocks in front of all restaurants except Red Lobster. Either way I am selectively impeding or assisting 3rd-parties who I should be neutral to.
What the GGP described wasn't like putting road blocks in front of a restaurant, it was like maintaining a road and making a deal with a restaurant to put a special exit to their restaurant on the road. It still has exits (or exits of exits) to all the other restaurants, but now you have a straight shot to this one restaurant.
Network Neutrality (rather, lack thereof) would be like putting road blocks in front of the restaurants and not removing them until the restaurant pays. There is a difference, though you may think both ideas are bad.
I don't think that's quite right. My understanding of the Network Neutrality debate is that ISPs could hold websites "hostage" unless they pay an extra fee (or the user pays). In short, they would hobble most everything else and only un-hobble it once the extor- er, fee has been paid.
What the GP talks about seems like a reverse of that. Internet usage is normal for everyone else, but they have a special partnership for one or two companies. Yeah, it does add incentive to use iTunes over Amazon, but you're not inhibited from using Amazon. And they always have the chance to partner up when they go global (I believe Amazon is only doing the MP3 service in restricted markets, AUS not included).
I can understand how this might be seen as the same thing- eventually the larger companies happily pay a partnership fee and the smaller companies are stuck being passed on the "regular" service. However, I don't agree- this partnership is at the incentive of the company, not the ISP, and the ISP is doing nothing special to any of those companies. I can easily see something like this happening in America, but more like the Ubuntu example that the GP talks about- the ISP caches popular downloads from SERVICE_X, and so users would have more incentive to use SERVICE_X because they could get faster downloads. Seems like basic economics, not extortion.
Look at it from a real life standpoint. Let's say that I predominantly do my shopping at Target (I know it's much easier to switch stores than ISPs, just work with me here). Now when I start shopping at Target and spend $X, I get a free $5 gift card to Red Lobster. This is incentive for me to go to Red Lobster, but does not require me to do so, and does not impair me from going to, say, Olive Garden if I'm willing to spend that $5 from my own pocket.
The Network Neutrality version (which doesn't really fit IRL) is that if I go to Target they give me a pass for parking at Red Lobster, which is free anyway, but if I try to go to Olive Garden from Target I have to pay a parking fee when it was previously free. (These examples might be easier to understand if the rester aunts are directly connected to the Target store.)
I can't quite remember which came first. I had a Brick Boy (came with Link's Awakening), an NES (with only Super Mario Bros. 2, yes the Doki Doki one), and one other one, which I'll relate here.
Once or twice a week after school (I think it was 1990, maybe first or second grade?) I would go home with some elderly gentlemen that belonged to my dad's congregation . I would have a snack (I think it varied, but all I can remember is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into fourths), and then spend the next hour or two playing text adventure games on his PC. He would be off doing something else, and if I got stuck (which happened often) I'd ask him for help. He had a few playing manuals of sorts and had beat these games before, so he would tell me where to look and I would go there and he's go back to whatever else he was doing.
A few years and one move later, my family finally got our own PC, and I was able to get another text adventure. This lead me to be more inquisitive as to how the rest of the computer work, and probably sparked my interest in computers altogether.
This kind of scenario would probably never happen today, though.
The sad thing is, this isn't out of line for Gizmodo. I'm a regular reader, and they do post some useful gadget information (sometimes sooner, sometimes later than other other places), but they are all about "boobies lol!".
I love me some fart jokes, but I'm not terribly interested in them when I'm reading news (comments are another thing). Humor mixed with news isn't a bad thing, especially considering a blog atmosphere, but it should be reserved. This prank wasn't.
And it's not the first time they've been in hot water. They can't even lay off their own sister site, Kotaku, as they posted a tubgirl image to Kotaku's front page (don't worry, links are tubgirl free) during some build up to a Halo 3 match between the "editors" of the two sites.
How many people look at fictional characters (from games, movies, anime, even some cartoons) as sexually enticing even if not romantically? Hell, Esurance has Erin Esurance for their "sex sells" model, rather than a real female.
I can easily see a market where you have RealDoll++ outfitted with personalities and looks of fictional characters. Yes, that includes Seven of Nine.
See the Futurama episode "I Dated A Robot" (in which Fry falls in love with a Lucy Lu-bot) for more information.
The stupid thing about this is how a few months ago fark went from being fairly open about NSFW imagery, to banning anyone that links to or posts it. Apparently they can make more money by being family(or workplace) friendly.
