A lot of modern laws and legal constructs were bribed and bought into existence by the money power. Denying people their rights. One only has to look at DRM, patents and copyright as the new enclosure movement around software to see how capitalism functions in the real world.
I'm sick and tired of capitalists not fucking understanding human beings and not understanding and separating THEORY from how people and capitalists behave in the REAL WORLD. There is no "pure capitalism" to go back to. Capitalism was always a mix of thievery, thuggery, and questionable justifications for power hungry and profiteering human beings if you ever studied it's history.
Cronyism is just the normal functioning of capitalism. Most people on slashdot are american and so historically illiterate as to make their points of view downright idiotic and uninformed.
When Americans finally grow up out of ideology and start doing serious analysis only then will I ever take what they say seriously.
Angry birds is a clone of flash games that had been around for ages, the thing that angry birds got right was just sheer aesthetics that launched it into the statosphere. It has nothing to do with 'well made game' has everything to do with the bird aesthetic.
Check out crush the castle (the games angry bird copied) below:
... are mostly clueless. I look at how GUI has developed on windows and there are days I wonder how those people got hired at microsoft.
A GUI should be simple, functional, expose what functions you commonly use and hide infrequently used aspects of the program. There are tonnes of modern day programs that could learn this lesson but you could see the start of it in I think it is Office 2000 ish (203?) where menu's would shorten and hide functions not used. Also for more advanced users you can edit the shortcut bar and add/remove functions/buttons you don't use to clean up the interface.
A great interface gets out of the way for basic users and allows more advanced users freedom of hiding/removing/editing functions they don't use from the program's interface.
Read all about the enclosure movement. It's the same drive for profit and power that brought both slavery and capitalism into existence, human beings once they become rich think it's their right to be rich in perpetuity and hide behind vague language and con artistry under the guise of noble ideals or fairness.
The drive to enclose is currently happening to games right now with MMO's and DRM. I imagine we'll start to see trojan horse of trusted computing rear it's head sooner or later or it will be slowly phased in. If I remember correctly Nintendo (and other companies I can't remember at the moment) is behind this kind of act and others like it as well.
We really need a revolt against this kind of bullshit.
... too incompetent to judge the quality of patents anymore, especially regarding software and mathematics. There is an infinite amount of work to be discovered/yet undone. Over time the complexity of modern products/etc has out-stripped human capability and human judgement so we have just ridiculousness things getting patented. Companies will just patent the low hanging fruit which are the foundations of all future work and hang everyone else with it. It's time to put the system down and severely restrain it. We have copyrights that go on forever and the public domain has been completely stolen by corporations.
This is especially apparent with abandon/out-dated/breakware video games or companies that can't afford and whose teams have long since left/died/moved on. Games and IP just sits collecting dust when it should be able to be used by others. I often wonder if take say a hot property universe for the sake of argument say: Transformers, let companies compete on making good games instead of trying to lock down licenses. It's time to get these companies competing on product quality instead.
I think we've all seen companies just lock down stuff and then make mediocre crap with it, it's time for a more sane system.
.... a genetically based disability. I swear some of these people are just off the wall clueless. A more accurate statement would be "Heavy screen time stunts social skills". It certainly doesn't cause autism though.
"It's sad to see companies don't appreciate quality software anymore"
It's more about the costs to develop quality software for the end customer. If you want to see a perfect example look at the gaming industry, the development time and costs of modern games are astronomical compared to 15 years ago when you could do a game like Duke nukem 3D for $400,000. A modern AAA game is at least $5-10 million to start.
There is a point where human limits and the human costs is too much for the customer and they look to cheaper alternatives. Most companies only care about quality if it makes enough sense financially.
... is that human beings just don't have the cognitive power, wisdom or experience to even have a patent system. You'd have to be a higher being and know an enormous amount to even begin having enough judgement to seperate 'obvious' from 'non obvious'.
We see this in the courts all the time - judges are frequently ignorant morons and do just the most bone-headed legal shit because of their ignorance. Same thing happens in regard to patents.
"Actually plenty of economists did predict the crash"
Crashes are inherent to the nature of capitalist society and has been known about since the time of marx and even before then. Just because you can predict something doesn't say anything about the political foundations of the institutions and social relations in general. I can use science to predict the whether tomorrow will be sunny, but that is different from human societies which are organized on the basis of legal and political structures. Money, property and the laws governing it are human inventions not natural laws.
... is not a science. The legal structure of money, the way prices work in a one way fashion, and private ownershp are all political all the way through. Now this may piss off Americans but there are alternative ways to organize society whether they like it or not. Human beings tend to be people of their era and they often have a profound lack of imagination, the black and white right/left thinking I see from people already disqualifies them for not even having the courage to analyze or think about the structures and societies in which they find themselves, the false notion that it is either THIS/THAT, BLACK/WHITE is having given up critical thinking and analysis for good.
