"Is it unreasonable to assume that a great deal of CDR sales are related to piracy archives? "
In a word? Yes.
"Warez/MP3 archives, VCD/SVCDs, and MP3s converted to Audio CDs for the purpose of compatibility with older players probably make up a sizeable amount of CDR sales, particularly through non-office supply sources such as Walmart or Best Buy."
And can you point to some numbers justifying this? If not, you are trying to connect two things which have some vague relation to each other, but no direct connection, and is thus a meaningless correlation.
"Well probably have a better idea of whats going on from CDR sales figures."
Don't know if you're trolling or not...but is it really that hard to find a way to use CDRs aside from burning pirated material? How can you possibly tell if the usage of an online service has increased or decreased based on the amount of blank media sold of which only ONE of the many uses is to backup pirated files?
Filesharing companies claim their userbase increased after being threatened....
Media claims their threats were effective and the userbase decreased...
I mean...neither of these two groups would have an ulterior motive...naaaah...
So, in cases like these, aside from using your own good (or not so good) judgement, how are we supposed to be able to tell who to believe, or if we can't believe either source, where to find a source we CAN believe?
"It makes no difference how ceesy the "global village paradigm schtick" may be, a time is coming where people are producing art and putting it out there simply because the community wants to be entertained and it feels good to be the entertainer."
Wow, I don't think I've seen a better job of someone summing up the original definition of "entertainment". That is what it used to be all about. Now its going through its whole corporate phase because thats the only way to get heard. But thanks to the internet, that is slowly starting to change. Eventually, it will compete with/replace those who do it for profit because the desire to be heard is worth more to some people than making money. And suddenly there's a lot more passion behind the work too. Distribute it for free...and guess what? Corporate garbage entertainment is then seeing a direct, free, LEGAL competitor who they have no control over. If its hippies that are starting all this, I say PASS ME THAT JOINT!!!!.
"If this becomes commonplace, the only thing it's going to really do is make popup ads into Popup Prism (tm) ads."
Something tells me the company had this in mind when they created it. Seriously, why else would you name your product that? They will wait to see if it catches on and then sell a method to marketers to highlight their ads automatically. (adds another layer of tinfoil to hat)
"And you wonder why you get ads that have absolutely no interest for you? And why advertisers have to shout lounder and louder to get through a mass of untargeted ads?"
Here's a tip for them then that will help them reach their target better AND save them money.
DON'T GIVE ME ADS!!
I will NEVER buy something that I see in an annoying ad online. I already ignore them all due to psychological conditioning. Now it just pisses me off because it eats up my bandwidth. Seriously, I understand the reasoning of "well, there might be some people who say they don't want the ads but might buy/click anyways". Honestly, I think the advertisers would make more just moving to opt-in for ads. Of course, the people hosting the ads want it to be the opposite because they make their money usually on volume of clickthru's and not necessarily on clickthru's that lead to sales.
"I'll put it this way: There may be other games that let you have sex, but the feedback is sooooo much better in "Real Life"."
Is this 'sex' quest kind of like the Jedi quest in Star Wars: Galaxies? No guarantee you'll get to attempt the quest, and odds of about 1-1000 of succeeding? Eh, maybe I can wait till someone just sells their woman on EBay
"I don't wonder within a few years psychologists officially recognize a mental disorder of "Video Game/Reality dissociation" or something..."
They are already starting to. Its not 'official' per se, but everytime something like Columbine happens, guess what topic inevitably comes up? 'Yup, these kids shot everybody up because they were playing Doom.'
Awesome, I should be able to see them race. Now I just need to bring a bucket of mud and a paintball gun. Just kidding....but actually now that I think about it....how cool would it be to have a video game with people racing in solar cars, and your job is to cover them with paint and mud to try to slow them down and obscure their vision so they crash? Errr......its late......sleep..............
" Well, you can legally do the opposite and pick up his garbage and have a look-see through it.
It could be fun to share his private life with the world."
Finally! A REAL use for image blogging. Screw getting him tons of junk mail. Lets make his private life as public as we can. Take pictures etc, and do press releases to all the big websites. CNN, MSNBC, etc. Lets see what happens when a lot of people, who may or may not be as technically sophisticated as the slashdot crowd....but suddenly know a lot about this guy, decide to do once they have easy access to his personal life.
There's a ton of people on here bitching about how there was no point in adding MS to the blurb except to encourage MS bashing in the comments.
