Basically people shouldn't be paid for their produce if you in your wisdom) reckon (that;
1/ they don't need it 2/ they're only going to spend it on crap 3/ what they produce is educational
I have some sympathy with the first two, though I can see it as a easy way of avoiding payment for anything. Perhaps, next time you're accepting a haircut, you should demand an analysis of the barber's lifestyle before deciding if they're worthy of payment. I mean, if they're loaded already and are just going to go out and waste it on beer, you'd be perfectly within your rights to walk out without paying!
As for the last point; I don't understand your logic. Education is a great thing, but what makes you think you're due others work for nothing just because you might learn something from it?
At what point does the public have a say in what is right and what is wrong? I guess it depends on what public you ask. Everyone loves getting something for nothing, until it's their something that others are getting. You're making the mistake of assuming that slashdot speaks for the world.
Well of course Oink was great. Isn't it just amazing what you can offer when you never have to pay anyone for any of it? No tedious licensing arrangements, no boring tracking of sales, no dull international copyright maze to negotiate. Life's a breeze when you're freeloading off someone else's industry. Meanwhile, back in the real world, when you're actually involved in music production, when you've got legal and financial responsibilities, things are just a bit more complicated.
we have digital players that would take in excess of $30000 to fill at those rates. News flash: just because you have a capacity for something doesn't mean you have a right that it should be filled. Just because the medium is cheaper does not mean that the content should be too. I have a belly that takes lots of pizza to fill. It's twice as big as my old one. On the basis that things have changed, change your business model, yada, yada yada, do I get to demand cheaper pizza?
If the labels give us what we want and we'll gladly tithe 20, 30, 40 dollars a month of absolutely rock-steady continual income to them on perpetual basis. And how stupid do you think any company has to be to give you unlimited, unrestrict, unDRMed access to everything on the promise that'll you pay them 40 dollars a month forever? Is maybe not just a little more likely that'll you'll sign up for 2 months, download everything, then split?
If they ignore us, we'll just wind up on Oink's successor, whenever one finally rises to dominance in the gaping hole formerly filled by Oink. So your consumer power works on the basis of "give me what I want, at the price I want, or I'll take it without paying"? Anything else you consume on this basis? Try that at your newsagents; "sell me this paper for a penny, or I'm going to stand here and read it for nothing!" Or at the airport; "A ticket to Rio for a dollar, or I'm going to sneak on board! Don't say I didn't warn you!"
Lily Allen became popular without the help of her record label. No she didn't. The Wikipedia article you link to says her record label gave her £25,000 up front before anything happened on mySpace. Sounds like a big help to me.
Bands can do their own marketing. Cool. And maybe they could write music in the free time they have after all that marketing and administration you've got them doing.
Or, maybe, here's a radical idea, they can get someone else to do all that stuff for them. Maybe some people who really know how to do this. Like, they could know all about making a record, marketing it and selling it. Maybe they could do all this up-front, without payment in advance, cos everyone knows that a small band starting out has no money. But they'd have to be ok with taking all the risk. So if the band sell squat they'd be the one out of pocket, but if they do well then they get a share of the profits. Maybe they could make a business out of it! They'd be far better at doing all that, and that would let the band get on with doing what their best at; making music.
What do you think you could call these people? It would kind of be like an industry, but about music. Hmmmm.....
why pay for music, when it's so easy to download the pirated stuff for free? iTunes has the people who aren't computer savvy I wasn't aware that having no qualms about free-loading off others = being computer savvy.
(Unless I'm missing something) What you're missing is that you can only authorize computers that have iTunes installed. On some computers that's impossible.
Why would wikipedia ever reject a voluntary contribution? Because Wikipedia is not a free-for-all. You want to put up garbage about stuff no one else cares about? Go to myspace.
Extra articles don't clutter up wikipedia. They simply don't get looked at. So what? Who cares? But they would appear in searches and they would crowd out the good articles. Where do we find a famous, say, "Bill Smith", when there's 300 other articles on people with the same name who aren't of any importance or interest to anyone? How is anyone to find it among the trash? Who's going to write wikilinks between articles if every time they go looking for the page they want they get 80 others that look similar, but aren't?
