The point you keep missing of course is bandwidth and memory, the math co-processor is NOTHING LIKE a modern gpu, it did not have nor need what GPU's require in order to function, even GPU's are under tremendous strain, moving that strain to a different place and centralizing it with general purpose processor is not going to pan out.
And integrated graphics still suck, the fact is no one wants to subsidize integrating high end GPU chips onto motherboards to standardize the platform because of the costs associated with that. This is where markets pervert and hamper progress.
"The pattern set by the whole CPU / Math Co-Processor integration showed the way. For those old enough to remember, once upon a time the CPU and Math Co-Processor were separate socketed chips"
Math co-processors did not have massive bandwidth requirements that modern GPU's need in order to pump out frames. Everyone in this discussion seeing the merging of CPU and GPU haven't been around long enough, I remember many times back in the 80's and 90's the same people predicting the 'end of the graphics card' it NEVER HAPPENED, even with 2D cards, and this was well before the advent of 3D accelerators.
"Intel has already figured out that for the vast majority of home users have finally caught on that they don't NEED more processing power."
I think the real big issue is that there are no killer apps yet (apps so convenient to ones life that they require more processing power).
I think there are a lot of killer apps out there simply waiting for processing power to make its move, the next big move IMHO is in AUTOMATING the OS, automating programming, and the creation of AI's that do what people can't.
I've been experimenting with automatic content generation for games and whatnot, and over time these same principles will spread into other areas, I doubt I'll see it in my lifetime but smart-systems are coming.
What you're talking about is high inter dependency in complex systems vs lower order or non-dependency. The difference you're thinking of is extremely interdependent and time critical applications vs those of lower order/complexity/dependency.
The interdependency doesn't even have to be with lots of caculations + outputting lots of data, that n number of other processes/nodes need for next iteration, say like having the results of critical elements that need to be routed to x,y,z (say in a specificed order or specified period of time).
I said all of what you said in a lot less words, but what you said was interesting none the less.:)
"Sure, work hard at a boring job so that your child has all the right opportunities to grow up and do the same for his child."
Many "cool dads" do just this FYI. My dad did a boring job making good money, and you know what? He's glad he took the money, one of his children he ended up supporting he couldn't do that being a 'fun dad'. In life when you have kids, you never know when a hurricane will strike. Such as, if your child(ren) will have severe problems being independent as they grow up for any number of reasons. If you take the 'fun job' you'll be killing yourself wishing you had more money should the unexpected strike. Boring and high pay is UNDER-RATED imho, money is liquid opportunity it gives you OPTIONS, being the man without OPTIONS is a shitty place to be for anyone.
If for the OP (and anyone listening) if you are seriously getting good money stick with it, in the end, wives, children are NOT guaranteed to like you or stay with you. For many men all they will have in the end is their means (money) when the shit hits the fan in their relationship lives. You can always count on money to be there, but the same cannot be said for human beings, tragically.
For every positive 'family', there is a negative family.
"From my point of view, it's better to take a fun but low-paying job, because you'd inspire your kid to follow his own dreams instead of taking the easy way out. (There's also the side benefit of perhaps not being so materially-focused.)"
I think this kind of thinking is a bit of nonsense, it's not about being 'materially focused', this is a lie! You can have money and not live a lavish lifestyle, nor spoil your children. It's about being secure financially, someone with a million or more dollars in the bank is much more secure then someone who's income will not be enough for retirement should unexpected expenses arise (as they often do).
You will always need money and gearing up for hard times (planning ahead), it is what few people have the spine, will, and backbone to do.
Money will speak when no one will speak for you, remember this.
"All it takes is one new generation to grow up behind these 'iron curtains' and the governments have effectively indoctrinated an entire country with the ideals of a select few."
Sounds like America. Despite all the hoopla about freedom and whatnot in america, there is substantial indoctrination i.e. any mention of helping others gets you labelled a 'socialist' or a 'commie'. IMHO America is probably one of THE most indoctrinated societies in the world at the moment. You can't have a discussion about much with a large percentage of people about certain topics.
