Three words: channel, channel, channel. The smaller competitors may be more efficient at creating a master. The efficiencies almost certainly drop off from there, and "from there" is where the real profitability starts.
And, in fact, the industry is segmented in such a way that the "smaller competitors" can compete with each other until their margins are razor-thin, while the labels sit on their distribution channels and carry in from there. It's pretty sweet for them.
California is far less censorious a place than much of the rest of the country. You should see the court battle now going on regarding medical marijuana - the Feds are trying to shut it down, the state is trying to protect it. The difference between California and middle America is than in Cal, when the soccer moms try to pull something like this, the ACLU is all over them like ants to a picnic. In the Bible Belt, these laws get passed without review all the time.
The problem isn't always one's own kids. As far as an army of soccer moms is concerned, the problem is someone *else's* kid, and the law is meant to keep *him* from becoming a psychopath that guns down her own peace-loving, well-trained child.
Well, there's a lot of space between nature and nurture, too - like gestation environment, developmental interactions, hormonal exposure and the like. Developing systems often structure each other through interaction, and small changes early in development can lead to major effects later on down the line. It's even concievable that different hormonal environments create some mutation. It's no accident that, in humans, a stressed or anxious mother will produce an emotionally unstable or learning-disabled child, for example (transplacental effects are likely a stronger factor in why people from poorer backgrounds are likely to stay in poorer/troubled environments than genetics is).
I just re-watched the Mel Brooks classic, "The Producers." To quote Blum, Gene Wilder's character: "You know, in the right circumstances, you could make more money with a flop than with a hit!"
I present to you: Springtime for Hitler, the console.
Being cute is a benefit. Or would you rather live in a completely utilitarian environment?
I don't know about you, but for me, creating and inhabiting aesthetically pleasing environments is one of the basic goals of life, for which technology is a means.
All the "gains in profits" over the past couple years have come from slashed budgets and layoffs. Which means - less corporate spending, and far less consumer spending. Which leads to more layoffs, and more slashed budgets.
It was the quarter-to-quarter hunger for a paper-profit (to pump up share prices) that has turned into an engine of recession. Too few businesses are working on long-term productivity. I consider this a further demonstration that shareholder capitalism as we know it is broken.
The whole piece is essentially revisionist propaganda for the miracle of American capitalist innovation. The list is profoundly biased to American developments in the private sector, completely omitting the vast number of ideas that came out of academia and the public sector, and many that came from outside the US.
Funny how Ben Stein in his "how America is losing its technological edge" piece was so busy being a fluff-job for the same tired old big-business agenda and cranky curmudgeonry and somehow managed to miss that the biggest threat to technological innovation could be the patent system.
There's a difference between a dumb fun movie and just a dumb movie. I like dumb fun movies, too. I'll happily watch Evil Dead 2 again. But we're talking about uncritically loyal fan-bases that will go to any filmic poo that has their favorite "logo" on it.
It's not healthy, it's understandable. "Healthy" would be making choices that would make life more bearable. If you don't enjoy your work and need to escape from it, then there's something wrong with your work (or you are living far beyond your means, or both.)
Most great works have nothing to do with avoiding prior knowledge. News flash: in Hamlet, he kills his uncle and his Mom, and dies. MacBeth dies. Oedipus sleeps with his mum and kills his Pa, goes crazy and kills himself.
If you think in any way that I've ruined those stories for you, you're mad. If you think that most people who went to see the original plays didn't know those stories ahead of time, you're also mad.
In a journey, you largely know where you are going and the route you will take. It's a matter of enjoying, not "knowing," the route that matters.
It's noble that you can admit you have a problem - that you've been somewhat owned by a cultural franchise, that is in turn owned by a media conglomerate. I don't know if being self-conscious about it alone about it makes it a lot better - but if people went to see, say, Solaris (which is flawed, but at least it *wants* to be a good movie) or even non-science-fiction films like the latest Dogme movie, then you are making an effort, and more importantly creating a stronger financial incentive to make high-quality, intellectually ambitious films.