I'm just pointing out that you don't know what the hell you're talking about, and that you're using the internet to fill in data so that you can try to make it appear that that is not so. Hmm. I'm not sure why you're bothering, since you seem convinced you're arguing with Wikipedia and Google combined, rather than discussing something with a real live person. You must find internet communications very frustrating and impersonal. Though not, I warrant, as frustrating as others find communicating with you.
Yeah, that's my point. Twenty years ago, you wouldn't be pretending to know this stuff FYI, twenty years ago I was probably sitting in a lecture theatre learning this stuff.
My link to OED was what you'd call a convenient reference. I wasn't obtaining my information from it, and Google was just a convenient way of finding a suitable URL to quote. I suppose I could have given you entry, page number and column of an appropriate dictionary that meets your approval, but frankly I doubt I could have been bothered. You may be amazed to hear it, but I don't require the go ahead from any dictionary before I write something. You can continue to insist that your definition is the only acceptable one, but don't be too disappointed when the language leaves you behind. Pesky things languages, they just won't be pinned down by anyone.
But no matter. Experience has taught me there's no point to arguing with crazies on the internet. So I'll leave you to pen a letter of protest to the OED instead. Maybe they'll be happy to play with you.
Oh, and by the way, you don't "throw" muscles, you flex them. And do people really still use geocities? You need to update your cultural references by about 10 years.
People in academia do not own the language. They merely document it. That's descriptive rather than proscriptive linguistics, as my university English Language lecturer would have it (now that, apparently, we're comparing educations).
I used the Oxford Dictionary link merely because it was one of the first I googled. (You see what I did there?! Someone call the linguistic police!).
Oh absolutely, couldn't agree more. You should not apply the same standards of practice to yourself as those that operate illegally, even when you're acting against them.
It was the nauseating sight of copyright pirates trying to take the moral high ground that I was referring to. As if they suddenly had a deep respect for the finer details of the law.
After all, Anderson did not "steal" this data. They still have their data. He merely infringed their copyright by copying it. And we know how evil copyright is, don't we?
Isn't that how the argument goes?
Or you could sell it a whole lot dearer to fewer people and see even more money, over a longer term.
cheap + more sales does not necessarily = more profit.
My POINT was, this is something people want. Instead of providing it, the movie and record companies sue everyone to prevent it. The bottom line is that nothing the companies could provide can be anywhere as convenient as a service that's free and doesn't bother itself with legal restrictions, artists contracts, TV channel contracts, national boundaries, etc. All that boring stuff that ensures everyone gets paid for their work, and if you pay for exclusive rights for a show, that's what you get. These are the technicalities you don't have to worry about when you're obtaining revenue from a product that you didn't make to begin with and have no rights or obligations for.
Compare that to a TV company. You are considering entering an online market providing your product, while all the time competing against your own product given away free by someone else. You have no chance. So the only thing these companies have to allow them to compete in this market is use of copyright law, which was designed to give them a fair right to exploit commercially their own product without others ripping it off. This is exactly what these companies are doing
So rather than whining about this, you should be welcoming it as a step towards a fair and level market for online video provision driven by healthy competition and consumer choice. But instead you'd rather support some third party leechers, providing a shoddy product and making it impossible for others.
Just because their current business model no longer suits the enviornment they're trying to use it in, that's no reason they should be able to sue everyone to MAKE it work. For millions of years it's been 'adapt or die'. It's time they learned the same lesson. Wrong. They have every right because it's their product and they can do whatever the hell they like with it. If their "business model" is so poor that they can't make a successful business out of selling their product, then yes, they deserve to fade away. And if someone else is more successful with some other business model, then good luck to them. But no-one has the right to base their "business model" on ripping off someone else's product. If their business model is so good, then let them see how it works when it has to support the overheads of making the product to begin with. Only once that works do they deserve congratulations.
I'm thinking it's not nearly as simple as you like to think. Just because you can say "business model" doesn't mean you know anything about what it involves.