"has enough productivity to provide for the basic needs of everyone, it just chooses not to."
But this was my whole point - until there is a democratization of the distribution of wealth (which will probably require serious amounts of protest or even violence) there's not going to be a change and the poor will get doused by inflation. Take a look at disability payments in the US/Canada you can't live on what they pay you with that you are pushed to the margins of society.
"Everyone can't be rich, but with a little work, everyone could not be poor."
Wrong, what the market gives with one hand it takes with the other via inflation. Until the poor get some say over pricing of their bills (relative to their income). The poor will not escape poverty.
"I love capitalism -- moderately free enterprise beats the hell out of managed economies if only because the latter are invariably even less free and more entrenched."
You love capitalism because you're in the top 1% of the global population in terms of wealth, you wouldn't love it exactly if you had just been bombed.
Let us face facts that our capitalist elite aren't exactly friends of more humane and mixed-market socialistic enterprises that the people wanted in other countries and they destroyed just so they didn't have to compete. The truth is american capitalists are scared of other models that work just fine and are on par with the american model and they don't want to lose their position which and wealth much of which is ill gotten. In america I understand you love it but the more you learn about what goes on in the world the less invested you become in ideology when you get old - you look at facts and prize analysis over ideology, since ideology is the wrong approach.
Criticism of all views is absolutely necessary to solve major problems facing us all and if that means tweaking or modifying or throwing out aspects of this or that ideology then so be it.
"They exist, impervious in our society, simply because we lack the will to oppose them. "
It's not merely that, it's the propaganda that goes along with it. How many Americans buy into the so called 'free market' and believe these people 'earned' their money? I'd say a good number of them want just to be like them in their own sick way. The poor and middle class in america see themselves as temporarily embarrassed rich people.
As opposed to cinematic story narrative driven crap? Games are about doing things. RPG's took the doing stuff out of the game and that's why it's boring. If WoW played like darksiders I'd be all over that. But WoW is a casual game so all they have for you is tedious autocombat.
Strong Copyright is NOT about protecting the public. It is about protecting the few at the top that can rake in the dough.
No doubt about this, the truth is the public can't defend itself the money power because only a small portion of the population even understands the issues correctly to make any kind of sound decision regarding policy.
"Capitalism - in this context the voluntary exchange of money and goods - is inherently democratic "
Only stupid people believe this nonsense. You can always buy laws/change the rules in your favor to make this statement totally void, one only has to look at copyrights and patents to see how nonsensical this statement is. As well as "software licensing" think about how many people just accept these things when they were bitterly argued over a long time ago. Next you don't take into account scaling problems. In a small town of 10K if I make widgets the maximum profit I can make is capped against population size, as population sizes expand my profits keep expanding and there is no checks or balances on this concentration of capital. The rules of free exchange are fundamentally flawed when dealing with large concentrations of money because of the power and influence it gives people to negatively influence society. This is why the founding fathers were often so against banks.
Games have no value if they are not fun no matter how much developers spend on developing them regardless. A 50 million dollar game that is not fun is zero value. Therefore to say games increase in value is completely incorrect. If a game increased in value it would be fun on release and grow more fun with time without additions and that is not what happens in entertainment products.
."that there is anything wrong with being rich, or that there is something wrong with capitalism generally..."
Capitalism naturally leads to this outcome because there is no check on how much you can accumulate and no democratic control over pricing and resources. There is no ideal capitalism that has existed in some fairy fairy land in your head.
This is the natural outcome of capitalism _in the real world_ the evidence is more then abundant.
" I was buying games with my own money before the Genesis and Super Nintendo hit the scene, so I've had to know game prices for over 20 years."
While the game prices haven't changed much the size of the market has changed offsetting the need to increase prices because of market expansion. I really hate how people say "games are cheaper because of inflation" but then fail to mention stagnant wages and the erosion of buying power from said inflation.
It's too simplistic an explanation that doesn't take into account multitude of variables.
They don't have to shut down anything, they just have to control funding and hiring and firing. They can hire and fire based on political views and then just come up with excuses like they do in the corporate world. Shows how clueless you are about the world IMHO. It's trivially easy to change an institution when you steer and control the hiring, firing and funding.
Slashdot Mirror
"It's not a property of capitalism. It's a property of cronyism."
No you are just historically illiterate, how about the enclosure movement that kicked people off their lands at the hands of the capitalists?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure
A lot of modern laws and legal constructs were bribed and bought into existence by the money power. Denying people their rights. One only has to look at DRM, patents and copyright as the new enclosure movement around software to see how capitalism functions in the real world.