I'm not part of fan culture; I look at it from the outside. On one hand, I can see both a kind of carnival atmosphere in it - there's some shred of creative expression in soaking in the meta-narratives of these popular culture franchises. And at least some of the fans really contest ownership of those franchises, in fan art and fan fiction and the like - there's something valorous about that. But the other side of it is that it's one of the more primitive ways to related to narrative art: almost total focus on diagesis, a neurotic escapism that often appears as an express desire to inhabit the worlds constructed by the stories, etc. I don't need to go on about the absurdities and stupidities of fan culture: I'm sure you've all seen it, and all of us have engaged in it a little to varying extents as a guilty pleasure.
I think it is best if people try to put the fan-epoch of their lives behind them at a certain point, as part of their personal-cultural adolescence. I think there's a developmental process in the appreciation of artworks and stories that has somehow become stunted particularly in American culture, which leads me to suspect that it could be an educational failure.
Most adult film goers don't care that much about spoilers. I assume that people go to films for reasons other than to see punch lines and surprises. If otherwise, they'd best not discuss films or books or any narratives with me at all. The only exception to that is the true plot twist, a la Crying Game. As Andrew O'Hehir says:
Actually, my view is that the spoiler obsession, born of the Internet's fan-geek culture, is the enemy of real criticism, real discussion and maybe even real thought, but that's a subject for another time.
Re:Cycling at 70 is quite possible
on
Old Age Simulator
·
· Score: 2
The idea is to recreate typical, not universal experiences of aging. Too many people think they they are somehow immune from any kind of decrepitude just because a few elderly people manage to be very healthy. It's something to hope and strive for, but it's not realistic to count on it.
I think that the era of the general accessibility of computing is coming to an end, if it isn't over already. Biotechnology and bioscience are difficult, complex, highly specialized and incompletely understood fields - the number of people who can do anything resembling "hacking" is miniscule. Biotechnology will reach people almost entirely as products and services, not as a realm of activity in which they can directly participate.
I think computing is going to move in that direction, as well. Libraries are much too complex and interdependent to be understood by the programmers who use them. We are more likely to manipulate large libraries and pre-programmed objects, working in increasingly visual environments with only a few specialists tweaking specific low-level libraries (and those specialists not necessarily understanding each other's work). I think that there already is a sort of nostalgia for the epoch of computing when any dedicated amateur could pretty much comprehend what was going on in their machine.
Funny, I'm making a point now that I was arguing against in another forum, but the fact that an earnest endeavour like Equilibrium is going to struggle for a profit while formulaic franchise crap like Star Wars and Star Trek rakes in money hand over fist is entirely the responsibility of dimwitted fanboys who think they they have to ignore the critics for the franchises they like while they are unwilling to take the chance and part with 8 bucks for films that don't have their favorite character in it. It really is part of the decline of our cultural landscape.
Most artists look for money to support their art. The original poster's point is correct - unless one is getting a commission to freely design an expressive, creative work and the money is just a way of supporting himself to do that, then he's an artist. If he is designing a web-site according to customer specifications, and would build more or less whatever he was paid to build, he's just a hired hand.
Now, many good artists are also smart about the market and the business-end of art, but that's another question.
I swear if I read another thread like this, it's going to wind up "guns don't kill people, bored Slashdot posters aggravated by obvious and tedious cliches kill people."
I wouldn't say it's impossible to become addicted to FPS's or even Quake. I just don't know anyone who has this problem, and both my general impression, and the data that we've seen circulating, suggests that it is disproportionately associated with MMORPGs, and that there is something about the structure of MMORPGs that accounts for the difference.
Personally speaking, my longest sessions of play were/are for Squaresoft games and resource management (Civ, Alpha Centauri, etc) games. I actually have wasted a couple days on them, something I've never done with other genres. But on the macro level, I believe my observation holds.
Real addiction occurs when the obsession for the addictive object ends up compromising normal healthy developmental goals. When you start missing classes, when you give up a healthy social life, when you start lying about how much you're drinking/gaming, when you choose your drug/game over your SO (and the relationship with the SO was, pre-addiction, healthy), then there's a problem. I've seen this happen a lot.