Oh dear. If anyone's throwing a hissy fit it's the big babies who are upset about this site being closed down. Big babies like their tv! Big babies want their tv! Why won't nasty Big Business give it?!
Big babies want their tv. Yes, even while half the time they're complaining it's crap. This is a defence mechanism they use to justify why it should be ok to not pay for it.
Big babies don't want to pay for their tv. Or certainly don't want to pay what it costs to make.
Big babies are happy to join in leaching off a process where other people pay the bills.
Big babies run off crying if stopped getting their tv for free.
"Big business" is what produces there TV shows in the first place. If "people" don't pay them for producing them, then they'll stop doing it. Then no-one gets to see them, ever. Everyone loses.
However, in a future where the bands themselves are in charge, I think using their work for other projects will become much cheaper. I can't see where you're getting this. Do you imagine the bands don't want paid as much as the record company?
Say I'm a musician with a famous song; what's my incentive to sell it cheap to boost the profile of some crappy advert or shoddy amateur film? If I have an artistic reputation for quality and popularity, why should I allow someone else to cheapen that to promote their product? Maybe I don't want my song associated with a bar of chocolate for little return. And if I choose to do it, why shouldn't I demand a large amount of cash?
If the advertiser or film maker doesn't believe my music is worth that they are always free to go elsewhere.
his guy has become known as a fast but SAFE driver. No. If he was a SAFE driver then the roads would be SAFER if everyone followed his example. Do you think the roads would be safer if we all drove like that?
What he is is a SELFISH driver because he is relying on everyone else following the rules, so that he can ignore them. His safety is entirely reliant on being able to predict everyone around him following the rules of the road, a courtesy he's not prepared return.
All we can hope for is that one day he'll meet as "fast but SAFE" a driver as himself on an otherwise empty road. Then he'll see what happens when the guy he's overtaking in the wrong lane has as little regard for the regulations as he has.
People are happier at work if they can act like themselves. And what if swearing is not themselves?
This benefits and reinforces solidarity only among those who are willing to join in with the swearing. I can't imagine it does much for those who get uncomfortable around constant cursing. So really a policy of "swearing's ok" is every bit as oppressive as one that says "not ok". Either way you're cramping someone's style. Which do you think is the lesser of the two evils?
Personally I'd go with the option that's least likely to offend those in and visiting the working environment.
Also consider that swearing, by its very nature, often revolves around phrases that can very easily be used, intentionally or not, as a form of sexual harassment. You read stories all the time of cases where a company has been taken to court over sexual discrimination, and their defence is "it was only office banter". But it's often the case that "office banter" is just the excuse used to disguise real harassment. That's why your HR dept doesn't like it.
-still embeds buyer information inside the files Oh noes! The horror! Something I own has my name on it!!
Re:There's nothing left that wikki doesn't know!
on
Has Wikipedia Peaked?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The point of notability (besides vastly increasing the chances of the information be verifiable) is that attempting to include every single non-notable bit of knowledge would be a disaster as the useless crud submerges the stuff worth reading. Notability is just another spam filter.
Consider if Wikipedia contained a page on every sucky band ever formed by three teenagers in dad's garage. So now you have 300 articles titled some variance on "Rock Pwnage (band)". Who's every going to ever look them up? Answer; no-one. And even if they did, how would you ever know which one is the one you're interested in reading about? And say, god forbid, one Rock Pwnage makes it big and people actually do want to look their page up. They have to find their way through 299 other near-identically titled pages full of non-entities. You think people are going to continue using Wikipedia if every search produces results that are 99% garbage about people who no-one, other than their mothers, would ever be interested in?? That's what myspace is for!
There is the fundamental difference between online and dead-tree encyclopedias; it is a pity Wikipedia hasn't quite grasped this. So why do they have a policy that says exactly that? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_paper_encyclopedia
If you could "take" my computer, pot, food, books, or anything I own by easily making your own copy at essentially no cost to you in money or time - meanwhile leaving me still in possession of the things you copied, I'd not only be ok with you doing it, I'd encourage you. OK. How about if your computer was unique? It was something you, personally, made yourself and is so special people pay good money just to use it. In fact you make your living that way. Now I've taken a copy of your computer (with your encouragement), and I'm sharing it out for free to all the people that used to pay you. You still have your computer, but all the time and money you spent making it is no longer putting food on your table.
