Have you ever been in a greenhouse? Have you ever heard about the greenhouse effect? Visible light penetrates glass and transparent plastic. Infrared light doesn't. Light from the sun enters the bottle and heats the water. Hot water tries to radiate heat in the infrared spectrum, but infrared can't escape. What happens with the heat? It is trapped inside the bottle. Try it someday, you will be surprised.
Apple's probably outlaid millions in R&D, hosting, advertising, etc to make -- at most -- $50 million annually. Which makes what, around 500% ROI? How much could their R&D actually cost? This is not rocket science, folks, this is just a simple application to sell songs online. Many slashdotters could probably make a rough version of online music store in one day. How much functionality is there in iTunes store? We can't tell how much it costed Apple until they release their next annual report, but I guess it didn't really cost too much.
Folks, Apple's a big corporation. A fifty million dollar gain annually is, whether we like it or not comparing it to the scale of dough in our bank accounts/wallets, not horribly big money. This is just a project. Apple didn't bet their future on iTunes. Even Microsoft, being the largest corporation in the world, has small projects. Yeah, writing a new macro for MS Word may not be such a big deal for MS, but these things add up.
Your numbers are irrelevant. You speak about return, presumably a return on investment (profit/investment). 10% return and 20% return are pretty much equal, because higher return is always negated by higher risk. The article, though, speaks about the profit margin (profit/sales). The profit margin has no direct influence on the attractiveness of the business. For different industries it varies greatly. We have no way to tell whether 10% is a lot, until a serious competition emerges in this market.
It may not be new, but iTunes was the first one that worked. Say what you will about originality, in the end, it's not worth a hoot if nobody uses your product.
Is the list called "Coolest Consumer Products of 2003"? I though it was called "Coolest Inventions" and if so, iTunes hardly qualifies, because it is not one. It might be a cool innovative product, but it is not an invention.
Who do you think invented the radio? It was Popov, not Clear Channel, even though radio was not really used that much in 19th century and so does not qualify according to your definition.
That's pretty sick... You bet. But catching bad (or shall we say, horrible) parents is not as sexy as busting a paedophile ring (whatever it is). It doesn't help sell more copies of your newspaper, doesn't boost your ratings, doesn't look as cool on cop's resume. In short, real child abuse is booooring. Paedophiles and child porn users (or, rather, combating them), on the other hand, are considered glamourous by the society.
So if, in our imaginary scenario, I fuck my 5-year old daughter and you look at the photos of myself doing it. As a result, you are paedophile scum and go to jail and I am just one of about 1+ million American parents who abuses his kid. You're right, the society that thinks in this way (and it does, otherwise why would it act in this way?) is pretty sick...
More likely, the game will be all about going out and fighting Agent Smiths. This is covered in the FAQs and interviews. You will not be fighting agents. Those who meet agents, usualyl die - the rule will be true for the game.
I remember the times when viruses spread around with floppies. It got written into boot sector and loaded into memory when floppy was inserted into drive. Then antivirus programms were necessary. You should write "vaguely remember", because obviously you were quite young and inexperienced then.:) Viruses were loaded into memory only when you rebooted the machine with the infected floppy still inserted. You could very well manage without an antivirus program then if you know not to do such a stupid thing.:)
Hate to say it, but is it really the government's role to promote the arts? Well, may be not government's, but surely it is one of the state's roles. Remember why patents and copyrights exist - to promote the progress of useful arts (and science). The whole institution of copyright was created to do exactly that. If we find out it doesn't work all that well, it's a good idea to replace copyright with something that works better.
What is interesting is that there are 1 million proved cases of child abuse (presumably, the article talks about parents) every year, but for some strange reason we rarely hear about these abusers going to jail. Nobody even seems to hate them much. But their victims, especially those who were completely fucked up as kids, and became paedophiles, are commonly hated more than murderers.
I know one thing. If I ever decide that I want to fuck a 5-year old girl, I will fuck my own daughter. It seems that in the eyes of society this isn't really a serious crime ("thankfully", not everyone believes in the rational and calm responses)...