What I want to know is what can we do about it aside from choosing another site to get our news from? How can we get our issues to the people they need to. Does CmdrTaco really care if there was MS Flaming in the summary? No, he probably likes it, because guess what, it means more comments. Which in turn means more eyeballs on the ads, which in turn means more money from advertisers.
The quality of this site has been going to hell lately, and everybody bitches and moans about it in the comments, but guess what, NOTHING gets done about it. How can we change that?
Your link to the original article does not work. Also, it is kind of disgusting that you can karmawhore just by posting in its entirety someone elses well thought out joke. Even if you do post a broken link giving credit to the original author, its pretty pathetic.
"One looks interesting; so I scan the "WebCode" or whatever with my phone. A couple links pop up on my screen, one to the reviews section of B&N.com for the book and one to the publisher."
You are being too trusting. What would happen is that the only reviews you would see are the favorable ones because that would be more likely to make you buy the book right then and there. This would be much cooler if you could point it to whatever review site you chose and it got its reviews from there.
Awesome post, I couldn't have put it better myself. Just two things I'd like to add though. This WOULD be a cool thing if perhaps you could set it to get reviews off of a site you choose. Perhaps some kind of XML tag or something could be used. This would require it to be open source technology....which would never happen, but the benefit would be if you didn't like all of the reviews that were um.....'biased' you could get them off of a site you trusted instead.
The other thing I'd like to point out is with the new Do Not Call registry....I wonder if using your cellphone for something like this would be considered 'establishing a business relationship' and thus entitle them to spam you. Granted, at that point its not spam.....so I don't know if the law about spamming cellphones would apply. But just a thought.
"Not really any step closer. The examples you use are really just more of a symptom of hollywood being eager to latch on to anything that has an existing brand... like games or old sitcoms, or remakes, or what have you."
Exactly. I vaguely recall (sorry I can't find the exact quote) an advertising article in which one of the marketing people working on the new Tomb Raider was talking about how the movie was "a total marketing package" or something of the sort. Basically it was one long commercial. The way he quoted it made it sound like everything that was done in the movie was done to show off a product.
Now, this comes as no surprise to me, as I'm in advertising...but disgusted me none the less. Hopefully people reject the Hollywood marketing movie crap that comes out. Sooner or later you're going to have to have a plot in the movie...you can't just make a movie with product placements and expect it to sell well.
"I hope Ashcroft doesn't get any ideas from this. We may wind up getting little text alerts on our cell phones when the Bill Of Rights is, and is not, in affect. "
Even worse, imagine all those color cellphones and what it'd be like to have a stupid little color guage telling us what the Terrorist Alert level is. "Shit honey, I have to go, my phone just went orange, get the saran wrap and duct tape!"
The first version of 3ED was 20 bucks. Now its 30. Why can they charge this much? Because its not TSR, its WoTC that is selling it. And guess what, they jack up their prices on everything. Why? Because stupid little kids buy it, or rather get their parents to buy it. And if people buy 3.5ED now, guess what, 4ED will be out a year later. And once they convince people to buy a new edition semi-annually, guess whats next? 4.1ED, 4.2ED, 4.3ED etc. If you think they wouldn't do that......give it a decade. Unless they go the way of TSR, it is inevitable. Simply put, its a lot easier to sell upgrades to a product at a slightly higher price on a more regular basis than it is to sell one large overhall at a way more expensive price than the last one people remembered.
on how long it takes Thinkgeek to sell an overpriced version of one of these for your desk? And then how long before Slashdot posts a dupe just to plug said Thinkgeek product?
" That's why I use Trojan (TM) brand rubbers to protect myself in all those "sticky" situations, especially the ones that cause me to exert large amounts of energy."
And exactly which situations cause you to exert large amounts of energy? Using Opera's Gesture Commands?
Slashdot Mirror
In a word? Yes.
"Warez/MP3 archives, VCD/SVCDs, and MP3s converted to Audio CDs for the purpose of compatibility with older players probably make up a sizeable amount of CDR sales, particularly through non-office supply sources such as Walmart or Best Buy."
And can you point to some numbers justifying this? If not, you are trying to connect two things which have some vague relation to each other, but no direct connection, and is thus a meaningless correlation.
Don't know if you're trolling or not...but is it really that hard to find a way to use CDRs aside from burning pirated material? How can you possibly tell if the usage of an online service has increased or decreased based on the amount of blank media sold of which only ONE of the many uses is to backup pirated files?
