Actually, the ko rule creates ko fights which, once your not scared of them anymore, is a pretty interesting layer of the game. Because in order to settle a local dispute(the ko itself) you have to play elsewere alternatively, thus waging both a local and a global battle at the same time.
It's kind of hard to convey if you're not that familiar with the game, but it's actually one of the coolest and hardest things in Go, IMO.
strioa
Re:But It is the intent that makes the art.
on
Videogames as Art
·
· Score: 1
You missed the point. It's not intent as in "ah.. what I wanted to do with this portrait is...". It's what is vehiculed by the work itself.
When I say that the intent makes the art, I mean IT MAKES the art. Leonardo's paintings represent what he wanted to express visualy, about or using it's particlar subject matter. It is his paintings. It is not expressed verbally or even figuratively for the most part, even when the subject matter is figurative(ie: a portrait).
I must repeat: Art is in the intent. The artistic intent. Not the justification and not what the artist "thought about" while he worked. Not whether or not he needed the money. The artistic intent.
I don't know what your so mad about though. Then again, you did miss the point.
I'm sorry but the nature of art IS the purpose or the intent of the artist (or artists) that realize the work in question.
If it is worth anything artistically is a matter of debate, and of taste. But It is the intent that makes the art.
That is why if you see some rock with an interesting shape, it can be beautiful, but it's not art. Because there was no intent in creating it.
If someone takes that boulder and put's it on display, and calls it "Attack ship on the shoulder of Orion". Then it is art. It might suck, be lame or lazy, derivative or cliché. It might be artistically worthless. But that's not the point. There was intent in putting it in context, however lame it may be.
There seems to be a misunderstanding that to be art, an object, work or process as to have a standard of quality. Or a certain degree of pompousness. As if "Art", with a capital A is something else in a class on it's own.
The artisitc intent makes the piece. Whether or not it is good is a matter of taste, and analysis.
The problem with the article, is that it does not adress some of the more interesting issues. Like that videogame as an artform has yet to come into is own. Videogames are still an immature medium. It's highly derivative of movies in it's grammar and the way that it conveys information.
It is somewhat natural, being partly a visual medium, like movies. But I think that as it matures, the medium will acquire it's own distinctive grammar, it's own style guidelines. Videogames are a mix of interactivity, visual stimulation, intellectual stimulation, fine motor skills as well as dramatic tension. But it has yet to fully exploit all of those element with any degree of consistency, partly because of it's cinema heritage, and the strong familiarity that people have of it.
The same way that cinema gradually moved away from the theatre mindset and that photography moved away from a painting mindset, while still retaining caracteristics reminiscing of them, videogames are evolving and will continue to evolve.
I also think it would be interesting to look at the way games are reviewed, and how it evolves with time. Because it seems that the way a particular medium is critiqued formalises the medium, identifies the structure of the idiom and procures guidelines to follow or break. It provides a structure, on which the artform can lean on.
Those are very interesting issues on a theoretical stand point, and I'm still waiting for this. It dosen't at all diminishes the pleasure of playing the present games however
"That editing, however, should have taken place by cutting away some scenes and spoken lines from the book. "
You can't adapt a book that way. In fact if you want to keep the themes of the book, you have to do much more dramatic changes. The basic ideas and themes of the original book are *not* corrupted. I don't know where you see the themes of the book corrupted.
In fact, I would say that the themes of the book are the thing that is kept the most intact in the adaptation.
The point is that, as was said before, and before that for 3 years now, is that they are two different mediums. Plot and storytelling devices that work in a litterary context aren't worth shit in a cinematic context.
"It appears that Jackson thought that he could create a better LotR than Tolkien by introducing exaggerated battle scenes and gut-wrenching folk psychology -- the problem is Jackson's overgrown ego, not the structure of the book"
The movie didn't deviate because there was a problem with the structure of the book. It was changed because the structure, the style and the pace of the book, dosen't make a good script.
"[..] for instance perverted Theoden's character from a great warrior king to a mindless follower of others."
Theoden's character was changed to emphasized how Aragron came into it's own and was truly a King even among kings." He is still a great warrior. I mean you can love the characters, but they are basically tools to further the story. As long as the story is told right and the themes are preserved, you can do what you want.
