I love how adamant you are that we've crossed some kind of Rubicon and can never go back, but all they have to do is change the internet and they win. Change displays to not display "stolen" or "unapproved" content. Change hardware to plug the analog output hole. Change video cameras to blur copyrighted material, or to stop functioning when you point them at billboards/logos/whatever. Change internet protocols to carry bits that identify you. Change networking equipment so that law enforcement can easily get reports of your activity.
All of those and more are being pushed forward, now. Every new video format, every new gaming console, every new Apple product and Windows operating system makes it just a little harder for Joe Consumer to share stuff. It does not matter to them if some Swedish guys hacks a way around those restrictions and a few geeks are freer.
Yeah, the technorati will always have hacked-up ways to get what they want. But the media companies don't care about our 1%; they care about the masses. To say that copyright is unenforceable (in the way that companies care about) is naive.
If you insist on seeing the dinosaur media companies as clueless idiots, you'll lose your chance to fight them on every front.
There are several reasons why comparing American Idol votes to presidential votes is an apples-an-oranges comparison:
1. You can vote multiple times in American Idol. Many people try speed-dial and vote over and over. Whether the votes get ~counted~ I don't know, but the vote count you see may contain dupes.
2. In American Idol, anyone with a phone can vote. No age limits, etc.
3. With American Idol, you can vote by phone, from the privacy of your home and without leaving your couch.
4. With American idol, the time between "thinking about voting" and voting can be instant. You can't just vote for president when you feel like it.
Well, I quoted that not so much to imply that higher tax rates *improve* economic health, but to head off the inevitable charge that higher tax rates *hurt* growth, productivity, etc. I was just saying that we can do (a very little!) more to solve the problems that cause us all pain and also have a thriving economy.
Very few people in this country are giving a TON of money to "help others". We all pay taxes for various shared services, services which we couldn't do on our own. As someone else said, unless you want to pay a per-use fee every time you drive, pay a monthly security fee to your own private police officer, pay a private militia to protect you from the bad guys and so on, you need a government, and they need your money to run.
Compared to similar nations, we have a much lower tax burden:
http://www.ppionline.org/documents/ACFAVUvce4Tc.pd f
"It is also worth noting that most other industrialized nations face far higher tax burdens than the United States. According to OECD data, the 2000 tax share of GDP in the United States, Belgium, and Norway were 29.6, 45.6, and 40.3% respectively. These higher tax burdens have not prevented the economies of these nations from continuing to grow and prosper. Belgium, France and Norway enjoyed higher productivity levels than the United States throughout the 1990s, despite their higher tax rates.[4] Many countries with far higher tax burdens than the United States, such as Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, enjoy lower unemployment rates." - http://www.cepr.net/publications/deficit_scare.htm #_ftn4
The simple fact is that we are just about the *least* taxed modern nation on the planet. And yet people who live extremely comfortable lives, with amenities that 99.9% of humanity could only dream of, all because they won the socioeconomic lottery to be born middle class in America, spend much of their time complaining that what they *do* give back is too much.
All while suggesting that the poor should be satisfied that they are not even poorer.
I know you probably won't, but you should look at the work of Jeffrey Sachs, a brilliant man with decades of on-the-ground experience around the world. When will the giving stop, you ask? His latest book describes how developed nations giving 0.7% of GDP to targeted programs could solve a whole raft of problems the world over, from unclean water to famine to disease to a lack of basic education.
So. Less than 1%. Sounds reasonable to me.
Arguments like these require you to talk out both sides of your mouth. On the one hand, you have to assert something like "Being poor isn't all that bad, really." But on the other, people generally have vastly more resources (due to many reasons not within their control) will bristle at giving up something insignificant even if it tremendously benefits others. If the middle and upper classes of this country gave 0.5% of their income to the right programs, we'd see unbelievable benefits, and the donors would hardly even notice the loss. Yet people still assert that it's unfair in principle to give up this pittance.
Why does missing out on a Coke a few times a week hurt so much, if the poverty out there is "not so bad"?
You are of course willfully misunderstanding his intent. Let me modify the cheese story slightly:
There is a supermarket that gives out occsaional free cheese samples (the market in your analogy).
Next door is another market. That market gives cheese away for free, but it is cheese stolen from the first market. It is a fair assumption to say that each person who gets free cheese in Market #2 is not going to buy cheese at Market #1.