"What's wrong with being content with a reasonable profit?"
The culture and economic system demand the greed, remember Ebay is public company owned by shareholders, whose sole purpose is growth of profits.
As for people. People want power, when people say they want to be "rich", it's not that they want to just be rich (10 million or so) they want as much wealth as possible. Being 'rich' is relative to the richest, what they mean is "I want to be among the richest".
"... this does mean that there are fewer opportunities available for unskilled labor"
De-skilled labour, I really wish the whole unskilled labour thing and the social status conferred upon the 'unskilled' myth would die.
The truth of the matter is this: We've changed the environment in which people exist radically and their biology was designed for a world radically different then modern society with all its technology.
The fact that technology and 'de-skillization' is on a collision course with white collar labour, I know I wont see the collision in my life time but eventually technology will be doing most of the heavy lifting and many 'highly skilled' millions will become 'unskilled labour'.
The truth is we use these lovely perjorative terms to justify dominating others, although unconscios and built in, it still sickens me we refer to people as 'unskilled' rather then 'de-skilled', since most people are clearly capable of a lot of creative work that would add wealth/value to society but would not pay the bills.
"I think people might (quite rightly) have a beef with that."
We're talking about source code for a game (and only the client) which has
1) Already been released and 2) May not even be recent or even complete. 3) Who's utlity to the average person is of little value.
Then there's the fact that 99% of the people in the world won't know what eve is or even can make heads or tales of whats in it or even give a crap. We're talking about something as mundane as staring at a wall watching paint dry in this regard.
Then there is the whole MMO scam-business-model the fact that such 'business models' (rather exploitation models) using the internet to charge monthly service fee's for a game that by all intents and purposes could be played stand alone 1 time payment for free is just as much a theiverous thing to do as posting a link to source code of not more so.
The fact that businesses can keep ownership of a product (their customers are paying remember) for eternity is in fact more sinister then stealing source code, much of which 99% of humanity can't understand and who's value is quite of limited interest to anyone who is not technically adept to some degree in programming/etc.
Businesses are miniature dictatorships, the fact that this is lost on the average citizen is why slashdot is such a great place to begin with, all the so called 'moral' morons can stay away because their thinking lacks subtlety and complexity of the issues at hand and cannot see and interpret the underhanded/evil nature of the relationships that people so ignorantly enforce as 'normal'.
There is no reason why a game someone purchases should not break for instance over time, if in fact the government could keep a copy of the source code and release it to public domain after the sales cycle. No one would tolerate a car industry that does what the software industry does. I can fix my car, replace it, etc, and not be beholden to draconian copyright/IP laws of some remote manufacturer who may or may not be still in business. The fact that corporations have convinced people that what they are buying is not in anyway theirs, is probably one of the greatest heists in the history of humanity. Imagine having the source to update and fix old software that doesn't in anyway have to stop working, this kind of thuggery in modern society is insane, the fact that intelligent people rail against it in the few ways the can (piracy, etc) is an encouraging sign.
"Am I the only person who thinks it somewhat wrong to post on Slashdot a link to stolen, unreleased source code?
Geez, why not just upload a GTA4 ISO while you're at it."
I bet you're one of the ones who think you can stop piracy, prohibition or drug use. Once the cat is out of the bag, its out, what harm is the person doing what a person using google or simply reading other tech/gaming/geek forums wont find on their own?
Physics is over-rated, the big deal with physics when it was 'first' talked about really was for rag-doll physics in FPS games and things like Unreal, where you shoot someone and the body animates from an impact not in a pre-scripted manner but according to impact. Most games pre 2000 had fixed / scripted animations that occored when someone died, also you'd see weird things like when someone dies their body would be hanging off a ledge vertically, with physics these things don't (uaually) happen, the body falls over an edge, rather then being 'stuck' permanently mostly in mid air.
I just finished playing crysis and buildings would fall in on you and collapse when shot/blown up, etc, in many games the set pieces are entirely static, you cannot damage them. Physics adds some very limited destructability to certain environments and is basically used mostly to amplify special effects.
