Seriously though: market driven, know demographics, data and numbers,...? One Sony word to serve as a small counterpoint: Betamax. Strategic decisions and number crunching can make their heads spin as well, apparently.
Male electronics: functionality, empowering features, etc. Female electronics: kitchen environment, petite design, fancy colors.
I don't know what dictionary you use, but it's pretty fucking textbook.
But maybe you're right, companies never fail, make stupid shit, or take shortcuts wherever there's a buck to save or someone outcompete..because they do their homework, they really understand...are you still keeping a straight face over there?
Drop a hot semi-nude chick in close proximity to whatever generic product X: research shows it's effective on men! It is, nevertheless, sad, stereotyped shit. Same goes for fancy colors and kitchen settings. It's just not as blatant.
You know, for a second there, I thought I'd posted something without remembering it.
I conclude that we're not exactly business' ideal consumers (..he writes on an ancient company-borrowed IBM T21 [750 MHz PIII], because he has researched his new system for over two fricken months now when his old one died...)
I dunno, when it comes to buying new boxen, every (male) geek friend I know spend endless amounts of time (only online though) on research, comparisons, searching for deals, etc. Although the same goes for the, sadly few, geek women I know. But then, if I was offered a 4.2 GHz, that's an impulse buy right there;)
Sharp redesigned its flat-panel TVs two years ago with women in mind./.../ Last Mother's Day, a Circuit City ad prominently featured one of the sleek TVs in a kitchen.
Sony's products targeting women include its LIV line,/.../ CD players for the kitchen and shower radios/.../. The smaller designs should fit better in a home -- characteristics desired by consumers in general and women in particular, said Ellen Glassman, a director of design at Sony.
Well isn't that some sad, stereotyped shit(?) According to the article, women complained about being patronized in tech stores. But what the hell kind of image of women do the tech manufacturers have?
1. "Well, these 'women' are always in the kitchen, right?!"
2. "True dat, so why not refit our gadgets so they match kitchen cabinets and stuff!"
3. "We've got it! Profit!"
What's the word I'm looking for... unzeitgeistful?
Very well said, albeit depressing as hell. I'm not American, but this is rampant in the EU too. Politicos, businesses and media, all busy creating artificial focal points of power and authority. Whether it's presidencies or punch-line agendas, dumbed-down 'news' or brands as identity/lifestyle.
Reminds me of the Facade pattern ("...can be used to simplify a number of complicated object interactions into a single interface."). We, the public, only get to play with facades; the important stuff abstracted away, protected and out of reach.
It makes perfect sense, that searching for any single or few points of control/power (a president, a product/service/brand, a standard 'journalistic analysis', etc.) is naive and simplifying. As is easy to see, changing a few pieces on the chessboard doesn't change the game; we'/they're still caught playing chess...
Making noise and protesting probably is close to all we can do. Though even that can get dangerous quickly, especially in a society with fewer rights to privacy and with eroded individual and 'cultural' freedoms. Something we discussed here, about Paul Graham's fine essay What You Can't Say
It increasingly looks like "the system" fights hard to file down the teeth on the parts of democracy that can bite back and hurt "the system" itself..
Jesus, this is both frightening and depressing. And it's back to work in less than 8 hours. Unh.
Good point. I agree with the first part. Much could be done with the submission/selection/creation side of/. (precisely what I don't know, maybe something akin to the ingenious ideas and implementation of these collaborative discussion tools(?)).
But even today, I believe it is working quite well. As you say, the weak "articles" are quickly scrutinized, the initial slants, etc. are - if substandard/false - discarded, and the discussions yield insights, perspectives and opinions no one could foresee. (Unfortunately, a lot of very good stuff is offtopic, and sometimes get modded thusly.).
But the real active part only comes *after* the article is posted, and we get to discuss it.
What I think I'm saying, is that I believe the *after* part of the "Slashdot experience" is what matters. The Slashdot "articles" aren't so much articles (at least not to me), as 'sparkplugs'; facilities to get us talking - about whatever matters (increasingly offtopic if we choose, like this thread:) ). Speed, volume, and continuity; a steady stream of lots of new (yes, dupe-clusters are annoying) stuff to delve into, I firmly believe is more important than getting the facts 100% correct. Or getting a totally unbiased (which I don't even think is possible..) starting point for our discussions.
