But pot use after age 18 doesn't have long-term affects on IQ, only for the time immediately after consuming the drug. This was an important point lost in the summary. So, marijuana should be illegal for young kids to smoke. If marijuana were legal and regulated like alcohol, we would see less young people abusing the drug.
It would take you less time to skim the article and find the solution than it does for you to post and read my response, but basically the summary almost captures the answer: the scammers are looking for the most gullible people possible, and that would include anyone who hasn't already heard of the Nigerian scammers.
Kind of a rambling post (and this is a rambling response), but I think you hit the nail on the head with the price point of Netflix. I think it's easy to say that once you release something that can be copied digitally that it is no longer yours. In reality, there will always be at least some way to restrict people from copying, if not technologically then at least legally. The trick then is to charge people a fair price for goods. If the Kindle store has a book for $2, I don't really have to think about paying for it, unless I'm on the 50th book I've bought for the month. Similarly, if the iPhone app store has a game I want to play for that price, I'll gladly pay it rather than risk getting caught pirating the game. Now if music was more like 5 cents a song, I bet iTunes would see their profits go through the roof on sheer volume of sales.
Things that are typically more expensively priced like textbooks will be replaced by communal works like WikiBooks (and seriously, good riddance to the textbook pricing model). Really specialized books can still go the print-only route, and are generally so rarely purchased that they are difficult to find online. Larger software applications like AutoCAD have built-in protections around licensing. If your company needs AutoCAD and is caught pirating it, there is a large penalty to pay. Fiction books might get less readership, but perhaps being able to sell directly to consumers without a publisher will make up for that. Most fiction authors don't expect to get rich, anyway.
Most artists already don't earn a living at their art. RTFA Lowery admits that the average salary of a musician is around $35k. You have a better chance of winning the lottery than becoming a successful musician. Money isn't the driving factor for these guys.
If a content creator doesn't want the world to use his content, then he shouldn't release his content to the public. This is the world we live in. How's that for you?
Why would Elvis steal other musicians' songs if there was no money to be made in it? Why would anyone care if Elvis recorded his own version of a little-known band's song if it didn't result in him achieving super-stardom?
If they used music in ads without providing compensation, that would mean that the artist isn't a vested interest in the product being sold, which is the main reason for objecting to having your favorite band sell out to the big corporation.
Copying music costs the artist nothing. Having you squat in my house does cost me something. What we are learning is that once you release something that can be easily replicated by a computer over the internet, that thing is no longer just yours. The world has changed; you need to adjust.
The new reality is that once you record and distribute your music to more than a handful of close friends, it's now the world's music and not just yours. If you can't afford the up-front costs to record (which are dwindling every day as computers and recording equipment get cheaper), then you should find something else to do with your time besides record music. Your distribution cost argument is laughable when you consider peer-to-peer file sharing.
I still think that despite these hurdles, we are going to have thousands of great songs each year for people to listen to, more than any one person could possibly have time to consume. If it really gets desperate, we could move to a model where the rich fund talented musicians to produce at the start of their careers.
The author does make his point about the starving musicians who died on their $35k/year. But the fact is there were plenty of people killing themselves trying to make it as artists before internet file sharing.
You leave me with no choice then but to simply not create. Which I guess is what many content providers will do. The world won't necessarily be a worse place for it if we remove all profit seekers from music.
I'll admit to playing a bit of devil's advocate in my previous posts. You're right; there simply is no argument to the fact that once you've recorded a piece of music and distributed it to more than a handful of people, there's no stopping it from being copied at will. It does not matter what it cost me to produce said content, nor what I wish to charge you for it. The sooner we can get people to realize that and move on from the outdated RIAA/MPAA the faster we can evolve.
I recorded it. I can't stop you from copying it. I can tell you what I expect in return for you listening to it. You can choose to ignore me, but you are disobeying the law, much like I would be if I decided to set up a taco stand on your property.
If you make something, it's up to you to decide how you want to distribute it. If I write a song, it could be the best song ever written, but if I never record it then good luck trying to find it on The Pirate Bay. I have a reasonable expectation that people should respect my wishes when it comes to how the song should be copied, played, or otherwise consumed. Your right to listen to my song ends where my right to protect my work begins.
Now, of course the realities are that the internet makes it so that many people can get their fill of listening to my song once it's been recorded and distributed without paying compensation. This in turn diminishes the market value for my song. The market should adjust so that the cost to hear a song is more inline with the actual cost to produce and distribute it, not the $15/CD that the RIAA has been getting away with. It still doesn't make it right for the people to pirate the song.