"The question should be, are the developers putting out a quality product? In my honest opinion, game developers fail in this task 60% of the time."
The problem is, what is a quality product and what kind of game makes money are two different things entirely. We can list all the great games that bombed on the PC financially. The massification of video games has sent quality towards the mean and most accessable: The average gaming retard.
We see more FPS and racing games then pretty much all other genres, that should tell you a lot about the state of the indsutry.
"The interesting question is not who pays, but how can we all collectively pay less for better performance? The problem is that the billing model for the internet is broken. ISPs need to start billing for usage, that much is obvious."
While this sounds smart, that's exactly the model for water and right now there is a bit of a crisis for the home owners conserving their water around the Toronto area where I live... all of a sudden they are not taking in enough money to maintain infrastructure because it's based on usage.
"I don't know about you guys, but the vast majority of the video games I played at school were lame. The only one I remember fondly was a typing game based on the 'Puff the Magic Dragon' story."
I believe it's a matter of you not getting in contact with the right games, why is scrabble for instance fun, and acrophobia not? Both essentially teach spelling whether one is aware of it or not.
I'm sure there are plenty of other games that can take advantage of this like Civilization 4 and Medieval 2 : Total war series, these games are really deep and if modded properly could easily put a tonne of memorable history inside the game. The key thing here is to take advantage of how memory works and couple it with something interesting and fascinating so it sticks, why do you think people remember more of hte stuff they are interested in?
I could recite whole movies by heart and commercials from ten years ago, ask me to recite much of what was 'learned' in school and I'd be pulling up blanks.
"The thing is, they evidently did something different "
Yeah they took an established franchise millions loved (warcraft) and made an MMO out of it, what gamer has not played warcraft?
They had huge mindshare, if they used a different property other then warcraft (i..e something new) do you really think they would have had such runaway success? I doubt it very much. Warcraft has a history from gamers playing it all over the world and those who played any of the warcrafts (1, 2, 3, etc) are of course going to go gangbusters over an MMO version of their favorite franchise.
"Buying the game and paying the monthly fee means you get to play the game. That's it"
The whole 'liscensing' and 'software as a service' is quite a scam anyway, if I'm paying for a product I don't want to see ads. I'd like to have some time and place where I do not have ads in my face. Games is one of the few mediums that ads have not yet penetrated. We see enough ads in our daily lives, on the way to/from wherever, etc, etc?
If I'm voting for a product with my dollars and I am a customer they better damn well listen, I think the optional ads is a good thing in that those of us who don't want to have it shoved down our throat get to opt out of it but I know I'm not the only one tired of being haggled for cash 24/7.
"As a buyer, it's extremely easy NOT to be scammed."
You have a pretty limited definition of 'being scammed', this site sent me shipping emails, had a phone # for the business (i.e. the people picked up the phone at the business, etc) there, they went out of their way to look legitimate.
Just because I got my money back does not mean I was not defrauded and yes I used a CC (pretty much all online orders use CC). The fraud did occur, whether I was insured against it or not is quite irrelevant. I consider myself a pretty savvy internet user, and even *I* got nabbed.
Having been defrauded this year, I was defrauded by what seemed like a legimate site, only to have the site suddenly disappear after I had made my order. Even though the fraudulent site did publish the businesses phone #, had an email address, etc.
Scam's are much easier to pull off over the net, and I don't think it's a matter of suckerdom as much as distance and ease of pulling it off. There are plenty of legitimate businesses online, this is the first time I have been defrauded.
"advertising is merely publishing the existence of a product"
Uhm, there is NO clear demarcation between advertising and marketing. When someone from my bank calls me up about credit card offer X/Y/Z WITHOUT my persmission they have gone overboard and it's no longer advertising but STALKING for profit. No business should have the right to HARASS it's customers or "inform them" of things they DON'T want to be 'informed' about. I do online banking and they are free to advertise on their site but to CALL ME UP and say "we have x/y/z" is just a little too much for me.
