I think your task is simpler if you define your terms first. Psychologists often define stress as being the result of conflict...normally internal ones. Conflicting desires, or desires at odds with your environment, or an environment hostile to your physical needs can all cause stress.
If you examine the way technology has altered our environment, both physically and psychologically, I think you will find plenty of correlation between it and stress. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to notice how maladapted we are for our twenty-first centruy lifestyle. We are overpopulating, overeating, and generally abusing ourselves and one another to an extent unheard of in societies further back along the technology curve. (I have rarely seen obese people anywhere but America. Think of tha amount of pain and suffering caused by simply being overweight...) We are bombarding eachother with advertising specifically designed to make us unhappy with our lot in life, killing eachother at wartime casualty rates on the highways, and poisoning our air, water and food supply with an ever-increasing output of waste. We cram ourselves into little boxes all day long, devoid of fresh air, sunlight and constantly exposed to electromagnetic radiation, sitting unblinking in front of CRT's and LCD's while stuffing industrially produced food into our faces, then go home and do the same thing.
I'll tell you what: when I was 18, I was a bit of a vagrant. I lived on the street for several weeks. I was certainly not a pillar of the community.
But I never felt freer or more stress free than I did then. All I had to worry about was where I would eat and sleep next. Simple. I didn't have things to clean, things to fix, things to do, people to pay, people to boss me around, people to be prettier than, places to go...I simply had to survive. There is a clarity of life that rapidly gets blurred by twenty-first century living. I will probably end up moving to a log cabin in the mountains to recapture that feeling.
Technology can make you comfortable...too comfortable, in fact...but it will never make life simple, and I think it is an excellent source of stress. The only thing better at producing stress than technology is other people...and there wouldn't be so damn many of them if it weren't for technology.
I think there is a profound misunderstanding of the role of the Pentagon here. The Pentagon does not initiate hostilities. Our elected politicians do.
If you don't like war, don't vote for a warmonger. But don't harp on the professionals whose job it is to win wars. Because as soon as some misguided politician starts one, you can be darn sure the best way out of it is to win it.
I'd prefer butter to guns any day, but I've lived long enough to see the value of the both the military and wargaming. It's easy for a bunch of overfed geeks to sit behind their monitors and cry about man's inhumanity to man...but the truth is, those same geeks have the luxury of being overfed because we are the most militarily powerful nation on a planet where weaker billions starve.
Is there a better way? Maybe. But for billions of years, this has been nature's way of deciding who gets to live at the oasis and eat and mate. It makes a whole lot of sense to try to be the best at it.
We can and should aspire to more peaceful solutions. But until one of you aspiring nobel prize winners comes up with a better idea, I'll keep my sabre sharpened...
Experimental aircraft are not a very good analogy in this context. All experimental aircraft still have to undergo routine FAA airworthiness inspections. The company that designs the aircraft has different certification standards, but there ARE standards, and the process is still very controlled. (In fact, if cars, and the drivers themselves, were as closely monitored as pilots and airplanes, we'd live in a much safer world. Of course, no one would be able to afford to drive, either...)
More likely causes of the accident you saw were:
1) Engine failure on takeoff (generally a no-win scenario)
2) pilot error (overloaded his plane, underestimated the density altitude for the day, stalled on final, or a midair...midairs are not uncommon in Florida, where air traffic is very heavy)
Why is everyone so gung ho to privatize things nowadays? The only thing we as a people have any control over is the preserve of government.
Corporations are accountable only to their shareholders...a handful of wealthy men who care little or or nothing for the welfare of the rest of us. Corporations have the rights of citizens, but not the responsibilities. They exist only to make money. They give nothing to anyone.
The government is...in democratic nations, at least...elected by the people, and accountable to their wishes. They do not unexpectedly go bankrupt (usually), merge with other companies, or sell your private information to the highest bidder. We all enjoy the fruits of their labors (roads, schools, new technologies) equally.
