You seem to have a deep-seated misunderstanding of socialism and the benefit of sensible regulations for the end customer, probably due to a lifetime of "socialism = BAD!" style indoctrination.
No, fair competition killed Blockbuster. That is not necessarily the same thing as the "invisible hand of the free market". If Blockbuster had been just a little bit aware of their position and what the future of movie/series watching would look like, they could have owned the entire segment. That would have been completely in line with free market philosophy, which doesn't mind monopolies at all, because it erroneously considers all actors to be rational, and considers companies unwilling to exploit their customers.
The Free Market is what allowed a small upstart company like netflix to destroy a juggernaut fortune-500 company that was blockbuster.
No. Netflix won because Blockbuster refused to innovate and were way too slow to realize that streaming is the future. The mythical free market didn't kill Blockbuster. Blockbuster killed Blockbuster.
The free market was what (almost) put kodak out of business. They refused to invest in the burgeoning digital camera market, trying to prevent it from happening and doubling down on film cameras. Thats not what the market wanted and they got put in their place.
That has nothing to do with the mythical free market. Kodak simply didn't follow the technical advances in camera technology, and paid for it.
Ooh, and Terminator as well. The first one is low-budget sci-fi genius. The sequel is a high-budget action fest blowout. Shame they only made those two movies...
For me there is absolutely no contest. Blade Runner (director's cut or Final Cut, obviously) shows a world that is fleshed out, a world that feels real and realistic, where your natural reaction is "yeah, this is how the world could be in 50 years". It's not huge on special effects fanfare, technology exists naturally in the world and no big occasion is made of it. It feels natural and grounded.
The Fifth Element is a close runner-up. It's just so big and colorful and goddamn French, like nothing else. It's a visual extravaganza and one hell of a ride.
And I have to mention Dredd as well, because like Blade Runner, it just feels real.
Top tier modern prog? The Mars Volta are basically pop stars.
Try Steven Wilson or Porcupine Tree. If you want to get a little more adventurous, there are bands like Caligula's Horse, Ihsahn, Ne Obliviscaris or Soen.
Opeth's "Black Rose Immortal" is over 20 minutes. But most songs pale in comparison to The Atomic Bitchwax' "The Local Fuzz", which is over 42 minutes long.
Even more embarassingly, their very own Contract of Carriage state that bumping paying passengers can ONLY happen pre-boarding. Once they're on the plane, it's over.
Let's also be clear that original AC doesn't need to resort to privacy... they could actually BUY the recordings to get what they want, and rip them to FLAC using one of the many methods available. Even if Spotify added a FLAC, DRM-free option that worked with a MP3 player from 1997 and came with a free OC3 Internet connection to their house, and a fiber drop to their MP3 player, there would be some other excuse -- "their UI isn't like Winamp, right back to the torrents" or some such.
Some people are just vehemently opposed to paying for things, now matter how inexpensive and convenient the delivery method is.
Universal seems hell-bent on ruining their own releases for paying customers (even free Spotify users generate income), while the CD rips available through P2P for free do not have any audible watermarks.
Universal Media Groups stupid-ass annoying and clearly audible watermarks on streaming services are another good example.
They're deliberately supplying an inferior product to paying customers, but the people who torrent a CD rip get the untainted sound quality. It's absolutely ridiculous.
A preference for physical media, which you can continue listening to after the store that sold it to you has closed up shop and the hard drive holding your music collection took a shit or the DRM music player used by your store of choice (admittedly a thing of the past in most cases) needs to refresh licenses, isn't respectable?
Tell that to everyone who bought music through DRM-encumbered stores that later shut down. They're sure all wishing they'd bought physical media. Plus the fact that an uncompressed CD just sounds better; yeah, I'll keep my physical media, thanks.
I waffled over this issue for a long time. but the simple fact of the matter is that I cannot remember the last time I put a CD in my CD player and just played it. Any CDs I've bought for the last 5-6 years have gone straight to my PC, ripped to LAME -q0 -V0 MP3. And I recently decided to get a Spotify premium account, because 99% of the music I listen to is on there anyway, and I like the curated playlists and recommendations.
So my collection of ~400 CDs is simply taking up space for no good reason. Luckily, existence of people like you with a fetish for physical media means that I can sell my currently unloved CD collection, hopefully to someone who will appreciate them more than I currently do. I'm probably keeping my signed CDs and some of the imported versions with Japan-only bonus tracks that aren't available anywhere else, for some reason.