That's as much to do with national tariffs, trade barriers and differences in law. All these are legal constraints on market forces that distort things (for better or worse). They are not necessarily down to the desires of one particular industry.
You could argue that we live in an international age, internet has no boundaries, etc etc. But the implications of that go far further than where you are allowed to buy your music. We do not live in a world that is ready or able to have anything near a totally free global economy.
Of course. If someone disagrees with your personal opinion it's not because that ;
a/ there's a difference of opinion b/ you personally might be (gasp!) wrong.
Noooo. It must be because they're getting paid to disagree with your obviously infallible and universally accepted opinion! How else could they conceivably disagree with you? And they're everywhere! They must be stopped!
It's sort of like expecting oil paintings to be held to the same pricing standards as mass-produced posters. Except they are. It's called "Market Forces". The oil painting sells at the highest price that someone is prepared to pay. Exactly the same as the poster. The only difference is the rarity will tend to drive up the painting's price higher.
Other than Market Forces, there are no 'standards'. And that includes production costs. Production cost are only one part of what determines the price. When production costs fall there is no law or 'standard' that says the price must too.
Similarly there is no law or 'standard' that tells a music company what price they must sell CDs at, any more than there is a 'standard' for concert ticket prices. They are free to sell as many, or few, as they like at the price that Market Forces determines is best for them. You, in turn, can determine what's best for you; if you don't like the price don't buy.
You are only two ways you can be 'ripped off' 1/ if you buy in a knowledge vacuum unaware you can get it cheaper elsewhere 2/ if you buy something at a higher price than your own interests determine.
With case 1, well, you should have shopped around. Case 2; you're a sucker who can't hold on to your own money.
Can you imagine having a job where you *know* the candidates will die a horrible death I'm not sure if I can imagine anything you're describing, as you appear to have left 50% of the story out. Who are these people dying? What explosion? What candidates?
it's our Christian role to care for the Earth So the rest of us don't? The scary thing about some Christians is that they think that the process of royally screwing things up will hasten the coming of "the end-times", which is a good thing. So don't go counting on a person's religion to stop them messing up the living conditions on planet Earth. You'd hope that plain old selfish self interest would be enough.
What makes you think you've a right to a full ipod with 160gb worth of music? What, you expect to pay 1/2 of one percent of $80,000$ $400? So that's 1 cent a track? You think that's a fair price? Who's the insane one?
If I buy an empty field, do I get to complain how much it'd cost to build my 160 bedroom mansion on it? Dammit, I demand someone build me a mansion for a dollar a room!
Slashdot Mirror
Basically people shouldn't be paid for their produce if you in your wisdom) reckon (that;
1/ they don't need it
2/ they're only going to spend it on crap
3/ what they produce is educational
I have some sympathy with the first two, though I can see it as a easy way of avoiding payment for anything. Perhaps, next time you're accepting a haircut, you should demand an analysis of the barber's lifestyle before deciding if they're worthy of payment. I mean, if they're loaded already and are just going to go out and waste it on beer, you'd be perfectly within your rights to walk out without paying!
As for the last point; I don't understand your logic. Education is a great thing, but what makes you think you're due others work for nothing just because you might learn something from it? At what point does the public have a say in what is right and what is wrong? I guess it depends on what public you ask. Everyone loves getting something for nothing, until it's their something that others are getting. You're making the mistake of assuming that slashdot speaks for the world.
Or, maybe, here's a radical idea, they can get someone else to do all that stuff for them. Maybe some people who really know how to do this. Like, they could know all about making a record, marketing it and selling it. Maybe they could do all this up-front, without payment in advance, cos everyone knows that a small band starting out has no money. But they'd have to be ok with taking all the risk. So if the band sell squat they'd be the one out of pocket, but if they do well then they get a share of the profits. Maybe they could make a business out of it! They'd be far better at doing all that, and that would let the band get on with doing what their best at; making music.