When the phone companies were privatized, a phone call was a dime. Now they are fifty cents, and we have enjoyed such new innovations as slamming and telemarketer harassment. Can you imagine Microsoft's "Driver Certification Program"...a three-day, 1000-dollar now-you-can-drive, too, seminar? How about Adobe awarding and revoking copyrights? (Dang, they got bought out...guess all my copyrights are worthless now!) What if your water supply was dependent upon the whims of Verisign? (No, I don't want to hold, I've had no water for two weeks...hello?)
Thanks, anyway, but I prefer the red tape and innefficancy of MY government to the greed and calousness of THEIR corporation any day of the week.
I think that is an interesting argument, but I disagree. Once a corporation is large enough, it can rely on such a diversified number of investments for revenue that it becomes effectively impossible to boycott. It bears responsibility to no one but it's (generally very wealthy) shareholders.
I prefer government. At least a democratic government is theoretically accountable to it's voters.
The price is very excessive, given the theoretical supply (i.e. unlimited) and ease of distribution. But I don't want to get into a debate about the slippery economics of software here. The bottom line is that the barrier to entry in the graphic field used to be skill and training...the tools of the trade themselves were relatively inexpensive. I got through college with only about three hundred bucks worth of tools, and I still have most of them. A copy of Photoshop costs hundreds of dollars, lasts a year or two before the inevitable upgrade if you are lucky, and it is not the only tool you need. You need an expensive computer to run it, and many other killer apps to provide for all the neccessary graphic chores clients need done nowadays. Thousands to start and hundreds every year to keep running, and all for the same pay.
This is not increased productivity. It's the tech industry poised like a vampire over this and every other job in America and bleeding us dry. Someday I hope that will become obvious...
Does CS stand for Counterfeit Stopper? Customer Scalper? What? What's wrong with numbers all of the sudden? Software is priced like cars so we should start naming them like cars? What?
I've been using Photoshop since version 2.5 (And actually started paying for it by version 4. Those present who seem to feel 600 dollars is a reasonable price for software need their head examined. It doesn't matter if it makes economic sense to the company...it makes no sense to the end user. It used to be that a graphic designer needed a ruler, an exacto knife and some whiteout to make a living. Now he needs several thousand dollars worth of equipment and software. That's not progress, that's larceny. But I digress... ) and I must say that PS CS is the most disappointing upgrade I have seen. All your money buys you is a bunch of DRM stuff and one or two token tweaks. PC users even have to deal with remote activation. Skip this upgrade if you can.
While I am ranting about PS upgrades, WTF is up with the line tool? It used to be to draw a line was a one step process. After several upgrades worth of improvements, it is now a three or four step process.
If ever-evolving file formats and OS's weren't such an issue, I think I would still be perfectly happy with Photoshop 4.
BTW, bonus points to anyone who knows what company originally wrote Photoshop...
I drank caffienated soda for over twenty years and decided I didn't want to do it anymore because it made me nervous. So I stopped. I had a mild headache for a day or two. It was not a big deal. I still don't drink it.
I smoked two packs of Marlboros a day for over ten years. I decided I was tired of the expense, the annual chest cold and the increasing risk to my health. So I stopped. It sucked for about a week. I probably chewed up a whole forest worth of toothpicks for a few months afterword. But it's been over twelve years or so and I don't miss it at all.
Frankly, after all the hype, I had thought it was all going to be much more difficult than it actually was.
You can do it if you want to. It's simply a question of willpower.
Actually, many pilot's have been known to tune the ADF into the nearest AM station, and if you peek into the cockpit of any given privately owned GA aircraft, you will probably see a CD player wedged in the panel somewhere.
If it weren't so important to keep monitoring the radio, I think pilot's would listen to music constantly.
Most modern documentaries have soundtracks. It's just rarely memorable.
But I think people would still go to strip clubs without music.
And, yet, Iria has no lips and grotesquely proportioned eyes and hair. Personally, I hate the anime style. The backgrounds are gorgeous at times, and the sensitivity to light and shadow is notable, but the characters look awful, and it gets pretty stylistically repetitive. In many ways, the anime "Style" is a crutcj to enable low-paid animators to crank out the toons. (Notice how they often substitute camera movement for actual animation) At least US animation has a little stylistic variety to it. And there is quite a lot of adult storytelling in US animation...it just tends to stay underground. Ever see the Maxx, or Spawn, or seek out any indie films at a film festival?