Movies are a visual medium... To take a book and adapt it into a movie, you have to do a lot of drastic changes. Every inner dialogue, every mood or tone description, has to be seen. Even most long dialogue has to be emphasized visually for the tone to stand out. So a lot of times your gonna have to take out your favorite side characters and give their important lines to someone else, or change them to take on another role in the story.
Sometimes it seems like people are attached to some characters and hate to see them different than they had imagined. Sorry, but most characters aren't essential. What they say or do might be. Or their relationships to other characters might be important. But in a story with 50+ side-characters, most of them aren't important in a movie format.
It's quite good in the book though. It paints a rich world, and you have time to get to know them and all. But in a movie... it dosen't work.
"So the question is why wasn't it made clear what that was all about without listening to the commentary? Jackson screwed up."
Yep I think he did too on this one. But at least it had a design and a purpose. He just failed to attain his goal in that particular case.
"#2 - One of the writers says something to the effect of try to imagine what it would do to the tension of the story if Aragorn HADN'T fallen off the cliff. I couldn't follow this-- maybe some film buff could explain?"
I think that this point is related to the first. It has more to do with the scene with Arwen, in my view.
Aragorn falling to his "death" had more to do with giving a place to a more relaxed scene. You can't hold up the tension for 1h30 hour straight, because then either people get used to it and don't feel it anymore, or people get tired of it.
So I think they wanted to give a pause to the audience before the preparation for Helm's Deep. Since they wanted to do a flashback to tie in the Arwen/Aragorn relationship, it was the perfect place.
Now this is what I think they were trying to do. Wether or not they succeded, that's debatable. I think in the end it worked out.
"Then you're using a fantasy definition of democracy. One that could only be achieved by a civilization like Star Trek's "Borg", which uses neural implants to allow everybody to instantly vote on tiny decisions made everyday."
That's not the point. I'm not saying that we should vote on every decision. Or hold referenda(is that the plural?) on every piece of legislature. But the point is that in a reprensentative governement, there should be much more accountability, and much more severe consequences for decisions that goes against what the populatiion want.
There is no easy way to do that, I don't have a ready solution. The only thing to do is something that is naturaly done, the gradual refinement of institutions, or the destruction or creation of political institutions when needed, under the pressure of social change.
I mean I have nothing against voting but it is not sufficient to acheive democracy.
As far as it being a fantasy definition of democracy, I would agree. But democracy is a concept. You can either dumb it down to apply it to reality or work your way towards it. Even if it means to never really acheive it, at least it gets better.
"However, it is a little interesting to consider just what percentage of franchisement is required to honestly call a country democratic. I'm inclined to say that Israel is not democratic, because around 20% of the people are denied voting on religious grounds."
That is a good point. I would be inclined to say that the percentage required depends of the situation. A situation where a group is denied the power to vote is obviously different than a situation where the population are disenfranchised. 20% percent in your example is really high, 20% in the latter situation is pretty good nowadays.
And what proportion, if equally equiped to make a decision, would be franchised, assuming everybody has the right to vote.
" Once voting is available to the large majority of people, it's safe to call a nation democratic. "
Again, I don't think that univeral sufferage alone is enough to acheive any kind of democracy. Because even though the governement is elected, it is elected between choices presented by a certain political elite, either overtly or de-facto. That of course is my view of it, it is open to interpretation.
What is not open to interpretation is the fact that people with more material ressources have a disproportionate amount of leverage on the center of power.
Electing your governing body is essential in democracy. But it's not sufficient, in my opinion.
I do agree that the reasonning in the article was flawed, but I would like to point out that the concept of democracy is a tad bit more complicated than a simple dictionary definition.
Democracy is not a governement elected by the people, although it might be in a one line dictionary definition, it is a governement of the people. Your not in a democracy just because you vote.
The Greeks and Romans didn't have a democracy, although they arguably conceptualise the idea, because large sections of the populations weren't considered citizens.
Even today I can't see any country that has acheived democracy. We certanly have more freedoms than we had before. Nevertheless, large portions of the population are basically voiceless because of the representative systems. Furthermore, you basically give up executive and legislative power almost irrevocably for years at a time.
And then there are the economic circumstances that puts a select elite much closer to the center of power than everybody else. How can you have a democracy when not everyone has equal pull on the center of power?
I mean, we shouldn't throw around the word democracy as lightly as we do. It must be a subject of constant thought and debate in order to constantly move in a more democratic direction. It has been this way ever since the inception of the idea. Reading some of the works of political thinkers about democracy, on both sides of the political divide, is a must.