I wonder if a good "Phantom Editor" could merge together the parts 2 & 3, replace some speechifying, and transform it into a coherent, restrained remake. Do you have any specific suggestions? It's not that difficult to do in practice, but a good understanding of necessary changes is needed.
It's an example of what's classified as "mono-developmental futurism": a story based on the assumption that there will be just one amazing discovery or field of improvement that'll redefine all life around it. Could you please give some good links/references about the "mono-developmental futurism". It sound like a very common trap that many futurists fall to even unintentionally.
the criminal syndicates that produce the disks you describe, who are profiting from violating their copyright.
They are not really profiting that much. What they are doing is provide people with a cheaper alternative, providing them with services. You can get the movie for free from eDonkey2000, or you can get it for 3$ from a pirate. The money is a compensation for pirate's time and efforts, not something stolen from the movie producers. This is a very small distinction, but it is here.
It's one thing (very bad) to sell a pirated copy of the retail DVD for 15$ in a box almost identical to retail package and it is another (not so bad) to sell this copy for 3$ in a simple DVD-case. In the first case the pirate gets the distribution costs and the part which should have gone to the producers (to recuperate the production costs), in the second case he only gets the distribution costs (and some profit as a compensation for risk and a cost of capital).
That depends entirely on how much is at stake. What is worth more to a terrorist who does not value life -- a few thousand dollars or a few hundred lives? The original point is still valid - normal people will not become terrorists because of the ability to profit in this perverted way and terrorists usually have other reasons to commit their acts.
What sane person hijacks a plane and slams it into a symbol of American power? Don't they realize the backlash they will receive? Well - no, they don't, because they're blinded by religious fanaticism. Backlash? I think that was the whole point to make America pissed off. I am not arguing that terrorists are sane. I am arguing that sane people will not become terrorists because of this market.
Let's say the 19 hijackers on 9/11 each bet $10,000 that planes would slam into the WTC and Pentagon. Result? $190,000 profit for their surviving families. Well, the whole point of the market is to try to prevent terrorism, not for people to profit (that's a side effect). I suspect that someone from FBI or CIA might (just might) become interested in these bets. I mean, you see 19 Arabs betting money that planes will slam into the WTC. What exactly is the reason they do it? Can they know something? Even given the helplessness of the FBI and CIA, I believe there is at least a 0.01% chance that they will be able to prevent the attack, given such an obvious hint. Since the US lost several tens of billions because of the 9/11, paying 200000$ even for a 0.01% chance to prevent the loss is a bargain.
might as well take advantage of our supposedly-capitalist (actually crony-capitalist) system And we might as well take advantage of their greed.
Do you realize, for example, that foreign exchange markets perform about $1.5 trillion in transactions every day? Of course, the proposed market was not experimental in any way, right? Surely people would immediately start trading trillions of dollars there. Yeah. This was an experiment, which would be done in a highly controlled environment first. If it proved successful in the trial, then it might have been changed into a full fledged idea futures market.
Who is going to stop a dedicated attacker? It's all about chances. If you can very cheaply do something that has a decent chance of helping prevent a terrorist act, it is a good idea to try.
I never said the exchange *wouldn't* allow for it. However, I highly doubt that the Islamic religious-zealots who seem to be responsible for the majority of the terrorist acts in the last 30 years or so are going to be overcome by their wives or friends (who are also likely religious extremists) trying to stop them from pursuing their crusade "in the name of Allah!" You really are very stupid. But I will patiently try to explain.
With the information about the bets currently made on the market, FBI/CIA will be able to prevent terrorism, not wives or friends (WTF?). When I call police and warn them about a bomb in the mall, they go, check and disarm it. When several people will bet money on the market that there will be a bomb in the mall on such and such date, police will do the same. The end result? A terrorist act did not happen, people are safe. What about the better? Since the terrorist act was obviously planned, a person gets the money for the correct prediction.