Media claims their threats were effective and the userbase decreased...
I mean...neither of these two groups would have an ulterior motive...naaaah...
So, in cases like these, aside from using your own good (or not so good) judgement, how are we supposed to be able to tell who to believe, or if we can't believe either source, where to find a source we CAN believe?
Wow, I don't think I've seen a better job of someone summing up the original definition of "entertainment". That is what it used to be all about. Now its going through its whole corporate phase because thats the only way to get heard. But thanks to the internet, that is slowly starting to change. Eventually, it will compete with/replace those who do it for profit because the desire to be heard is worth more to some people than making money. And suddenly there's a lot more passion behind the work too. Distribute it for free...and guess what? Corporate garbage entertainment is then seeing a direct, free, LEGAL competitor who they have no control over. If its hippies that are starting all this, I say PASS ME THAT JOINT!!!!.
Something tells me the company had this in mind when they created it. Seriously, why else would you name your product that? They will wait to see if it catches on and then sell a method to marketers to highlight their ads automatically. (adds another layer of tinfoil to hat)
Here's a tip for them then that will help them reach their target better AND save them money.
DON'T GIVE ME ADS!!
I will NEVER buy something that I see in an annoying ad online. I already ignore them all due to psychological conditioning. Now it just pisses me off because it eats up my bandwidth. Seriously, I understand the reasoning of "well, there might be some people who say they don't want the ads but might buy/click anyways". Honestly, I think the advertisers would make more just moving to opt-in for ads. Of course, the people hosting the ads want it to be the opposite because they make their money usually on volume of clickthru's and not necessarily on clickthru's that lead to sales.
Is this 'sex' quest kind of like the Jedi quest in Star Wars: Galaxies? No guarantee you'll get to attempt the quest, and odds of about 1-1000 of succeeding? Eh, maybe I can wait till someone just sells their woman on EBay
They are already starting to. Its not 'official' per se, but everytime something like Columbine happens, guess what topic inevitably comes up? 'Yup, these kids shot everybody up because they were playing Doom.'
Finally! A REAL use for image blogging. Screw getting him tons of junk mail. Lets make his private life as public as we can. Take pictures etc, and do press releases to all the big websites. CNN, MSNBC, etc. Lets see what happens when a lot of people, who may or may not be as technically sophisticated as the slashdot crowd....but suddenly know a lot about this guy, decide to do once they have easy access to his personal life.
"Stop touching me!"
"I...I...would burn down the building...."
"MooooooOOOOOOOOOooooo"
Yeah, but the first guy who posts a video of Natalie Portman covered in hot grits will go down in the annals of Slashdot history.
And it is powered by a 'nukular' reactor.
What I want to know is what can we do about it aside from choosing another site to get our news from? How can we get our issues to the people they need to. Does CmdrTaco really care if there was MS Flaming in the summary? No, he probably likes it, because guess what, it means more comments. Which in turn means more eyeballs on the ads, which in turn means more money from advertisers.
The quality of this site has been going to hell lately, and everybody bitches and moans about it in the comments, but guess what, NOTHING gets done about it. How can we change that?
Icarus.
You are being too trusting. What would happen is that the only reviews you would see are the favorable ones because that would be more likely to make you buy the book right then and there. This would be much cooler if you could point it to whatever review site you chose and it got its reviews from there.
The other thing I'd like to point out is with the new Do Not Call registry....I wonder if using your cellphone for something like this would be considered 'establishing a business relationship' and thus entitle them to spam you. Granted, at that point its not spam.....so I don't know if the law about spamming cellphones would apply. But just a thought.
Exactly. I vaguely recall (sorry I can't find the exact quote) an advertising article in which one of the marketing people working on the new Tomb Raider was talking about how the movie was "a total marketing package" or something of the sort. Basically it was one long commercial. The way he quoted it made it sound like everything that was done in the movie was done to show off a product.
Now, this comes as no surprise to me, as I'm in advertising...but disgusted me none the less. Hopefully people reject the Hollywood marketing movie crap that comes out. Sooner or later you're going to have to have a plot in the movie...you can't just make a movie with product placements and expect it to sell well.
Even worse, imagine all those color cellphones and what it'd be like to have a stupid little color guage telling us what the Terrorist Alert level is. "Shit honey, I have to go, my phone just went orange, get the saran wrap and duct tape!"
And exactly which situations cause you to exert large amounts of energy? Using Opera's Gesture Commands?