I'm sick and tired of capitalists not fucking understanding human beings and not understanding and separating THEORY from how people and capitalists behave in the REAL WORLD. There is no "pure capitalism" to go back to. Capitalism was always a mix of thievery, thuggery, and questionable justifications for power hungry and profiteering human beings if you ever studied it's history.
Cronyism is just the normal functioning of capitalism. Most people on slashdot are american and so historically illiterate as to make their points of view downright idiotic and uninformed.
When Americans finally grow up out of ideology and start doing serious analysis only then will I ever take what they say seriously.
"It's a pretty well made game."
Angry birds is a clone of flash games that had been around for ages, the thing that angry birds got right was just sheer aesthetics that launched it into the statosphere. It has nothing to do with 'well made game' has everything to do with the bird aesthetic.
Check out crush the castle (the games angry bird copied) below:
http://armorgames.com/play/3614/crush-the-castle
"How is this news for nerds?"
Many nerds like shitty mainstream videogames.
... are mostly clueless. I look at how GUI has developed on windows and there are days I wonder how those people got hired at microsoft.
A GUI should be simple, functional, expose what functions you commonly use and hide infrequently used aspects of the program. There are tonnes of modern day programs that could learn this lesson but you could see the start of it in I think it is Office 2000 ish (203?) where menu's would shorten and hide functions not used. Also for more advanced users you can edit the shortcut bar and add/remove functions/buttons you don't use to clean up the interface.
A great interface gets out of the way for basic users and allows more advanced users freedom of hiding/removing/editing functions they don't use from the program's interface.
"I still don't understand it."
Read all about the enclosure movement. It's the same drive for profit and power that brought both slavery and capitalism into existence, human beings once they become rich think it's their right to be rich in perpetuity and hide behind vague language and con artistry under the guise of noble ideals or fairness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure
The drive to enclose is currently happening to games right now with MMO's and DRM. I imagine we'll start to see trojan horse of trusted computing rear it's head sooner or later or it will be slowly phased in. If I remember correctly Nintendo (and other companies I can't remember at the moment) is behind this kind of act and others like it as well.
We really need a revolt against this kind of bullshit.
"And to think some working men think unions are a bad thing."
Thanks to billionaires propaganda see here:
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleandpower/2011/10/2011102683719370179.html
... too incompetent to judge the quality of patents anymore, especially regarding software and mathematics. There is an infinite amount of work to be discovered/yet undone. Over time the complexity of modern products/etc has out-stripped human capability and human judgement so we have just ridiculousness things getting patented. Companies will just patent the low hanging fruit which are the foundations of all future work and hang everyone else with it. It's time to put the system down and severely restrain it. We have copyrights that go on forever and the public domain has been completely stolen by corporations.
This is especially apparent with abandon/out-dated/breakware video games or companies that can't afford and whose teams have long since left/died/moved on. Games and IP just sits collecting dust when it should be able to be used by others. I often wonder if take say a hot property universe for the sake of argument say: Transformers, let companies compete on making good games instead of trying to lock down licenses. It's time to get these companies competing on product quality instead.
I think we've all seen companies just lock down stuff and then make mediocre crap with it, it's time for a more sane system.
.... a genetically based disability. I swear some of these people are just off the wall clueless. A more accurate statement would be "Heavy screen time stunts social skills". It certainly doesn't cause autism though.
"It's sad to see companies don't appreciate quality software anymore"
It's more about the costs to develop quality software for the end customer. If you want to see a perfect example look at the gaming industry, the development time and costs of modern games are astronomical compared to 15 years ago when you could do a game like Duke nukem 3D for $400,000. A modern AAA game is at least $5-10 million to start.
There is a point where human limits and the human costs is too much for the customer and they look to cheaper alternatives. Most companies only care about quality if it makes enough sense financially.
... is that human beings just don't have the cognitive power, wisdom or experience to even have a patent system. You'd have to be a higher being and know an enormous amount to even begin having enough judgement to seperate 'obvious' from 'non obvious'.
We see this in the courts all the time - judges are frequently ignorant morons and do just the most bone-headed legal shit because of their ignorance. Same thing happens in regard to patents.
Societies have been organized differently in the past which is evidence that refutes your rather limited view of the world.
"Actually plenty of economists did predict the crash"
Crashes are inherent to the nature of capitalist society and has been known about since the time of marx and even before then. Just because you can predict something doesn't say anything about the political foundations of the institutions and social relations in general. I can use science to predict the whether tomorrow will be sunny, but that is different from human societies which are organized on the basis of legal and political structures. Money, property and the laws governing it are human inventions not natural laws.
... is not a science. The legal structure of money, the way prices work in a one way fashion, and private ownershp are all political all the way through. Now this may piss off Americans but there are alternative ways to organize society whether they like it or not. Human beings tend to be people of their era and they often have a profound lack of imagination, the black and white right/left thinking I see from people already disqualifies them for not even having the courage to analyze or think about the structures and societies in which they find themselves, the false notion that it is either THIS/THAT, BLACK/WHITE is having given up critical thinking and analysis for good.