As the original "article" examplifies, not even the *real* journos get it right, they just think they do. The important and best part about Slashdot (when it's working), is that all the smart people here collectively dig out what (if any) knowledge, humor, dilemmas, etc., any original topic (or whatever's remotely related) contains.
To me, the "articles" are like the awkward opening phrases you resort to when meeting people. Necessary, but mostly to quickly break the ice and learn something interesting. Cheers.
Meta-territory here, but was there a vote on bleating-acceptance I missed, or...? Didn't Nirvana's "here we are now, entertain us" attitude end a decade ago?
Part of the problem could stem from casting oneself as "the audience". An audience passively consumes what it is served. I don't know, but shouldn't (being part of creating what is) Slashdot, be..you know, the opposite of wanting to be spoonfed?
When products domainate [sic] and earn name recognition they deserve it not to be trampled...
I'd have to disagree, although it's a blurry area. I think that if it comes to what you describe, the companies have, in a pure sense, FAIL IT.
Yes, these companies achieved ubiquitous name recognition, huzzah. But I believe they lost - for all intents and purposes - control over its use; they were too successful. The brands have become proprietary eponyms.
An eponym is a general term used to describe from what or whom something derived its name./.../
a proprietary eponym could be considered a brand name/.../ which has fallen into general use." [American proprietary eponyms]
If a company is unable to distinguish a brand name from the (over time) consensual general meaning, the word/s in question become de facto 'regular' words. The brand name becomes public domain - legal or not.
If people associate certain words with some activity, it seems unreasonable (read: impossible) to exclude everyone but the coiner of the phrase from using it. No one would be able to communicate. IP/copyright cannot achieve this, nor should it be able to.
I recall the first-to-market company Rollerblades, which came close to 'loosing' their brand name to the public domain when the sport (inline [skating]) was 'introduced' to the general public. People started "rollerblading". The company had to spend a lot of energy/money on educating people that the sport was inlines, and the(ir) brand was Rollerblades. (That's what their ads actually said.)
The [other dekstop] is light years behind technologically and is only supported by trolls and zealots. [Favored dekstop] is so fast now it's amazing, I installed the latest beta the other day and I was amazed how fast it ran. It's also so stable now.
Good one, if it wasn't for the fact I'm so GODDAMMED tired of hearing this BS. [other dude's favored desktop] can't hold a candle to [my desktop numero uno]. Light years behind? Really. So I could just [random feature in my desktop numero uno, lacking in other dude's favored desktop] in [other dude's desktop]? Puhleze.. Or [iterate..]? Not even the [whatchamacallit] is worth a sh*t in [other dude's favored desktop]!
And don't give me that crap about good looks - [my desktop numero uno] has by far the slickest themes and everything! FYI, [my desktop numeo uno]'s userbase 0wn3s [other dude's favored desktop] so much it's not even funny; it's like 32% more or something. Fanboy, d/l [my desktop numero uno] and experience some real computing why don't you.
We don't know what, when, and (to some extent) how "they" observe us - logging our behaviour, our interests, dreams, information. We don't know what "they" use it for, by themselves or with "partners", today or in the future. What knowledge is (or will be) combined with your profile and usage data, and so on and so on...
All this while "providing integrated, quality solutions and experiences". Or, without the adspeak: "Gaining access to more and more parts of your digitized self (to be used at our discretion)". Risque.
They/will/ know more about you than you do. Like I said, there be dragons.
We don't want to find ourselves ordering those Bigmac&Co's, and be luvin' it - without a clue as to why that is - now, do we?
Probably the scientific "cup" would be:
1 cup = 2.366 deciliter
(or 8 fluid ounces, or 0.00112648 Russian chetvert, or 0.0125 nebuchadnezzar, or 0.0014881 barrels, or... as told by convertit.com)
See also: Passport. Gated communities. Castle moats and draw bridges. Schengen. "Liberty" alliance. 1984. The matrix. Animal farm. The trollverbial Soviet Russia. A brave new world.