I'm sorry, but: what?
I've been a member of Fark for quite a few years now (five digit ID, aw yeah), and they have always been against the NSFW postings. You could never post actual NSFW images in the discussion forums, even for discussions of a NSFW link. You could link to stuff, but only if you had large notices that the link was NSFW. If something is questionable, they remove it anyway.
Even on the TotalFarker side (who are the only ones that can comment on Boobies links now) you can't post anything like that. Images are auto-disabled for "Adult content" links, too.
Drew has generally tried to keep Fark a place that could be browsed at work, uncaught by language and porn filters. This isn't new. They may have cracked down on porn links recently, but everything else is old hat.
Ha! The fact that tissue was preserved only goes further to prove that the world isn't as old as those stupid Evolutionists claim it is! Could tissue survive a couple hundred million years? I think not! Pffft!
I recently had to do research on the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which included reading the debate in the House of Reps about it. Ron Paul was one of those who stood up to speak near the end, but instead of stating support or opposition to the bill (or substitute), he went on a fairly long speech about this being a state's right and not something that Congress can enact upon.
It seems that he kind of skirted the issue at hand (one can take that he was opposed to both ideas, but he doesn't say it explicitly), but I do admire that he was willing to bring the point to bear, regardless if it was ignored by everyone else in the Senate (and it was).
My hat is currently in the ring for Kucinich, but if he can't make the primaries and Paul does, I would certainly vote for him. I don't agree with everything he has to say, but he's far better than many of the other candidates.
So I can't help wonder what kind of idiot chose "Black Friday" to mean "we're selling lots of stuff". I mean, gee, it must be such a dark and depressing thing.
My understanding of the origin is that for most of the year, businesses are slightly in the red (where red represents a negative number in accounting) from costs, and the spur of sales (both discount and normal) on that Friday puts the retailers into the "black" (or positive) cash.
I'm not a business owner, so I have no idea if this is the way it actually works. If this is correct, it sounds stupid.
Oh, and when I worked at Best Buy (retail level), we were told that we should refer to it as "Green Friday" (Green having the same idea as black), since Black had the bad connotations you previously mentioned. No one did, to my knowledge.
You might be interested to know that the online trading and downloading of comics is just as active as music or video trading- perhaps less popular, but still very active. A comic site I visit regularly has "Release Wednesday" download links in the forums, right on that Wednesday, and almost all of the major comics released that day. I think Marvel is doing this to combat that as well as falling sales.
I personally think it's great, and plan to buy in. It won't put a huge dent in comic piracy, as it won't include the most recent titles, but it's great for me to get the back-issues I might read once or twice without having to hunt them down or shell out $1/each.
Hopefully they'll start making online releases sooner and sooner after paperback releases, but it's a step in the right direction.
My biggest complaint with print media is the ads- almost every other freaking page. I can understand ads when I'm not paying for access to a website, or ads when they lower my subscription costs (not that that seems to have had any effect), but every other freaking page? If I'm lucky, they're back to back, and I can rip out the page entirely.
Even worse, there are some advertisements that act as if they are part of the magazine. For the most part, these have "ADVERTISEMENT" across the top in small-to-regular print, but if the layout is similar to the regular magazine layout, you can easily read a bit before you realize what's going on. I don't want to have to check the top of every damn page to see if I'm reading some advertising bullshit or the magazine's bullshit.
I still like print media- it's useful for when the internet goes down, when I'm on the can, or when I'm on a bus or riding with my family. It's not great for immediate news, but I like it for the reviews and features. However, some of the tactics being taken by various magazines (not just gaming) are making it much harder for me to justify continuous purchase.
An impact with a 'flying car' (under these sport rules) scares me far less than the typical car -- never mind the behemoth SUV's and trucks.
Ah. However, while I'm no housing engineer or architect, I would think the roof would be able to repel less force than the walls, so the weight difference may just wind up in the same amount of destruction.
a sky filled with people who don't have pilot's licenses could also be a problem.
That's my largest concern. Some fund baby will purchase one of these things, try to apply makeup while flying, and crash into my house. Hopefully we can update our laws to accommodate this type of situation before they actually come in use. I'm thinking another class of license- you have one for motorcycles, for limos, etc., how about a class of driver's license that works with planes (but you have to have passed a flight school to get)?
