True, but what you're proposing is still regulation (assuming that there is some form of redress for damages resulting in failure to follow policy), even if it isn't from SL. It's just about whom do you trust regarding the establishment and enforcement of rules meant to protect the investor.
And yes, the infrastructure must be built up and maintained, which is an endless endeavour.
Relying on contracts is reactive and shifts enforcement of regulation to the courts, which as we have often discussed on slashdot is slanted to those who have more resources to argue their position (think **AA).
I'll take a reasonable amount of preventitive regulation that doesn't require the employment of 3rd parties to mount a dispute.
It didn't have a bad reputation. Before the scheme began it had no reputation. In this case, without rules from LL, all it does it make it harder users to trust institutions without a rep external to the game. The problem may be resolved in regards to one SL bank, but if the prob repeats then it reflects on SL when nobody wants to come on line and play. SL can't not act without harming their own reputation.
If no regulations exist, then banking in Second Life can't be trusted at all. It seems like it would be in a vendor's best interests to operate in a system where a set of rules dictate portions of its behavior. Then trust is less of an issue and competition increases as new players join the market.
It is however interesting how Second Life started out as this sort of free for all, and more and more it's starting to evolve a government out of necessity.
Yes, the fantasy of the Ayn Rand unregulated perfect market always comes crashing down when human nature gets involved.
As much as people hate to admit it, regulation is a necessary part of society. You just have to hope for the right balance. Too little is chaos, too much a police state.
Such an idea would work if they were to create a limited supply of the content. That's why it works with venue tickets, hardware and the like. There is only so much available, so consumers compete for it. With digitally distributed content, there is no such limitation.
True, but one can create the same effect of limited inventory with a higher price. A $500 widget that can be bought today is the same to me and the seller as a $100 one that's out of stock (or imaginary if I'm holding out for that price) if I only have $100 to spare. Inventory level is not the only thing that can influence sales volume.
Given that Apple is the distributor, it would all depend on how much the players down the food chain get. If I have $10 I'm determined to spend and Apple is pricing songs at $0.50 or for $2.50, our exchange will be the same. I'm out $10, Apple is up $10, and the only mystery is how much the artist(s) and their business partners get. It's all about the demand curve and Apple's eventual profit and costs.
Re:Why should the labels be in control anyway?
on
Sony BMG Dropping DRM
·
· Score: 1
Reduced price flexibility for retailers is less common in the non-music world, but it's not unheard of. Apple itself is a good example. They rigidly control the retail price of all their hardware. That's why when Fry's has an ad touting a sale on iPods or MacBooks the sale price is $294, down from $299. Whoopee.
Price control by manufacturers is supposed be illegal, but it's pretty common in the electronics/computer world. I'm not exactly sure how it's done, but it happens.
With the rise of e-commerce and it's new sales methods, is there any reason not to think that a lot of shopping in the future will be like using eBay? Sports teams and event venues are already experimenting with it, since ticket brokers have shown that they can take more profit on popular events than the organizers themselves. Will we see this sort of thing for initial releases of future products? Say, instead of Nintendo doling out Wii consoles to retailers while supplies are short, hungry buyers bid on them directly from Nintendo?
Apple's reluctance to allow variable pricing does seem weird. Why not do it? The only reason I can think of is the extreme price sensitivity of online shoppers. Even just a small increase in one song over another may result in increased piracy at the most or lowered customer satisfaction in the least, but who knows? It seems like such an easy thing to try out to determine the price elasticity of songs and videos based on their ever-changing popularity. Change prices each week based on ratings and expected purchase volumes. Even just a few cents change can add up.
Actually, the whole thing is kinda scary and may be subject to price discrimination laws, but IA soo NAL.
What does it mean, Apple's become too powerful, so Sony needs another distribution channel?
Even if you're not currently getting screwed, it's usually not in your best interests to be dependent on a single distributor. FakeSteve summed it up nicely a while back.
It's almost like iTunes is doing to the record companies what they've been doing to the artists and record stores for so long: maintaining vise-grip control of the channel. Only with iTunes, nobody else seemed to want it in the beginning.