Better make fsking sure that what's 'delivered', is worth the convenience and efficiency though.
(T)here be dragons.
I hear fraternizing with them is a charring experience.
Ok, I understand better now and would like to retract the elitist (correctly spelled this time) accusation, my apologies.
Your elaborations on willful ignorance, the problems with lack of incentives to learn, meritocracy, etc., are educational, and I agree. Also, the clarification/definition of "desktop" in this context makes sense. And I believe it points towards some form of consensual view.
I too, think it would be a bad idea, a very 'costly' and ultimately destructive evolution, if developers and users were constrained (forced) into conforming to one-and-only-one 'desktop'.
As a *nix 'semi-beginner', my interests lie in the empowering "development and programming aspects" of the OS/toolkits, community, and culture as a whole. In this context, I see many possibilities with tools that try to bridge incompabilities; tools that 'translate' between different cultural and/or technical views/solutions - or at least try to. (And I think this GTK-QT Theme Engine is an attempt in this general direction.)
Sometimes they create a new, unified and more powerful "Way" - deep down in the kernel, or high up in a GUI. More often, they probably (re)introduce weaknesses an original model or fork tried to overcome. Evolution hopefully continues to do its stuff.
The ability to put "everything" in a pipe is ingenious, for example. It's intriguing when people try to achieve something related at other levels of the system ecology.
I totally disagree with your (apparent) eliteist views regarding who should be "allowed" to use Linux. I don't understand this position, and so won't argue with it. Instead, I'd like to focus on the (constructive) discussion on the concept(s) of choice.
I agree that a universally applied "one size fits all" 'strategy', would take away a core strenght/concept from Linux. But I don't think your assertions about choice really invalidates the grandparent's belief that 'choice' in the (G)UI isn't always a good thing.
Perhaps the use of (the keyword) "choice" there is misleading, but I think you're mixing up choice, constraints, and freedom, in you post.
I view choice (in the "core-concept-of-Linux" sense), as the freedom to choose, based on open source and licenses that give you powerful rights, to use, share, modify, build on, etc. On the other hand, constraints (to disallow certain things in favor of other benefits) are vital. Your own claim that interop between Gnome and KDE is a good thing, shows that you too understand this.
The Null style/.../ is simply an empty set of constraints. From an architectural perspective, the null style describes a system in which there are no distinguished boundaries between components....
Obviously, the Null style gives you unlimited choice (absolute freedom). It's also practically useless as you can't build anything without constraints.
Another example: OOP wouldn't be very useful (or, indeed, object-oriented) if one chose to disregard the principles of abstraction, encapsulation, inheritence, polymorphism, etc.
I think we all can agree that solutions (such as this GTK-QT Theme Engine) that aim to bridge various gaps throughout the "Unix universe" are good things.
Sometimes these efforts might constrain our choices, but they don't necessarily limit our freedom.
Your earlier posts had me worried CD, and now this.. If I'd never chanced upon your latests posts, I wouldn't even know you existed. But now I do, and I had trouble sleeping yesterday.
If you're trolling: congratulations, you 'got' quite a few of us.
If you're not, please reach out to someone. Family, friends, a suicide hotline. Or if you want to talk to a stranger, drop me a line and we'll talk: janbjurstrom at hotmail dot com.
Guy, you don't sound alright. You got 2 posts along these lines...how are you man?
Please don't do anything you can't have undone. If you're truly hurting, try to find help - now. Call someone, go to a hospital, something, just NOT what you seem to be contemplating.
While what you're saying's probably too true, gross incompetence etc. in places of authority can certainly become lethally dangerous in a hurry.
Mistakes, negligence, stupidity, et al., has rendered many lives' truly Kafkaesque. Hell, falsely convicted people are being executed...*shudder*
True, most of us can probably sleep soundly (most of the time), even with some small wrong-doings on our conscience. But if/when 'dumb power' fixes us in its sights, "Abandon all hope, ye who..."
Fair points, I'll try to adress them (but please log in - you're not trolling/flaming/&c. - so why ACing?).
As for the semantics: hating risks doesn't mean not taking risks. Obviously, nothing is ever 100% risk free. Doing business is, to a fair extent, to take risks. Calculated risks; avoid if possible, minimize if not.
