While medical care may be very cheap there, I'll bet you that it doesn't even come close to being the same quality as it is here. Yeah, you pay for it, but if you can afford it, you get the best of the best.
What a naive post, and somehow I'm not shocked it got modded +5 insightful. Fact of the matter is that companies great and small go out of business all the time, sometimes for predictable reasons (horse and buggy industry example) and sometimes for not so predictable reasons (like many of the recent wallstreet scandals).
The real point is it doesn't matter what the likelihood of the companies going out of business is, it matters if the customer will be screwed if they ever do, and in this case the answer is yes, the customer WILL be screwed if Valve happens to go out of business for WHATEVER reason we can or cannot predict.
So I'm curious how you plan to adapt your website's business model to compete with this new government site, which will be offering the same service for free.
Or better yet, tell both the RIAA and the MPAA to join that network because thats where all the pirates are.
Then they'll flood it with their broken files, and inevitably end up suing each other over some similar file names, most likely movie soundtracks. 2 birds with one stone.
And what about the colleges who are making deals with Napster to provide students with a service which they don't have a choice of opting out of?
I don't see any reason why the MPAA wouldn't try to move in with similar motives and then launch lawsuits from that position on all who weren't "on the service".
I have to say I think Trader Joe's prices are a bit higher than average. Of course, their products tend to be a bit higher quality, often going into "gourmet" territory. I can't exactly buy truffle oil at the Rainbow here.
So yes, Trader Joe's rocks for anybody who enjoys high quality food, but you pay for that quality.
But there's many disadvantages to this as well. There's a "feel" to holding a gun that a mouse simply cannot replicate. There is also the smell and sound of the animals which wouldn't translate very well over the net.
Personally though, this seems like the first step between bridging the gap between CS and the movie Toys.
I didn't mean to sound accusing, which is why I added the disclaimer. I don't think you're an astroturfer, I was just suggesting the highly unlikely, albeit possible issue of Valve having done this.
Well, I don't think the advantage will last for long once camera phones become even MORE ingrained in our culture, but for now, when someone has a cellphone, at least in America, you don't automatically assume they have a camera in them as well, so you're not on guard for having your pic taken.
I'd be curious to see what people from Asia think who have adopted camera phones long before they ever reached our shores. Over there do you just assume someone has a camera in their phone?
You know, if I were a bit more paranoid and untrusting, I could almost see the parent as an astroturfer from Valve trying to encourage people to just buy things through Steam in the future, since they have a much greater profit margin on it than they do through distributors.
I'm just goint to put on my tin foil hat for a second here and suggest a very far fetched evil idea:
Is it at all possible that they PLANNED on people who bought it retail having these issues to encourage more people to just buy it through Steam in the future, since they get much more profit that way?
I'm all for cutting out the middleman, but when the process of distributing without the middleman becomes more difficult and less beneficial than WITH the middleman, then I think that it is a horrible idea. And Valve has just proven that they are not capable of utilizing that strategy in a method that benefits anybody but themselves.
This will have the same effect on science as the dotcom boom did for the programmers of the world. Anytime you glamorize or show huge amounts of money (or any reward for that matter) without showing the nitty gritty of all the work, how grueling it really is, and the harsh realities of the profession, you will end up with clueless people who just want to be there for whatever it was that got them excited about it in the first place (the glamour, the money, whatever). This is why there are so many clueless programmers out there who can barely code HTML, and this is why the programming job market has been completely saturated.
So I guess this kind of stuff is good, if you want to flood the science industry with the same kind of people who are just chasing after whatever false or misleading promises the show offers.
But of course there are some beneficial effects, namely making us geeks sexier, which I'm always down for. Plus it gives people more appreciation for some of those jobs out there that nobody really knew about but were pretty cool.
But if I had to choose either good or bad, I'd say in the long run this is bad, and will get worse the more popular the show gets and the longer it goes on.
"Right. Kazaa and others are what they are because I don't have to pay for what I download and because what is being shared is made by users. Bootlegs, old records, forgotten recordings, tiny bands. All the stuff you can't find in the shops."