Anime isn't all that. It can be good, and so can the best of American animation. But both countries have their fair share of crap. Anime certainly doesn't warrant it's own name. It's just Japanese animation, folks...
Part of the reason for region encoding is licensing to television. The franchise rights to exclusively air a program may be sold here in the States, but not so often overseas, so studios find themselves in a situation where they would love to release a popular film or show overseas while it is hot, but cannot do so in the States because it would step on the toes of a local station airing the same show. With video, this was not a big deal, since the NTSC and PAL formats were incompatable and trader was limited, but with modern play-all devices and e-commerce, it became neccessary to restrict overseas movie purchases some other way.
Another reason for region encoding is staggered release dates, which are neccessary because the studios can only afford so many prints of the film to distribute at once. (A 70mm film print costs a kings ransom). Only the most ambitious blockbuster could currently stay profitable if released everywhere all at once. I suspect the same economics underlie the DVD release dates.
Obviously, the digital economy will demand changes in this business model, and I think we are seeing this slowly evolve before out eyes. Digital distribution, as in Star Wars, is a good example, as is this latest plea to end region coding. When the companies finally get their business models and distribution arrangements in step with the new technology, it will happen. But let's not forget that we are talking about an expensive process, with lots of jobs on the line, and technophobic grey-hairs running it. It's not a conspiracy, it's just the wheels of progress turning slower than everyone would like. But it WILL happen.
Actually, you guys sometimes get them sooner. We are about a season behind in the Buffy the Vampire releases here in the states, because the FX channel currently holds the rights to air them.
Part of the reason for region encoding is licensing to television. The franchise rights to exclusively air a program may be sold here in the States, but not so often overseas, so studios find themselves in a situation where they would love to release a popular film or show overseas while it is hot, but cannot do so in the States because it would step on the toes of a local station airing the same show. With video, this was not a big deal, since the NTSC and PAL formats were incompatable and trader was limited, but with modern play-all devices and e-commerce, it became neccessary to restrict overseas movie purchases some other way.
The US will be slow to adopt it, on religious grounds. Meanwhile, far more pragmatic souls overseas will discover the lucrative market for creating legions of Pam Anderson lookalikes with four boobs...
I've been exploring various options for delivering a short movie on the web in a pay-per-view format, and have found that the costs for bandwidth consumed make it unlikely that I can make it economically viable. It is cheaper for me to deliver it by mail on a DVD than to offer it for download.
So much for micropayments being a leg up for the little guy...
Music piracy, software piracy, bootleg DVD's...I think the problem is really symptomatic of a growing disparity between our old fashioned economic model and the perceived value of digitally replicated information. While it is undeniable that many hours of hard work go into producing software or music or art, it is often difficult to reconcile the idea of paying a lot of money for a CD in your hand that is essentially little more than a 30 cent piece of plastic, or the even more ephemeral downloaded mp3. The consumer does not see the the costs involved in their production. All we see is that there is a virtually unlimited supply of them. Their perceived value is low, and supply far outstrips demand. Therefore, the costs are seen as artificially inflated. The industry's tendency to deliberately restrict supply, and to charge prices far in excess of what is neccessary to make a reasonable profit, only contributes to this perception. The bottom line is that the music industry (and many other industries, too) has lost our trust, through repeated excesses, and many now feel morally justified in "stealing from the rich, to give to the poor". Are we really poor? No. Are they really rich? A few fat cats in suits, perhaps, but most are not...although the media moguls excel at portraying themselves as such. No, the truth is we are simply stealing from those who we sense have been stealing from us all along...if indeed theft is an appropriate word for what is really an act of unauthorized replication.
It is not a matter that can be adequately resolved by enforcing an archaic business model through litigation. The theft will continue. Our economic and legal systems need to grow and adapt to a very new kind of business environment. This is only the beginning...