It's a money grab pure and simple, the guy on the phone is being paid to advertise a product. They will harass you until they meet their profit targets. I'm not sure what alternet reality you live in but companies are getting to the point where they just know too much about you and are basically like big brother, except this big brother is a greedy shill trying to meet their profit targets.
"Unfortunately, I can't seem to come up with a good car analogy for this.. Hrm.."
There is a good car analogy, if we imagine car dealers and oil industries were basically a cartel (which is not too far from the truth). The reason car's dont use less gas is because the oil and gas station industry would make less profit.
In terms of bandwidth the opposite is true: They lie and oversell the resource, the only difference is bandwidth is not 'scarce', in the sameway oil is, it replenishes the less people use it to a fixed amount per unit of time but we could say the oil is in fact replenishible, just not in terms of energy efficiency (i.e. oil spewing bacteria, or some other new oil manufacturing technology).
"I worked for a while on the Netflix prize, and if there's one thing I learned it's that a recommender system almost always gets better the more data you put into it,...."
Ironically enough, you'd think they'd adopt the wikipedia model where their customers can simply vote thumbs up vs thumbs down to a small list of recomendations everytime they visit their site.
All this convenience comes at a cost though, you're basically giving people insight into your personality and who you are and I'm sure many "Recommendation engines" easily double as demographic data for advertisers and other companies.
"companies. But a more valid form of protest, to me, would have been to simply do without most or all major label records, in protest to the high prices."
The problem is this takes concerted focused effort, and to get spread the word to do just that. The truth is, often times consumers are just too fragmented to and dispersed.
"Believe it or not flowcharts and Venn diagrams are not obsolete."
Believe it or not I use mindmapping software to help plan out the structure of a program and draw relationship lines arbitrarily, I wish someone made these mindmapping programs and made them more accessable to programs and programming.
Slashdot Mirror
The point you keep missing of course is bandwidth and memory, the math co-processor is NOTHING LIKE a modern gpu, it did not have nor need what GPU's require in order to function, even GPU's are under tremendous strain, moving that strain to a different place and centralizing it with general purpose processor is not going to pan out.
And integrated graphics still suck, the fact is no one wants to subsidize integrating high end GPU chips onto motherboards to standardize the platform because of the costs associated with that. This is where markets pervert and hamper progress.
"The pattern set by the whole CPU / Math Co-Processor integration showed the way. For those old enough to remember, once upon a time the CPU and Math Co-Processor were separate socketed chips"
Math co-processors did not have massive bandwidth requirements that modern GPU's need in order to pump out frames. Everyone in this discussion seeing the merging of CPU and GPU haven't been around long enough, I remember many times back in the 80's and 90's the same people predicting the 'end of the graphics card' it NEVER HAPPENED, even with 2D cards, and this was well before the advent of 3D accelerators.
"Intel has already figured out that for the vast majority of home users have finally caught on that they don't NEED more processing power."
I think the real big issue is that there are no killer apps yet (apps so convenient to ones life that they require more processing power).
I think there are a lot of killer apps out there simply waiting for processing power to make its move, the next big move IMHO is in AUTOMATING the OS, automating programming, and the creation of AI's that do what people can't.
I've been experimenting with automatic content generation for games and whatnot, and over time these same principles will spread into other areas, I doubt I'll see it in my lifetime but smart-systems are coming.
What you're talking about is high inter dependency in complex systems vs lower order or non-dependency. The difference you're thinking of is extremely interdependent and time critical applications vs those of lower order/complexity/dependency.
:)
The interdependency doesn't even have to be with lots of caculations + outputting lots of data, that n number of other processes/nodes need for next iteration, say like having the results of critical elements that need to be routed to x,y,z (say in a specificed order or specified period of time).
I said all of what you said in a lot less words, but what you said was interesting none the less.
"Sure, work hard at a boring job so that your child has all the right opportunities to grow up and do the same for his child."
