You're absolutely right if you're dealing with rational actors. The weird thing is, humans would prefer to roll all of their costs (be they economic, emotional, or physical) into a single larger cost. In fact, the preference is pronounced enough that people are often willing to take a net loss if it's necessary to roll their losses together. I'm not making this phenomenon up; a number of studies supports it. (Read about it in The Power of Persuasion, reviewed on slashdot a few months ago.)
So for example, someone might feel worse about being fined by the IRS for $75 twice than once for $200.
Or someone might prefer to pay $300 for a console-DVD player than $200 for a console and $50 for a DVD player separately. So a company would be quite savvy to offer at least the option. And perhaps their focus groups are one-sided enough to justify ONLY offering that.
Another corollary to the phenomenon is that customers might not really notice or discriminate between a $299 price tag and a $280 price tag, whereas they certainly will differentiate between "plays DVDs" and "doesn't." That's why magazines often offer "free gifts" to subscribers instead of merely lowering the cost of subscription by the cost of the gift.
So in summary, I can certainly see circumstances under which including the DVD play feature might be a very smart move on the company's part.
No! Because life goes on for 99.9% of all citizens at the present (positive) frequency of murders. Even though deterrence doesn't ELIMIATE murder, it cuts it back enough that the system works.
With virus writers, though, a single guy infects the whole world. You'd literally need to deter every single potential author before you'd see much of a change. Cutting back on the number of virus writers isn't that significant; to have the effect MS is looking for, they'd have to wipe them out completely. And deterrence just won't do that, because there will always be the occasional radical who for whatever reason isn't affected by deterrence.
So offering bounties and such is really a pretty useless action on MS's part, provided they're legitimately interested in squashing viruses. They'd be much better served offering people bounties to find original, exploitable holes in Windows security and report them only to MS. Give out $250,000 for each unique remote exploit people can find and patch them -- that would be a step in the direction of security.
Baloney. If anything, this proves that deterrence is utterly worthless. It demonstrates that only a single hacker (or maybe one hacker and two or three of his friends) can infect the entire world. So you could offer a $10 billion bounty and a mandatory death sentence for the guy and his entire family -- but all it takes is ONE GUY out of 6 billion humans who doesn't think he'll get caught, or is insane and simply doesn't act in his own self-interest, or hasn't heard of the penalty, and you're completely sunk.
Think about how devastating the penalties are for murder in the U.S. And realize that nevertheless, murders happen every day. In light of that, their virus bounties are absolutely useless for everything except PR. But that's what they've always been about -- the APPEARANCE of security.
These are things that aren't illegal, but are merely rude; you are taking advantage of the proprietor.
There is no "legal but rude" in the world of business. There are exactly two categories (well, a continuum, but only a one-dimensional one): profitable and not. Corporations have no morals to burden, no souls to damn, and no sympathy to appeal to. They are legally convenient constellations of contracts and nothing more. They are emotionless profit-maximizing machines. They spend lots of money (on likable actors and PR campaigns and smiling stock photos of models) trying to convince you otherwise because it's to their financial benefit that you LIKE them, but they will never -- CAN never -- like you back. They're not human.
So if you feel guilty for depriving a for-profit entity of profit, that entity will quickly learn to take advantage of you. And you can burn all your cash feeling moral and upright and the entities will smile back and thank you with skillfully crafted kudos and warm fuzzies, but it's all a lie.
Don't waste your conscience on corporations. It just doesn't make sense.
Bob is (implicitly) saying: "Hey, I went out and took these pictures, and you can have them! When you view them, I have some ads running so I can continue to bring them to you".
Or maybe Bob is (implicitly) saying: "Hey, I found a way to make lots of cash by polluting your eyeballs and distorting your preferences with advertising! I also put up some site content as bait so you keep coming back and poisoning your mind."
Fuck that. It doesn't matter why Bob decided to post the photos. If he wants us to agree to pay for them, he should charge for a subscription. If he figures he can make more money by cramming ads down our throats instead, that's his gamble to take. If it fails, it's Bob's problem. There is no moral obligation WHATSOEVER to view his marketing tripe.