Post in on a website. I read a university-run study into sources of spam that concluded that the vast majority of email addresses spammers collect were obtained from websites using automatic bots (the same way search engines catalog sites). I confirmed this myself. My primary email address was being hammered by spam (at least a hundred a day), so I changed addresses and made sure that it remained unposted on any website (in HTML...Flash is safe, at least for now). It has been months since I changed the adress, I have registered for many things on the web since, but have not received a single scrap of spam.
The university used far more exhaustive methods to reach the same conclusions, and I can vouch for the results. They did much the same thing you are doing...setting up dummy email accounts and then exposing them to the scrutiny of spammers in a variety of ways. The accounts posted on the web were far and away the most abused. Interestingly, they also found that, once an address is removed from the web, the spam begins to fall off after only a few weeks. Maybe spammers have an artificially short life span? We can only hope...
I think the primary responsibility for any murder belongs the murderer. Since our society seem reluctant to hold children or young adults accountable for these offenses, we turn to the next available whipping boy, be it the parents who raised them, the game developers/film makers/rock stars who inspired them, or whoever else seems to be handy. And yet no one can yet agree on exactly what inspires this sort of senseless violence...we can only seem to agree that someone must endur our vengeance. But who?
Is it the parents? Really? I am a parent of a 7 year old autistic child who is capable of extremely violent behaviour with little provocation. I spend many sleepless nights wondering if he will outgrow it, or if he is destined for an institution. If he kills someone, am I responsible?
Is it the game makers? Really? I am a pilot, and have spent a lot of time using flight simulators to hone my skills, because they are much like the real thing, and very educational. How realistic does a third-person shooter have to be before it is considered training?
Is it the media? Really? I have been paid good money to create art for advertisements. Every major company on the planet spends millions on advertising every year in the belief that it can influence consumer behavior. Isn't it interesting that the media giants are also quick to deny that their increasingly violent programming has any influence over our children?
I have thought long and hard about these things, as I am parent, and want what is best for my children. But I have arrived at no easy answers. I am somewhat dismayed that so many posters here are so quick to point the finger...typically at parents. I suspect many of those same posters are not parents themselves. If they were, they may begin to understand just how difficult it is to steer your children clear of the psychic minefield we have built for ourselves.
Think about it: As a parent, my job it to say no. No, don't stick your finger in the socket, you could die. No, don't hit your brother, it makes him cry. No, no,no. And slowly, he learns that their are limits to acceptable behaviour.
Then he discovers the rest of the world, the one just outside our four walls, the one that creeps into the house on the television and the radio and the Playstation faster than I can possibly hope to stop it. Yes, you can buy our product and be happy. Yes, you can drink our beer, and cheerleaders will love you. Yes, you can eat our food, and look just like this smiling model. Yes, you can solve any difficult problem by blowing up the bad guy. You can even get points for it.
Whose the bad parent? Me? Or could it be the society that gives us all what we want when we want it, and panders to our baser instincts to get us to beg for more?
Compound this dilemma with the limitless variety and mysteries of the human brain, and I doubt anyone could say just whose fault it is when a tragedy of this nature occurs.
Did the children know what they were doing? Did they understand right from wrong? If so, aren't they accountable? If not, why not? Was it their upbringing? Did they suffer from the latest fashionable syndrom? Were they mentally impaired in some way?
And how do we cope with them? Can they be rehabilitated? Will jailing their parents and sticking them in a foster home straighten them out? Perhaps some state-appointed psychiatrist could pump them full of feelgood chemicals untilk they are all smiles, at least until their prescription runs out. Will that help? Or maybe we should just put them down, like any other sick animal. Cleanse the gene pool. Will that please the Darwinists?
Here's a horrible thought...what if they were just ordinary kids, just like you and I once were, who fucked up? Really badly? Yes, they knew what they were doing, and they knew their parents would not approve, but they got caught up in the moment and did it anyway. Sounds just like a kid, doesn't it? After all, even adults sometimes lose their heads. The prisons are full of them. Ordinary people, who lost their mind...just for a moment. A moment is all
Slashdot Mirror
Just rip off the interface. That's what they did to Xerox...
I think your task is simpler if you define your terms first. Psychologists often define stress as being the result of conflict...normally internal ones. Conflicting desires, or desires at odds with your environment, or an environment hostile to your physical needs can all cause stress.