Also no, there is no audible difference between a CD and something like Spotify's highest quality (320kbps Ogg Vorbis). If you're hearing a difference, it's down to mastering differences, not the format. And both are significantly better than the shit-tier stuff you get from Youtube pirates.
And that's why we need sites like Bandcamp. You get to stream the tracks a limited number of times, so you know what you're buying. And 85% of the price you pay goes directly to the artists.
The sound quality is going to be utter shit for tracks ripped from Youtube.
Contrast this with Bandcamp, where you get the music for download in any format you want (including lossless FLAC or ALAC), with perfect tagging, embedded cover art and unlimited streaming in the Bandcamp app.
Well said. Yes there is the fourth group mentioned by someone else responding (although I highly doubt it's ever as significant as he suggests) and there is even a fifth group... the really dedicated consumers who simply consume more content than they could/would ever buy (or collect/hoard it even without consuming it).
This is a massive group. Do you know how many people I know with a personal archive of thousands of digital books and gigs upon gigs of mp3s and even terrabytes of movies/tv and/or all of the above? All of them buy content as well and yes they do make recommendations and people listen. On paper these are the worst pirates and amount to lost revenue figures off the charts but there is no way some guy barely makiing above minimum wage and living in a trailer park and all his friends combined was ever going to buy the movies he watches in a week or buy all the books his wife chain reads.
That would be me. I hit the 50,000 track upload limit on Google Play Music quite easily. I had terabytes of downloaded movies and TV series, which I never got around to actually watching.
Getting a Spotify subscription and getting rid of all the junk I was never going to listen to/watch anyway was tremendously good for my mental well-being (not even joking).
Slashdot Mirror
In other words "*beep boop* does not compute, I do not understand hoo-mans"?
You seem to misunderstand the question "What's Your Favorite Sci-Fi Movie?".
You seem to have a deep-seated misunderstanding of socialism and the benefit of sensible regulations for the end customer, probably due to a lifetime of "socialism = BAD!" style indoctrination.
No, fair competition killed Blockbuster. That is not necessarily the same thing as the "invisible hand of the free market". If Blockbuster had been just a little bit aware of their position and what the future of movie/series watching would look like, they could have owned the entire segment. That would have been completely in line with free market philosophy, which doesn't mind monopolies at all, because it erroneously considers all actors to be rational, and considers companies unwilling to exploit their customers.
As reality has shown, this is not true.
The Free Market is what allowed a small upstart company like netflix to destroy a juggernaut fortune-500 company that was blockbuster.
No. Netflix won because Blockbuster refused to innovate and were way too slow to realize that streaming is the future. The mythical free market didn't kill Blockbuster. Blockbuster killed Blockbuster.
The free market was what (almost) put kodak out of business. They refused to invest in the burgeoning digital camera market, trying to prevent it from happening and doubling down on film cameras. Thats not what the market wanted and they got put in their place.
That has nothing to do with the mythical free market. Kodak simply didn't follow the technical advances in camera technology, and paid for it.
Ooh, and Terminator as well. The first one is low-budget sci-fi genius. The sequel is a high-budget action fest blowout. Shame they only made those two movies...
For me there is absolutely no contest. Blade Runner (director's cut or Final Cut, obviously) shows a world that is fleshed out, a world that feels real and realistic, where your natural reaction is "yeah, this is how the world could be in 50 years". It's not huge on special effects fanfare, technology exists naturally in the world and no big occasion is made of it. It feels natural and grounded.
The Fifth Element is a close runner-up. It's just so big and colorful and goddamn French, like nothing else. It's a visual extravaganza and one hell of a ride.
And I have to mention Dredd as well, because like Blade Runner, it just feels real.
He didn't throw a fit, he was assaulted.
And yes, I would refuse to move. The Contract of Carriage specifically states that bumping passengers like this must happen before boarding.
23 seconds? That's basically a prog rock album!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Top tier modern prog? The Mars Volta are basically pop stars.
Try Steven Wilson or Porcupine Tree. If you want to get a little more adventurous, there are bands like Caligula's Horse, Ihsahn, Ne Obliviscaris or Soen.
Opeth's "Black Rose Immortal" is over 20 minutes. But most songs pale in comparison to The Atomic Bitchwax' "The Local Fuzz", which is over 42 minutes long.