Now. What if Market #2 could somehow make sure that the cheese Market #2 steals is unpalatable, poisonous, whatever. This would encourage people who want the cheese (because the cheese is good, and because Market #1 works to advertise the cheese) to get it at the "real" source.
What is your problem with this, exactly?
HBO is not trying to force people to watch the show. They are trying to force people who ALREADY want to watch the show to use the correct way to obtain it. And what's more, they are doing it in a tech-savvy and fairly creative way. They are making the process of copyright infringement frustrating. If infringement is about convenience (free, easy-to-get downloads), then a certain amount of INconvenience thrown in will get people to switch.
I think maybe we share a lot of common ground here. A couple minor clarifications on my part:
- When I talk about teaching kids how to consume media, I am thinking mostly of things like making sure they can easily separate what's real from what's not real and when media is trying to bypass their conscious thought and go directly to the brain stem. Whether it's subtle advertising or a game that plays to some atavistic desire for violence rather than providing an actual story with meaningful decisions, kids should know what media is trying to do *to* them. It's not at all about saying "this is good and that is bad".
- I'm a parent, and it frustrates me that I can't be everywhere my kid is. I do everything I can to teach her to make the right decisions, but the cold hard reality is that parenting is a difficult job that requires more time than most of us have, and we do the best we can. Now in an ideal world, my kid would never watch a show I disapprove of, because she would simply accept my values. In the REAL world, I have a v-chip and control over the remote. In an ideal world, she would never buy stuff I disapprove of, but in the REAL world, I depend upon having some control over her spendable cash, and where we go to shop (she's under 10, and I do the driving). In an ideal world, she would never watch R-rated movies I disapprove of (and keep in mind, I may be fine with some of them, who knows?), but in the REAL world, I control that because a kid needs an adult to see those films.
So of course, in an ideal world, my under-10 daughter would not buy Postal or GTA or Hitman, because she would make that choice on her own anyway, whether I was there or not. But I need a tool to allow me to parent her when I am not there. If she can't buy those games herself, then I become the gateway for them. In other words, I get to parent. I'm not sure how that is any different from the way we treat movies.
I call bullshit. Video games are decidedly NOT like books, or movies, or watching TV, or listening to music. Video are BY FAR the most immersive way to interact with media, and are becoming more immersive all the time.
Most popular modern video games provide the player with a fully-realized virtual world where they must make the decisions that guide the action. This draws the average player in more than any other media. If it wasn't true, video games wouldn't be growing at the expense of other media. And it IS true that the vast majority of roleplaying games, first person shooters, and driving games REWARD the player for destructive acts - killing people/mobs, crashing cars, etc.
Now. I freaking LOVE video games. And I believe that they are getting better as the genre matures. But here is what needs to happen, in order of importance:
1. Parents and schools need to teach every child how to consume media in an intelligent and healthy manner. And this goes for all media (especially advertising) but among them, video games.
2. Game developers need to take on the non-trivial problem of designing games with multiple solutions to problems that are not always violent. And don't tell me it can't be done, or that the resulting games will suck. Look at Fable, the Fallout games, KOTOR, Baldur's gate, and so on. All of these involve violence, but there are multiple paths, which have consequences. As a side note, many games provide parents with the tools they need to control the level of violence their kids encounter in games. This IS trivial, and needs to continue and improve.
3. Lastly, but still needed, society needs to set some standards about how we sell games. It should be simple for a parent to find out what their kid will encounter in a game, and there need to be rules that help parents control what (adult-themed) games their kids play. Parents CANNOT be everywhere their kids go - at some point, society has to give parents the power to make those decisions. In the case of games the way to help parents make decisions is to give adults EXCLUSIVE RIGHT to buy adult-themed games. All you people who tell parents to parent? Here's how to help 'em do just that.
"And interaction is not a valid defense, choose your own adventure books would meet that standard."
In the words of the kids who play World of Warcraft: "OMFG!!!LAWL!!111ROFLMAO!!"
(And don't think the irony of those acronyms is lost on me.:-) )
I call bullshit.
You do not need any "gross, broad stereotypes" to understand that any group of people who share experience (all of the things that go along with where and how you grew up) will have different ideas and points of view to another group of people who do not share that experience. This is true no matter which groups of people you are talking about.
If a company has a monoculture (of any sort), expanding the diversity in the company helps it to better understand the needs of its customers (and potential customers), and gives that company more insight into marketing, product development, customer relations, all down the line. This can make a person who augments the diversity of a company a more worthwhile hire than someone who only extends the monoculture. Even if the "outsider" employee is less skilled.