If you examine the way technology has altered our environment, both physically and psychologically, I think you will find plenty of correlation between it and stress. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to notice how maladapted we are for our twenty-first centruy lifestyle. We are overpopulating, overeating, and generally abusing ourselves and one another to an extent unheard of in societies further back along the technology curve. (I have rarely seen obese people anywhere but America. Think of tha amount of pain and suffering caused by simply being overweight...) We are bombarding eachother with advertising specifically designed to make us unhappy with our lot in life, killing eachother at wartime casualty rates on the highways, and poisoning our air, water and food supply with an ever-increasing output of waste. We cram ourselves into little boxes all day long, devoid of fresh air, sunlight and constantly exposed to electromagnetic radiation, sitting unblinking in front of CRT's and LCD's while stuffing industrially produced food into our faces, then go home and do the same thing.
I'll tell you what: when I was 18, I was a bit of a vagrant. I lived on the street for several weeks. I was certainly not a pillar of the community.
But I never felt freer or more stress free than I did then. All I had to worry about was where I would eat and sleep next. Simple. I didn't have things to clean, things to fix, things to do, people to pay, people to boss me around, people to be prettier than, places to go...I simply had to survive. There is a clarity of life that rapidly gets blurred by twenty-first century living. I will probably end up moving to a log cabin in the mountains to recapture that feeling.
Technology can make you comfortable...too comfortable, in fact...but it will never make life simple, and I think it is an excellent source of stress. The only thing better at producing stress than technology is other people...and there wouldn't be so damn many of them if it weren't for technology.
Can I write your paper?
I think there is a profound misunderstanding of the role of the Pentagon here. The Pentagon does not initiate hostilities. Our elected politicians do. If you don't like war, don't vote for a warmonger. But don't harp on the professionals whose job it is to win wars. Because as soon as some misguided politician starts one, you can be darn sure the best way out of it is to win it.
I agree.
I'd prefer butter to guns any day, but I've lived long enough to see the value of the both the military and wargaming. It's easy for a bunch of overfed geeks to sit behind their monitors and cry about man's inhumanity to man...but the truth is, those same geeks have the luxury of being overfed because we are the most militarily powerful nation on a planet where weaker billions starve.
Is there a better way? Maybe. But for billions of years, this has been nature's way of deciding who gets to live at the oasis and eat and mate. It makes a whole lot of sense to try to be the best at it.
We can and should aspire to more peaceful solutions. But until one of you aspiring nobel prize winners comes up with a better idea, I'll keep my sabre sharpened...
Experimental aircraft are not a very good analogy in this context. All experimental aircraft still have to undergo routine FAA airworthiness inspections. The company that designs the aircraft has different certification standards, but there ARE standards, and the process is still very controlled. (In fact, if cars, and the drivers themselves, were as closely monitored as pilots and airplanes, we'd live in a much safer world. Of course, no one would be able to afford to drive, either...) More likely causes of the accident you saw were: 1) Engine failure on takeoff (generally a no-win scenario) 2) pilot error (overloaded his plane, underestimated the density altitude for the day, stalled on final, or a midair...midairs are not uncommon in Florida, where air traffic is very heavy)
Why is everyone so gung ho to privatize things nowadays? The only thing we as a people have any control over is the preserve of government. Corporations are accountable only to their shareholders...a handful of wealthy men who care little or or nothing for the welfare of the rest of us. Corporations have the rights of citizens, but not the responsibilities. They exist only to make money. They give nothing to anyone. The government is...in democratic nations, at least...elected by the people, and accountable to their wishes. They do not unexpectedly go bankrupt (usually), merge with other companies, or sell your private information to the highest bidder. We all enjoy the fruits of their labors (roads, schools, new technologies) equally. When the phone companies were privatized, a phone call was a dime. Now they are fifty cents, and we have enjoyed such new innovations as slamming and telemarketer harassment. Can you imagine Microsoft's "Driver Certification Program"...a three-day, 1000-dollar now-you-can-drive, too, seminar? How about Adobe awarding and revoking copyrights? (Dang, they got bought out...guess all my copyrights are worthless now!) What if your water supply was dependent upon the whims of Verisign? (No, I don't want to hold, I've had no water for two weeks...hello?) Thanks, anyway, but I prefer the red tape and innefficancy of MY government to the greed and calousness of THEIR corporation any day of the week.