What if the submitted corrections were done in a Digg kind of style? They're there and can be voted up/down; the obviously bad ones will be taken care of pretty quickly, lowering the noise.
Of course, it introduces a new problem: Education by popularity, which goes back to your point on contentious material.
I've wondered about the potential for something like this- could you make "open source" textbooks?
The project linked seems to go a different way. My vision was such:
You would have a central company, not a charity, but not for-profit. It would do the things that textbook companies regularly do (or I hope they do), hire experts to write the text books, editors to check everything, a small publishing house, etc.
The difference is that it's all put online. It can be peer-reviewed by thousands, if not millions, and used by anyone. In order to make the company non-reliant on donations, it would be released under a custom license, one that allows reproduction of x pages at a time and unlimited but unedited online disbursal, while the company still sells the textbooks at cost.
The idea is that you would get a textbook that can be referenced by anyone, checked by anyone, and teachers can download updates and corrections without having to buy a whole new damn book. I don't know how well it would work in the long run, but I'd say it's a sight better than the current set up for text books in school.
Do you have a hard time telling the difference between arson and cannibalism? No? Then why do you have a hard time telling the difference between copyright infringement and theft?
I do admit that I often revert to using the "scare tactic" word to refer to things like illegal file sharing and copyright infringement. Calling it "theft" is the wrong title, but it's become so entrenched in the media that I have a hard time not using it for the wider recognition it has. While I will try not to, I likely will again, but I do know the difference.
If you make decent money and don't have a lot of debt, it is more convenient to buy than to deal with the hassle
This was much more true ten, maybe even five, years ago, when things were majorly underground and finding places to upload/download was much harder. But now, in many cases (especially where things like console modding is concerned), it's incredibly easy to find and download/torrent many games at once. I personally know of many "honest" (as in thieves) sources (not because I partake in that kind of thing but because I frequent sites where others do).
You also seem to be assuming the best in humanity- that those with the ability do. I agree that it is likely less common with the more well-off, but not a rare thing.
1) I find it funny that you mention innovation and Madden in the same breath.
I'm not certain which way you mean that (as in it's funny that I try to equate them, or that I don't see them as the same thing). I don't play Madden, but I do know that they try to add features with every game, but to my knowledge it's mostly been small incremental upgrades since the transition to 3D. The main formula has always stayed the same. To its credit, it seems to do it well, and some people don't get tired of the same recipe, likely why it still sells.
2) Ever bought anything used, Ryo?
Aha!, I see your trap. I have, and think you want to respond with something like "Well the game companies don't get money, so it's the same thing as pirating." This used to be something that I thought, as well, but that never sat well with me. I recently realized why, and will try to explain to you how I see the difference between file sharing and the second-hand market. (Please note that the following is all personal conjecture, so feel free to poke holes as you wish so I can firm it up.)
With piracy, a one-to-many model, one person can buy (or even steal!) one copy of one game and upload it. Once this (and whatever cracking) is done, the game is now available for almost unlimited distribution. One $50 payment (assuming they were honest enough to purchase it) can put the game into the hands of potentially millions. (I am unfamiliar with the actual download statistics, but I'm certain they're not that big.) Yes, some of them wouldn't have bought it anyway, but not all.
Let's say that a huge game like Halo 3 makes it to the web and is downloaded by a quarter million people (with over 10 million 360s on the market, I don't think that's an unwarranted number). Let's say that only 10% of those people would have purchased the game otherwise. That's 25,000 people at $50/game, with a gross revenue of $1.25M. That, in my opinion, is not small potatoes.
Now, the second hand market, a one-to-one model, works differently. Let's take the same quarter million people, and now they're all willing to purchase the game, but not all at full price. So we have the same 10% who are willing to buy it at full price, and through various channels the games they buy eventually work their way to the other 90% of the people. You only ever have one game for each purchase on the market (one-to-one).
Do you see the difference? In the piracy scenario of our sample, the game grossed $50 (if that). In the secondary market, the game grossed $1.25M. (I assume that the numbers outside of the sample would be the same in both cases.) So secondary sales,
You can argue that those who steal games wouldn't buy them in the first place, but then why steal them? Why get something that doesn't have value? Okay, you can extend that to say this is true for those below the poverty line, and I'd agree, but we both know that is not only poor people that pirate. I'd think that some (more than a tiny fraction) of those who pirate can afford (or at least save without much effort) and would buy the game if it was the only way, but would rather be cheap/fight "the man" and pirate it instead.