I'm partial to Cornelius Castoriadis. I recently read his last interview in which he cites Rousseau talking about the English(it's not a crack about the English). He said:"The English think that they are free because they elect representatives every 5 years. I say they're free one day every 5 years!". Same applies in every representative governement, just substitute the term length.
"His thesis is akin to claiming that capitalists are the cause of poverty in the huddled masses and therefore communism will serve us best if we all give our best for the communal good and reap returns collectively."
How do you get that?
He says that the prices are controlled by the music distributors and therefore aren't giving any information to the consummer. So the consummer dosen't have any indicator as to the product is worth it or not.
So people decide to mitigate the risks of having crap sold to them by going getting their music themselves.
It's true that some people will continue to download music freely off the internet. But if people have a reasonable choice they will pay a reasonable price.
"A free lunch is a free lunch" is crap
I know that if record companies charged me to find artists, "hone" them and knew that THAT was there jobs, instead of trying to force created artists and force them down my throat, I would pay.(As I do when it is the case.)
As a Canadian, I can state that the U.S. political system is much more sophisticated than the Canadian system.
I mean there are much more safeguards in the U.S. system. There are different layers of governement theoretically guaranteeing a separation of power.
I mean I can't imagine what would happen down in the US if the governement had the power that our governement has.
But all in all, the US government seems to have a lot more going on in screwing their people. (Might just be that they have more money though:)
Don't take that as a flame bait, it's an earnest point I'm trying to make.
From what we see, a big proportion of Americans seem to give their president the benefit of the doubt, for lots of things. But you always hear staunchly anti-governement point of views.
In Canada we have a big governement, and we rely on it for a lot of things. But we rarely ever give an inch of respect or of confidence to our prime minister, whomever he may be. (Same thing might be said of other countries leaders, that is if we know anything about that country.)
It's obviously a generalisation, but it's what I perceive to be happening. And I find it intriguing.
To say that the CRTC and the various grant programs in Canada have ruined it for Canadian artists is such right wing bullshit that it blows my mind.
I'm not a fan of the CRTC, but the will of the media buying public dosen't matter for shit when the HUGE US music and movie conglomerates litteraly DUMP theit products on our shelves.
I'm sorry but the reason that those US products get so much more market share is because of the huge advertising and distributing budget. They make deals with distribution channels (TV, radio Movie theaters, Music stores) bo that they buy the bulk of the shelves, air time, and theatres.
Because of that, independent and local products sell less, so they have less money for distribution, so they can't get enough shelf space so they sell less.
The local end of the distribution chains bitch and moan that those US product are what the public wants, when in fact, those are the only product they get to see in the first place.
Add that to the fact that the advertising budgets of a hollywood movie is bigger that the entire budget of a Canadian film, you'll see that it dosen't have anything to do with the relative merits of the product itself. It boils down to one thing: If you don't know it exists, you can't really buy it now can you?
That's not even considering the agressive and overwhelming ad campaings. You see that the will of the public dosen't have anything to do with the sales number.
I don't think enough people realise that Celine Dion became a star by imitating american marketing strategies
It's true that the CRTC itself has a political goal and it sucks. But the whole entertainment industry in the US has a blatant propaganda function. I mean, you expect that from a governement agency like the CRTC so you can prepare for it. But from an industry that names itself "entertainement", it's a bitch to get a forced lecture on supposed american "values" and "way of life" when you don't even live there.
(Insert joke about Canada being part of the US here)
All that the CRTC is doing, in this particular case, is trying to level the playing field.
At least, here in Montreal, there this language thing, so by accident there is more of a local market than in the rest of Canada (or at least that's what I heard from some guy in Toronto)
But if it wasn't for those CRTC Quotas, there wouldn't be a Canadian entertainement industry. Not because we can't produce anything worth buying, but because it would have been quite easily suffocated.
If you think that people buy American products more because they are just better, as your post seems to indicate, your an idiot.
And anybody that thinks that anything I said means that I think nothing good comes out of the US, then they're even bigger idiots
The incredibly HUGE budgets that go into creating "celebrities" out of thin air, agressively market them to pre-teens and teenager, trying to make sure that they buy anything that the content provider sells them in the future, plus any derived crap that they can think of.