Many "cool dads" do just this FYI. My dad did a boring job making good money, and you know what? He's glad he took the money, one of his children he ended up supporting he couldn't do that being a 'fun dad'. In life when you have kids, you never know when a hurricane will strike. Such as, if your child(ren) will have severe problems being independent as they grow up for any number of reasons. If you take the 'fun job' you'll be killing yourself wishing you had more money should the unexpected strike. Boring and high pay is UNDER-RATED imho, money is liquid opportunity it gives you OPTIONS, being the man without OPTIONS is a shitty place to be for anyone.
If for the OP (and anyone listening) if you are seriously getting good money stick with it, in the end, wives, children are NOT guaranteed to like you or stay with you. For many men all they will have in the end is their means (money) when the shit hits the fan in their relationship lives. You can always count on money to be there, but the same cannot be said for human beings, tragically.
For every positive 'family', there is a negative family.
"From my point of view, it's better to take a fun but low-paying job, because you'd inspire your kid to follow his own dreams instead of taking the easy way out. (There's also the side benefit of perhaps not being so materially-focused.)"
I think this kind of thinking is a bit of nonsense, it's not about being 'materially focused', this is a lie! You can have money and not live a lavish lifestyle, nor spoil your children. It's about being secure financially, someone with a million or more dollars in the bank is much more secure then someone who's income will not be enough for retirement should unexpected expenses arise (as they often do).
You will always need money and gearing up for hard times (planning ahead), it is what few people have the spine, will, and backbone to do.
Money will speak when no one will speak for you, remember this.
"All it takes is one new generation to grow up behind these 'iron curtains' and the governments have effectively indoctrinated an entire country with the ideals of a select few."
Sounds like America. Despite all the hoopla about freedom and whatnot in america, there is substantial indoctrination i.e. any mention of helping others gets you labelled a 'socialist' or a 'commie'. IMHO America is probably one of THE most indoctrinated societies in the world at the moment. You can't have a discussion about much with a large percentage of people about certain topics.
"What's wrong with being content with a reasonable profit?"
The culture and economic system demand the greed, remember Ebay is public company owned by shareholders, whose sole purpose is growth of profits.
As for people. People want power, when people say they want to be "rich", it's not that they want to just be rich (10 million or so) they want as much wealth as possible. Being 'rich' is relative to the richest, what they mean is "I want to be among the richest".
"... this does mean that there are fewer opportunities available for unskilled labor"
De-skilled labour, I really wish the whole unskilled labour thing and the social status conferred upon the 'unskilled' myth would die.
The truth of the matter is this: We've changed the environment in which people exist radically and their biology was designed for a world radically different then modern society with all its technology.
The fact that technology and 'de-skillization' is on a collision course with white collar labour, I know I wont see the collision in my life time but eventually technology will be doing most of the heavy lifting and many 'highly skilled' millions will become 'unskilled labour'.
The truth is we use these lovely perjorative terms to justify dominating others, although unconscios and built in, it still sickens me we refer to people as 'unskilled' rather then 'de-skilled', since most people are clearly capable of a lot of creative work that would add wealth/value to society but would not pay the bills.
They do this on purpose, it wasn't always this way. It's been this way since the geforce 5 genration roughly.
"I think people might (quite rightly) have a beef with that."
We're talking about source code for a game (and only the client) which has
1) Already been released and
2) May not even be recent or even complete.
3) Who's utlity to the average person is of little value.
Then there's the fact that 99% of the people in the world won't know what eve is or even can make heads or tales of whats in it or even give a crap. We're talking about something as mundane as staring at a wall watching paint dry in this regard.
Then there is the whole MMO scam-business-model the fact that such 'business models' (rather exploitation models) using the internet to charge monthly service fee's for a game that by all intents and purposes could be played stand alone 1 time payment for free is just as much a theiverous thing to do as posting a link to source code of not more so.
The fact that businesses can keep ownership of a product (their customers are paying remember) for eternity is in fact more sinister then stealing source code, much of which 99% of humanity can't understand and who's value is quite of limited interest to anyone who is not technically adept to some degree in programming/etc.