Slashdot Mirror
I love how adamant you are that we've crossed some kind of Rubicon and can never go back, but all they have to do is change the internet and they win. Change displays to not display "stolen" or "unapproved" content. Change hardware to plug the analog output hole. Change video cameras to blur copyrighted material, or to stop functioning when you point them at billboards/logos/whatever. Change internet protocols to carry bits that identify you. Change networking equipment so that law enforcement can easily get reports of your activity.
All of those and more are being pushed forward, now. Every new video format, every new gaming console, every new Apple product and Windows operating system makes it just a little harder for Joe Consumer to share stuff. It does not matter to them if some Swedish guys hacks a way around those restrictions and a few geeks are freer. Yeah, the technorati will always have hacked-up ways to get what they want. But the media companies don't care about our 1%; they care about the masses. To say that copyright is unenforceable (in the way that companies care about) is naive.
If you insist on seeing the dinosaur media companies as clueless idiots, you'll lose your chance to fight them on every front.
There are several reasons why comparing American Idol votes to presidential votes is an apples-an-oranges comparison: 1. You can vote multiple times in American Idol. Many people try speed-dial and vote over and over. Whether the votes get ~counted~ I don't know, but the vote count you see may contain dupes. 2. In American Idol, anyone with a phone can vote. No age limits, etc. 3. With American Idol, you can vote by phone, from the privacy of your home and without leaving your couch. 4. With American idol, the time between "thinking about voting" and voting can be instant. You can't just vote for president when you feel like it.
Well, I quoted that not so much to imply that higher tax rates *improve* economic health, but to head off the inevitable charge that higher tax rates *hurt* growth, productivity, etc. I was just saying that we can do (a very little!) more to solve the problems that cause us all pain and also have a thriving economy.
Very few people in this country are giving a TON of money to "help others". We all pay taxes for various shared services, services which we couldn't do on our own. As someone else said, unless you want to pay a per-use fee every time you drive, pay a monthly security fee to your own private police officer, pay a private militia to protect you from the bad guys and so on, you need a government, and they need your money to run. Compared to similar nations, we have a much lower tax burden: http://www.ppionline.org/documents/ACFAVUvce4Tc.pd f
"It is also worth noting that most other industrialized nations face far higher tax burdens than the United States. According to OECD data, the 2000 tax share of GDP in the United States, Belgium, and Norway were 29.6, 45.6, and 40.3% respectively. These higher tax burdens have not prevented the economies of these nations from continuing to grow and prosper. Belgium, France and Norway enjoyed higher productivity levels than the United States throughout the 1990s, despite their higher tax rates.[4] Many countries with far higher tax burdens than the United States, such as Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, enjoy lower unemployment rates." - http://www.cepr.net/publications/deficit_scare.htm #_ftn4
The simple fact is that we are just about the *least* taxed modern nation on the planet. And yet people who live extremely comfortable lives, with amenities that 99.9% of humanity could only dream of, all because they won the socioeconomic lottery to be born middle class in America, spend much of their time complaining that what they *do* give back is too much.
All while suggesting that the poor should be satisfied that they are not even poorer.
I know you probably won't, but you should look at the work of Jeffrey Sachs, a brilliant man with decades of on-the-ground experience around the world. When will the giving stop, you ask? His latest book describes how developed nations giving 0.7% of GDP to targeted programs could solve a whole raft of problems the world over, from unclean water to famine to disease to a lack of basic education.
So. Less than 1%. Sounds reasonable to me.
Arguments like these require you to talk out both sides of your mouth. On the one hand, you have to assert something like "Being poor isn't all that bad, really." But on the other, people generally have vastly more resources (due to many reasons not within their control) will bristle at giving up something insignificant even if it tremendously benefits others. If the middle and upper classes of this country gave 0.5% of their income to the right programs, we'd see unbelievable benefits, and the donors would hardly even notice the loss. Yet people still assert that it's unfair in principle to give up this pittance. Why does missing out on a Coke a few times a week hurt so much, if the poverty out there is "not so bad"?
Shhh ... Don't tell him that the internet was *created* as a government project ... his head might explode.