Is there any reason at all to allow corporations to change their names?
We have a whole body of law -- trademark law -- to prevent companies from confusing customers by imitating other companies. Why do we allow them to confuse customers by pretending not to be themselves?
In recent memory, I can think of this one, the Gator to Claria switch, and Phillip Morris to Altria Group switch. Every one of them is a blatant attempt to shed bad PR and start fresh. But they EARNED the bad PR! Why can they legally drop a PR debt more easily than they can drop a financial debt?
At the very least, why doesn't the FTC review all name changes and reject ones that appear to be motivated by negative PR?
Hmm. I see what you're saying, but I gotta disagree. Cheating in a single-player game is not something people frown upon. Parents will oblige the youngster by purchasing the Game Genie and appreciatively ooh and ahh over how high mario can jump with the cheat enabled. But (good) parents will react quite oppositely when the kid cheats in a way that harms another. And that is the distinction children should make: grasping the harms principle in a rudimentary sense allows a child not only to follow rules, but to evaluate them. I'd say conformity is only valuable insofar as the rules one conforms to are worthwhile, and this distinction between cheating in a single-player video game and cheating in real life (e.g. lying or stealing) can only help the child develop that invaluable moral compass.
Granted, maybe I just have a different worldview. In that classic scenario where one arrives at a red light in the middle of a desert, and no one is approaching from any direction for 10 miles, and one is guaranteed not to get caught, I would run the light without a second thought, and I think an unwillingness to do so would constitute a character flaw. Without exception, I believe that victimless crimes aren't moral offenses, and acting to the contrary only introduces inefficiency and decreased utility.
Finally, you say ``And it lets you get a fuller enjoyment out of your investment'' -- I would say that this is only true if you assume (and you seem to assume it) that the cheating is required to derive the `fuller' enjoyment. I deny this as a general claim, and I would suggest that it points directly at the issue.
I only assumed this because grandparent stipulated it: he is busy, and he can only see the full game by cheating. Generally I agree with you that cheating tends not to increase one's satisfaction although I admit that there may be cases where it does. But again, I don't think that's a reason to prevent a child from cheating; better that he learn why it is in his interest not to ruin the game's enjoyment than live in resentment of what he perceives as arbitrary parental demands.
I realize that this isn't entirely on-topic, but I've been doing a lot of study on the social effects of games lately, so please forgive me.:-)
Intelligent discussions on slashdot are a rare pleasure; there's certainly nothing to forgive:)
I agree with you completely, but I think you're preaching to the choir. We know that Wikipedia is solid gold, but academia doesn't. The question is how to convince it.
And frankly, the idea that a free enyclopedia can work might be more than a little terrifying to a profession built upon expertise.
Or you could burn it to optical media with a printed description of the relevent file formats and a description of how to construct the hardware to read a CD.
You've got a gamecube; buy a Gameboy Advance Player for it and play GBA games on your 61" TV.
I'm serious. They are 2D gaming at the peak of modernity.
If that's not enough, consider buying a modded xbox (I got mine here for $300) and emulate NES/SNES/GBA games till the cows come home. They're just as entertaining as today's games, plus there are many more of them since they cost less to make than 3D.
I'd rather my kids not do it, and I'm not proud, but it makes sense.
Of course it makes sense -- so why the tone of guilt? Cheating at a game is not a moral offense, since there is no victim. It doesn't encourage you to cheat elsewhere in life since the risks and rewards (and morals) are of a completely different category. And it lets you get a fuller enjoyment out of your investment.
So what's the problem? Why not let your kids do it? I'm honestly curious.
Of course then the problem is how to do a graceful automated shutdown of a vehicle travelling at 100km/h, but you gotta start somewhere!
No way, man -- all you gotta do is wake the driver up again. Blast a klaxon in his ear.