You may ask, what if people will start planting the bombs just to collect the money? Well, this is not currently a problem. If it ever becomes one, the market can be closed and we will be back to the starting point. But if it doesn't, we will have a useful tool to save some lives.
still I oppose(d) the terrorist futures market on the grounds that it creates financial incentive to end human life.
That was really stupid. You can't be a libertarian if you allow your emotions to overcome your intelligence so quickly. I mean, I understand perfectly, why some people would be up in arms about the "terrorism market" (because they are idiots), but the arguments simply do not hold water. Whatever financial incentive there might be to commit the act, do you honestly believe that it can be in any way comparable to the risks and the expected value of losses? I mean, what sane person would do a terrorist act for a few thousand dollars? And you can't win more, because what would FBI think when you bet 1 million $ on a terrorist act and it happens? You call that incentive to commit the act, I call it incentive to disclose the information about it.
Nobody said (except for conservative wackos like yourself) that participants will be rewarded for successful terrorist acts and not for those that are prevented. What makes you think that the exchange would not reward people for successful predictions that would have resulted in a prevented terrorist act.
Well, I was offerning the solution to the problem of stupidity or extremely poorly designed ballots (a sidenote - poor Russia with a few years of democracy experience can design good ballots - I've never heard of any problem with layout or design - the USA with their 3 centuries of democracy can't). With the fraud the problem is that 1) Manual count can easily produce errors of about 1%. 2) The whole point of electronic voting was to make the process cheaper and easier. If you need to use both methods, there is no benefit in using electronic voting.
Personally I think that the whole voting business should be taken away from the voting machine manufacturers and given to slot maching manufacturers and bankers. If they can comply with tons of gambling regulations and provide safe and reliable (relatively) financial transactions, maybe they are better suited for "running" the elections?
I regularly see an ad in the subway for some lame skin beauty product. It got faces of a man and a woman, edited so much that I always think of "The wonders of Photoshop" as a very suitable slogan.:)
But if you take into account the average size of data that you can fit on a CD, the price can easily increase several times. Do all your files come in 650Mb chunks? Or do you prefer to fit 650Mb of different files on a CD and then spend hours looking for the correct one?
Guess how many people will actually use the "songs" given away in McDonalds. I don't think they will come on floppies - the point is they are iTunes songs, so people will have to: 1) get a computer 2) connect to the Internet 3) download iTunes 4) download the song Unless they already did steps 1-3, this is simply too much hassle to get a 1$ song.
So the end result is much smaller than you might think judging from the 1B figure.
This is a voter's dilemma. You know that your personal decision is extremely unlikely to have any influence on the result. You also know that you can gain something by making a selfish decision (ignore the elections or block the banners) and the expected loss will be negligible.
I personally block the ads and don't vote. Yes, if everyone did it, I would be screwed. But guess what, I am not everyone and I have almost no say in what they do. If they all wanted to block ads, I could not do anything about it. So better not to worry, do as I want and hope for the best.
And then it says (and prints) the message "You voted for the candidate A from the B party". If you still managed to fuck it up somehow, at least you can press the big "Panic!" button and an election official would be happy to assist you.
Yes, it is easy to do, but there is no will to do it. Ergo it is not done.
That's interesting. It appears that food can change its classification when crossing the national borders... What are melons then? In Russia they are eaten for dessert, so they probably are fruits. In neighbouring Finland they are included in salads, so they must be vegetables. And if I start hunting them, will they suddenly become game?
I agree wholeheartedly. Personally I think that the state should be ruled by a group of philosophers (in Plato's terminology), basically by scientists and other specialists (engineers, generals for Defence Ministry, etc.). The emphasis should be made on the consensus-based decision-making, but voting should still be an option. These rulers should be well-educated and raised to be honest. The selection should be done in an objective and transparent way. Unfortunately, the idea is completely unrealistic today.:(
Slashdot Mirror
Have you ever been in a greenhouse? Have you ever heard about the greenhouse effect? Visible light penetrates glass and transparent plastic. Infrared light doesn't. Light from the sun enters the bottle and heats the water. Hot water tries to radiate heat in the infrared spectrum, but infrared can't escape. What happens with the heat? It is trapped inside the bottle. Try it someday, you will be surprised.