"has enough productivity to provide for the basic needs of everyone, it just chooses not to."
But this was my whole point - until there is a democratization of the distribution of wealth (which will probably require serious amounts of protest or even violence) there's not going to be a change and the poor will get doused by inflation. Take a look at disability payments in the US/Canada you can't live on what they pay you with that you are pushed to the margins of society.
"Everyone can't be rich, but with a little work, everyone could not be poor."
Wrong, what the market gives with one hand it takes with the other via inflation. Until the poor get some say over pricing of their bills (relative to their income). The poor will not escape poverty.
"I love capitalism -- moderately free enterprise beats the hell out of managed economies if only because the latter are invariably even less free and more entrenched."
You love capitalism because you're in the top 1% of the global population in terms of wealth, you wouldn't love it exactly if you had just been bombed.
http://rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/migrant-matters/2011/10/michael-parenti-face-imperialism
Let us face facts that our capitalist elite aren't exactly friends of more humane and mixed-market socialistic enterprises that the people wanted in other countries and they destroyed just so they didn't have to compete. The truth is american capitalists are scared of other models that work just fine and are on par with the american model and they don't want to lose their position which and wealth much of which is ill gotten. In america I understand you love it but the more you learn about what goes on in the world the less invested you become in ideology when you get old - you look at facts and prize analysis over ideology, since ideology is the wrong approach.
Criticism of all views is absolutely necessary to solve major problems facing us all and if that means tweaking or modifying or throwing out aspects of this or that ideology then so be it.
"They exist, impervious in our society, simply because we lack the will to oppose them. "
It's not merely that, it's the propaganda that goes along with it. How many Americans buy into the so called 'free market' and believe these people 'earned' their money? I'd say a good number of them want just to be like them in their own sick way. The poor and middle class in america see themselves as temporarily embarrassed rich people.
"Dungeons are gear based which requires grinding"
As opposed to cinematic story narrative driven crap? Games are about doing things. RPG's took the doing stuff out of the game and that's why it's boring. If WoW played like darksiders I'd be all over that. But WoW is a casual game so all they have for you is tedious autocombat.
How many people who pirate stuff really care about copyright/licensing/patent issues in depth though? I doubt many do.
Strong Copyright is NOT about protecting the public. It is about protecting the few at the top that can rake in the dough.
No doubt about this, the truth is the public can't defend itself the money power because only a small portion of the population even understands the issues correctly to make any kind of sound decision regarding policy.
"Capitalism - in this context the voluntary exchange of money and goods - is inherently democratic "
Only stupid people believe this nonsense. You can always buy laws/change the rules in your favor to make this statement totally void, one only has to look at copyrights and patents to see how nonsensical this statement is. As well as "software licensing" think about how many people just accept these things when they were bitterly argued over a long time ago. Next you don't take into account scaling problems. In a small town of 10K if I make widgets the maximum profit I can make is capped against population size, as population sizes expand my profits keep expanding and there is no checks or balances on this concentration of capital. The rules of free exchange are fundamentally flawed when dealing with large concentrations of money because of the power and influence it gives people to negatively influence society. This is why the founding fathers were often so against banks.
See andrew jackson.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_jackson
Intellectual Property is priviledge see here : http://www.ipocracy.org/
Note that when you have money you have the power to shape and enforce culture and laws, and to that I say 'fuck that'.
Games have no value if they are not fun no matter how much developers spend on developing them regardless. A 50 million dollar game that is not fun is zero value. Therefore to say games increase in value is completely incorrect. If a game increased in value it would be fun on release and grow more fun with time without additions and that is not what happens in entertainment products.
."that there is anything wrong with being rich, or that there is something wrong with capitalism generally..."
Capitalism naturally leads to this outcome because there is no check on how much you can accumulate and no democratic control over pricing and resources. There is no ideal capitalism that has existed in some fairy fairy land in your head.
This is the natural outcome of capitalism _in the real world_ the evidence is more then abundant.
" I was buying games with my own money before the Genesis and Super Nintendo hit the scene, so I've had to know game prices for over 20 years."
While the game prices haven't changed much the size of the market has changed offsetting the need to increase prices because of market expansion. I really hate how people say "games are cheaper because of inflation" but then fail to mention stagnant wages and the erosion of buying power from said inflation.
It's too simplistic an explanation that doesn't take into account multitude of variables.
They don't have to shut down anything, they just have to control funding and hiring and firing. They can hire and fire based on political views and then just come up with excuses like they do in the corporate world. Shows how clueless you are about the world IMHO. It's trivially easy to change an institution when you steer and control the hiring, firing and funding.