I think it would also increase the potential for road rage by orders of magnitude. Right now, drivers give one another the finger and pantomime screaming (or actually scream, but it's all the same to the other driver) and that's it. With your device, they'd get involved in protracted shouting matches, which when done in person escalate into physical shoving and intimidation. On the road, that escalation might find its analogue in tailgating, nudging, or worse. And it certainly would lead to less aware driving.
What do you want the suckers to do when they wake up? Write Congress? What do you want Congress to do? Mandate that every big pharmaceutical company has to cure X terrible diseases per year or they get broken up?
Lamenting a problem gets you some points, because it is a subtle problem and you do well to recognize it. But you'd get treble the points for offering a fix that stands up to casual scrutiny.
The great thing about blame is that it, like love, is infinite. You can assign full blame for an event to multiple parties without running out.
e.g. my house gets robbed. First I blame the robbers themselves. Then I blame the company that makes my security system for not activating until four minutes into the robbery. Then I blame the police for not responding right away. And my brother for not locking the door of the house when he left. And society for creating rich/poor differentials great enough to encourage the crime. And myself for leaving expensive electronics in plain view of the downstairs window. And throughout it all, I continue cursing the robbers.
(I have never actually been robbed.)
So I think it's perfectly acceptable to blame society for a group's wrongdoings, as long as we continue to blame the individuals as well. And we do: thugs and drug-runners still go to jail.
God, man, this is wrenching to read. Shouldn't there be surgical options for someone in unbearable and chronic pain? I'm talking about surgically damaging or excising the pain center in the brain if nothing else. Less than subtle, I know, but in extreme cases you consider extreme measures.
A friend of mine was going through an enormous amount of pain following lung surgery, and she found that watching horror movies helped more than Oxycontin. They distracted her from the pain, and probably triggered adrenaline rushes that drowned it out, often for long stretches. It may be bogus, medically, but it's something you might consider trying.
You're talking about trademarks, jackass, which are completely different. What is really annoying is that you knew it: the arguments he makes about copyright don't apply to "its siblings," and that's why he didn't talk about abolishing patents and trademarks too. You're not playing fair; you're trolling.
Currently the only way you can legally obtain files over the internet for playback on an iPod is by purchasing songs from iTunes.
Bullshit. Just last week, TMBG opened an mp3 store. There are plenty of free mp3s elsewhere. Lots of small bands offer free downloads. Even bigger ones -- like the Ataris -- have free tracks up on their website. And there are plenty of mp3 files that are not music: I often download Supreme Court oral argument mp3s and listen to them in transit.
Ohh, you meant that the iTMS is the only way to get legal JESSICA SIMPSON mp3s online.
Course, if you're such a slathering Jessica Simpson fan (mmm... talent...) and hate DRM, buy a damn CD and rip it!
Shit, man, let them invoke the DMCA against a big-name target and watch the industry back-pedal. "Wait, that Ultimate Weapon we pushed through the legislature can be used against us too? Hold on a sec..." The way to kill a bad law is to enforce it and let the outcry build.
In this case, Real would be in violation of the software license on the iPod, and would not be infringing on the DMCA.
How the fuck are these mutually exclusive? Are you a real lawyer, or do you just play one on T.V.?
The fact that the DMCA burdens fair use is not just "a bit of a bummer," it's the total failure of our legislature. As a previous poster stated, the DMCA does not protect copyright: all it takes is a SINGLE CIRCUMVENTION ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, and then the song is an unencumbered mp3 ready to be shared with everyone. There IS NO IMPETUS to traffic in a true circumvention device when you can traffic in the copyrighted material instead. Therefore the only circumvention devices taht are truly restricted are ones that have lawful (non-infringing) purposes! All the DMCA does is protect frightened corporations from free market competition.
In other words, it screws the electorate to prop up the corporations. Isn't this a bit backwards? Shouldn't the corporations exist to serve the people, a la Adam Smith? Else why have them?
Finally, how do you expect elections to fix the sorry, broken excuse for a law if you "hate the sheer disgust associated with [it]"? That sheer disgust is what gets the politicians to listen, or what votes them out if they don't.