That whole indoctrination process through marketing and advertising IS the business model of the content providers. And that is what the industry is defending with it's dying breath. Those budgets are what keeps them from lowering CD prices. Certainly not the royalties.
The point is that the only way that these huge, bloated, mega corporation can make any money is by making sure that this whole advertising machine is there, keeping the price up and keep people from downloading. They could bring the price down if they cut on the agressive, obnoxious advertising process. But if that disappears, there won't be any more huge mega planetary stars, and that would make these huge corporate structure quite obsolete.
There could be a multitude of content providers that could do a good job of distributing and advertising their creators, and a lot more people could make a living out of their art. But the way it is now, the advertising industry is proping up the content providers and the content providers are proping up the advertising industry.
For that they need high prices and DRM.
This may seem to some people like conspiracy theory, especially because I used words like indoctrination. Let me just say that there is no conspiration in all that. Just self-preservation by people with a good deal of money and power.
Please feel free to tell me I'm full of shit, as long as you back it up!
I agree with the other replies. But there is another point I would like to make. The computer that you have now is the result of the research that went in the development of those super computers of the last 50 years.
It's the research that trickles down that can at some point provide solutions FOR EVERYONE(well not everyone at the same time). This is so obvious, it should'nt even have to be explained.
I mean, where do you think technology comes from. Come on, I have a Palm that has 75 times the clock speed of my first computer. This didn't come ex-nihilo. Huge expensive projects pushed the limits of computing and the resulting advances, combined with other developments in all branches of sciences and smaller projects in computing, made it possible.
And how do you think Parallel/Distributed computing came about? What do you even think a supercomputer is?
Remember the ENIAC, now look at a calculator. How's that for a solution for EVERYONE!
And the computers aren't obsolete when they come out!! They're no longer the fastest, but they aren't close to obsolete by any sense of the word.
That dosen't mean, however that technology is then available justly to anyone, but that dosen't have anything to do with it.
Don't mean to be rude, but this is really basic applied science.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the ko rule creates ko fights which, once your not scared of them anymore, is a pretty interesting layer of the game. Because in order to settle a local dispute(the ko itself) you have to play elsewere alternatively, thus waging both a local and a global battle at the same time.
It's kind of hard to convey if you're not that familiar with the game, but it's actually one of the coolest and hardest things in Go, IMO.
strioa
You missed the point. It's not intent as in "ah.. what I wanted to do with this portrait is...". It's what is vehiculed by the work itself.
When I say that the intent makes the art, I mean IT MAKES the art. Leonardo's paintings represent what he wanted to express visualy, about or using it's particlar subject matter. It is his paintings. It is not expressed verbally or even figuratively for the most part, even when the subject matter is figurative(ie: a portrait).
I must repeat: Art is in the intent. The artistic intent. Not the justification and not what the artist "thought about" while he worked. Not whether or not he needed the money. The artistic intent.
I don't know what your so mad about though. Then again, you did miss the point.
Strioa
I'm sorry but the nature of art IS the purpose or the intent of the artist (or artists) that realize the work in question.
If it is worth anything artistically is a matter of debate, and of taste. But It is the intent that makes the art.
That is why if you see some rock with an interesting shape, it can be beautiful, but it's not art. Because there was no intent in creating it.
If someone takes that boulder and put's it on display, and calls it "Attack ship on the shoulder of Orion". Then it is art. It might suck, be lame or lazy, derivative or cliché. It might be artistically worthless. But that's not the point.
There was intent in putting it in context, however lame it may be.
There seems to be a misunderstanding that to be art, an object, work or process as to have a standard of quality. Or a certain degree of pompousness. As if "Art", with a capital A is something else in a class on it's own.
The artisitc intent makes the piece. Whether or not it is good is a matter of taste, and analysis.
The problem with the article, is that it does not adress some of the more interesting issues. Like that videogame as an artform has yet to come into is own. Videogames are still an immature medium. It's highly derivative of movies in it's grammar and the way that it conveys information.
It is somewhat natural, being partly a visual medium, like movies. But I think that as it matures, the medium will acquire it's own distinctive grammar, it's own style guidelines.
Videogames are a mix of interactivity, visual stimulation, intellectual stimulation, fine motor skills as well as dramatic tension. But it has yet to fully exploit all of those element with any degree of consistency, partly because of it's cinema heritage, and the strong familiarity that people have of it.