Apple's probably outlaid millions in R&D, hosting, advertising, etc to make -- at most -- $50 million annually.
Which makes what, around 500% ROI? How much could their R&D actually cost? This is not rocket science, folks, this is just a simple application to sell songs online. Many slashdotters could probably make a rough version of online music store in one day. How much functionality is there in iTunes store? We can't tell how much it costed Apple until they release their next annual report, but I guess it didn't really cost too much.
Folks, Apple's a big corporation. A fifty million dollar gain annually is, whether we like it or not comparing it to the scale of dough in our bank accounts/wallets, not horribly big money.
This is just a project. Apple didn't bet their future on iTunes. Even Microsoft, being the largest corporation in the world, has small projects. Yeah, writing a new macro for MS Word may not be such a big deal for MS, but these things add up.
Your numbers are irrelevant. You speak about return, presumably a return on investment (profit/investment). 10% return and 20% return are pretty much equal, because higher return is always negated by higher risk. The article, though, speaks about the profit margin (profit/sales). The profit margin has no direct influence on the attractiveness of the business. For different industries it varies greatly. We have no way to tell whether 10% is a lot, until a serious competition emerges in this market.
It may not be new, but iTunes was the first one that worked. Say what you will about originality, in the end, it's not worth a hoot if nobody uses your product.
Is the list called "Coolest Consumer Products of 2003"? I though it was called "Coolest Inventions" and if so, iTunes hardly qualifies, because it is not one. It might be a cool innovative product, but it is not an invention.
Who do you think invented the radio? It was Popov, not Clear Channel, even though radio was not really used that much in 19th century and so does not qualify according to your definition.
That's pretty sick...
You bet. But catching bad (or shall we say, horrible) parents is not as sexy as busting a paedophile ring (whatever it is). It doesn't help sell more copies of your newspaper, doesn't boost your ratings, doesn't look as cool on cop's resume. In short, real child abuse is booooring. Paedophiles and child porn users (or, rather, combating them), on the other hand, are considered glamourous by the society.
So if, in our imaginary scenario, I fuck my 5-year old daughter and you look at the photos of myself doing it. As a result, you are paedophile scum and go to jail and I am just one of about 1+ million American parents who abuses his kid. You're right, the society that thinks in this way (and it does, otherwise why would it act in this way?) is pretty sick...
More likely, the game will be all about going out and fighting Agent Smiths.
This is covered in the FAQs and interviews. You will not be fighting agents. Those who meet agents, usualyl die - the rule will be true for the game.
What is that "respawn" you keep talking about? I though Wachowski brothers made it clear enough - you die in the Matrix, you die in the real world.
I remember the times when viruses spread around with floppies. It got written into boot sector and loaded into memory when floppy was inserted into drive. Then antivirus programms were necessary. :) Viruses were loaded into memory only when you rebooted the machine with the infected floppy still inserted. You could very well manage without an antivirus program then if you know not to do such a stupid thing. :)
You should write "vaguely remember", because obviously you were quite young and inexperienced then.
Hate to say it, but is it really the government's role to promote the arts?
Well, may be not government's, but surely it is one of the state's roles. Remember why patents and copyrights exist - to promote the progress of useful arts (and science). The whole institution of copyright was created to do exactly that. If we find out it doesn't work all that well, it's a good idea to replace copyright with something that works better.
What is interesting is that there are 1 million proved cases of child abuse (presumably, the article talks about parents) every year, but for some strange reason we rarely hear about these abusers going to jail. Nobody even seems to hate them much. But their victims, especially those who were completely fucked up as kids, and became paedophiles, are commonly hated more than murderers.
I know one thing. If I ever decide that I want to fuck a 5-year old girl, I will fuck my own daughter. It seems that in the eyes of society this isn't really a serious crime ("thankfully", not everyone believes in the rational and calm responses)...
I wonder if a good "Phantom Editor" could merge together the parts 2 & 3, replace some speechifying, and transform it into a coherent, restrained remake.