People keep harping on the "Apple controls the hardware" issue, but with each passing generation the hardware difference between a mac and a pc decreases. I still say that Apple will eventually sell OS X for non-Apple hardware. Vista's problems are certainly opening that door. And stop talking about the hardware margins being affected. If MS has shown anything, it's that software sold in sufficient quantities can make plenty of money on smaller margin.
Microsoft's burden is not so much from hardware diversity (like it was in the old ISA days, or the early incarnations of PCI plug-n-play), but from trying to maintain backwards software compatibility at all costs. I'm always impressed by the DOS programs that still work in XP. Throughout their history, Apple has been fortunate enough to be able to dump technical dead ends for improved software and hardware architectures without alienating their customer base or drawing the ire of regulators. And with emulation becoming what it is, that sort of move becomes even easier. But as hardware commodotizes further and the browser becomes the primary application, look for Apple to just sell software someday.
Agreed. If not for the wealthier markets but maybe for developing countries where the cost of Windows license can't be what it is US/Europe/Asia, etc.
It could also be a move towards a subscription system. Pay your annual Windows fee or not, either way we'll keep updating your box with patches and not worry about WGA. Just watch these ads if you don't want to pay us or while you're trying to straighten out the WGA validation failures.
Given that one has to sign a contract with AT&T, I don't see the point of the hack if you have to pay double line fees to use on TMobile. I can wait a few years for a real one.
I lived in Britain for a couple of years starting in 2001. While we were covered under the state system, as employees of my company we also had private insurance. One of the things I found interesting in the policy was a list of activities that required additional premiums. Skiing was one example. If you wanted the private insurance to cover you for your ski trip, you had to call the insurer, tell them for how long you would be skiing (or rock climbing, or whatever) and they would tell you it would be an additional 15-25 pounds or so for them to extend coverage for your trip. The prices were reasonable and I was lucky enough to never have to file a claim. It was an interesting approach.
That said, there's a difference in assessing insurable risk for preventable factors (obesity, smoking, sports injuries) and charging people more because of factors that are out of their control (genetic presdispositions). It's only a matter of time before we cross that line. Then it will really get interesting.
This strikes me as too intrusive for anyone to accept on a paid piece of software, but maybe MS is considering someday giving Windows away for free in exchange for the user having to watch ads? They already know that people pirate their products and no matter what they do, someone will crack the piracy. Someone will probably crack the ad stuff, too, but Aunt Tillie may not mind if she can get a cheap box that let's her send email and exchange pictures of her rose bushes and grandkids.
Or MS will give up the "cripple your unlicensed windows copy" and just turn on ads if you fail WGA. Piracy problem solved. Download it and watch ads, or pay us and don't. Either way you can still surf the web and play solitaire.
I suppose there's also the possibility of using something like this on kiosks or other public and/or shared terminals.
There has to be more to this than just sticking ads on licensed copies of Windows.
[the deal will] result in free music for consumers, but there are still cash transactions going on behind the scenes
Exactly!
The thing that keeps getting overlooked in the comments is that the Mail is paying Prince for the right to distribute the album. He's not giving something for nothing. In turn, the advertisers are paying the Mail for the right to appear in a paper that will have unusually high circulation, and the consumers are getting a bonus with their Sunday paper. The screaming by the record stores is hilarious. They're cut out of the deal and can't stand it one bit.
That said, I don't see how the 'record companies' are really mentioned in the article here, other than that Prince's UK distributor is renegging on the distribution deal for the stated reason of supporting the record stores. It would be interesting to find out if they got any cut from the Mail deal, or if they would've actually done anything on their own had the stores not raised such a stink.
Overall, point taken. But if the only issue is that the research tools have usability problems, referencing video games is probably the wrong approach. Games rarely feature user-interface innovations. If he's in education, then he may already be familiar with Macs and the interface guidelines. Instead he's hinting at the user's emotional needs.
Even when I started college some 20 years ago (10 miles, uphill, snow, both ways!), I didn't find any of the tools (electronic or otherwise) to be so difficult that I needed to review large instructional documents. A lot of them were just orange-pixel-only google-like search engines. I just had to keep trying search terms until the results started becoming useful. That was my gradually improving reward.
I stand by my original point. If you can't figure out how to find shit in a place as organized as a library, it's only downhill from there.