Like I said, this is especially true in mature sectors/markets, where:
market size is fairly stable: focus shifts to finding adjecent markets and "synergies".
many innovations and investments are already made: less need for costly investment in basic R&D, infrastructure, brand recognition, etc.
competition is strong (it's costly to increase market share): focus often becomes guarding your position, mergers, cutting costs, etc.
There's a lot of literature on this, as a starting point I enjoyed Marketing Strategy & Competitive Positioning (Hooley, Saunders, et al.). I've got the 1st & 2nd edt., but there's a 3rd edt. (October 2003) now.
The profitability of these companies. I'm sure you're right in that they're struggling. Many companies/sectors are. "Hard times" they call it;). But, considering the sizes of these companies (and their still substantial wealth, influence, etc.), I'd say it pays off for the media/entertainment industry. Clearly not as much as before, but still.. And they had a good number of decades making crazy dollars, didn't they? (And now, with rapidly changing and hard times, the choice: guarding the cash cows - avoid risk, or innovate - take substantial risks, etc.). I have no hard numbers to back that up right now - i.e. I could certainly be wrong:) - but their very size/existence and omniprescence in today's world tells me something.
Plus, it's really not just the music or movies is it? All the different spin-offs, merchandise, etc. Soundtracks, t-shirts, McDonald's toys, whatever, rakes in cash as well. I don't know if your 1 in 10 assertion takes this into account(?).
But lets say it does.
Consider LOTR. that thing alone is making (and will be making for years to come) billions in profit. A few years time and a couple of hundred million in investments are surely considerable risks. But I'd think any business would love those kind of odds. Even if the companies involved only get ROI like that for 1 in 50, they and their investors/VCs are made.
Or take Rawling's Potter phenomenon. She's personally up, what, a billion.. The risk? I'd say well worth it:).
And Elvis is still making money;). Granted, all these examples are stellar successes, and there's plenty of abject failures. My argument - which again, might be flawed - is that this level of risk, by camparison, seems very attractive (e.g. compare the examples with AMDs need to invest billions for a next-gen. chip shop, or the amount of investment/risk Ford does to get a new Navigator on the market.)
I do agree, and hopefully the flow of these forms of information will improve, but...
One must remember that mature sectors like these hate risks. Most of what they do now - lawsuits, technological barriers, lobbying, cartels, hyper advertising/marketing, etc. - are 'simply' means to remove uncertainty and avoid risk. The goal being to ensure a predictable, stable-or-increasing, revenue stream.
Consider the situation if most of the obstacles - artificial scarcity, et al., that we lament over today - were removed.
This would essentially mean for them to give up a large amount of control, and put a lot of trust in consumers. Which in turn would translate roughly into competing with quality (possibly also by meeting - rather than creating - customer demand).
Media corps would have to go through radical, nay, fundamental changes to be able to handle these things. Are they willing? Are they even able?
And of course, trust and creating quality 'anything' is unpredictable and risky.
I believe media corps of today show much determination to avoid that scenario at considerable "cost" (consumer dissatisfaction).
Slashdot Mirror
Apt handle you got there.
...? One Sony word to serve as a small counterpoint: Betamax. Strategic decisions and number crunching can make their heads spin as well, apparently.
..because they do their homework, they really understand...are you still keeping a straight face over there?
Seriously though: market driven, know demographics, data and numbers,
Male electronics: functionality, empowering features, etc.
Female electronics: kitchen environment, petite design, fancy colors.
I don't know what dictionary you use, but it's pretty fucking textbook.
But maybe you're right, companies never fail, make stupid shit, or take shortcuts wherever there's a buck to save or someone outcompete
Drop a hot semi-nude chick in close proximity to whatever generic product X: research shows it's effective on men! It is, nevertheless, sad, stereotyped shit. Same goes for fancy colors and kitchen settings. It's just not as blatant.
You know, for a second there, I thought I'd posted something without remembering it.
I conclude that we're not exactly business' ideal consumers (..he writes on an ancient company-borrowed IBM T21 [750 MHz PIII], because he has researched his new system for over two fricken months now when his old one died...)