The same way that cinema gradually moved away from the theatre mindset and that photography moved away from a painting mindset, while still retaining caracteristics reminiscing of them, videogames are evolving and will continue to evolve.
I also think it would be interesting to look at the way games are reviewed, and how it evolves with time. Because it seems that the way a particular medium is critiqued formalises the medium, identifies the structure of the idiom and procures guidelines to follow or break. It provides a structure, on which the artform can lean on.
Those are very interesting issues on a theoretical stand point, and I'm still waiting for this. It dosen't at all diminishes the pleasure of playing the present games however
Strioa
Is that Jesus Christ or Jesus H. Christ? I tend to mix them up.
"That editing, however, should have taken place by cutting away some scenes and spoken lines from the book. "
You can't adapt a book that way. In fact if you want to keep the themes of the book, you have to do much more dramatic changes. The basic ideas and themes of the original book are *not* corrupted. I don't know where you see the themes of the book corrupted.
In fact, I would say that the themes of the book are the thing that is kept the most intact in the adaptation.
The point is that, as was said before, and before that for 3 years now, is that they are two different mediums. Plot and storytelling devices that work in a litterary context aren't worth shit in a cinematic context.
"It appears that Jackson thought that he could create a better LotR than Tolkien by introducing exaggerated battle scenes and gut-wrenching folk psychology -- the problem is Jackson's overgrown ego, not the structure of the book"
The movie didn't deviate because there was a problem with the structure of the book. It was changed because the structure, the style and the pace of the book, dosen't make a good script.
"[..] for instance perverted Theoden's character from a great warrior king to a mindless follower of others."
Theoden's character was changed to emphasized how Aragron came into it's own and was truly a King even among kings." He is still a great warrior. I mean you can love the characters, but they are basically tools to further the story. As long as the story is told right and the themes are preserved, you can do what you want.
Movies are a visual medium... To take a book and adapt it into a movie, you have to do a lot of drastic changes. Every inner dialogue, every mood or tone description, has to be seen. Even most long dialogue has to be emphasized visually for the tone to stand out. So a lot of times your gonna have to take out your favorite side characters and give their important lines to someone else, or change them to take on another role in the story.
Sometimes it seems like people are attached to some characters and hate to see them different than they had imagined. Sorry, but most characters aren't essential. What they say or do might be. Or their relationships to other characters might be important. But in a story with 50+ side-characters, most of them aren't important in a movie format.
It's quite good in the book though. It paints a rich world, and you have time to get to know them and all. But in a movie... it dosen't work.
Sorry for the rambling.
Strioa
"So the question is why wasn't it made clear what that was all about without listening to the commentary? Jackson screwed up."
Yep I think he did too on this one. But at least it had a design and a purpose. He just failed to attain his goal in that particular case.
"#2 - One of the writers says something to the effect of try to imagine what it would do to the tension of the story if Aragorn HADN'T fallen off the cliff. I couldn't follow this-- maybe some film buff could explain?"
I think that this point is related to the first. It has more to do with the scene with Arwen, in my view.
Aragorn falling to his "death" had more to do with giving a place to a more relaxed scene. You can't hold up the tension for 1h30 hour straight, because then either people get used to it and don't feel it anymore, or people get tired of it.
So I think they wanted to give a pause to the audience before the preparation for Helm's Deep. Since they wanted to do a flashback to tie in the Arwen/Aragorn relationship, it was the perfect place.
Now this is what I think they were trying to do. Wether or not they succeded, that's debatable. I think in the end it worked out.
Strioa
"Then you're using a fantasy definition of democracy. One that could only be achieved by a civilization like Star Trek's "Borg", which uses neural implants to allow everybody to instantly vote on tiny decisions made everyday."
That's not the point. I'm not saying that we should vote on every decision. Or hold referenda(is that the plural?) on every piece of legislature. But the point is that in a reprensentative governement, there should be much more accountability, and much more severe consequences for decisions that goes against what the populatiion want.
There is no easy way to do that, I don't have a ready solution. The only thing to do is something that is naturaly done, the gradual refinement of institutions, or the destruction or creation of political institutions when needed, under the pressure of social change.
I mean I have nothing against voting but it is not sufficient to acheive democracy.
As far as it being a fantasy definition of democracy, I would agree. But democracy is a concept. You can either dumb it down to apply it to reality or work your way towards it. Even if it means to never really acheive it, at least it gets better.