I think that is an interesting argument, but I disagree. Once a corporation is large enough, it can rely on such a diversified number of investments for revenue that it becomes effectively impossible to boycott. It bears responsibility to no one but it's (generally very wealthy) shareholders. I prefer government. At least a democratic government is theoretically accountable to it's voters.
The price is very excessive, given the theoretical supply (i.e. unlimited) and ease of distribution. But I don't want to get into a debate about the slippery economics of software here. The bottom line is that the barrier to entry in the graphic field used to be skill and training...the tools of the trade themselves were relatively inexpensive. I got through college with only about three hundred bucks worth of tools, and I still have most of them. A copy of Photoshop costs hundreds of dollars, lasts a year or two before the inevitable upgrade if you are lucky, and it is not the only tool you need. You need an expensive computer to run it, and many other killer apps to provide for all the neccessary graphic chores clients need done nowadays. Thousands to start and hundreds every year to keep running, and all for the same pay. This is not increased productivity. It's the tech industry poised like a vampire over this and every other job in America and bleeding us dry. Someday I hope that will become obvious...
Does CS stand for Counterfeit Stopper? Customer Scalper? What? What's wrong with numbers all of the sudden? Software is priced like cars so we should start naming them like cars? What?
I've been using Photoshop since version 2.5 (And actually started paying for it by version 4. Those present who seem to feel 600 dollars is a reasonable price for software need their head examined. It doesn't matter if it makes economic sense to the company...it makes no sense to the end user. It used to be that a graphic designer needed a ruler, an exacto knife and some whiteout to make a living. Now he needs several thousand dollars worth of equipment and software. That's not progress, that's larceny. But I digress... ) and I must say that PS CS is the most disappointing upgrade I have seen. All your money buys you is a bunch of DRM stuff and one or two token tweaks. PC users even have to deal with remote activation. Skip this upgrade if you can.
While I am ranting about PS upgrades, WTF is up with the line tool? It used to be to draw a line was a one step process. After several upgrades worth of improvements, it is now a three or four step process.
If ever-evolving file formats and OS's weren't such an issue, I think I would still be perfectly happy with Photoshop 4.
BTW, bonus points to anyone who knows what company originally wrote Photoshop...
I drank caffienated soda for over twenty years and decided I didn't want to do it anymore because it made me nervous. So I stopped. I had a mild headache for a day or two. It was not a big deal. I still don't drink it. I smoked two packs of Marlboros a day for over ten years. I decided I was tired of the expense, the annual chest cold and the increasing risk to my health. So I stopped. It sucked for about a week. I probably chewed up a whole forest worth of toothpicks for a few months afterword. But it's been over twelve years or so and I don't miss it at all. Frankly, after all the hype, I had thought it was all going to be much more difficult than it actually was. You can do it if you want to. It's simply a question of willpower.
I don't think that's a malady that infects only Indian programmers...
Actually, many pilot's have been known to tune the ADF into the nearest AM station, and if you peek into the cockpit of any given privately owned GA aircraft, you will probably see a CD player wedged in the panel somewhere.
If it weren't so important to keep monitoring the radio, I think pilot's would listen to music constantly.
Most modern documentaries have soundtracks. It's just rarely memorable.
But I think people would still go to strip clubs without music.
And, yet, Iria has no lips and grotesquely proportioned eyes and hair. Personally, I hate the anime style. The backgrounds are gorgeous at times, and the sensitivity to light and shadow is notable, but the characters look awful, and it gets pretty stylistically repetitive. In many ways, the anime "Style" is a crutcj to enable low-paid animators to crank out the toons. (Notice how they often substitute camera movement for actual animation) At least US animation has a little stylistic variety to it. And there is quite a lot of adult storytelling in US animation...it just tends to stay underground. Ever see the Maxx, or Spawn, or seek out any indie films at a film festival? Anime isn't all that. It can be good, and so can the best of American animation. But both countries have their fair share of crap. Anime certainly doesn't warrant it's own name. It's just Japanese animation, folks...