There's a tendency in talking about this to either a. defend the substance ("it's not the game's fault! It's the personality of the person/their lack of willpower/etc! Anything can be addictive!") or b. attack the substance ("won't someone think of the children..." etc.). Both are somewhat wrong-headed. It's naive to think that the game/whatever has nothing to do with it - some things are intrinsically more likely to be part of addictive behaviour than others. Some games are more addictive than others, and MMPORG's seem to lead the pack (there's a lot of possible reasons - their open structure, the psuedo-social aspect and the sense of competition and fear of getting "left behind", the enormity of the game-zone, etc.) MUDs and MOOs used to be the culprit, probably for similar reasons. (The whole "endorphins" explanation that gets tossed around, like the article has it, is really overextended. There are limbic systems far more extensive than that one at play, and it doesn't explain the nature of addiction any more than talking about the digestive system explains world hunger. And other, more 'neuroactive' games, don't show the same addictive effects as the frankly slower Everquest and company.
Even though many people play FPS's a lot, I haven't seen the sort of destructive fall-out from them that I've seen with other games - I don't know of anyone who failed out of school or became an antisocial shut-in because of Quake or Counterstrike.
In a sense, people who really like video games but would never let them interfere with the normal functioning of their lives (personal and professional) abuse the term "addiction" when they describe themselves as addicted to the games. I found the article underinformed and somewhat irresponsible - the realities of addiction are far more complex than a little controlled "experiment" will illuminate.
Slashdot Mirror
And, in fact, the industry is segmented in such a way that the "smaller competitors" can compete with each other until their margins are razor-thin, while the labels sit on their distribution channels and carry in from there. It's pretty sweet for them.
California is far less censorious a place than much of the rest of the country. You should see the court battle now going on regarding medical marijuana - the Feds are trying to shut it down, the state is trying to protect it. The difference between California and middle America is than in Cal, when the soccer moms try to pull something like this, the ACLU is all over them like ants to a picnic. In the Bible Belt, these laws get passed without review all the time.
The problem isn't always one's own kids. As far as an army of soccer moms is concerned, the problem is someone *else's* kid, and the law is meant to keep *him* from becoming a psychopath that guns down her own peace-loving, well-trained child.
Well, there's a lot of space between nature and nurture, too - like gestation environment, developmental interactions, hormonal exposure and the like. Developing systems often structure each other through interaction, and small changes early in development can lead to major effects later on down the line. It's even concievable that different hormonal environments create some mutation. It's no accident that, in humans, a stressed or anxious mother will produce an emotionally unstable or learning-disabled child, for example (transplacental effects are likely a stronger factor in why people from poorer backgrounds are likely to stay in poorer/troubled environments than genetics is).
I present to you: Springtime for Hitler, the console.
I'm under the impression that the rules have since been changed, and this is largely about tarriffs in the past.
I don't know about you, but for me, creating and inhabiting aesthetically pleasing environments is one of the basic goals of life, for which technology is a means.
It was the quarter-to-quarter hunger for a paper-profit (to pump up share prices) that has turned into an engine of recession. Too few businesses are working on long-term productivity. I consider this a further demonstration that shareholder capitalism as we know it is broken.
The whole piece is essentially revisionist propaganda for the miracle of American capitalist innovation. The list is profoundly biased to American developments in the private sector, completely omitting the vast number of ideas that came out of academia and the public sector, and many that came from outside the US.
Funny how Ben Stein in his "how America is losing its technological edge" piece was so busy being a fluff-job for the same tired old big-business agenda and cranky curmudgeonry and somehow managed to miss that the biggest threat to technological innovation could be the patent system.
(Although, truth to be told, I have read political interpretations of the Godzilla before, equating Godzilla with atomic-war-capable America.)
There's a difference between a dumb fun movie and just a dumb movie. I like dumb fun movies, too. I'll happily watch Evil Dead 2 again. But we're talking about uncritically loyal fan-bases that will go to any filmic poo that has their favorite "logo" on it.
It's not healthy, it's understandable. "Healthy" would be making choices that would make life more bearable. If you don't enjoy your work and need to escape from it, then there's something wrong with your work (or you are living far beyond your means, or both.)
If you think in any way that I've ruined those stories for you, you're mad. If you think that most people who went to see the original plays didn't know those stories ahead of time, you're also mad.