What moving targets they are, those gadgets..
I dunno, when it comes to buying new boxen, every (male) geek friend I know spend endless amounts of time (only online though) on research, comparisons, searching for deals, etc. Although the same goes for the, sadly few, geek women I know. But then, if I was offered a 4.2 GHz, that's an impulse buy right there ;)
Well isn't that some sad, stereotyped shit(?) According to the article, women complained about being patronized in tech stores. But what the hell kind of image of women do the tech manufacturers have?
1. "Well, these 'women' are always in the kitchen, right?!"
2. "True dat, so why not refit our gadgets so they match kitchen cabinets and stuff!"
3. "We've got it! Profit!"
What's the word I'm looking for
Very well said, albeit depressing as hell. I'm not American, but this is rampant in the EU too. Politicos, businesses and media, all busy creating artificial focal points of power and authority. Whether it's presidencies or punch-line agendas, dumbed-down 'news' or brands as identity/lifestyle.
Reminds me of the Facade pattern ("...can be used to simplify a number of complicated object interactions into a single interface."). We, the public, only get to play with facades; the important stuff abstracted away, protected and out of reach.
It makes perfect sense, that searching for any single or few points of control/power (a president, a product/service/brand, a standard 'journalistic analysis', etc.) is naive and simplifying. As is easy to see, changing a few pieces on the chessboard doesn't change the game; we'/they're still caught playing chess...
Making noise and protesting probably is close to all we can do. Though even that can get dangerous quickly, especially in a society with fewer rights to privacy and with eroded individual and 'cultural' freedoms. Something we discussed here, about Paul Graham's fine essay What You Can't Say
It increasingly looks like "the system" fights hard to file down the teeth on the parts of democracy that can bite back and hurt "the system" itself..
Jesus, this is both frightening and depressing. And it's back to work in less than 8 hours. Unh.
But even today, I believe it is working quite well. As you say, the weak "articles" are quickly scrutinized, the initial slants, etc. are - if substandard/false - discarded, and the discussions yield insights, perspectives and opinions no one could foresee. (Unfortunately, a lot of very good stuff is offtopic, and sometimes get modded thusly.). What I think I'm saying, is that I believe the *after* part of the "Slashdot experience" is what matters. The Slashdot "articles" aren't so much articles (at least not to me), as 'sparkplugs'; facilities to get us talking - about whatever matters (increasingly offtopic if we choose, like this thread
As the original "article" examplifies, not even the *real* journos get it right, they just think they do. The important and best part about Slashdot (when it's working), is that all the smart people here collectively dig out what (if any) knowledge, humor, dilemmas, etc., any original topic (or whatever's remotely related) contains.
To me, the "articles" are like the awkward opening phrases you resort to when meeting people. Necessary, but mostly to quickly break the ice and learn something interesting. Cheers.
Meta-territory here, but was there a vote on bleating-acceptance I missed, or...? Didn't Nirvana's "here we are now, entertain us" attitude end a decade ago?
..you know, the opposite of wanting to be spoonfed?
Part of the problem could stem from casting oneself as "the audience". An audience passively consumes what it is served. I don't know, but shouldn't (being part of creating what is) Slashdot, be
Yes, these companies achieved ubiquitous name recognition, huzzah. But I believe they lost - for all intents and purposes - control over its use; they were too successful. The brands have become proprietary eponyms. If a company is unable to distinguish a brand name from the (over time) consensual general meaning, the word/s in question become de facto 'regular' words. The brand name becomes public domain - legal or not.
If people associate certain words with some activity, it seems unreasonable (read: impossible) to exclude everyone but the coiner of the phrase from using it. No one would be able to communicate. IP/copyright cannot achieve this, nor should it be able to.
I recall the first-to-market company Rollerblades, which came close to 'loosing' their brand name to the public domain when the sport (inline [skating]) was 'introduced' to the general public. People started "rollerblading". The company had to spend a lot of energy/money on educating people that the sport was inlines, and the(ir) brand was Rollerblades. (That's what their ads actually said.)