For shits and giggles, let's run with your idea of a copying device. If everyone could easily make their own duplicate Ferrari*, then very few people would pay. Why therefore, would Ferrari want to continue making cars? Some argue that is their problem, not yours. Alright, so now you have your own Ferrari, sweet. And every day your drive your Ferrari. And now it's getting kind of dull, even when you invite friends over to ride your Ferrari... (remember, this is about entertainment, so practical uses are irrelevant for the analogy).
So now what? You keep using the same Ferrari, over and over? I sure bet you'd like a new Ferrari to copy and use. Maybe something with a new built-in holographic projector and hooker bot (this is the future, after all). But, because no one was buying their cars, Ferrari had no interest in creating new cars with more auto advancements and interesting/innovative features. If they still exist at this point, they're probably surviving on a service model. Upgrade? What upgrade? Aside from fixing some mechanical issues in the car, giving extra features in upgrade packs usually get copied as well, so why bother.
But you have your Ferrari. Too bad no one cares, because now everyone else does too.
You see, it's not just economics and legality that are at issue here, it's innovation and incentive for those who produce these things. It's why we have things like Madden '08 and Tony Hawk Ultra Super Neat Skater 7, but no Skies of Arcadia 2 (or any number of original properties that never saw the light of day). Companies are banking more on established games that will reach the masses rather than new material or indie stuff, because apparently a lot of people who would actually be interested in newer stuff are the same kinds who have the ability and desire to download instead of pay for them.
So before you pirate, think of the Ferraris.
* I've ignored a whole other part of the requisite auto analogy that would cause it to break down, such as other immaterial things that can't be copied like insurance, registration, etc.
The portion of your post that I quoted basically, at least to me, tries to rationalize the ability to mod consoles so as to steal games, in essence claiming it's okay to do that.
Slashdot Mirror
It looks like this might be a followup story or actual action taken upon a proposition for collective licensing of music for personal use from the Songwriters Association of Canada.
Slashdot story
SAC proposal
...I think you're missing the point. It's not to cut my off from other people- it's to let me move about more. In fact, because (if allowed, which is highly questionable) I would be able to use an ultra-mobile laptop at work I would probably be more likely to interact with "ppl" because I wouldn't be chained to a desktop in one place.
I can go to meetings and, if it's worthless/boring (one would hope it wouldn't then be held in the first place, but oh well), I can slowly do a bit more work, lightening my load at other times. Or I can use it to take notes, since my handwriting is atrocious.
And if I ever do light work from home (sick days, telecommuting) I can make it a dedicated work machine so I don't have to mingle it with my personal stuff.
I don't have an Eee myself, but I do hope that they take off and become a leader for a new "race to the bottom". I've been going the last ~5 years on a Compaq Presario 2100 that was bottom-of-the-line when I first bought it (roughly $1000). I use it mainly for taking notes in class, e-mail, surfing the web, etc.- basically stuff the Eee was meant for.
When I graduate this summer, I do plan on getting an Eee to take with me to work (if allowed). Something that I can easily use for porting things back and forth, bring with me to a restaurant to do some surfing/e-mail over lunch, etc. The low price means I don't worry as much if it gets stolen, the small dimensions make it very easy to fit in a briefcase with room to spare, and if someone puts a hinge on it to flip the screen around you can make a nice, small eBook reader.
It's better than a Crackberry because I don't have to think of having it on my person at all times and have better resolution; at the same time, it's better than a laptop because it's ultra portable and cheap.
While his games have never been huge hits or ground breaking, they almost always offer something unique and entertaining. His best known works are probably Killer7 and, much more recently, No More Heroes. He's trying new things and ideas, and perhaps he shouldn't make it to the top 25, but I think he should get at least honorable mention.
If anyone's not tried No More Heroes and enjoys over-the-top fighting games, I highly recommend it. The overworld (think GTA) really needs a lot of work, but the actual fighting more than makes up for it. Pretty crazy plotline and characters, too. (Each of the ten bosses you fight would be a major villain in their own right for any other game.)
Network Neutrality (rather, lack thereof) would be like putting road blocks in front of the restaurants and not removing them until the restaurant pays. There is a difference, though you may think both ideas are bad.
