The cost of living being 10x more is part of the consequence of being 10x more well paid. Where do you think "cost of living" comes from?
The real hitch in the whole thing is housing prices, really. All other goods can come down in price based on lower costs of labor, but housing is now the primary vessel of wealth for most Americans, and they would be unwilling to see the paper wealth of their equity - often mortgaged out - drop in the interests of remaining wage-competitive. Until that happens, though, I think we'll see a net export of production.
If you take a look at the India of 20 years ago and the India of today, I think you'll see startingly different countries, particularly in terms of technological education and infrastructure.
What's probably the saddest bit about this is that the India/Pakistan cold war is proving to be just as much of a boon to technological development as the US/USSR cold war was. It's as if it's impossible to leapfrog in technology without the political motivation of an enemy to mobilize it.
In the US, for example, it's hard to imagine that considerations of intellectual property, patents, NDA's and the like would have been allowed to hamstring the development of strategic military technologies. But peacetime technological development is increasingly being stymied by such factors.
The original poster's point is not lost. If a scandal becomes apparent in June and people quit by July, I think that says well of them. Ultimately, I do think the rank-and-file gives implicit consent to bad behavior, and should hold themselves accountable. They can't know ahead of time, but they can be held accountable for how they react to what they do know when they learn it.
Because a copy is not a product. Because copyright laws vary from country to country, and for something to be stolen, it has to be understood as a good in the place where it's being taken.
In Canada, it is illegal to share files, but not illegal to download them. Also, in the US, the RIAA is going after music sharers, not music downloaders - even if the sharers have legally purchased CD's (and therefore the right to make personal copies) If you kept sticking to your "theft" analogy, this would be like saying that it's illegal to leave your front door unlocked, but not illegal for someone to walk in and take your stereo if you do. Seems like the "theft" metaphor is breaking down already.
Music is a service, not a good. Treating it like a good is increasingly an unteneble, broken model.
I don't think you can get around the fact that pricing really isn't about costs, it's about market perception of value, mostly because there is, effectively, absolutely no legal competition involved - it's not like there can be competition to produce and retail different copies of Revolver, and the consumer be allowed to choose which to buy.
Production costs are factored into the industry as a whole, to some extent - in general, they have to recoup production costs on the average, but that's clearly an early and soon superceded step in the pricing process.
Nobody here has hard data, but I'm willing to stick with my common-sense impression that, for the vast bulk of consumers, we play CD's ubiquitously (while driving, as background music, etc.) far more than DVD's, your sample-family-size-of-one notwithstanding.
Insofar as the age of the original is a question which also exists for film (i.e., I could compare a recent symphonic recording with a DVD of Gone with the Wind) I consider that completely irrelevent. (Also, I don't know where you shop, but where I go a new, full-priced CD is 14.95, and a new full-priced DVD is 29.95).
Ironically, for your argument, kids' media is almost always cheaper than regular media. You can get a Spongebob DVD for about half the price of a regular movie DVD.
The cost of production argument is specious, because DVD's of films are the second source of income for those films (after all, they were released originally in theaters), while CD's are the only revenue return of significance for a production session.
The thing is that the enjoyment or us value we get out of a thing is not the only element that goes into price-sensitivity, nor are (perceived) costs. Price expectation is part of the "black magic" area of economics, ultimately, because it's very hard to model with traditional economic tools. It's about perception and social consensus more than anything else.
We consider a CD to be "less than" a DVD because, among other things, it is "only" audio information. The fact that we may listen to a CD 50 times over, while we watch a movie on a DVD we buy twice, is overlooked. The existence of alternatives is not the issue: radio is to CD's what TV is to DVD's. From a utility perspective, CD's arguably offer far more flexibility and durability as an "entertainment product" than DVD's do, but we consider the latter more valuable. Part of that is also the perception that films are more of a true cultural product than music is.
Except for Criterion editions and short form collections, I've stopped buying DVD's myself. I rent. Personally, I recommend GreenCine.
Or perhaps he's a college-educated, 60-hour-a-week working South American in a country like Uruguay, Peru or Argentina. My own (Peruvian) relatives earn about $800 a month doing work that would get paid about 10 times that in the US (lawyers, doctors, financial professionals). For paying for housing and food and even internet access, that's all well and good, because the costs are relative. For things like consumer electronics, DVD's and CD's, videogames and the like, those are even more expensive in real terms than in the US, and are essentially true luxury items. If I were them, I would be almost exclusively watching movies I downloaded online. Those goods were priced for US markets.
That ignores the utility value of money, which acts as a coefficient to the payoff, rises and falls in a non-linear way, and reacts differently for loss than for gain.
Utility theory is also why it taxing 10% of a blue collar worker's income hurts more than taxing 50% of Bill Gates'. There's a vast difference in value between the utility of 10,000 dollars and 9,000 dollars (it may be the difference between paying rent and not having a home) and less of a relative gulf in utility between 20 billion and 40 billion dollars.