Just like when Circuit City went down, they're going to blame everyone but themselves. Circuit City's differential for years was that it had commissioned salespeople who were actually knowledgeable and gave a shit. Then they pulled their commissions, and when the economy started to falter, they died. They then turned around and blamed it on the recession, when everyone knew that their stores just sucked. So is it with Best Buy. In smaller markets, Best Buy is the only electronics store in town. You can count on walking the store and seeing many of the shelves empty because the merchandise is not in stock. They pay the salespeople diddly squat with no commissions, so you can count on having to browse the store yourself with little to no help from anyone. The only time you do get help is when you checkout the cashier will try to sell you an extended warranty that you don't need. Everything is overpriced, and most of the items they stock are of inferior quality.
I don't think anyone will ever try it, but here's an idea for how to run a store:
1) Hire people who know technology, and pay them adequately/treat them well to work the floor. Keep track of how much time your average customer walks the store without anyone offering to help, and work towards reducing that time. 2) Don't insult your customers with insane markups on things like cables, or with bullshit warranties, credit card offers, etc. 3) Instead of offering a wide range of choices with many of them shit, offer choices that someone has actually vetted as working properly, and keep them in stock. Don't waste the consumer's time and money with having to buy crap. In turn, you can expect your loss from returned merchandise to go down. 4) Make it a pleasure to shop your store and I might actually go there. Right now, it's a better experience to shop online. I can get reviews of products, narrow down my selection to the best possible one, and have a pretty good idea of what I'm buying. Much better than wasting time browsing some store. This is before considering that shopping online is actually cheaper. If when I went to your store I saw the same salespeople who had offered me good advice on other purchases I had made there before, guess what? I'd keep coming back because I'd value their input. The prices should be fair, meaning only a slight markup over what I could get online + shipping,
I don't think games are as big a pull as they once were. Consoles and the perceived need to control privacy have pretty much killed the PC game market.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but Bill Clinton supports it!
s/obfuscated/abstracted/
there *is* a slight difference in intent between those two words.
But pot use after age 18 doesn't have long-term affects on IQ, only for the time immediately after consuming the drug. This was an important point lost in the summary. So, marijuana should be illegal for young kids to smoke. If marijuana were legal and regulated like alcohol, we would see less young people abusing the drug.
Nope, Chuck Testa!
"The Mexicans are doing the jobs we don't want to do. The Asians are doing the jobs we don't know how to do. Where does that leave us?" - Colbert
It would take you less time to skim the article and find the solution than it does for you to post and read my response, but basically the summary almost captures the answer: the scammers are looking for the most gullible people possible, and that would include anyone who hasn't already heard of the Nigerian scammers.
Kind of a rambling post (and this is a rambling response), but I think you hit the nail on the head with the price point of Netflix. I think it's easy to say that once you release something that can be copied digitally that it is no longer yours. In reality, there will always be at least some way to restrict people from copying, if not technologically then at least legally. The trick then is to charge people a fair price for goods. If the Kindle store has a book for $2, I don't really have to think about paying for it, unless I'm on the 50th book I've bought for the month. Similarly, if the iPhone app store has a game I want to play for that price, I'll gladly pay it rather than risk getting caught pirating the game. Now if music was more like 5 cents a song, I bet iTunes would see their profits go through the roof on sheer volume of sales.
Things that are typically more expensively priced like textbooks will be replaced by communal works like WikiBooks (and seriously, good riddance to the textbook pricing model). Really specialized books can still go the print-only route, and are generally so rarely purchased that they are difficult to find online. Larger software applications like AutoCAD have built-in protections around licensing. If your company needs AutoCAD and is caught pirating it, there is a large penalty to pay. Fiction books might get less readership, but perhaps being able to sell directly to consumers without a publisher will make up for that. Most fiction authors don't expect to get rich, anyway.
Most artists already don't earn a living at their art. RTFA Lowery admits that the average salary of a musician is around $35k. You have a better chance of winning the lottery than becoming a successful musician. Money isn't the driving factor for these guys.
If a content creator doesn't want the world to use his content, then he shouldn't release his content to the public. This is the world we live in. How's that for you?
I would like to dispute whether all the hot girls in my vicinity own the clothes on their backs...
Because stealing a car is depriving someone of their property. Copying a song is not depriving someone of something.
Why would Elvis steal other musicians' songs if there was no money to be made in it? Why would anyone care if Elvis recorded his own version of a little-known band's song if it didn't result in him achieving super-stardom?
If they used music in ads without providing compensation, that would mean that the artist isn't a vested interest in the product being sold, which is the main reason for objecting to having your favorite band sell out to the big corporation.