The rest of your post was spot on, but I have to say you are very naive or enjoy lying to yourself if you think this is the reason Kazaa is what it is. Kazaa is and always has been about about downloading pirated material. Yes, there are other files on there that are perfectly legal, but the reason it has the user base it does is not because of people downloading the latest linux distro, its because of all the kids out there downloading the lastest eminem or britney spears.
I'm not saying that the things you mentioned don't exist, but lets not sugar coat this any more than we have to.
What flamebait. First off, I'd love to see some cold hard numbers to support your assumption that most people bought tivo for the timeshifting and season pass features. If you can't back it up with numbers, don't make such a broad assumption.
Commercials aren't that bad, but I'm in advertising/marketing so I may be a bit biased. That being said, I would NEVER suggest to a client that they run one of these tivo ads because in the end, it pisses off the viewer. If they payed for a product/service to escape one thing, and that very thing is now being forced on them, that is fucking ridiculous and if you can't see that and understand why people are upset about it, you need to crawl back under whatever rock you trolls spew forth from.
It is not your place to decide whether or not people should have an issue with ads being forced on them. It is up to them, and as the other posts here have shown, there are quite a few people who are very upset about this, and that's just on Slashdot.
You a very right though that this is a supply and demand issue. People are demanding no commercials, and tivo used to supply a way to meet that demand. But they're not doing it now, so whoever can, will get the money of those demanding it. It may take some time, but I feel ultimately people will decide to vote with their money and show tivo the error of their ways.
Let me tell you why this will not work. As the push towards PVR becomes greater, advertisers will start to advertise with tivo as well as on tv. They'll think "well, they can't get away from us now!". Tivo then thinks, "great! we'll get some serious ad revenue now"
However the customers will think "so wait, I bought this thing to avoid the commercials, and now the people are putting those same commercials in when I'm fast forwarding. I don't want this, who oh who will come along and provide a pay service that acts as tivo used to?"
And then someone will come along and provide the service tivo used to, and tivo will die. I personally would love to see mythTV replace it in the mainstream, and this shotgun-to-foot action by tivo management is exactly the thing that will bring this about.
I am a MMORPG vet, having been a MUD vet way before that. I have beta tested almost all of the current mainstream offerings and played a few of them after they went retail.
Now before I begin, let me say I absolutely love Blizzard, and have nothing but good things to say about them, and had pinned all my MMORPG hopes on them for WoW. I had become jaded from the "skinner box" gameplay of pretty much EVERY SINGLE MMORPG out there.
What did I discover? That WoW was that same skinner box model, with gameplay reminiscent of EQ1, just at a faster pace. I honestly wasn't that impressed. And its funny because when I ask people how WoW is different from EQ, all they can usually muster is "but....but...its in the World of Warcraft!"
I am enjoying the WoW beta test, but I will never drop money for that game. If I buy any of the new MMORPGs, it will probably be Guildwars since I hear you don't need to pay a monthly fee, plus the gameplay was even faster paced than WoW. Almost no travel time (even within cities), absolutely BEAUTIFUL world, and their instanced adventure system was fun. Plus the gladiator arena was a blast.
I dunno, WoW just kind of reminded me of that painting someone did once where they interviewed people on what they'd most like to see in a painting, took the average of the results, and painted that. Problem was nobody liked it because it was too normal/boring. WoW took all the best elements from everything out there and did the exact same thing. Nicely put together, but nothing out of the ordinary in any way whatsoever.
Slashdot Mirror
....yet.
The real point is it doesn't matter what the likelihood of the companies going out of business is, it matters if the customer will be screwed if they ever do, and in this case the answer is yes, the customer WILL be screwed if Valve happens to go out of business for WHATEVER reason we can or cannot predict.
Right, because I'm sure all the pirates will use their real name, CC#, address, etc.
I wonder if they'll join the crowd and sue to protect their failing business model?
Have you looked at selling your database to them?
Then they'll flood it with their broken files, and inevitably end up suing each other over some similar file names, most likely movie soundtracks. 2 birds with one stone.
I don't see any reason why the MPAA wouldn't try to move in with similar motives and then launch lawsuits from that position on all who weren't "on the service".
So yes, Trader Joe's rocks for anybody who enjoys high quality food, but you pay for that quality.