I'm pretty sure the DMCA only cares whether you've
-circumvented some sort of technological barrier -and that technological barrier protects copyrighted work.
Since the iPod technology protects copyrighted works (the songs the user downloads) and it seems Real circumvented it, then in my non-professional opinion, they violated the DMCA. Doesn't matter that Real themselves were not violating copyright.
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You're absolutely right if you're dealing with rational actors. The weird thing is, humans would prefer to roll all of their costs (be they economic, emotional, or physical) into a single larger cost. In fact, the preference is pronounced enough that people are often willing to take a net loss if it's necessary to roll their losses together. I'm not making this phenomenon up; a number of studies supports it. (Read about it in The Power of Persuasion, reviewed on slashdot a few months ago.)
So for example, someone might feel worse about being fined by the IRS for $75 twice than once for $200.
Or someone might prefer to pay $300 for a console-DVD player than $200 for a console and $50 for a DVD player separately. So a company would be quite savvy to offer at least the option. And perhaps their focus groups are one-sided enough to justify ONLY offering that.
Another corollary to the phenomenon is that customers might not really notice or discriminate between a $299 price tag and a $280 price tag, whereas they certainly will differentiate between "plays DVDs" and "doesn't." That's why magazines often offer "free gifts" to subscribers instead of merely lowering the cost of subscription by the cost of the gift.
So in summary, I can certainly see circumstances under which including the DVD play feature might be a very smart move on the company's part.
No! Because life goes on for 99.9% of all citizens at the present (positive) frequency of murders. Even though deterrence doesn't ELIMIATE murder, it cuts it back enough that the system works.
With virus writers, though, a single guy infects the whole world. You'd literally need to deter every single potential author before you'd see much of a change. Cutting back on the number of virus writers isn't that significant; to have the effect MS is looking for, they'd have to wipe them out completely. And deterrence just won't do that, because there will always be the occasional radical who for whatever reason isn't affected by deterrence.
So offering bounties and such is really a pretty useless action on MS's part, provided they're legitimately interested in squashing viruses. They'd be much better served offering people bounties to find original, exploitable holes in Windows security and report them only to MS. Give out $250,000 for each unique remote exploit people can find and patch them -- that would be a step in the direction of security.
That's what I meant; sorry for being unclear.
Baloney. If anything, this proves that deterrence is utterly worthless. It demonstrates that only a single hacker (or maybe one hacker and two or three of his friends) can infect the entire world. So you could offer a $10 billion bounty and a mandatory death sentence for the guy and his entire family -- but all it takes is ONE GUY out of 6 billion humans who doesn't think he'll get caught, or is insane and simply doesn't act in his own self-interest, or hasn't heard of the penalty, and you're completely sunk.
Think about how devastating the penalties are for murder in the U.S. And realize that nevertheless, murders happen every day. In light of that, their virus bounties are absolutely useless for everything except PR. But that's what they've always been about -- the APPEARANCE of security.
There is no "legal but rude" in the world of business. There are exactly two categories (well, a continuum, but only a one-dimensional one): profitable and not. Corporations have no morals to burden, no souls to damn, and no sympathy to appeal to. They are legally convenient constellations of contracts and nothing more. They are emotionless profit-maximizing machines. They spend lots of money (on likable actors and PR campaigns and smiling stock photos of models) trying to convince you otherwise because it's to their financial benefit that you LIKE them, but they will never -- CAN never -- like you back. They're not human.
So if you feel guilty for depriving a for-profit entity of profit, that entity will quickly learn to take advantage of you. And you can burn all your cash feeling moral and upright and the entities will smile back and thank you with skillfully crafted kudos and warm fuzzies, but it's all a lie.
Don't waste your conscience on corporations. It just doesn't make sense.
Or maybe Bob is (implicitly) saying: "Hey, I found a way to make lots of cash by polluting your eyeballs and distorting your preferences with advertising! I also put up some site content as bait so you keep coming back and poisoning your mind."