You are of course willfully misunderstanding his intent. Let me modify the cheese story slightly: There is a supermarket that gives out occsaional free cheese samples (the market in your analogy). Next door is another market. That market gives cheese away for free, but it is cheese stolen from the first market. It is a fair assumption to say that each person who gets free cheese in Market #2 is not going to buy cheese at Market #1. Now. What if Market #2 could somehow make sure that the cheese Market #2 steals is unpalatable, poisonous, whatever. This would encourage people who want the cheese (because the cheese is good, and because Market #1 works to advertise the cheese) to get it at the "real" source. What is your problem with this, exactly? HBO is not trying to force people to watch the show. They are trying to force people who ALREADY want to watch the show to use the correct way to obtain it. And what's more, they are doing it in a tech-savvy and fairly creative way. They are making the process of copyright infringement frustrating. If infringement is about convenience (free, easy-to-get downloads), then a certain amount of INconvenience thrown in will get people to switch.
- When I talk about teaching kids how to consume media, I am thinking mostly of things like making sure they can easily separate what's real from what's not real and when media is trying to bypass their conscious thought and go directly to the brain stem. Whether it's subtle advertising or a game that plays to some atavistic desire for violence rather than providing an actual story with meaningful decisions, kids should know what media is trying to do *to* them. It's not at all about saying "this is good and that is bad".
- I'm a parent, and it frustrates me that I can't be everywhere my kid is. I do everything I can to teach her to make the right decisions, but the cold hard reality is that parenting is a difficult job that requires more time than most of us have, and we do the best we can. Now in an ideal world, my kid would never watch a show I disapprove of, because she would simply accept my values. In the REAL world, I have a v-chip and control over the remote. In an ideal world, she would never buy stuff I disapprove of, but in the REAL world, I depend upon having some control over her spendable cash, and where we go to shop (she's under 10, and I do the driving). In an ideal world, she would never watch R-rated movies I disapprove of (and keep in mind, I may be fine with some of them, who knows?), but in the REAL world, I control that because a kid needs an adult to see those films.
So of course, in an ideal world, my under-10 daughter would not buy Postal or GTA or Hitman, because she would make that choice on her own anyway, whether I was there or not. But I need a tool to allow me to parent her when I am not there. If she can't buy those games herself, then I become the gateway for them. In other words, I get to parent. I'm not sure how that is any different from the way we treat movies.
Anyway, thanks for the thoughtful reply.
Most popular modern video games provide the player with a fully-realized virtual world where they must make the decisions that guide the action. This draws the average player in more than any other media. If it wasn't true, video games wouldn't be growing at the expense of other media. And it IS true that the vast majority of roleplaying games, first person shooters, and driving games REWARD the player for destructive acts - killing people/mobs, crashing cars, etc.
Now. I freaking LOVE video games. And I believe that they are getting better as the genre matures. But here is what needs to happen, in order of importance:
1. Parents and schools need to teach every child how to consume media in an intelligent and healthy manner. And this goes for all media (especially advertising) but among them, video games.
2. Game developers need to take on the non-trivial problem of designing games with multiple solutions to problems that are not always violent. And don't tell me it can't be done, or that the resulting games will suck. Look at Fable, the Fallout games, KOTOR, Baldur's gate, and so on. All of these involve violence, but there are multiple paths, which have consequences. As a side note, many games provide parents with the tools they need to control the level of violence their kids encounter in games. This IS trivial, and needs to continue and improve.
3. Lastly, but still needed, society needs to set some standards about how we sell games. It should be simple for a parent to find out what their kid will encounter in a game, and there need to be rules that help parents control what (adult-themed) games their kids play. Parents CANNOT be everywhere their kids go - at some point, society has to give parents the power to make those decisions. In the case of games the way to help parents make decisions is to give adults EXCLUSIVE RIGHT to buy adult-themed games. All you people who tell parents to parent? Here's how to help 'em do just that.
"And interaction is not a valid defense, choose your own adventure books would meet that standard."
In the words of the kids who play World of Warcraft: "OMFG!!!LAWL!!111ROFLMAO!!"
(And don't think the irony of those acronyms is lost on me. :-) )
I call bullshit. You do not need any "gross, broad stereotypes" to understand that any group of people who share experience (all of the things that go along with where and how you grew up) will have different ideas and points of view to another group of people who do not share that experience. This is true no matter which groups of people you are talking about. If a company has a monoculture (of any sort), expanding the diversity in the company helps it to better understand the needs of its customers (and potential customers), and gives that company more insight into marketing, product development, customer relations, all down the line. This can make a person who augments the diversity of a company a more worthwhile hire than someone who only extends the monoculture. Even if the "outsider" employee is less skilled.