"However, it is a little interesting to consider just what percentage of franchisement is required to honestly call a country democratic. I'm inclined to say that Israel is not democratic, because around 20% of the people are denied voting on religious grounds."
That is a good point. I would be inclined to say that the percentage required depends of the situation. A situation where a group is denied the power to vote is obviously different than a situation where the population are disenfranchised. 20% percent in your example is really high, 20% in the latter situation is pretty good nowadays.
And what proportion, if equally equiped to make a decision, would be franchised, assuming everybody has the right to vote.
" Once voting is available to the large majority of people, it's safe to call a nation democratic. "
Again, I don't think that univeral sufferage alone is enough to acheive any kind of democracy. Because even though the governement is elected, it is elected between choices presented by a certain political elite, either overtly or de-facto. That of course is my view of it, it is open to interpretation.
What is not open to interpretation is the fact that people with more material ressources have a disproportionate amount of leverage on the center of power.
Electing your governing body is essential in democracy. But it's not sufficient, in my opinion.
Strioa
I do agree that the reasonning in the article was flawed, but I would like to point out that the concept of democracy is a tad bit more complicated than a simple dictionary definition.
:"The English think that they are free because they elect representatives every 5 years. I say they're free one day every 5 years!". Same applies in every representative governement, just substitute the term length.
Democracy is not a governement elected by the people, although it might be in a one line dictionary definition, it is a governement of the people. Your not in a democracy just because you vote.
The Greeks and Romans didn't have a democracy, although they arguably conceptualise the idea, because large sections of the populations weren't considered citizens.
Even today I can't see any country that has acheived democracy. We certanly have more freedoms than we had before. Nevertheless, large portions of the population are basically voiceless because of the representative systems. Furthermore, you basically give up executive and legislative power almost irrevocably for years at a time.
And then there are the economic circumstances that puts a select elite much closer to the center of power than everybody else. How can you have a democracy when not everyone has equal pull on the center of power?
I mean, we shouldn't throw around the word democracy as lightly as we do. It must be a subject of constant thought and debate in order to constantly move in a more democratic direction. It has been this way ever since the inception of the idea. Reading some of the works of political thinkers about democracy, on both sides of the political divide, is a must.
I'm partial to Cornelius Castoriadis. I recently read his last interview in which he cites Rousseau talking about the English(it's not a crack about the English). He said
Just a thought.
Strioa
"His thesis is akin to claiming that capitalists are the cause of poverty in the huddled masses and therefore communism will serve us best if we all give our best for the communal good and reap returns collectively."
How do you get that?
He says that the prices are controlled by the music distributors and therefore aren't giving any information to the consummer. So the consummer dosen't have any indicator as to the product is worth it or not.
So people decide to mitigate the risks of having crap sold to them by going getting their music themselves.
It's true that some people will continue to download music freely off the internet. But if people have a reasonable choice they will pay a reasonable price.
"A free lunch is a free lunch" is crap
I know that if record companies charged me to find artists, "hone" them and knew that THAT was there jobs, instead of trying to force created artists and force them down my throat, I would pay.(As I do when it is the case.)
Strioa
As a Canadian, I can state that the U.S. political system is much more sophisticated than the Canadian system.
I mean there are much more safeguards in the U.S. system. There are different layers of governement theoretically guaranteeing a separation of power.
I mean I can't imagine what would happen down in the US if the governement had the power that our governement has.
But all in all, the US government seems to have a lot more going on in screwing their people. (Might just be that they have more money though:)
Don't take that as a flame bait, it's an earnest point I'm trying to make.
From what we see, a big proportion of Americans seem to give their president the benefit of the doubt, for lots of things. But you always hear staunchly anti-governement point of views.
In Canada we have a big governement, and we rely on it for a lot of things. But we rarely ever give an inch of respect or of confidence to our prime minister, whomever he may be. (Same thing might be said of other countries leaders, that is if we know anything about that country.)
It's obviously a generalisation, but it's what I perceive to be happening. And I find it intriguing.
Any thoughts.
Strioa
Just wanted to point out that US advertisement industry shares part of the blame for her being lose on the world:)
Strioa
I'm not a fan of the CRTC, but the will of the media buying public dosen't matter for shit when the HUGE US music and movie conglomerates litteraly DUMP theit products on our shelves.