Cue "AstroTurf", "Band Aid", "Beer Nuts", "Chapstick", "Coke", "Dumpster", "Fiberglass", "Freon", "Frisbee", "Hi-lighter", "Jacuzzi", "Jello", "Jockey Shorts", "Plexiglas", "Popsicle", "Post-it", "Teleprompter", "Teletype", "Thermos", "TV Dinner", "UNIX", "Vaseline", "Velcro", "White Out", "Windbreaker", etc., even "Xerox".. [Fun with words]
That, Sir, was a pretty insightful description. Thank you.
And don't give me that crap about good looks - [my desktop numero uno] has by far the slickest themes and everything! FYI, [my desktop numeo uno]'s userbase 0wn3s [other dude's favored desktop] so much it's not even funny; it's like 32% more or something. Fanboy, d/l [my desktop numero uno] and experience some real computing why don't you.
YHL. HAND. blahblahblah
No other reason for this post. kthx.
..more distressing scenarios.
/will/ know more about you than you do. Like I said, there be dragons.
We don't know what, when, and (to some extent) how "they" observe us - logging our behaviour, our interests, dreams, information. We don't know what "they" use it for, by themselves or with "partners", today or in the future. What knowledge is (or will be) combined with your profile and usage data, and so on and so on...
All this while "providing integrated, quality solutions and experiences". Or, without the adspeak: "Gaining access to more and more parts of your digitized self (to be used at our discretion)". Risque.
They
We don't want to find ourselves ordering those Bigmac&Co's, and be luvin' it - without a clue as to why that is - now, do we?
Probably the scientific "cup" would be:
1 cup = 2.366 deciliter
(or 8 fluid ounces, or 0.00112648 Russian chetvert, or 0.0125 nebuchadnezzar, or 0.0014881 barrels, or... as told by convertit.com)
See also: Passport. Gated communities. Castle moats and draw bridges. Schengen. "Liberty" alliance. 1984. The matrix. Animal farm. The trollverbial Soviet Russia. A brave new world.
Better make fsking sure that what's 'delivered', is worth the convenience and efficiency though.
(T)here be dragons.
I hear fraternizing with them is a charring experience.
Ok, I understand better now and would like to retract the elitist (correctly spelled this time) accusation, my apologies.
Your elaborations on willful ignorance, the problems with lack of incentives to learn, meritocracy, etc., are educational, and I agree. Also, the clarification/definition of "desktop" in this context makes sense. And I believe it points towards some form of consensual view.
I too, think it would be a bad idea, a very 'costly' and ultimately destructive evolution, if developers and users were constrained (forced) into conforming to one-and-only-one 'desktop'.
As a *nix 'semi-beginner', my interests lie in the empowering "development and programming aspects" of the OS/toolkits, community, and culture as a whole. In this context, I see many possibilities with tools that try to bridge incompabilities; tools that 'translate' between different cultural and/or technical views/solutions - or at least try to. (And I think this GTK-QT Theme Engine is an attempt in this general direction.)
Sometimes they create a new, unified and more powerful "Way" - deep down in the kernel, or high up in a GUI. More often, they probably (re)introduce weaknesses an original model or fork tried to overcome. Evolution hopefully continues to do its stuff.
The ability to put "everything" in a pipe is ingenious, for example. It's intriguing when people try to achieve something related at other levels of the system ecology.
I agree that a universally applied "one size fits all" 'strategy', would take away a core strenght/concept from Linux. But I don't think your assertions about choice really invalidates the grandparent's belief that 'choice' in the (G)UI isn't always a good thing.
Perhaps the use of (the keyword) "choice" there is misleading, but I think you're mixing up choice, constraints, and freedom, in you post.
I view choice (in the "core-concept-of-Linux" sense), as the freedom to choose, based on open source and licenses that give you powerful rights, to use, share, modify, build on, etc. On the other hand, constraints (to disallow certain things in favor of other benefits) are vital. Your own claim that interop between Gnome and KDE is a good thing, shows that you too understand this.
As an example, Roy T. Fielding's (W3C, Apache foundation, et al.) dissertation Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures (describing the architecture of WWW) is illustrative. Fielding coined the term Null style: Obviously, the Null style gives you unlimited choice (absolute freedom). It's also practically useless as you can't build anything without constraints.