How can you even walk, with the infected pustulent cock of Corporate America that far up your ass?
The key point is that they can be denied boarding, not kicked off the flight when they've already boarded and are in their seats.
Even more embarassingly, their very own Contract of Carriage state that bumping paying passengers can ONLY happen pre-boarding. Once they're on the plane, it's over.
No, the right in America is mostly pro-"whoever pays me the most".
Let's also be clear that original AC doesn't need to resort to privacy ... they could actually BUY the recordings to get what they want, and rip them to FLAC using one of the many methods available. Even if Spotify added a FLAC, DRM-free option that worked with a MP3 player from 1997 and came with a free OC3 Internet connection to their house, and a fiber drop to their MP3 player, there would be some other excuse -- "their UI isn't like Winamp, right back to the torrents" or some such.
Some people are just vehemently opposed to paying for things, now matter how inexpensive and convenient the delivery method is.
A ton of albums released by Universal still have clearly audible watermarks on Spotify (and other streaming services).
https://www.mattmontag.com/mus...
Universal seems hell-bent on ruining their own releases for paying customers (even free Spotify users generate income), while the CD rips available through P2P for free do not have any audible watermarks.
Some good music?
You don't get out much, do you?
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over all this amazing metal that has been released in the last 30 years.
Universal Media Groups stupid-ass annoying and clearly audible watermarks on streaming services are another good example.
They're deliberately supplying an inferior product to paying customers, but the people who torrent a CD rip get the untainted sound quality. It's absolutely ridiculous.
A preference for physical media, which you can continue listening to after the store that sold it to you has closed up shop and the hard drive holding your music collection took a shit or the DRM music player used by your store of choice (admittedly a thing of the past in most cases) needs to refresh licenses, isn't respectable?
Tell that to everyone who bought music through DRM-encumbered stores that later shut down. They're sure all wishing they'd bought physical media. Plus the fact that an uncompressed CD just sounds better; yeah, I'll keep my physical media, thanks.
I waffled over this issue for a long time. but the simple fact of the matter is that I cannot remember the last time I put a CD in my CD player and just played it. Any CDs I've bought for the last 5-6 years have gone straight to my PC, ripped to LAME -q0 -V0 MP3. And I recently decided to get a Spotify premium account, because 99% of the music I listen to is on there anyway, and I like the curated playlists and recommendations.
So my collection of ~400 CDs is simply taking up space for no good reason. Luckily, existence of people like you with a fetish for physical media means that I can sell my currently unloved CD collection, hopefully to someone who will appreciate them more than I currently do. I'm probably keeping my signed CDs and some of the imported versions with Japan-only bonus tracks that aren't available anywhere else, for some reason.
Also no, there is no audible difference between a CD and something like Spotify's highest quality (320kbps Ogg Vorbis). If you're hearing a difference, it's down to mastering differences, not the format. And both are significantly better than the shit-tier stuff you get from Youtube pirates.
And that's why we need sites like Bandcamp. You get to stream the tracks a limited number of times, so you know what you're buying. And 85% of the price you pay goes directly to the artists.
The sound quality is going to be utter shit for tracks ripped from Youtube.
Contrast this with Bandcamp, where you get the music for download in any format you want (including lossless FLAC or ALAC), with perfect tagging, embedded cover art and unlimited streaming in the Bandcamp app.
And that is exactly why I LOVE Bandcamp, because the money goes to the people doing the actual work.
Well said. Yes there is the fourth group mentioned by someone else responding (although I highly doubt it's ever as significant as he suggests) and there is even a fifth group... the really dedicated consumers who simply consume more content than they could/would ever buy (or collect/hoard it even without consuming it).
This is a massive group. Do you know how many people I know with a personal archive of thousands of digital books and gigs upon gigs of mp3s and even terrabytes of movies/tv and/or all of the above? All of them buy content as well and yes they do make recommendations and people listen. On paper these are the worst pirates and amount to lost revenue figures off the charts but there is no way some guy barely makiing above minimum wage and living in a trailer park and all his friends combined was ever going to buy the movies he watches in a week or buy all the books his wife chain reads.
That would be me. I hit the 50,000 track upload limit on Google Play Music quite easily. I had terabytes of downloaded movies and TV series, which I never got around to actually watching.
Getting a Spotify subscription and getting rid of all the junk I was never going to listen to/watch anyway was tremendously good for my mental well-being (not even joking).