Part of the reason for region encoding is licensing to television. The franchise rights to exclusively air a program may be sold here in the States, but not so often overseas, so studios find themselves in a situation where they would love to release a popular film or show overseas while it is hot, but cannot do so in the States because it would step on the toes of a local station airing the same show. With video, this was not a big deal, since the NTSC and PAL formats were incompatable and trader was limited, but with modern play-all devices and e-commerce, it became neccessary to restrict overseas movie purchases some other way. Another reason for region encoding is staggered release dates, which are neccessary because the studios can only afford so many prints of the film to distribute at once. (A 70mm film print costs a kings ransom). Only the most ambitious blockbuster could currently stay profitable if released everywhere all at once. I suspect the same economics underlie the DVD release dates. Obviously, the digital economy will demand changes in this business model, and I think we are seeing this slowly evolve before out eyes. Digital distribution, as in Star Wars, is a good example, as is this latest plea to end region coding. When the companies finally get their business models and distribution arrangements in step with the new technology, it will happen. But let's not forget that we are talking about an expensive process, with lots of jobs on the line, and technophobic grey-hairs running it. It's not a conspiracy, it's just the wheels of progress turning slower than everyone would like. But it WILL happen.
Actually, you guys sometimes get them sooner. We are about a season behind in the Buffy the Vampire releases here in the states, because the FX channel currently holds the rights to air them.
Part of the reason for region encoding is licensing to television. The franchise rights to exclusively air a program may be sold here in the States, but not so often overseas, so studios find themselves in a situation where they would love to release a popular film or show overseas while it is hot, but cannot do so in the States because it would step on the toes of a local station airing the same show. With video, this was not a big deal, since the NTSC and PAL formats were incompatable and trader was limited, but with modern play-all devices and e-commerce, it became neccessary to restrict overseas movie purchases some other way.
The US will be slow to adopt it, on religious grounds. Meanwhile, far more pragmatic souls overseas will discover the lucrative market for creating legions of Pam Anderson lookalikes with four boobs...
Where do they come up with those percentages? (i.e. 30% chance of snow).
Good idea. Replace your artists with a bunch of geeks and uber expensive software. Yah, that'll work. Don't forget to fire the writer...
I've been exploring various options for delivering a short movie on the web in a pay-per-view format, and have found that the costs for bandwidth consumed make it unlikely that I can make it economically viable. It is cheaper for me to deliver it by mail on a DVD than to offer it for download.
So much for micropayments being a leg up for the little guy...
Then we would all live in fear of the WWF, instead of the RIAA. I don't know which is worse...
Music piracy, software piracy, bootleg DVD's...I think the problem is really symptomatic of a growing disparity between our old fashioned economic model and the perceived value of digitally replicated information. While it is undeniable that many hours of hard work go into producing software or music or art, it is often difficult to reconcile the idea of paying a lot of money for a CD in your hand that is essentially little more than a 30 cent piece of plastic, or the even more ephemeral downloaded mp3. The consumer does not see the the costs involved in their production. All we see is that there is a virtually unlimited supply of them. Their perceived value is low, and supply far outstrips demand. Therefore, the costs are seen as artificially inflated. The industry's tendency to deliberately restrict supply, and to charge prices far in excess of what is neccessary to make a reasonable profit, only contributes to this perception.
The bottom line is that the music industry (and many other industries, too) has lost our trust, through repeated excesses, and many now feel morally justified in "stealing from the rich, to give to the poor". Are we really poor? No. Are they really rich? A few fat cats in suits, perhaps, but most are not...although the media moguls excel at portraying themselves as such. No, the truth is we are simply stealing from those who we sense have been stealing from us all along...if indeed theft is an appropriate word for what is really an act of unauthorized replication.
It is not a matter that can be adequately resolved by enforcing an archaic business model through litigation. The theft will continue. Our economic and legal systems need to grow and adapt to a very new kind of business environment. This is only the beginning...