Another example: OOP wouldn't be very useful (or, indeed, object-oriented) if one chose to disregard the principles of abstraction, encapsulation, inheritence, polymorphism, etc.
I think we all can agree that solutions (such as this GTK-QT Theme Engine) that aim to bridge various gaps throughout the "Unix universe" are good things.
Sometimes these efforts might constrain our choices, but they don't necessarily limit our freedom.
Your earlier posts had me worried CD, and now this.. If I'd never chanced upon your latests posts, I wouldn't even know you existed. But now I do, and I had trouble sleeping yesterday.
If you're trolling: congratulations, you 'got' quite a few of us.
If you're not, please reach out to someone. Family, friends, a suicide hotline. Or if you want to talk to a stranger, drop me a line and we'll talk: janbjurstrom at hotmail dot com.
Guy, you don't sound alright. You got 2 posts along these lines ...how are you man?
Please don't do anything you can't have undone. If you're truly hurting, try to find help - now. Call someone, go to a hospital, something, just NOT what you seem to be contemplating.
So it was you who stole my pot and my George Carlin CDs! Bastard!
? I don't get it, it's right " " there!
While what you're saying's probably too true, gross incompetence etc. in places of authority can certainly become lethally dangerous in a hurry.
Mistakes, negligence, stupidity, et al., has rendered many lives' truly Kafkaesque. Hell, falsely convicted people are being executed...*shudder*
True, most of us can probably sleep soundly (most of the time), even with some small wrong-doings on our conscience. But if/when 'dumb power' fixes us in its sights, "Abandon all hope, ye who..."
As for the semantics: hating risks doesn't mean not taking risks. Obviously, nothing is ever 100% risk free. Doing business is, to a fair extent, to take risks. Calculated risks; avoid if possible, minimize if not.
Like I said, this is especially true in mature sectors/markets, where:
- market size is fairly stable: focus shifts to finding adjecent markets and "synergies".
- many innovations and investments are already made: less need for costly investment in basic R&D, infrastructure, brand recognition, etc.
- competition is strong (it's costly to increase market share): focus often becomes guarding your position, mergers, cutting costs, etc.
There's a lot of literature on this, as a starting point I enjoyed Marketing Strategy & Competitive Positioning (Hooley, Saunders, et al.). I've got the 1st & 2nd edt., but there's a 3rd edt. (October 2003) now.The profitability of these companies. I'm sure you're right in that they're struggling. Many companies/sectors are. "Hard times" they call it
Plus, it's really not just the music or movies is it? All the different spin-offs, merchandise, etc. Soundtracks, t-shirts, McDonald's toys, whatever, rakes in cash as well. I don't know if your 1 in 10 assertion takes this into account(?).
But lets say it does.
Consider LOTR. that thing alone is making (and will be making for years to come) billions in profit. A few years time and a couple of hundred million in investments are surely considerable risks. But I'd think any business would love those kind of odds. Even if the companies involved only get ROI like that for 1 in 50, they and their investors/VCs are made.
Or take Rawling's Potter phenomenon. She's personally up, what, a billion.. The risk? I'd say well worth it
And Elvis is still making money
barratry, n. (pl. barratries)
I do agree, and hopefully the flow of these forms of information will improve, but...
One must remember that mature sectors like these hate risks. Most of what they do now - lawsuits, technological barriers, lobbying, cartels, hyper advertising/marketing, etc. - are 'simply' means to remove uncertainty and avoid risk. The goal being to ensure a predictable, stable-or-increasing, revenue stream.
Consider the situation if most of the obstacles - artificial scarcity, et al., that we lament over today - were removed.
This would essentially mean for them to give up a large amount of control, and put a lot of trust in consumers. Which in turn would translate roughly into competing with quality (possibly also by meeting - rather than creating - customer demand).
Media corps would have to go through radical, nay, fundamental changes to be able to handle these things. Are they willing? Are they even able?
And of course, trust and creating quality 'anything' is unpredictable and risky.
I believe media corps of today show much determination to avoid that scenario at considerable "cost" (consumer dissatisfaction).