"to all the people that download music, if you think you are only hurting big companies you are wrong. There are two working people with families who no longer have jobs because of music piracy."
That's actually very unfair, and not necessarily correct. While I think this is a great article and agree with their assertions about the RIAA, there are other factors that have had a massive affect on record shops - e.g. Amazon, and iTunes. Perfectly legal, but many record shops (and book shops, in Amazon's case) haven't adapted to face that challenge.
eBay is also a massive factor in the collector's market.
I believe the Microsoft attempted a viral marketing / meme manipulation scheme over the Internet, but I can't prove it. It's getting harder and harder to "advertise", partly because of the flood of information from the IT age, partly due to increasing resistence to memetic propagation.
No kidding! "Squirt" as a meme... search for that and guess what you'll find!
I use both Macs and PCs and it seems like I buy and upgrade PCs a lot more often.
Yep me too. I have a few machines on both platforms. One is an old iMac G3 from '98. It works fine, a little slow sure but still perfectly serviceable - still on it's original hard disc, although it isn't frequently used. It runs much better in fact than my Compaq laptop from 2002 running XP. It's pretty much done, been through 2 HD's already, the monitor is dodgy and it's slower than the iMac.
But yeah, like everyone else here my G4 iBook wasn't getting upgraded until CS3 and Leopard.
I assure you, there would be consequences with a newspaper classified.
This is very true. Also, Craigslist's flagging system does not always work. If you look at any of the European Craigslist sites, around 90% of the ads for any city are scams or spam. There are very few genuine ads. These sites read like SEO link farms. Since their system requires a critical mass of users for it to work, and lack of genuine ads means lack of genuine users, the spammers and scammers win.
Craigslist staff do a very very poor job of proactively taking down obvious scams and spam, never mind more subtle ones. The way they manage filtering technology is very poor.
While they do have this ethos that they want to keep costs down, the result is that they really don't run their site to a professional standard. I would suspect that while they are popular now, their days are numbered. In a few years Craigslist will be gone.
Yes, that's all correct. At he microeconomics level there's also the fact that the drive to reduce short run costs by outsourcing invariably produces a decrease in customer satisfaction due to the increased difficulty for the firm in maintaining quality and training over longer communication lines. There may also be language and cultural issues too.
So long run at the micro level, brand quality and profits can be affected. I'm fairly sure if you did an in-depth cost benefit analysis projected over time of any outsourcing operation there would be more resulting net costs than benefits.
Absolutely 100% correct! Greenpeace has very little credibility in most subjects. They have considerable history with manipulating data to suit their fund raising profile, and have been caught doing on a number of occasions - Bret Spar is one example, though others can be found easily . Remember Greenpeace is NOT a charity. Historically, they have provably lied to make money.
Environmental economics was the subject I studied at university; I have undertaken environmental assessments in the field..To perform a fair, accurate and precise assessment of a company's environmental impact requires weeks, if not months, of intensive on-site research and measurement. It requires full access to all processes within the company, and access to privileged information.
There is no way Greenpeace has access to this information. A true and fair assessment cannot be done externally. This is a fund raising publicity stunt and absolutely nothing more. It has no credible science or economics behind it whatsoever.
If you cut holes in your tin foil hat so your pony's ears fit through, does it lessen the effect? I wouldn't want Stardust to be turned into a Government sleeper agent.
Mark Cuban certainly is a controversial figure. However, he's a smart guy and has done a great deal for independent film-making.
I agree with his views on this, I think the EFF is wrong. The DMCA belongs to an old business model, one that Mark and others are moving away from.
Still, I do understand that the EFF needs to appear reasonable and can't push extreme or radical agendas, moderation probably helps them win friends. Mark doesn't need to do that, and it's great that he can add a maverick voice to the mix - in the long run this may help the EFF ideas seem more practical.
I would think it's a win / win for all involved. Those who want to get to adult content would have an easier time finding it and by the same token those who want to filter it out would have time doing that as well. Where is the downside?