We're not asking them to become experts, we're asking them to adapt to a tool that works well but has certain expectations of its users. Telling the tool to be like a toy isn't much use to either party. Libraries have done plenty to move into the digital age, but that doesn't mean they have to suck up to the youngin's.
One thing about the article I found interesting was the suggestions:
Offer online services not just through e-mail, but through instant messaging and text messaging, which many students prefer.
Through IM? Librarians are just supposed to sit around and wait to type 'ur books r in' when some hungover freshman needs a last-minute reference check?
Hold LAN parties, after hours, in libraries.
And the kids will learn to use a library how in this scenario?
Schedule support services on a 24/7/365 basis, not the hours currently in use at many college libraries, which were "set in 1963."
The budgets may have been set back in 1963, too. So how would you pay for this kind of support? Online catalogs are available 24/7 and they exist in most libraries already.
Remember that students are much less sensitive about privacy issues than earlier generations were and are much more likely to share passwords or access to databases.
I must admit I don't know what this is about, unless librarians are upset that people share passwords to system accounts. Bummer.
Look for ways to involve digital natives in designing library services and even providing them. "Expertise is more important than credentials," he said, even credentials such as library science degrees.
Not sure how this ties into the video game thing, unless we want some kids to make Quake levels from the library layout guides (and use them in the aforementioned LAN parties).
Libraries aren't that hard to use, and the people who staff them are probably working harder than the students who need to be entertained to learn how to find copies of Huckleberry Finn.
Video game players encouraged to learn to use libraries
?
This is just depressing. More dumbing down.
We should never read before we play, Gee said.
OK fine, but I never thought of research as play.
Likewise, tools students will use should be designed with this in mind, Gee said, just the way video games are designed. With video games, you can play while you are inept, he said.
True, I do this every day. But again, we're not talking about play. It's a little harder (but not impossible) to graduate from college and hold a job while inept. And of course, the best quote from the article:
Lowered consequences of failure is a key value to embrace, he said.
Because we don't want failure to hold anybody back, teach people to learn from their mistakes, or encourage them to work harder.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, who modded this insightful?
Did you get it at a local store or online? Did you know that they existed before you saw it available, or did you stumble across it while browsing?
They're making TV's with embedded HDs? I hadn't heard about this. Is this like a built-in DVR?
True, but what you're proposing is still regulation (assuming that there is some form of redress for damages resulting in failure to follow policy), even if it isn't from SL. It's just about whom do you trust regarding the establishment and enforcement of rules meant to protect the investor.
And yes, the infrastructure must be built up and maintained, which is an endless endeavour.Relying on contracts is reactive and shifts enforcement of regulation to the courts, which as we have often discussed on slashdot is slanted to those who have more resources to argue their position (think **AA).
I'll take a reasonable amount of preventitive regulation that doesn't require the employment of 3rd parties to mount a dispute.
It didn't have a bad reputation. Before the scheme began it had no reputation. In this case, without rules from LL, all it does it make it harder users to trust institutions without a rep external to the game. The problem may be resolved in regards to one SL bank, but if the prob repeats then it reflects on SL when nobody wants to come on line and play. SL can't not act without harming their own reputation.
If no regulations exist, then banking in Second Life can't be trusted at all. It seems like it would be in a vendor's best interests to operate in a system where a set of rules dictate portions of its behavior. Then trust is less of an issue and competition increases as new players join the market.
Yes, the fantasy of the Ayn Rand unregulated perfect market always comes crashing down when human nature gets involved.
As much as people hate to admit it, regulation is a necessary part of society. You just have to hope for the right balance. Too little is chaos, too much a police state.
True, but one can create the same effect of limited inventory with a higher price. A $500 widget that can be bought today is the same to me and the seller as a $100 one that's out of stock (or imaginary if I'm holding out for that price) if I only have $100 to spare. Inventory level is not the only thing that can influence sales volume.
Given that Apple is the distributor, it would all depend on how much the players down the food chain get. If I have $10 I'm determined to spend and Apple is pricing songs at $0.50 or for $2.50, our exchange will be the same. I'm out $10, Apple is up $10, and the only mystery is how much the artist(s) and their business partners get. It's all about the demand curve and Apple's eventual profit and costs.
Reduced price flexibility for retailers is less common in the non-music world, but it's not unheard of. Apple itself is a good example. They rigidly control the retail price of all their hardware. That's why when Fry's has an ad touting a sale on iPods or MacBooks the sale price is $294, down from $299. Whoopee.