Personally though, this seems like the first step between bridging the gap between CS and the movie Toys.
Then they came for our felt tip markers, but I did not speak up because I did not have a felt tip marker.
Then they came for the electrical tape, and I did not speak up for I did not have electrical tape.
Then they came for me and there was nothing left to crack the DRM they installed in my brain.
I'd be curious to see what people from Asia think who have adopted camera phones long before they ever reached our shores. Over there do you just assume someone has a camera in their phone?
Shouldn't it be Slashdotters: Sitting down and preaching the talk since 1997?
Is it at all possible that they PLANNED on people who bought it retail having these issues to encourage more people to just buy it through Steam in the future, since they get much more profit that way?
So I guess this kind of stuff is good, if you want to flood the science industry with the same kind of people who are just chasing after whatever false or misleading promises the show offers.
But of course there are some beneficial effects, namely making us geeks sexier, which I'm always down for. Plus it gives people more appreciation for some of those jobs out there that nobody really knew about but were pretty cool.
But if I had to choose either good or bad, I'd say in the long run this is bad, and will get worse the more popular the show gets and the longer it goes on.
That made me wonder, does anybody out there currently sell short range RFID jammers?
The rest of your post was spot on, but I have to say you are very naive or enjoy lying to yourself if you think this is the reason Kazaa is what it is. Kazaa is and always has been about about downloading pirated material. Yes, there are other files on there that are perfectly legal, but the reason it has the user base it does is not because of people downloading the latest linux distro, its because of all the kids out there downloading the lastest eminem or britney spears.
I'm not saying that the things you mentioned don't exist, but lets not sugar coat this any more than we have to.
Gotta say though, this gives a whole new meaning to "dropped connection" *groan*.
Commercials aren't that bad, but I'm in advertising/marketing so I may be a bit biased. That being said, I would NEVER suggest to a client that they run one of these tivo ads because in the end, it pisses off the viewer. If they payed for a product/service to escape one thing, and that very thing is now being forced on them, that is fucking ridiculous and if you can't see that and understand why people are upset about it, you need to crawl back under whatever rock you trolls spew forth from.
It is not your place to decide whether or not people should have an issue with ads being forced on them. It is up to them, and as the other posts here have shown, there are quite a few people who are very upset about this, and that's just on Slashdot.
You a very right though that this is a supply and demand issue. People are demanding no commercials, and tivo used to supply a way to meet that demand. But they're not doing it now, so whoever can, will get the money of those demanding it. It may take some time, but I feel ultimately people will decide to vote with their money and show tivo the error of their ways.
However the customers will think "so wait, I bought this thing to avoid the commercials, and now the people are putting those same commercials in when I'm fast forwarding. I don't want this, who oh who will come along and provide a pay service that acts as tivo used to?"
And then someone will come along and provide the service tivo used to, and tivo will die. I personally would love to see mythTV replace it in the mainstream, and this shotgun-to-foot action by tivo management is exactly the thing that will bring this about.
Now before I begin, let me say I absolutely love Blizzard, and have nothing but good things to say about them, and had pinned all my MMORPG hopes on them for WoW. I had become jaded from the "skinner box" gameplay of pretty much EVERY SINGLE MMORPG out there.
What did I discover? That WoW was that same skinner box model, with gameplay reminiscent of EQ1, just at a faster pace. I honestly wasn't that impressed. And its funny because when I ask people how WoW is different from EQ, all they can usually muster is "but....but...its in the World of Warcraft!"
I am enjoying the WoW beta test, but I will never drop money for that game. If I buy any of the new MMORPGs, it will probably be Guildwars since I hear you don't need to pay a monthly fee, plus the gameplay was even faster paced than WoW. Almost no travel time (even within cities), absolutely BEAUTIFUL world, and their instanced adventure system was fun. Plus the gladiator arena was a blast.
I dunno, WoW just kind of reminded me of that painting someone did once where they interviewed people on what they'd most like to see in a painting, took the average of the results, and painted that. Problem was nobody liked it because it was too normal/boring. WoW took all the best elements from everything out there and did the exact same thing. Nicely put together, but nothing out of the ordinary in any way whatsoever.