I'm sorry but the reason that those US products get so much more market share is because of the huge advertising and distributing budget. They make deals with distribution channels (TV, radio Movie theaters, Music stores) bo that they buy the bulk of the shelves, air time, and theatres. Because of that, independent and local products sell less, so they have less money for distribution, so they can't get enough shelf space so they sell less.
The local end of the distribution chains bitch and moan that those US product are what the public wants, when in fact, those are the only product they get to see in the first place.
Add that to the fact that the advertising budgets of a hollywood movie is bigger that the entire budget of a Canadian film, you'll see that it dosen't have anything to do with the relative merits of the product itself. It boils down to one thing: If you don't know it exists, you can't really buy it now can you?
That's not even considering the agressive and overwhelming ad campaings. You see that the will of the public dosen't have anything to do with the sales number. I don't think enough people realise that Celine Dion became a star by imitating american marketing strategies
It's true that the CRTC itself has a political goal and it sucks. But the whole entertainment industry in the US has a blatant propaganda function. I mean, you expect that from a governement agency like the CRTC so you can prepare for it. But from an industry that names itself "entertainement", it's a bitch to get a forced lecture on supposed american "values" and "way of life" when you don't even live there. (Insert joke about Canada being part of the US here)
All that the CRTC is doing, in this particular case, is trying to level the playing field.
At least, here in Montreal, there this language thing, so by accident there is more of a local market than in the rest of Canada (or at least that's what I heard from some guy in Toronto)
But if it wasn't for those CRTC Quotas, there wouldn't be a Canadian entertainement industry. Not because we can't produce anything worth buying, but because it would have been quite easily suffocated.
If you think that people buy American products more because they are just better, as your post seems to indicate, your an idiot.
And anybody that thinks that anything I said means that I think nothing good comes out of the US, then they're even bigger idiots
Strioa
The incredibly HUGE budgets that go into creating "celebrities" out of thin air, agressively market them to pre-teens and teenager, trying to make sure that they buy anything that the content provider sells them in the future, plus any derived crap that they can think of.
That whole indoctrination process through marketing and advertising IS the business model of the content providers. And that is what the industry is defending with it's dying breath. Those budgets are what keeps them from lowering CD prices. Certainly not the royalties.
The point is that the only way that these huge, bloated, mega corporation can make any money is by making sure that this whole advertising machine is there, keeping the price up and keep people from downloading. They could bring the price down if they cut on the agressive, obnoxious advertising process. But if that disappears, there won't be any more huge mega planetary stars, and that would make these huge corporate structure quite obsolete.
There could be a multitude of content providers that could do a good job of distributing and advertising their creators, and a lot more people could make a living out of their art. But the way it is now, the advertising industry is proping up the content providers and the content providers are proping up the advertising industry. For that they need high prices and DRM.
This may seem to some people like conspiracy theory, especially because I used words like indoctrination. Let me just say that there is no conspiration in all that. Just self-preservation by people with a good deal of money and power.
Please feel free to tell me I'm full of shit, as long as you back it up!
Strioa
"Old Europe" should have been a dead giveaway..
If anyone wanted to make an earnest comment along these lines, please take my previous post as a reply.
Trying to develop a sense of sarcasm
Strioa
This guy stumbled in from the 50's!!
I mean this patriotic revival really is getting old fast.
To those (numerous) Americans who haven't lost their mind, I have this message of sorrow:
Sucks to be you right now.
With my best wishes from the north
Strioa
It's the research that trickles down that can at some point provide solutions FOR EVERYONE(well not everyone at the same time). This is so obvious, it should'nt even have to be explained.
I mean, where do you think technology comes from. Come on, I have a Palm that has 75 times the clock speed of my first computer. This didn't come ex-nihilo. Huge expensive projects pushed the limits of computing and the resulting advances, combined with other developments in all branches of sciences and smaller projects in computing, made it possible.
And how do you think Parallel/Distributed computing came about? What do you even think a supercomputer is?
Remember the ENIAC, now look at a calculator. How's that for a solution for EVERYONE!
And the computers aren't obsolete when they come out!! They're no longer the fastest, but they aren't close to obsolete by any sense of the word.
That dosen't mean, however that technology is then available justly to anyone, but that dosen't have anything to do with it.
Don't mean to be rude, but this is really basic applied science.
Strioa