Businesses are miniature dictatorships, the fact that this is lost on the average citizen is why slashdot is such a great place to begin with, all the so called 'moral' morons can stay away because their thinking lacks subtlety and complexity of the issues at hand and cannot see and interpret the underhanded/evil nature of the relationships that people so ignorantly enforce as 'normal'.
There is no reason why a game someone purchases should not break for instance over time, if in fact the government could keep a copy of the source code and release it to public domain after the sales cycle. No one would tolerate a car industry that does what the software industry does. I can fix my car, replace it, etc, and not be beholden to draconian copyright/IP laws of some remote manufacturer who may or may not be still in business. The fact that corporations have convinced people that what they are buying is not in anyway theirs, is probably one of the greatest heists in the history of humanity. Imagine having the source to update and fix old software that doesn't in anyway have to stop working, this kind of thuggery in modern society is insane, the fact that intelligent people rail against it in the few ways the can (piracy, etc) is an encouraging sign.
"Am I the only person who thinks it somewhat wrong to post on Slashdot a link to stolen, unreleased source code?
Geez, why not just upload a GTA4 ISO while you're at it."
I bet you're one of the ones who think you can stop piracy, prohibition or drug use. Once the cat is out of the bag, its out, what harm is the person doing what a person using google or simply reading other tech/gaming/geek forums wont find on their own?
Physics is over-rated, the big deal with physics when it was 'first' talked about really was for rag-doll physics in FPS games and things like Unreal, where you shoot someone and the body animates from an impact not in a pre-scripted manner but according to impact. Most games pre 2000 had fixed / scripted animations that occored when someone died, also you'd see weird things like when someone dies their body would be hanging off a ledge vertically, with physics these things don't (uaually) happen, the body falls over an edge, rather then being 'stuck' permanently mostly in mid air.
I just finished playing crysis and buildings would fall in on you and collapse when shot/blown up, etc, in many games the set pieces are entirely static, you cannot damage them. Physics adds some very limited destructability to certain environments and is basically used mostly to amplify special effects.
Physics in games is completely over-rated.
"The question should be, are the developers putting out a quality product? In my honest opinion, game developers fail in this task 60% of the time."
The problem is, what is a quality product and what kind of game makes money are two different things entirely. We can list all the great games that bombed on the PC financially. The massification of video games has sent quality towards the mean and most accessable: The average gaming retard.
We see more FPS and racing games then pretty much all other genres, that should tell you a lot about the state of the indsutry.
Real nerds do both dammit!
"The interesting question is not who pays, but how can we all collectively pay less for better performance? The problem is that the billing model for the internet is broken. ISPs need to start billing for usage, that much is obvious."
While this sounds smart, that's exactly the model for water and right now there is a bit of a crisis for the home owners conserving their water around the Toronto area where I live... all of a sudden they are not taking in enough money to maintain infrastructure because it's based on usage.
As always it's a double-edged sword.
"I don't know about you guys, but the vast majority of the video games I played at school were lame. The only one I remember fondly was a typing game based on the 'Puff the Magic Dragon' story."
I believe it's a matter of you not getting in contact with the right games, why is scrabble for instance fun, and acrophobia not? Both essentially teach spelling whether one is aware of it or not.
I'm sure there are plenty of other games that can take advantage of this like Civilization 4 and Medieval 2 : Total war series, these games are really deep and if modded properly could easily put a tonne of memorable history inside the game. The key thing here is to take advantage of how memory works and couple it with something interesting and fascinating so it sticks, why do you think people remember more of hte stuff they are interested in?
I could recite whole movies by heart and commercials from ten years ago, ask me to recite much of what was 'learned' in school and I'd be pulling up blanks.
"The thing is, they evidently did something different "
Yeah they took an established franchise millions loved (warcraft) and made an MMO out of it, what gamer has not played warcraft?
They had huge mindshare, if they used a different property other then warcraft (i..e something new) do you really think they would have had such runaway success? I doubt it very much. Warcraft has a history from gamers playing it all over the world and those who played any of the warcrafts (1, 2, 3, etc) are of course going to go gangbusters over an MMO version of their favorite franchise.