Copying music costs the artist nothing. Having you squat in my house does cost me something. What we are learning is that once you release something that can be easily replicated by a computer over the internet, that thing is no longer just yours. The world has changed; you need to adjust.
The new reality is that once you record and distribute your music to more than a handful of close friends, it's now the world's music and not just yours. If you can't afford the up-front costs to record (which are dwindling every day as computers and recording equipment get cheaper), then you should find something else to do with your time besides record music. Your distribution cost argument is laughable when you consider peer-to-peer file sharing.
I still think that despite these hurdles, we are going to have thousands of great songs each year for people to listen to, more than any one person could possibly have time to consume. If it really gets desperate, we could move to a model where the rich fund talented musicians to produce at the start of their careers.
Shooting someone with a gun takes their life away. Copying someone's music costs them nothing.
The author does make his point about the starving musicians who died on their $35k/year. But the fact is there were plenty of people killing themselves trying to make it as artists before internet file sharing.
You leave me with no choice then but to simply not create. Which I guess is what many content providers will do. The world won't necessarily be a worse place for it if we remove all profit seekers from music.
I'll admit to playing a bit of devil's advocate in my previous posts. You're right; there simply is no argument to the fact that once you've recorded a piece of music and distributed it to more than a handful of people, there's no stopping it from being copied at will. It does not matter what it cost me to produce said content, nor what I wish to charge you for it. The sooner we can get people to realize that and move on from the outdated RIAA/MPAA the faster we can evolve.
I recorded it. I can't stop you from copying it. I can tell you what I expect in return for you listening to it. You can choose to ignore me, but you are disobeying the law, much like I would be if I decided to set up a taco stand on your property.
If you make something, it's up to you to decide how you want to distribute it. If I write a song, it could be the best song ever written, but if I never record it then good luck trying to find it on The Pirate Bay. I have a reasonable expectation that people should respect my wishes when it comes to how the song should be copied, played, or otherwise consumed. Your right to listen to my song ends where my right to protect my work begins.
Now, of course the realities are that the internet makes it so that many people can get their fill of listening to my song once it's been recorded and distributed without paying compensation. This in turn diminishes the market value for my song. The market should adjust so that the cost to hear a song is more inline with the actual cost to produce and distribute it, not the $15/CD that the RIAA has been getting away with. It still doesn't make it right for the people to pirate the song.
OMG unbiased reporting on Slashdot that doesn't tell me what to think? The horror.
Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it...
I think you hit the nail on the head. It feels like these companies are trying to scam you, not help you. Why would you trust them with your money?
Just like when Circuit City went down, they're going to blame everyone but themselves. Circuit City's differential for years was that it had commissioned salespeople who were actually knowledgeable and gave a shit. Then they pulled their commissions, and when the economy started to falter, they died. They then turned around and blamed it on the recession, when everyone knew that their stores just sucked. So is it with Best Buy. In smaller markets, Best Buy is the only electronics store in town. You can count on walking the store and seeing many of the shelves empty because the merchandise is not in stock. They pay the salespeople diddly squat with no commissions, so you can count on having to browse the store yourself with little to no help from anyone. The only time you do get help is when you checkout the cashier will try to sell you an extended warranty that you don't need. Everything is overpriced, and most of the items they stock are of inferior quality.
I don't think anyone will ever try it, but here's an idea for how to run a store:
1) Hire people who know technology, and pay them adequately/treat them well to work the floor. Keep track of how much time your average customer walks the store without anyone offering to help, and work towards reducing that time.
2) Don't insult your customers with insane markups on things like cables, or with bullshit warranties, credit card offers, etc.
3) Instead of offering a wide range of choices with many of them shit, offer choices that someone has actually vetted as working properly, and keep them in stock. Don't waste the consumer's time and money with having to buy crap. In turn, you can expect your loss from returned merchandise to go down.
4) Make it a pleasure to shop your store and I might actually go there. Right now, it's a better experience to shop online. I can get reviews of products, narrow down my selection to the best possible one, and have a pretty good idea of what I'm buying. Much better than wasting time browsing some store. This is before considering that shopping online is actually cheaper. If when I went to your store I saw the same salespeople who had offered me good advice on other purchases I had made there before, guess what? I'd keep coming back because I'd value their input. The prices should be fair, meaning only a slight markup over what I could get online + shipping,
Chuck Testa does not taxidermize pets!
I don't think games are as big a pull as they once were. Consoles and the perceived need to control privacy have pretty much killed the PC game market.