I don't think that's quite right. My understanding of the Network Neutrality debate is that ISPs could hold websites "hostage" unless they pay an extra fee (or the user pays). In short, they would hobble most everything else and only un-hobble it once the extor- er, fee has been paid.
What the GP talks about seems like a reverse of that. Internet usage is normal for everyone else, but they have a special partnership for one or two companies. Yeah, it does add incentive to use iTunes over Amazon, but you're not inhibited from using Amazon. And they always have the chance to partner up when they go global (I believe Amazon is only doing the MP3 service in restricted markets, AUS not included).
I can understand how this might be seen as the same thing- eventually the larger companies happily pay a partnership fee and the smaller companies are stuck being passed on the "regular" service. However, I don't agree- this partnership is at the incentive of the company, not the ISP, and the ISP is doing nothing special to any of those companies. I can easily see something like this happening in America, but more like the Ubuntu example that the GP talks about- the ISP caches popular downloads from SERVICE_X, and so users would have more incentive to use SERVICE_X because they could get faster downloads. Seems like basic economics, not extortion.
Look at it from a real life standpoint. Let's say that I predominantly do my shopping at Target (I know it's much easier to switch stores than ISPs, just work with me here). Now when I start shopping at Target and spend $X, I get a free $5 gift card to Red Lobster. This is incentive for me to go to Red Lobster, but does not require me to do so, and does not impair me from going to, say, Olive Garden if I'm willing to spend that $5 from my own pocket.
The Network Neutrality version (which doesn't really fit IRL) is that if I go to Target they give me a pass for parking at Red Lobster, which is free anyway, but if I try to go to Olive Garden from Target I have to pay a parking fee when it was previously free. (These examples might be easier to understand if the rester aunts are directly connected to the Target store.)
I can't quite remember which came first. I had a Brick Boy (came with Link's Awakening), an NES (with only Super Mario Bros. 2, yes the Doki Doki one), and one other one, which I'll relate here.
Once or twice a week after school (I think it was 1990, maybe first or second grade?) I would go home with some elderly gentlemen that belonged to my dad's congregation . I would have a snack (I think it varied, but all I can remember is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into fourths), and then spend the next hour or two playing text adventure games on his PC. He would be off doing something else, and if I got stuck (which happened often) I'd ask him for help. He had a few playing manuals of sorts and had beat these games before, so he would tell me where to look and I would go there and he's go back to whatever else he was doing.
A few years and one move later, my family finally got our own PC, and I was able to get another text adventure. This lead me to be more inquisitive as to how the rest of the computer work, and probably sparked my interest in computers altogether.
This kind of scenario would probably never happen today, though.
The sad thing is, this isn't out of line for Gizmodo. I'm a regular reader, and they do post some useful gadget information (sometimes sooner, sometimes later than other other places), but they are all about "boobies lol!".
I love me some fart jokes, but I'm not terribly interested in them when I'm reading news (comments are another thing). Humor mixed with news isn't a bad thing, especially considering a blog atmosphere, but it should be reserved. This prank wasn't.
And it's not the first time they've been in hot water. They can't even lay off their own sister site, Kotaku, as they posted a tubgirl image to Kotaku's front page (don't worry, links are tubgirl free) during some build up to a Halo 3 match between the "editors" of the two sites.
I dunno, electricity in glass could lead to some shocking panes.
How many people look at fictional characters (from games, movies, anime, even some cartoons) as sexually enticing even if not romantically? Hell, Esurance has Erin Esurance for their "sex sells" model, rather than a real female.
I can easily see a market where you have RealDoll++ outfitted with personalities and looks of fictional characters. Yes, that includes Seven of Nine.
See the Futurama episode "I Dated A Robot" (in which Fry falls in love with a Lucy Lu-bot) for more information.
Also see Schediaphilia.
I've been a member of Fark for quite a few years now (five digit ID, aw yeah), and they have always been against the NSFW postings. You could never post actual NSFW images in the discussion forums, even for discussions of a NSFW link. You could link to stuff, but only if you had large notices that the link was NSFW. If something is questionable, they remove it anyway.
Even on the TotalFarker side (who are the only ones that can comment on Boobies links now) you can't post anything like that. Images are auto-disabled for "Adult content" links, too.
Drew has generally tried to keep Fark a place that could be browsed at work, uncaught by language and porn filters. This isn't new. They may have cracked down on porn links recently, but everything else is old hat.