Fuck that. It doesn't matter why Bob decided to post the photos. If he wants us to agree to pay for them, he should charge for a subscription. If he figures he can make more money by cramming ads down our throats instead, that's his gamble to take. If it fails, it's Bob's problem. There is no moral obligation WHATSOEVER to view his marketing tripe.
Oh please. Washington is made up of politicians who will not see one red cent if another million bucks drains into the legal industry.
Is there any reason at all to allow corporations to change their names?
We have a whole body of law -- trademark law -- to prevent companies from confusing customers by imitating other companies. Why do we allow them to confuse customers by pretending not to be themselves?
In recent memory, I can think of this one, the Gator to Claria switch, and Phillip Morris to Altria Group switch. Every one of them is a blatant attempt to shed bad PR and start fresh. But they EARNED the bad PR! Why can they legally drop a PR debt more easily than they can drop a financial debt?
At the very least, why doesn't the FTC review all name changes and reject ones that appear to be motivated by negative PR?
Granted, maybe I just have a different worldview. In that classic scenario where one arrives at a red light in the middle of a desert, and no one is approaching from any direction for 10 miles, and one is guaranteed not to get caught, I would run the light without a second thought, and I think an unwillingness to do so would constitute a character flaw. Without exception, I believe that victimless crimes aren't moral offenses, and acting to the contrary only introduces inefficiency and decreased utility.
Finally, you say ``And it lets you get a fuller enjoyment out of your investment'' -- I would say that this is only true if you assume (and you seem to assume it) that the cheating is required to derive the `fuller' enjoyment. I deny this as a general claim, and I would suggest that it points directly at the issue.
I only assumed this because grandparent stipulated it: he is busy, and he can only see the full game by cheating. Generally I agree with you that cheating tends not to increase one's satisfaction although I admit that there may be cases where it does. But again, I don't think that's a reason to prevent a child from cheating; better that he learn why it is in his interest not to ruin the game's enjoyment than live in resentment of what he perceives as arbitrary parental demands.
I realize that this isn't entirely on-topic, but I've been doing a lot of study on the social effects of games lately, so please forgive me. :-)
Intelligent discussions on slashdot are a rare pleasure; there's certainly nothing to forgive :)
I agree with you completely, but I think you're preaching to the choir. We know that Wikipedia is solid gold, but academia doesn't. The question is how to convince it.
And frankly, the idea that a free enyclopedia can work might be more than a little terrifying to a profession built upon expertise.
Or you could burn it to optical media with a printed description of the relevent file formats and a description of how to construct the hardware to read a CD.
I'm serious. They are 2D gaming at the peak of modernity.
If that's not enough, consider buying a modded xbox (I got mine here for $300) and emulate NES/SNES/GBA games till the cows come home. They're just as entertaining as today's games, plus there are many more of them since they cost less to make than 3D.
Of course it makes sense -- so why the tone of guilt? Cheating at a game is not a moral offense, since there is no victim. It doesn't encourage you to cheat elsewhere in life since the risks and rewards (and morals) are of a completely different category. And it lets you get a fuller enjoyment out of your investment.
So what's the problem? Why not let your kids do it? I'm honestly curious.
Of course then the problem is how to do a graceful automated shutdown of a vehicle travelling at 100km/h, but you gotta start somewhere! No way, man -- all you gotta do is wake the driver up again. Blast a klaxon in his ear.
I think it would also increase the potential for road rage by orders of magnitude. Right now, drivers give one another the finger and pantomime screaming (or actually scream, but it's all the same to the other driver) and that's it. With your device, they'd get involved in protracted shouting matches, which when done in person escalate into physical shoving and intimidation. On the road, that escalation might find its analogue in tailgating, nudging, or worse. And it certainly would lead to less aware driving.
Hehehehe... Japan is so funny. Anthropomorphic cars. Hehehe... Can we order them with Garfield stripes?
No one's going to make you change. We'll let you dinosaurs die out by yourselves
What do you want the suckers to do when they wake up? Write Congress? What do you want Congress to do? Mandate that every big pharmaceutical company has to cure X terrible diseases per year or they get broken up?