Price control by manufacturers is supposed be illegal, but it's pretty common in the electronics/computer world. I'm not exactly sure how it's done, but it happens.
With the rise of e-commerce and it's new sales methods, is there any reason not to think that a lot of shopping in the future will be like using eBay? Sports teams and event venues are already experimenting with it, since ticket brokers have shown that they can take more profit on popular events than the organizers themselves. Will we see this sort of thing for initial releases of future products? Say, instead of Nintendo doling out Wii consoles to retailers while supplies are short, hungry buyers bid on them directly from Nintendo?
Apple's reluctance to allow variable pricing does seem weird. Why not do it? The only reason I can think of is the extreme price sensitivity of online shoppers. Even just a small increase in one song over another may result in increased piracy at the most or lowered customer satisfaction in the least, but who knows? It seems like such an easy thing to try out to determine the price elasticity of songs and videos based on their ever-changing popularity. Change prices each week based on ratings and expected purchase volumes. Even just a few cents change can add up.
Actually, the whole thing is kinda scary and may be subject to price discrimination laws, but IA soo NAL.
Even if you're not currently getting screwed, it's usually not in your best interests to be dependent on a single distributor. FakeSteve summed it up nicely a while back.
It's almost like iTunes is doing to the record companies what they've been doing to the artists and record stores for so long: maintaining vise-grip control of the channel. Only with iTunes, nobody else seemed to want it in the beginning.
Yes!
People keep harping on the "Apple controls the hardware" issue, but with each passing generation the hardware difference between a mac and a pc decreases. I still say that Apple will eventually sell OS X for non-Apple hardware. Vista's problems are certainly opening that door. And stop talking about the hardware margins being affected. If MS has shown anything, it's that software sold in sufficient quantities can make plenty of money on smaller margin.
Microsoft's burden is not so much from hardware diversity (like it was in the old ISA days, or the early incarnations of PCI plug-n-play), but from trying to maintain backwards software compatibility at all costs. I'm always impressed by the DOS programs that still work in XP. Throughout their history, Apple has been fortunate enough to be able to dump technical dead ends for improved software and hardware architectures without alienating their customer base or drawing the ire of regulators. And with emulation becoming what it is, that sort of move becomes even easier. But as hardware commodotizes further and the browser becomes the primary application, look for Apple to just sell software someday.
Agreed. If not for the wealthier markets but maybe for developing countries where the cost of Windows license can't be what it is US/Europe/Asia, etc.
It could also be a move towards a subscription system. Pay your annual Windows fee or not, either way we'll keep updating your box with patches and not worry about WGA. Just watch these ads if you don't want to pay us or while you're trying to straighten out the WGA validation failures.
Given that one has to sign a contract with AT&T, I don't see the point of the hack if you have to pay double line fees to use on TMobile. I can wait a few years for a real one.
but thanks for the tip
Interesting. If T-Mobile had these I'd be all over it. Love my T-Mobile.
Mod up! Mod up!
Computers help make the world go round, but it first takes a human to say 'what if' to get anywhere worthwhile.
Somebody sounds unappreciated in their sysadmin job ;-)
I lived in Britain for a couple of years starting in 2001. While we were covered under the state system, as employees of my company we also had private insurance. One of the things I found interesting in the policy was a list of activities that required additional premiums. Skiing was one example. If you wanted the private insurance to cover you for your ski trip, you had to call the insurer, tell them for how long you would be skiing (or rock climbing, or whatever) and they would tell you it would be an additional 15-25 pounds or so for them to extend coverage for your trip. The prices were reasonable and I was lucky enough to never have to file a claim. It was an interesting approach.
That said, there's a difference in assessing insurable risk for preventable factors (obesity, smoking, sports injuries) and charging people more because of factors that are out of their control (genetic presdispositions). It's only a matter of time before we cross that line. Then it will really get interesting.
Or that stupid search dog.
That's what I first imagined when I saw the headline.
The home page there is fine. There do seem to be some NSFW links from there, but the initial loading isn't going to get anyone in trouble.
But my god, what a weird thing to be turned on by.
Well then, the race is on. Either MS can do something similar to what I've forseen, or ReactOS can become usable.