Ha! The fact that tissue was preserved only goes further to prove that the world isn't as old as those stupid Evolutionists claim it is! Could tissue survive a couple hundred million years? I think not! Pffft!
God wins again!
I recently had to do research on the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which included reading the debate in the House of Reps about it. Ron Paul was one of those who stood up to speak near the end, but instead of stating support or opposition to the bill (or substitute), he went on a fairly long speech about this being a state's right and not something that Congress can enact upon.
It seems that he kind of skirted the issue at hand (one can take that he was opposed to both ideas, but he doesn't say it explicitly), but I do admire that he was willing to bring the point to bear, regardless if it was ignored by everyone else in the Senate (and it was).
My hat is currently in the ring for Kucinich, but if he can't make the primaries and Paul does, I would certainly vote for him. I don't agree with everything he has to say, but he's far better than many of the other candidates.
I'm not a business owner, so I have no idea if this is the way it actually works. If this is correct, it sounds stupid.
Oh, and when I worked at Best Buy (retail level), we were told that we should refer to it as "Green Friday" (Green having the same idea as black), since Black had the bad connotations you previously mentioned. No one did, to my knowledge.
You might be interested to know that the online trading and downloading of comics is just as active as music or video trading- perhaps less popular, but still very active. A comic site I visit regularly has "Release Wednesday" download links in the forums, right on that Wednesday, and almost all of the major comics released that day. I think Marvel is doing this to combat that as well as falling sales.
I personally think it's great, and plan to buy in. It won't put a huge dent in comic piracy, as it won't include the most recent titles, but it's great for me to get the back-issues I might read once or twice without having to hunt them down or shell out $1/each.
Hopefully they'll start making online releases sooner and sooner after paperback releases, but it's a step in the right direction.
My biggest complaint with print media is the ads- almost every other freaking page. I can understand ads when I'm not paying for access to a website, or ads when they lower my subscription costs (not that that seems to have had any effect), but every other freaking page? If I'm lucky, they're back to back, and I can rip out the page entirely.
Even worse, there are some advertisements that act as if they are part of the magazine. For the most part, these have "ADVERTISEMENT" across the top in small-to-regular print, but if the layout is similar to the regular magazine layout, you can easily read a bit before you realize what's going on. I don't want to have to check the top of every damn page to see if I'm reading some advertising bullshit or the magazine's bullshit.
I still like print media- it's useful for when the internet goes down, when I'm on the can, or when I'm on a bus or riding with my family. It's not great for immediate news, but I like it for the reviews and features. However, some of the tactics being taken by various magazines (not just gaming) are making it much harder for me to justify continuous purchase.
Personally, I'd rather they work on a hoverboard.
What if the submitted corrections were done in a Digg kind of style? They're there and can be voted up/down; the obviously bad ones will be taken care of pretty quickly, lowering the noise.
Of course, it introduces a new problem: Education by popularity, which goes back to your point on contentious material.
I can dig your PhD idea.
I've wondered about the potential for something like this- could you make "open source" textbooks?
The project linked seems to go a different way. My vision was such:
You would have a central company, not a charity, but not for-profit. It would do the things that textbook companies regularly do (or I hope they do), hire experts to write the text books, editors to check everything, a small publishing house, etc.
The difference is that it's all put online. It can be peer-reviewed by thousands, if not millions, and used by anyone. In order to make the company non-reliant on donations, it would be released under a custom license, one that allows reproduction of x pages at a time and unlimited but unedited online disbursal, while the company still sells the textbooks at cost.
The idea is that you would get a textbook that can be referenced by anyone, checked by anyone, and teachers can download updates and corrections without having to buy a whole new damn book. I don't know how well it would work in the long run, but I'd say it's a sight better than the current set up for text books in school.
I shouldn't have expected much more from an MTV production, though.
I do admit that I often revert to using the "scare tactic" word to refer to things like illegal file sharing and copyright infringement. Calling it "theft" is the wrong title, but it's become so entrenched in the media that I have a hard time not using it for the wider recognition it has. While I will try not to, I likely will again, but I do know the difference.
This was much more true ten, maybe even five, years ago, when things were majorly underground and finding places to upload/download was much harder. But now, in many cases (especially where things like console modding is concerned), it's incredibly easy to find and download/torrent many games at once. I personally know of many "honest" (as in thieves) sources (not because I partake in that kind of thing but because I frequent sites where others do).