What do you think you could call these people? It would kind of be like an industry, but about music. Hmmmm.....
My link to OED was what you'd call a convenient reference. I wasn't obtaining my information from it, and Google was just a convenient way of finding a suitable URL to quote. I suppose I could have given you entry, page number and column of an appropriate dictionary that meets your approval, but frankly I doubt I could have been bothered. You may be amazed to hear it, but I don't require the go ahead from any dictionary before I write something. You can continue to insist that your definition is the only acceptable one, but don't be too disappointed when the language leaves you behind. Pesky things languages, they just won't be pinned down by anyone.
But no matter. Experience has taught me there's no point to arguing with crazies on the internet. So I'll leave you to pen a letter of protest to the OED instead. Maybe they'll be happy to play with you.
Oh, and by the way, you don't "throw" muscles, you flex them. And do people really still use geocities? You need to update your cultural references by about 10 years.
People in academia do not own the language. They merely document it. That's descriptive rather than proscriptive linguistics, as my university English Language lecturer would have it (now that, apparently, we're comparing educations).
I used the Oxford Dictionary link merely because it was one of the first I googled. (You see what I did there?! Someone call the linguistic police!).
Oxford English Dictionary
"a state of affairs that appears perversely contrary to what one expects"
Oh absolutely, couldn't agree more. You should not apply the same standards of practice to yourself as those that operate illegally, even when you're acting against them. It was the nauseating sight of copyright pirates trying to take the moral high ground that I was referring to. As if they suddenly had a deep respect for the finer details of the law. After all, Anderson did not "steal" this data. They still have their data. He merely infringed their copyright by copying it. And we know how evil copyright is, don't we? Isn't that how the argument goes?
Is there not something deliciously ironic about one set of criminals complaining about the illegal, immoral activities of another?
Actually, the situation is just a bit too cloying for my tastes.
Or you could sell it a whole lot dearer to fewer people and see even more money, over a longer term. cheap + more sales does not necessarily = more profit.
Compare that to a TV company. You are considering entering an online market providing your product, while all the time competing against your own product given away free by someone else. You have no chance. So the only thing these companies have to allow them to compete in this market is use of copyright law, which was designed to give them a fair right to exploit commercially their own product without others ripping it off. This is exactly what these companies are doing
So rather than whining about this, you should be welcoming it as a step towards a fair and level market for online video provision driven by healthy competition and consumer choice. But instead you'd rather support some third party leechers, providing a shoddy product and making it impossible for others. Just because their current business model no longer suits the enviornment they're trying to use it in, that's no reason they should be able to sue everyone to MAKE it work. For millions of years it's been 'adapt or die'. It's time they learned the same lesson. Wrong. They have every right because it's their product and they can do whatever the hell they like with it. If their "business model" is so poor that they can't make a successful business out of selling their product, then yes, they deserve to fade away. And if someone else is more successful with some other business model, then good luck to them. But no-one has the right to base their "business model" on ripping off someone else's product. If their business model is so good, then let them see how it works when it has to support the overheads of making the product to begin with. Only once that works do they deserve congratulations.
I'm thinking it's not nearly as simple as you like to think. Just because you can say "business model" doesn't mean you know anything about what it involves.
Oh dear. If anyone's throwing a hissy fit it's the big babies who are upset about this site being closed down. Big babies like their tv! Big babies want their tv! Why won't nasty Big Business give it?!
Big babies want their tv. Yes, even while half the time they're complaining it's crap. This is a defence mechanism they use to justify why it should be ok to not pay for it.
Big babies don't want to pay for their tv. Or certainly don't want to pay what it costs to make.
Big babies are happy to join in leaching off a process where other people pay the bills.
Big babies run off crying if stopped getting their tv for free.
"Big business" is what produces there TV shows in the first place. If "people" don't pay them for producing them, then they'll stop doing it. Then no-one gets to see them, ever. Everyone loses.