Hollywood makes a lot of trash, but the difference is that in America (and Europe, and Japan, and China) there are thriving independent/auteurist filmmakers who can make quality work and find funding for it. India has almost nothing like that right now - and Bollywood productions are completely, utterly formulaic in a way that even Hollywood doesn't approach. A generally censorious environment doesn't help much.
There are a number of great Indian filmmakers - of course, there was Satyajit Ray, one of the greatest filmmakers ever - but they don't enjoy the same beneficial relationship with Bollywood that American independents have with Hollywood.
This entire thread is a spoiler. If you really cared about spoilers, you wouldn't even have posted to this thread.
Really, the hysteria about spoilers is childish. Only when geeks entered culture - people who are so unsophisticated about narrative and cinema that they really think the "surprise!" is the main reward - did spoiler-mania really take off. A movie is *not about the ending.* I know how Hamlet ends. I know how Lord of the Rings ends. I know how War and Peace ends. But I will still see a good movie about *all* these stories. I don't know how "Van Wilder, Party Liason" ends, and I'm not going to find out.
While your story about the Third Man may be true, Welles didn't direct it: it was directed by Carol Reed, a postwar British director who never made another film as strong as this one. Welles simply co-starred.
The best change that Reed insisted upon was Alida Valli's (Anna's) snubbing of Joseph Cotton (Holly) at the end. In the novel, I believe they hooked up, which is something a disservice to Cotton's character (who is, after all, a weak-minded boob who takes no real initiative in the entire movie) and her character's sense of loyalty to Welles (Harry).
The novel, I think, succumbed to the compulsion to have the "hero" get the girl. Which betrays the essential point that Holly is no hero.
It could happen, it wouldn't be the first time. But if you were going to sum up my take on it, it's that the panel (except Bivens) were saying something close to the right things (protectionism would be counter-productive) for the wrong reasons ("we didn't want those jobs, anyway, you, dear manager, are much more important, and we can do better without them!")
I'm not a coder. I can code (to mediocre ability), but I don't do it for a living. I have a job, and my income is slightly higher than it was during the boom. And - I went to the same schools and can dress the same way as the managerial class I'm talking about. In fact, that's probably why I do have work - I can pass as an MBA if pressed, for brief periods of time. It's like a minor super-power.
What is true, however, is that it is market saturation and general market perception of value, not level of difficulty, or the education or intelligence required, that has a lot to do with things. Contracting is difficult work that requires considerable knowledge. But it's considered a working-class job. Being a runway model takes almost no intelligence, but they are well-paid professionals. Coding is only menial because supply outstrips demand now - there's nothing intrinsic about it.
The whole interview is a way to blow smoke up the ass of the managerial class that is shipping these jobs offshore, by somehow letting them think that it really is a matter of merit that their job is intact.
It's about legitimation: "my" skill is a high-level, professional skill, and I "deserve" my salary because of it (because the companies are run by people I went to college with, etc.) "Your" skills are replaceable and commodifiable, because I dress more like the people who run the mutual funds that own the company.
The cultural perception element of this sort of thing is difficult to quantify in economic terms, so economists - especially ones busy telling the managerial crowd exactly what they want to hear - tend to ignore it. But it's a reality.
Not that I'm a protectionist for these sorts of jobs, mind you - at the end of the day, I think that the creation of middle-class professionals in the developing world is a good thing. But I can still recognize self-serving disingenuous rhetoric when I see it.
No. The original poster is correct. IT's responsibility is to the shareholders of the corporation for which they work (or the stakeholders of the organization if it isn't a publicly held company, etc.)
If helping the users helps the bottom line, then you're right. If the users want to do dev work on a production system and threaten the revenue stream, then chopping of the user's genitals and hanging them on the door as a warning to others is the correct thing to do.
What you say is true. However, there's also a big difference between 1000 IP addresses of desktop machines and SOHO systems, and compromising the central system of a major - no, 2 major - distributions.
The films are not an homage. They are adaptations. There's a difference.
The point, of course, is that film and literature are distinct arts, even when they avail themselves of each other.
It is quite possible that the LOTR films be "better" than the books. The books are wonderful, but they have flaws. There is some truly unnecessary material, from a narrative perspective, in the books. In Jackson's view, the Scouring of the Shire is one of those flaws. The Godfather films outshone the novels they were based on: likewise the film The Third Man and the Graham Greene story novel on which it was based. As far as I'm concerned, I don't really feel any need to read Mario Puzo's work.
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The cost of living being 10x more is part of the consequence of being 10x more well paid. Where do you think "cost of living" comes from?