Do you have any specific suggestions? It's not that difficult to do in practice, but a good understanding of necessary changes is needed.
It's an example of what's classified as "mono-developmental futurism": a story based on the assumption that there will be just one amazing discovery or field of improvement that'll redefine all life around it.
Could you please give some good links/references about the "mono-developmental futurism". It sound like a very common trap that many futurists fall to even unintentionally.
the criminal syndicates that produce the disks you describe, who are profiting from violating their copyright.
They are not really profiting that much. What they are doing is provide people with a cheaper alternative, providing them with services. You can get the movie for free from eDonkey2000, or you can get it for 3$ from a pirate. The money is a compensation for pirate's time and efforts, not something stolen from the movie producers. This is a very small distinction, but it is here.
It's one thing (very bad) to sell a pirated copy of the retail DVD for 15$ in a box almost identical to retail package and it is another (not so bad) to sell this copy for 3$ in a simple DVD-case. In the first case the pirate gets the distribution costs and the part which should have gone to the producers (to recuperate the production costs), in the second case he only gets the distribution costs (and some profit as a compensation for risk and a cost of capital).
Check this thread at ShareReactor, an older posting on Slashdot or this Wikipedia entry.
You might actually like it. BTW, it also solves other problems mentioned in this thread, namely
fscking elves at the battle
Faramir taking Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath
bizzarre little side plot of ... Aragorn falling down
Theoden being posessed instead of manipulated
the ["Toss me!"] perversion of Gimli
That depends entirely on how much is at stake. What is worth more to a terrorist who does not value life -- a few thousand dollars or a few hundred lives?
The original point is still valid - normal people will not become terrorists because of the ability to profit in this perverted way and terrorists usually have other reasons to commit their acts.
What sane person hijacks a plane and slams it into a symbol of American power? Don't they realize the backlash they will receive? Well - no, they don't, because they're blinded by religious fanaticism.
Backlash? I think that was the whole point to make America pissed off. I am not arguing that terrorists are sane. I am arguing that sane people will not become terrorists because of this market.
Let's say the 19 hijackers on 9/11 each bet $10,000 that planes would slam into the WTC and Pentagon. Result? $190,000 profit for their surviving families.
Well, the whole point of the market is to try to prevent terrorism, not for people to profit (that's a side effect). I suspect that someone from FBI or CIA might (just might) become interested in these bets. I mean, you see 19 Arabs betting money that planes will slam into the WTC. What exactly is the reason they do it? Can they know something? Even given the helplessness of the FBI and CIA, I believe there is at least a 0.01% chance that they will be able to prevent the attack, given such an obvious hint. Since the US lost several tens of billions because of the 9/11, paying 200000$ even for a 0.01% chance to prevent the loss is a bargain.
might as well take advantage of our supposedly-capitalist (actually crony-capitalist) system
And we might as well take advantage of their greed.
Do you realize, for example, that foreign exchange markets perform about $1.5 trillion in transactions every day?
Of course, the proposed market was not experimental in any way, right? Surely people would immediately start trading trillions of dollars there. Yeah. This was an experiment, which would be done in a highly controlled environment first. If it proved successful in the trial, then it might have been changed into a full fledged idea futures market.
Who is going to stop a dedicated attacker?
It's all about chances. If you can very cheaply do something that has a decent chance of helping prevent a terrorist act, it is a good idea to try.
I never said the exchange *wouldn't* allow for it. However, I highly doubt that the Islamic religious-zealots who seem to be responsible for the majority of the terrorist acts in the last 30 years or so are going to be overcome by their wives or friends (who are also likely religious extremists) trying to stop them from pursuing their crusade "in the name of Allah!"
You really are very stupid. But I will patiently try to explain.
With the information about the bets currently made on the market, FBI/CIA will be able to prevent terrorism, not wives or friends (WTF?). When I call police and warn them about a bomb in the mall, they go, check and disarm it. When several people will bet money on the market that there will be a bomb in the mall on such and such date, police will do the same. The end result? A terrorist act did not happen, people are safe. What about the better? Since the terrorist act was obviously planned, a person gets the money for the correct prediction.