What's the safer bet?
This strikes me as too intrusive for anyone to accept on a paid piece of software, but maybe MS is considering someday giving Windows away for free in exchange for the user having to watch ads? They already know that people pirate their products and no matter what they do, someone will crack the piracy. Someone will probably crack the ad stuff, too, but Aunt Tillie may not mind if she can get a cheap box that let's her send email and exchange pictures of her rose bushes and grandkids.
Or MS will give up the "cripple your unlicensed windows copy" and just turn on ads if you fail WGA. Piracy problem solved. Download it and watch ads, or pay us and don't. Either way you can still surf the web and play solitaire.
I suppose there's also the possibility of using something like this on kiosks or other public and/or shared terminals.
There has to be more to this than just sticking ads on licensed copies of Windows.
Exactly!
The thing that keeps getting overlooked in the comments is that the Mail is paying Prince for the right to distribute the album. He's not giving something for nothing. In turn, the advertisers are paying the Mail for the right to appear in a paper that will have unusually high circulation, and the consumers are getting a bonus with their Sunday paper. The screaming by the record stores is hilarious. They're cut out of the deal and can't stand it one bit.
That said, I don't see how the 'record companies' are really mentioned in the article here, other than that Prince's UK distributor is renegging on the distribution deal for the stated reason of supporting the record stores. It would be interesting to find out if they got any cut from the Mail deal, or if they would've actually done anything on their own had the stores not raised such a stink.
I work hard on my lawn!!
Overall, point taken. But if the only issue is that the research tools have usability problems, referencing video games is probably the wrong approach. Games rarely feature user-interface innovations. If he's in education, then he may already be familiar with Macs and the interface guidelines. Instead he's hinting at the user's emotional needs.
Even when I started college some 20 years ago (10 miles, uphill, snow, both ways!), I didn't find any of the tools (electronic or otherwise) to be so difficult that I needed to review large instructional documents. A lot of them were just orange-pixel-only google-like search engines. I just had to keep trying search terms until the results started becoming useful. That was my gradually improving reward.
I stand by my original point. If you can't figure out how to find shit in a place as organized as a library, it's only downhill from there.
We're not asking them to become experts, we're asking them to adapt to a tool that works well but has certain expectations of its users. Telling the tool to be like a toy isn't much use to either party. Libraries have done plenty to move into the digital age, but that doesn't mean they have to suck up to the youngin's.
One thing about the article I found interesting was the suggestions:
Offer online services not just through e-mail, but through instant messaging and text messaging, which many students prefer.
Through IM? Librarians are just supposed to sit around and wait to type 'ur books r in' when some hungover freshman needs a last-minute reference check?
Hold LAN parties, after hours, in libraries.
And the kids will learn to use a library how in this scenario?
Schedule support services on a 24/7/365 basis, not the hours currently in use at many college libraries, which were "set in 1963."
The budgets may have been set back in 1963, too. So how would you pay for this kind of support? Online catalogs are available 24/7 and they exist in most libraries already.
Remember that students are much less sensitive about privacy issues than earlier generations were and are much more likely to share passwords or access to databases.
I must admit I don't know what this is about, unless librarians are upset that people share passwords to system accounts. Bummer.
Look for ways to involve digital natives in designing library services and even providing them. "Expertise is more important than credentials," he said, even credentials such as library science degrees.
Not sure how this ties into the video game thing, unless we want some kids to make Quake levels from the library layout guides (and use them in the aforementioned LAN parties).
Libraries aren't that hard to use, and the people who staff them are probably working harder than the students who need to be entertained to learn how to find copies of Huckleberry Finn.
So where is the companion article titled:
Video game players encouraged to learn to use libraries
?
This is just depressing. More dumbing down.
We should never read before we play, Gee said.OK fine, but I never thought of research as play.
Likewise, tools students will use should be designed with this in mind, Gee said, just the way video games are designed. With video games, you can play while you are inept, he said.True, I do this every day. But again, we're not talking about play. It's a little harder (but not impossible) to graduate from college and hold a job while inept. And of course, the best quote from the article:
Lowered consequences of failure is a key value to embrace, he said.Because we don't want failure to hold anybody back, teach people to learn from their mistakes, or encourage them to work harder.