The real hitch in the whole thing is housing prices, really. All other goods can come down in price based on lower costs of labor, but housing is now the primary vessel of wealth for most Americans, and they would be unwilling to see the paper wealth of their equity - often mortgaged out - drop in the interests of remaining wage-competitive. Until that happens, though, I think we'll see a net export of production.
If you take a look at the India of 20 years ago and the India of today, I think you'll see startingly different countries, particularly in terms of technological education and infrastructure.
What's probably the saddest bit about this is that the India/Pakistan cold war is proving to be just as much of a boon to technological development as the US/USSR cold war was. It's as if it's impossible to leapfrog in technology without the political motivation of an enemy to mobilize it.
In the US, for example, it's hard to imagine that considerations of intellectual property, patents, NDA's and the like would have been allowed to hamstring the development of strategic military technologies. But peacetime technological development is increasingly being stymied by such factors.
I've got a spare weekend and a home-made catapult waiting to prove you a liar.
The original poster's point is not lost. If a scandal becomes apparent in June and people quit by July, I think that says well of them. Ultimately, I do think the rank-and-file gives implicit consent to bad behavior, and should hold themselves accountable. They can't know ahead of time, but they can be held accountable for how they react to what they do know when they learn it.
"Oosp."
Exactly. Homeowner: "My house is on fire!" 411 Dispatcher: "Where are you?" Homeowner: "Erm, I don't want to say..."
Because a copy is not a product. Because copyright laws vary from country to country, and for something to be stolen, it has to be understood as a good in the place where it's being taken.
In Canada, it is illegal to share files, but not illegal to download them. Also, in the US, the RIAA is going after music sharers, not music downloaders - even if the sharers have legally purchased CD's (and therefore the right to make personal copies) If you kept sticking to your "theft" analogy, this would be like saying that it's illegal to leave your front door unlocked, but not illegal for someone to walk in and take your stereo if you do. Seems like the "theft" metaphor is breaking down already.
Music is a service, not a good. Treating it like a good is increasingly an unteneble, broken model.
I don't think you can get around the fact that pricing really isn't about costs, it's about market perception of value, mostly because there is, effectively, absolutely no legal competition involved - it's not like there can be competition to produce and retail different copies of Revolver, and the consumer be allowed to choose which to buy.
Production costs are factored into the industry as a whole, to some extent - in general, they have to recoup production costs on the average, but that's clearly an early and soon superceded step in the pricing process.
Nobody here has hard data, but I'm willing to stick with my common-sense impression that, for the vast bulk of consumers, we play CD's ubiquitously (while driving, as background music, etc.) far more than DVD's, your sample-family-size-of-one notwithstanding.
Insofar as the age of the original is a question which also exists for film (i.e., I could compare a recent symphonic recording with a DVD of Gone with the Wind) I consider that completely irrelevent. (Also, I don't know where you shop, but where I go a new, full-priced CD is 14.95, and a new full-priced DVD is 29.95).
Ironically, for your argument, kids' media is almost always cheaper than regular media. You can get a Spongebob DVD for about half the price of a regular movie DVD.
The cost of production argument is specious, because DVD's of films are the second source of income for those films (after all, they were released originally in theaters), while CD's are the only revenue return of significance for a production session.
Dead on. Free wireless at an RCC would cost-justify my expensing (yes, it's a verb now, leave me alone) the RCC membership.
The thing is that the enjoyment or us value we get out of a thing is not the only element that goes into price-sensitivity, nor are (perceived) costs. Price expectation is part of the "black magic" area of economics, ultimately, because it's very hard to model with traditional economic tools. It's about perception and social consensus more than anything else.
We consider a CD to be "less than" a DVD because, among other things, it is "only" audio information. The fact that we may listen to a CD 50 times over, while we watch a movie on a DVD we buy twice, is overlooked. The existence of alternatives is not the issue: radio is to CD's what TV is to DVD's. From a utility perspective, CD's arguably offer far more flexibility and durability as an "entertainment product" than DVD's do, but we consider the latter more valuable. Part of that is also the perception that films are more of a true cultural product than music is.
Except for Criterion editions and short form collections, I've stopped buying DVD's myself. I rent. Personally, I recommend GreenCine.
Or perhaps he's a college-educated, 60-hour-a-week working South American in a country like Uruguay, Peru or Argentina. My own (Peruvian) relatives earn about $800 a month doing work that would get paid about 10 times that in the US (lawyers, doctors, financial professionals). For paying for housing and food and even internet access, that's all well and good, because the costs are relative. For things like consumer electronics, DVD's and CD's, videogames and the like, those are even more expensive in real terms than in the US, and are essentially true luxury items. If I were them, I would be almost exclusively watching movies I downloaded online. Those goods were priced for US markets.
That ignores the utility value of money, which acts as a coefficient to the payoff, rises and falls in a non-linear way, and reacts differently for loss than for gain.