You also seem to be assuming the best in humanity- that those with the ability do. I agree that it is likely less common with the more well-off, but not a rare thing.
I'm not certain which way you mean that (as in it's funny that I try to equate them, or that I don't see them as the same thing). I don't play Madden, but I do know that they try to add features with every game, but to my knowledge it's mostly been small incremental upgrades since the transition to 3D. The main formula has always stayed the same. To its credit, it seems to do it well, and some people don't get tired of the same recipe, likely why it still sells.
Aha!, I see your trap. I have, and think you want to respond with something like "Well the game companies don't get money, so it's the same thing as pirating." This used to be something that I thought, as well, but that never sat well with me. I recently realized why, and will try to explain to you how I see the difference between file sharing and the second-hand market. (Please note that the following is all personal conjecture, so feel free to poke holes as you wish so I can firm it up.)
With piracy, a one-to-many model, one person can buy (or even steal!) one copy of one game and upload it. Once this (and whatever cracking) is done, the game is now available for almost unlimited distribution. One $50 payment (assuming they were honest enough to purchase it) can put the game into the hands of potentially millions. (I am unfamiliar with the actual download statistics, but I'm certain they're not that big.) Yes, some of them wouldn't have bought it anyway, but not all.
Let's say that a huge game like Halo 3 makes it to the web and is downloaded by a quarter million people (with over 10 million 360s on the market, I don't think that's an unwarranted number). Let's say that only 10% of those people would have purchased the game otherwise. That's 25,000 people at $50/game, with a gross revenue of $1.25M. That, in my opinion, is not small potatoes.
Now, the second hand market, a one-to-one model, works differently. Let's take the same quarter million people, and now they're all willing to purchase the game, but not all at full price. So we have the same 10% who are willing to buy it at full price, and through various channels the games they buy eventually work their way to the other 90% of the people. You only ever have one game for each purchase on the market (one-to-one).
Do you see the difference? In the piracy scenario of our sample, the game grossed $50 (if that). In the secondary market, the game grossed $1.25M. (I assume that the numbers outside of the sample would be the same in both cases.) So secondary sales,
You can argue that those who steal games wouldn't buy them in the first place, but then why steal them? Why get something that doesn't have value? Okay, you can extend that to say this is true for those below the poverty line, and I'd agree, but we both know that is not only poor people that pirate. I'd think that some (more than a tiny fraction) of those who pirate can afford (or at least save without much effort) and would buy the game if it was the only way, but would rather be cheap/fight "the man" and pirate it instead.
For shits and giggles, let's run with your idea of a copying device. If everyone could easily make their own duplicate Ferrari*, then very few people would pay. Why therefore, would Ferrari want to continue making cars? Some argue that is their problem, not yours. Alright, so now you have your own Ferrari, sweet. And every day your drive your Ferrari. And now it's getting kind of dull, even when you invite friends over to ride your Ferrari... (remember, this is about entertainment, so practical uses are irrelevant for the analogy).
So now what? You keep using the same Ferrari, over and over? I sure bet you'd like a new Ferrari to copy and use. Maybe something with a new built-in holographic projector and hooker bot (this is the future, after all). But, because no one was buying their cars, Ferrari had no interest in creating new cars with more auto advancements and interesting/innovative features. If they still exist at this point, they're probably surviving on a service model. Upgrade? What upgrade? Aside from fixing some mechanical issues in the car, giving extra features in upgrade packs usually get copied as well, so why bother.
But you have your Ferrari. Too bad no one cares, because now everyone else does too.
You see, it's not just economics and legality that are at issue here, it's innovation and incentive for those who produce these things. It's why we have things like Madden '08 and Tony Hawk Ultra Super Neat Skater 7, but no Skies of Arcadia 2 (or any number of original properties that never saw the light of day). Companies are banking more on established games that will reach the masses rather than new material or indie stuff, because apparently a lot of people who would actually be interested in newer stuff are the same kinds who have the ability and desire to download instead of pay for them.
So before you pirate, think of the Ferraris.
* I've ignored a whole other part of the requisite auto analogy that would cause it to break down, such as other immaterial things that can't be copied like insurance, registration, etc.
The portion of your post that I quoted basically, at least to me, tries to rationalize the ability to mod consoles so as to steal games, in essence claiming it's okay to do that.