In a journey, you largely know where you are going and the route you will take. It's a matter of enjoying, not "knowing," the route that matters.
I'm not part of fan culture; I look at it from the outside. On one hand, I can see both a kind of carnival atmosphere in it - there's some shred of creative expression in soaking in the meta-narratives of these popular culture franchises. And at least some of the fans really contest ownership of those franchises, in fan art and fan fiction and the like - there's something valorous about that. But the other side of it is that it's one of the more primitive ways to related to narrative art: almost total focus on diagesis, a neurotic escapism that often appears as an express desire to inhabit the worlds constructed by the stories, etc. I don't need to go on about the absurdities and stupidities of fan culture: I'm sure you've all seen it, and all of us have engaged in it a little to varying extents as a guilty pleasure.
I think it is best if people try to put the fan-epoch of their lives behind them at a certain point, as part of their personal-cultural adolescence. I think there's a developmental process in the appreciation of artworks and stories that has somehow become stunted particularly in American culture, which leads me to suspect that it could be an educational failure.
Gee, you don't think the fact that Ian Mckellen has second billing in the film might be a bit of a tip-off?
The idea is to recreate typical, not universal experiences of aging. Too many people think they they are somehow immune from any kind of decrepitude just because a few elderly people manage to be very healthy. It's something to hope and strive for, but it's not realistic to count on it.
I think computing is going to move in that direction, as well. Libraries are much too complex and interdependent to be understood by the programmers who use them. We are more likely to manipulate large libraries and pre-programmed objects, working in increasingly visual environments with only a few specialists tweaking specific low-level libraries (and those specialists not necessarily understanding each other's work). I think that there already is a sort of nostalgia for the epoch of computing when any dedicated amateur could pretty much comprehend what was going on in their machine.
Funny, I'm making a point now that I was arguing against in another forum, but the fact that an earnest endeavour like Equilibrium is going to struggle for a profit while formulaic franchise crap like Star Wars and Star Trek rakes in money hand over fist is entirely the responsibility of dimwitted fanboys who think they they have to ignore the critics for the franchises they like while they are unwilling to take the chance and part with 8 bucks for films that don't have their favorite character in it. It really is part of the decline of our cultural landscape.
Now, many good artists are also smart about the market and the business-end of art, but that's another question.
I swear if I read another thread like this, it's going to wind up "guns don't kill people, bored Slashdot posters aggravated by obvious and tedious cliches kill people."
Personally speaking, my longest sessions of play were/are for Squaresoft games and resource management (Civ, Alpha Centauri, etc) games. I actually have wasted a couple days on them, something I've never done with other genres. But on the macro level, I believe my observation holds.
You are quite wrong. Addicts have among the strongest "wills" of anyone. And that's part of the problem.
There's a tendency in talking about this to either a. defend the substance ("it's not the game's fault! It's the personality of the person/their lack of willpower/etc! Anything can be addictive!") or b. attack the substance ("won't someone think of the children..." etc.). Both are somewhat wrong-headed. It's naive to think that the game/whatever has nothing to do with it - some things are intrinsically more likely to be part of addictive behaviour than others. Some games are more addictive than others, and MMPORG's seem to lead the pack (there's a lot of possible reasons - their open structure, the psuedo-social aspect and the sense of competition and fear of getting "left behind", the enormity of the game-zone, etc.) MUDs and MOOs used to be the culprit, probably for similar reasons. (The whole "endorphins" explanation that gets tossed around, like the article has it, is really overextended. There are limbic systems far more extensive than that one at play, and it doesn't explain the nature of addiction any more than talking about the digestive system explains world hunger. And other, more 'neuroactive' games, don't show the same addictive effects as the frankly slower Everquest and company.
Even though many people play FPS's a lot, I haven't seen the sort of destructive fall-out from them that I've seen with other games - I don't know of anyone who failed out of school or became an antisocial shut-in because of Quake or Counterstrike.
In a sense, people who really like video games but would never let them interfere with the normal functioning of their lives (personal and professional) abuse the term "addiction" when they describe themselves as addicted to the games. I found the article underinformed and somewhat irresponsible - the realities of addiction are far more complex than a little controlled "experiment" will illuminate.