As someone in the adult industry, I do agree that those are upsides to the.xxx domain. The downsides that concern me would be:
1. whether we would be in some way coerced to use this domain exclusively (actually quite easy to do if the US and UK governments (being the most uptight about the adult industry) force the credit card companies not to accept payments from other domains - they already use this kind of pressure to effectively ban some types of fetish material)
2. the domain name landrush - a lot of us have spent a lot of time building up brands only to have some squatter scoop up the equivalent on the xxx domain. (Net regulators have done a truly awful job of this kind of thing in the past - the.eu one being a prime example)
3. I would be astonished if registering a.xxx domain is not going to be more expensive than a.com one.
4. Regulation of existing domains is so poor that there will be just as much mass cybersquatting and link farms and all sorts of other abuse using the new domain. This simply gives the religious right, and other killjoys, more ammunition to try to stop or further control what is for the most part an honest living for many people. Those of us in the industry are already regulated more than pretty much any other type of business.
I'd really like to see a situation where the domain system is scrapped. It has never worked as intended.
Within 72 hours, Americans will have forgotten entirely about it and be back to fretting over the poor blond haired, blue-eyed, pretty, affluent girl that disappeared a couple years ago in Bermuda thanks to the non-stop cable news coverage (still, two years later - as of the broadcasts LASTNIGHT!).
Yup. Gore Vidal said it best... welcome to the United States of Amnesia.
It's interesting that you bring up Shakespeare - after all, "Forbidden Planet" which is an excellent very-pre-SW SciFi movie, is based on The Tempest. I think there were also a few of the original ST episodes derived from Shakespeare.
So, while it's true that there are only a few great writers in every generation (for any genre, not just SciFi), that isn't necessarily a stumbling block if classic stories can be successfully adapted to the SciFi genre.
Lynch's movie captured the "ambiance" that many people associated with Dune, but slaughtered the story.
I think Lynch is innocent in this regard. I remember reading an interview in a trade paper with him many years ago, where he stated that the studio interfered greatly in the production, and that there's at least as much movie shot again as in the final film that ended up being cut. He was totally against the Irulan narration for example.
Apparently he wanted to release a directors cut of the movie, but the studio wouldn't agree to it. That is something that I'd really like to see.
I couldn't agree more! Lem seemingly enjoyed it much more than the Tarkovsky version too. Yet I do still meet self styled film buffs who are snobbish about the Tarkovsky version and deride Soderberg's for its Hollywood stars.
It's a movie that needs to be seen 3 or four times to truly get the full depth of it. Soderberg's decision to shoot it in HD video was masterful. It added a super-real quality to the shots which you'd struggle to get from film.
It's a well produced, directed, acted, beautiful, artistic movie.
Oh, and Natasha McElhone is hot - if anyone needed another reason to see it.
Something that I've never understood, is the nature of swear words.
For example "fuck, dick, wank" etc are considered unacceptable words to use, are censored, and children who use them are usually chastised. We all do these things or possess a part of the body that's referred to. We enjoy them, and to not enjoy them is widely accepted as dysfunctional.
However, such words as "murder, kill, maim, torture" etc. have no censorship, have no disapproval in polite conversation, and children can cheerfully use them frivolously in the playground to express themselves. However, to actually do any of these things is horrific and would rightly get you a long term in jail.
Just never made any sense to me at all. It surely desensitizes us to violence, and creates repression in the sexual sphere. It's lose, lose.
It's very simple: we like the content, we want everything for free, therefore copyright is evil. The justifications come after the fact.
It's simple, but it's not very simple, and it's not the simple you suggest. Much of Viacom's products are in fact already free. TV is, for the most part, free. Their revenue mostly comes from advertising, which a growing number of people are Tivo-ing out. Though to what extent anyone ever watched it is moot. Ads were always a good time to channel surf or go make some coffee.
but this is pretty clear cut: it's Viacom's stuff that Viacom's advertisers pay Viacom to distribute, and Youtube is cutting them out completely.