Say I'm a musician with a famous song; what's my incentive to sell it cheap to boost the profile of some crappy advert or shoddy amateur film? If I have an artistic reputation for quality and popularity, why should I allow someone else to cheapen that to promote their product? Maybe I don't want my song associated with a bar of chocolate for little return. And if I choose to do it, why shouldn't I demand a large amount of cash?
If the advertiser or film maker doesn't believe my music is worth that they are always free to go elsewhere.
What he is is a SELFISH driver because he is relying on everyone else following the rules, so that he can ignore them. His safety is entirely reliant on being able to predict everyone around him following the rules of the road, a courtesy he's not prepared return.
All we can hope for is that one day he'll meet as "fast but SAFE" a driver as himself on an otherwise empty road. Then he'll see what happens when the guy he's overtaking in the wrong lane has as little regard for the regulations as he has.
This benefits and reinforces solidarity only among those who are willing to join in with the swearing. I can't imagine it does much for those who get uncomfortable around constant cursing. So really a policy of "swearing's ok" is every bit as oppressive as one that says "not ok". Either way you're cramping someone's style. Which do you think is the lesser of the two evils?
Personally I'd go with the option that's least likely to offend those in and visiting the working environment.
Also consider that swearing, by its very nature, often revolves around phrases that can very easily be used, intentionally or not, as a form of sexual harassment. You read stories all the time of cases where a company has been taken to court over sexual discrimination, and their defence is "it was only office banter". But it's often the case that "office banter" is just the excuse used to disguise real harassment. That's why your HR dept doesn't like it.
Consider if Wikipedia contained a page on every sucky band ever formed by three teenagers in dad's garage. So now you have 300 articles titled some variance on "Rock Pwnage (band)". Who's every going to ever look them up? Answer; no-one. And even if they did, how would you ever know which one is the one you're interested in reading about? And say, god forbid, one Rock Pwnage makes it big and people actually do want to look their page up. They have to find their way through 299 other near-identically titled pages full of non-entities. You think people are going to continue using Wikipedia if every search produces results that are 99% garbage about people who no-one, other than their mothers, would ever be interested in?? That's what myspace is for! There is the fundamental difference between online and dead-tree encyclopedias; it is a pity Wikipedia hasn't quite grasped this. So why do they have a policy that says exactly that? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_paper_encyclopedia
Still ok?
That's as much to do with national tariffs, trade barriers and differences in law. All these are legal constraints on market forces that distort things (for better or worse). They are not necessarily down to the desires of one particular industry. You could argue that we live in an international age, internet has no boundaries, etc etc. But the implications of that go far further than where you are allowed to buy your music. We do not live in a world that is ready or able to have anything near a totally free global economy.
Of course. If someone disagrees with your personal opinion it's not because that ;
a/ there's a difference of opinion
b/ you personally might be (gasp!) wrong.
Noooo. It must be because they're getting paid to disagree with your obviously infallible and universally accepted opinion! How else could they conceivably disagree with you? And they're everywhere! They must be stopped!
Other than Market Forces, there are no 'standards'. And that includes production costs. Production cost are only one part of what determines the price. When production costs fall there is no law or 'standard' that says the price must too.
Similarly there is no law or 'standard' that tells a music company what price they must sell CDs at, any more than there is a 'standard' for concert ticket prices. They are free to sell as many, or few, as they like at the price that Market Forces determines is best for them. You, in turn, can determine what's best for you; if you don't like the price don't buy.
You are only two ways you can be 'ripped off'
1/ if you buy in a knowledge vacuum unaware you can get it cheaper elsewhere
2/ if you buy something at a higher price than your own interests determine.
With case 1, well, you should have shopped around. Case 2; you're a sucker who can't hold on to your own money.
What makes you think you've a right to a full ipod with 160gb worth of music? What, you expect to pay 1/2 of one percent of $80,000$ $400? So that's 1 cent a track? You think that's a fair price? Who's the insane one?
If I buy an empty field, do I get to complain how much it'd cost to build my 160 bedroom mansion on it? Dammit, I demand someone build me a mansion for a dollar a room!