"Buying the game and paying the monthly fee means you get to play the game. That's it"
The whole 'liscensing' and 'software as a service' is quite a scam anyway, if I'm paying for a product I don't want to see ads. I'd like to have some time and place where I do not have ads in my face. Games is one of the few mediums that ads have not yet penetrated. We see enough ads in our daily lives, on the way to/from wherever, etc, etc?
If I'm voting for a product with my dollars and I am a customer they better damn well listen, I think the optional ads is a good thing in that those of us who don't want to have it shoved down our throat get to opt out of it but I know I'm not the only one tired of being haggled for cash 24/7.
"As a buyer, it's extremely easy NOT to be scammed."
You have a pretty limited definition of 'being scammed', this site sent me shipping emails, had a phone # for the business (i.e. the people picked up the phone at the business, etc) there, they went out of their way to look legitimate.
Just because I got my money back does not mean I was not defrauded and yes I used a CC (pretty much all online orders use CC). The fraud did occur, whether I was insured against it or not is quite irrelevant. I consider myself a pretty savvy internet user, and even *I* got nabbed.
Having been defrauded this year, I was defrauded by what seemed like a legimate site, only to have the site suddenly disappear after I had made my order. Even though the fraudulent site did publish the businesses phone #, had an email address, etc.
Scam's are much easier to pull off over the net, and I don't think it's a matter of suckerdom as much as distance and ease of pulling it off. There are plenty of legitimate businesses online, this is the first time I have been defrauded.
"advertising is merely publishing the existence of a product"
Uhm, there is NO clear demarcation between advertising and marketing. When someone from my bank calls me up about credit card offer X/Y/Z WITHOUT my persmission they have gone overboard and it's no longer advertising but STALKING for profit. No business should have the right to HARASS it's customers or "inform them" of things they DON'T want to be 'informed' about. I do online banking and they are free to advertise on their site but to CALL ME UP and say "we have x/y/z" is just a little too much for me.
It's a money grab pure and simple, the guy on the phone is being paid to advertise a product. They will harass you until they meet their profit targets. I'm not sure what alternet reality you live in but companies are getting to the point where they just know too much about you and are basically like big brother, except this big brother is a greedy shill trying to meet their profit targets.
"Unfortunately, I can't seem to come up with a good car analogy for this.. Hrm.."
There is a good car analogy, if we imagine car dealers and oil industries were basically a cartel (which is not too far from the truth). The reason car's dont use less gas is because the oil and gas station industry would make less profit.
In terms of bandwidth the opposite is true: They lie and oversell the resource, the only difference is bandwidth is not 'scarce', in the sameway oil is, it replenishes the less people use it to a fixed amount per unit of time but we could say the oil is in fact replenishible, just not in terms of energy efficiency (i.e. oil spewing bacteria, or some other new oil manufacturing technology).
"I worked for a while on the Netflix prize, and if there's one thing I learned it's that a recommender system almost always gets better the more data you put into it, ...."
Ironically enough, you'd think they'd adopt the wikipedia model where their customers can simply vote thumbs up vs thumbs down to a small list of recomendations everytime they visit their site.
All this convenience comes at a cost though, you're basically giving people insight into your personality and who you are and I'm sure many "Recommendation engines" easily double as demographic data for advertisers and other companies.
"companies. But a more valid form of protest, to me, would have been to simply do without most or all major label records, in protest to the high prices."
The problem is this takes concerted focused effort, and to get spread the word to do just that. The truth is, often times consumers are just too fragmented to and dispersed.
"Believe it or not flowcharts and Venn diagrams are not obsolete."
Believe it or not I use mindmapping software to help plan out the structure of a program and draw relationship lines arbitrarily, I wish someone made these mindmapping programs and made them more accessable to programs and programming.
http://www.thebrain.com/
Also great flowchart drawing tools:
http://www.smartdraw.com/