Utility theory is also why it taxing 10% of a blue collar worker's income hurts more than taxing 50% of Bill Gates'. There's a vast difference in value between the utility of 10,000 dollars and 9,000 dollars (it may be the difference between paying rent and not having a home) and less of a relative gulf in utility between 20 billion and 40 billion dollars.
Hollywood makes a lot of trash, but the difference is that in America (and Europe, and Japan, and China) there are thriving independent/auteurist filmmakers who can make quality work and find funding for it. India has almost nothing like that right now - and Bollywood productions are completely, utterly formulaic in a way that even Hollywood doesn't approach. A generally censorious environment doesn't help much.
There are a number of great Indian filmmakers - of course, there was Satyajit Ray, one of the greatest filmmakers ever - but they don't enjoy the same beneficial relationship with Bollywood that American independents have with Hollywood.
Valuable historical information appreciated.
This entire thread is a spoiler. If you really cared about spoilers, you wouldn't even have posted to this thread.
Really, the hysteria about spoilers is childish. Only when geeks entered culture - people who are so unsophisticated about narrative and cinema that they really think the "surprise!" is the main reward - did spoiler-mania really take off. A movie is *not about the ending.* I know how Hamlet ends. I know how Lord of the Rings ends. I know how War and Peace ends. But I will still see a good movie about *all* these stories. I don't know how "Van Wilder, Party Liason" ends, and I'm not going to find out.
While your story about the Third Man may be true, Welles didn't direct it: it was directed by Carol Reed, a postwar British director who never made another film as strong as this one. Welles simply co-starred.
The best change that Reed insisted upon was Alida Valli's (Anna's) snubbing of Joseph Cotton (Holly) at the end. In the novel, I believe they hooked up, which is something a disservice to Cotton's character (who is, after all, a weak-minded boob who takes no real initiative in the entire movie) and her character's sense of loyalty to Welles (Harry).
The novel, I think, succumbed to the compulsion to have the "hero" get the girl. Which betrays the essential point that Holly is no hero.
It could happen, it wouldn't be the first time. But if you were going to sum up my take on it, it's that the panel (except Bivens) were saying something close to the right things (protectionism would be counter-productive) for the wrong reasons ("we didn't want those jobs, anyway, you, dear manager, are much more important, and we can do better without them!")
I'm not a coder. I can code (to mediocre ability), but I don't do it for a living. I have a job, and my income is slightly higher than it was during the boom. And - I went to the same schools and can dress the same way as the managerial class I'm talking about. In fact, that's probably why I do have work - I can pass as an MBA if pressed, for brief periods of time. It's like a minor super-power.
What is true, however, is that it is market saturation and general market perception of value, not level of difficulty, or the education or intelligence required, that has a lot to do with things. Contracting is difficult work that requires considerable knowledge. But it's considered a working-class job. Being a runway model takes almost no intelligence, but they are well-paid professionals. Coding is only menial because supply outstrips demand now - there's nothing intrinsic about it.
The whole interview is a way to blow smoke up the ass of the managerial class that is shipping these jobs offshore, by somehow letting them think that it really is a matter of merit that their job is intact.
It's about legitimation: "my" skill is a high-level, professional skill, and I "deserve" my salary because of it (because the companies are run by people I went to college with, etc.) "Your" skills are replaceable and commodifiable, because I dress more like the people who run the mutual funds that own the company.
The cultural perception element of this sort of thing is difficult to quantify in economic terms, so economists - especially ones busy telling the managerial crowd exactly what they want to hear - tend to ignore it. But it's a reality.
Not that I'm a protectionist for these sorts of jobs, mind you - at the end of the day, I think that the creation of middle-class professionals in the developing world is a good thing. But I can still recognize self-serving disingenuous rhetoric when I see it.
No. The original poster is correct. IT's responsibility is to the shareholders of the corporation for which they work (or the stakeholders of the organization if it isn't a publicly held company, etc.)
If helping the users helps the bottom line, then you're right. If the users want to do dev work on a production system and threaten the revenue stream, then chopping of the user's genitals and hanging them on the door as a warning to others is the correct thing to do.
Try to browse debian packages lately? They are still offline, after 2 weeks.
What you say is true. However, there's also a big difference between 1000 IP addresses of desktop machines and SOHO systems, and compromising the central system of a major - no, 2 major - distributions.
The films are not an homage. They are adaptations. There's a difference.
The point, of course, is that film and literature are distinct arts, even when they avail themselves of each other.
It is quite possible that the LOTR films be "better" than the books. The books are wonderful, but they have flaws. There is some truly unnecessary material, from a narrative perspective, in the books. In Jackson's view, the Scouring of the Shire is one of those flaws. The Godfather films outshone the novels they were based on: likewise the film The Third Man and the Graham Greene story novel on which it was based. As far as I'm concerned, I don't really feel any need to read Mario Puzo's work.