Lamenting a problem gets you some points, because it is a subtle problem and you do well to recognize it. But you'd get treble the points for offering a fix that stands up to casual scrutiny.
The great thing about blame is that it, like love, is infinite. You can assign full blame for an event to multiple parties without running out.
e.g. my house gets robbed. First I blame the robbers themselves. Then I blame the company that makes my security system for not activating until four minutes into the robbery. Then I blame the police for not responding right away. And my brother for not locking the door of the house when he left. And society for creating rich/poor differentials great enough to encourage the crime. And myself for leaving expensive electronics in plain view of the downstairs window. And throughout it all, I continue cursing the robbers.
(I have never actually been robbed.)
So I think it's perfectly acceptable to blame society for a group's wrongdoings, as long as we continue to blame the individuals as well. And we do: thugs and drug-runners still go to jail.
God, man, this is wrenching to read. Shouldn't there be surgical options for someone in unbearable and chronic pain? I'm talking about surgically damaging or excising the pain center in the brain if nothing else. Less than subtle, I know, but in extreme cases you consider extreme measures.
A friend of mine was going through an enormous amount of pain following lung surgery, and she found that watching horror movies helped more than Oxycontin. They distracted her from the pain, and probably triggered adrenaline rushes that drowned it out, often for long stretches. It may be bogus, medically, but it's something you might consider trying.
You're talking about trademarks, jackass, which are completely different. What is really annoying is that you knew it: the arguments he makes about copyright don't apply to "its siblings," and that's why he didn't talk about abolishing patents and trademarks too. You're not playing fair; you're trolling.
Yeah, but you can have 3D 'abstract beings' much more easily than 3D photo-realistic beings. See: Zelda Windwaker.
And you can certainly have photo-realistic 2D graphics.
So I don't think your distinction is particularly valid, insofar as the photorealism/abstraction continuum is independent of 2D/3D.
Bullshit. Just last week, TMBG opened an mp3 store. There are plenty of free mp3s elsewhere. Lots of small bands offer free downloads. Even bigger ones -- like the Ataris -- have free tracks up on their website. And there are plenty of mp3 files that are not music: I often download Supreme Court oral argument mp3s and listen to them in transit.
Ohh, you meant that the iTMS is the only way to get legal JESSICA SIMPSON mp3s online.
Course, if you're such a slathering Jessica Simpson fan (mmm... talent...) and hate DRM, buy a damn CD and rip it!
Shit, man, let them invoke the DMCA against a big-name target and watch the industry back-pedal. "Wait, that Ultimate Weapon we pushed through the legislature can be used against us too? Hold on a sec..." The way to kill a bad law is to enforce it and let the outcry build.
How the fuck are these mutually exclusive? Are you a real lawyer, or do you just play one on T.V.?
The fact that the DMCA burdens fair use is not just "a bit of a bummer," it's the total failure of our legislature. As a previous poster stated, the DMCA does not protect copyright: all it takes is a SINGLE CIRCUMVENTION ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, and then the song is an unencumbered mp3 ready to be shared with everyone. There IS NO IMPETUS to traffic in a true circumvention device when you can traffic in the copyrighted material instead. Therefore the only circumvention devices taht are truly restricted are ones that have lawful (non-infringing) purposes! All the DMCA does is protect frightened corporations from free market competition.
In other words, it screws the electorate to prop up the corporations. Isn't this a bit backwards? Shouldn't the corporations exist to serve the people, a la Adam Smith? Else why have them?
Finally, how do you expect elections to fix the sorry, broken excuse for a law if you "hate the sheer disgust associated with [it]"? That sheer disgust is what gets the politicians to listen, or what votes them out if they don't.
I'm pretty sure the DMCA only cares whether you've
-circumvented some sort of technological barrier
-and that technological barrier protects copyrighted work.
Since the iPod technology protects copyrighted works (the songs the user downloads) and it seems Real circumvented it, then in my non-professional opinion, they violated the DMCA. Doesn't matter that Real themselves were not violating copyright.