You may ask, what if people will start planting the bombs just to collect the money? Well, this is not currently a problem. If it ever becomes one, the market can be closed and we will be back to the starting point. But if it doesn't, we will have a useful tool to save some lives.
still I oppose(d) the terrorist futures market on the grounds that it creates financial incentive to end human life.
That was really stupid. You can't be a libertarian if you allow your emotions to overcome your intelligence so quickly. I mean, I understand perfectly, why some people would be up in arms about the "terrorism market" (because they are idiots), but the arguments simply do not hold water. Whatever financial incentive there might be to commit the act, do you honestly believe that it can be in any way comparable to the risks and the expected value of losses? I mean, what sane person would do a terrorist act for a few thousand dollars? And you can't win more, because what would FBI think when you bet 1 million $ on a terrorist act and it happens? You call that incentive to commit the act, I call it incentive to disclose the information about it.
Nobody said (except for conservative wackos like yourself) that participants will be rewarded for successful terrorist acts and not for those that are prevented. What makes you think that the exchange would not reward people for successful predictions that would have resulted in a prevented terrorist act.
Well, I was offerning the solution to the problem of stupidity or extremely poorly designed ballots (a sidenote - poor Russia with a few years of democracy experience can design good ballots - I've never heard of any problem with layout or design - the USA with their 3 centuries of democracy can't). With the fraud the problem is that
1) Manual count can easily produce errors of about 1%.
2) The whole point of electronic voting was to make the process cheaper and easier. If you need to use both methods, there is no benefit in using electronic voting.
Personally I think that the whole voting business should be taken away from the voting machine manufacturers and given to slot maching manufacturers and bankers. If they can comply with tons of gambling regulations and provide safe and reliable (relatively) financial transactions, maybe they are better suited for "running" the elections?
I regularly see an ad in the subway for some lame skin beauty product. It got faces of a man and a woman, edited so much that I always think of "The wonders of Photoshop" as a very suitable slogan. :)
What's the problem? You can create a frame page. Top frame is a [porn] banner, bottom one leads to hotmail.com. :)
But if you take into account the average size of data that you can fit on a CD, the price can easily increase several times. Do all your files come in 650Mb chunks? Or do you prefer to fit 650Mb of different files on a CD and then spend hours looking for the correct one?
Guess how many people will actually use the "songs" given away in McDonalds. I don't think they will come on floppies - the point is they are iTunes songs, so people will have to:
1) get a computer
2) connect to the Internet
3) download iTunes
4) download the song
Unless they already did steps 1-3, this is simply too much hassle to get a 1$ song.
So the end result is much smaller than you might think judging from the 1B figure.
This is a voter's dilemma. You know that your personal decision is extremely unlikely to have any influence on the result. You also know that you can gain something by making a selfish decision (ignore the elections or block the banners) and the expected loss will be negligible.
I personally block the ads and don't vote. Yes, if everyone did it, I would be screwed. But guess what, I am not everyone and I have almost no say in what they do. If they all wanted to block ads, I could not do anything about it. So better not to worry, do as I want and hope for the best.
And then it says (and prints) the message "You voted for the candidate A from the B party". If you still managed to fuck it up somehow, at least you can press the big "Panic!" button and an election official would be happy to assist you.
Yes, it is easy to do, but there is no will to do it. Ergo it is not done.
That's interesting. It appears that food can change its classification when crossing the national borders... What are melons then? In Russia they are eaten for dessert, so they probably are fruits. In neighbouring Finland they are included in salads, so they must be vegetables. And if I start hunting them, will they suddenly become game?
I agree wholeheartedly. Personally I think that the state should be ruled by a group of philosophers (in Plato's terminology), basically by scientists and other specialists (engineers, generals for Defence Ministry, etc.). The emphasis should be made on the consensus-based decision-making, but voting should still be an option. These rulers should be well-educated and raised to be honest. The selection should be done in an objective and transparent way. Unfortunately, the idea is completely unrealistic today. :(