Post in on a website. I read a university-run study into sources of spam that concluded that the vast majority of email addresses spammers collect were obtained from websites using automatic bots (the same way search engines catalog sites). I confirmed this myself. My primary email address was being hammered by spam (at least a hundred a day), so I changed addresses and made sure that it remained unposted on any website (in HTML...Flash is safe, at least for now). It has been months since I changed the adress, I have registered for many things on the web since, but have not received a single scrap of spam. The university used far more exhaustive methods to reach the same conclusions, and I can vouch for the results. They did much the same thing you are doing...setting up dummy email accounts and then exposing them to the scrutiny of spammers in a variety of ways. The accounts posted on the web were far and away the most abused. Interestingly, they also found that, once an address is removed from the web, the spam begins to fall off after only a few weeks. Maybe spammers have an artificially short life span? We can only hope...
That was just barely on topic, but I applaud your penmanship. Very well written!
I think the primary responsibility for any murder belongs the murderer. Since our society seem reluctant to hold children or young adults accountable for these offenses, we turn to the next available whipping boy, be it the parents who raised them, the game developers/film makers/rock stars who inspired them, or whoever else seems to be handy. And yet no one can yet agree on exactly what inspires this sort of senseless violence...we can only seem to agree that someone must endur our vengeance. But who? Is it the parents? Really? I am a parent of a 7 year old autistic child who is capable of extremely violent behaviour with little provocation. I spend many sleepless nights wondering if he will outgrow it, or if he is destined for an institution. If he kills someone, am I responsible? Is it the game makers? Really? I am a pilot, and have spent a lot of time using flight simulators to hone my skills, because they are much like the real thing, and very educational. How realistic does a third-person shooter have to be before it is considered training? Is it the media? Really? I have been paid good money to create art for advertisements. Every major company on the planet spends millions on advertising every year in the belief that it can influence consumer behavior. Isn't it interesting that the media giants are also quick to deny that their increasingly violent programming has any influence over our children? I have thought long and hard about these things, as I am parent, and want what is best for my children. But I have arrived at no easy answers. I am somewhat dismayed that so many posters here are so quick to point the finger...typically at parents. I suspect many of those same posters are not parents themselves. If they were, they may begin to understand just how difficult it is to steer your children clear of the psychic minefield we have built for ourselves. Think about it: As a parent, my job it to say no. No, don't stick your finger in the socket, you could die. No, don't hit your brother, it makes him cry. No, no,no. And slowly, he learns that their are limits to acceptable behaviour. Then he discovers the rest of the world, the one just outside our four walls, the one that creeps into the house on the television and the radio and the Playstation faster than I can possibly hope to stop it. Yes, you can buy our product and be happy. Yes, you can drink our beer, and cheerleaders will love you. Yes, you can eat our food, and look just like this smiling model. Yes, you can solve any difficult problem by blowing up the bad guy. You can even get points for it. Whose the bad parent? Me? Or could it be the society that gives us all what we want when we want it, and panders to our baser instincts to get us to beg for more? Compound this dilemma with the limitless variety and mysteries of the human brain, and I doubt anyone could say just whose fault it is when a tragedy of this nature occurs. Did the children know what they were doing? Did they understand right from wrong? If so, aren't they accountable? If not, why not? Was it their upbringing? Did they suffer from the latest fashionable syndrom? Were they mentally impaired in some way? And how do we cope with them? Can they be rehabilitated? Will jailing their parents and sticking them in a foster home straighten them out? Perhaps some state-appointed psychiatrist could pump them full of feelgood chemicals untilk they are all smiles, at least until their prescription runs out. Will that help? Or maybe we should just put them down, like any other sick animal. Cleanse the gene pool. Will that please the Darwinists? Here's a horrible thought...what if they were just ordinary kids, just like you and I once were, who fucked up? Really badly? Yes, they knew what they were doing, and they knew their parents would not approve, but they got caught up in the moment and did it anyway. Sounds just like a kid, doesn't it? After all, even adults sometimes lose their heads. The prisons are full of them. Ordinary people, who lost their mind...just for a moment. A moment is all