Bearing the above in mind, Viacom is cutting off one easy way to its future by doing this. Viacom is hurting itself by not using new channels such as YouTube to promote their own shows and to broadcast them - complete with ads - on the internet.
They are just another example of many in the entertainment industry who are like King Canute trying to hold back the tide. Sink or swim - people want their entertainment for free, and whenever they choose to sit down and view, regardless of schedule. There's no reason whatsoever they can't have it, and the producers will still make as much, if not more than they did before.
Bear in mind also - the real loser in this is Nielsen. Direct stats on downloads views give you a true measure of your viewing figs and demographics - Nielsen is just extrapolated guesstimates. Maybe the right shows will get picked up for once.
Slashdot Mirror
eBay is also a massive factor in the collector's market.
But yeah, like everyone else here my G4 iBook wasn't getting upgraded until CS3 and Leopard.
I agree with you. There is scientific evidence to show that climate change is not driven by human activity.
But why on Earth quote wikipedia? It proves nothing, and it's just as bad for science.
Craigslist staff do a very very poor job of proactively taking down obvious scams and spam, never mind more subtle ones. The way they manage filtering technology is very poor.
While they do have this ethos that they want to keep costs down, the result is that they really don't run their site to a professional standard. I would suspect that while they are popular now, their days are numbered. In a few years Craigslist will be gone.
Yes, that's all correct. At he microeconomics level there's also the fact that the drive to reduce short run costs by outsourcing invariably produces a decrease in customer satisfaction due to the increased difficulty for the firm in maintaining quality and training over longer communication lines. There may also be language and cultural issues too.
So long run at the micro level, brand quality and profits can be affected. I'm fairly sure if you did an in-depth cost benefit analysis projected over time of any outsourcing operation there would be more resulting net costs than benefits.
Environmental economics was the subject I studied at university; I have undertaken environmental assessments in the field.
There is no way Greenpeace has access to this information. A true and fair assessment cannot be done externally. This is a fund raising publicity stunt and absolutely nothing more. It has no credible science or economics behind it whatsoever.
Compuserve?
Compuserve?... That bloated, expensive, pretend internet thing that became AOL... that Compuserve? In the top 50?
*Checks date to see if it's still 1st April*
But not available for the iPhone because, an Apple a day keeps the dentist away.
Sorry, but my head is full of ponies...
If you cut holes in your tin foil hat so your pony's ears fit through, does it lessen the effect? I wouldn't want Stardust to be turned into a Government sleeper agent.
Ponies of Death - OMG!1! too scary!
Shouldn't that be:
In North Korea only old people fool April?
Where's my ponies? I'm sure we were promised ponies. OMG!
Mark Cuban certainly is a controversial figure. However, he's a smart guy and has done a great deal for independent film-making.
I agree with his views on this, I think the EFF is wrong. The DMCA belongs to an old business model, one that Mark and others are moving away from.
Still, I do understand that the EFF needs to appear reasonable and can't push extreme or radical agendas, moderation probably helps them win friends. Mark doesn't need to do that, and it's great that he can add a maverick voice to the mix - in the long run this may help the EFF ideas seem more practical.
1. whether we would be in some way coerced to use this domain exclusively (actually quite easy to do if the US and UK governments (being the most uptight about the adult industry) force the credit card companies not to accept payments from other domains - they already use this kind of pressure to effectively ban some types of fetish material)
2. the domain name landrush - a lot of us have spent a lot of time building up brands only to have some squatter scoop up the equivalent on the xxx domain. (Net regulators have done a truly awful job of this kind of thing in the past - the
3. I would be astonished if registering a
4. Regulation of existing domains is so poor that there will be just as much mass cybersquatting and link farms and all sorts of other abuse using the new domain. This simply gives the religious right, and other killjoys, more ammunition to try to stop or further control what is for the most part an honest living for many people. Those of us in the industry are already regulated more than pretty much any other type of business.
I'd really like to see a situation where the domain system is scrapped. It has never worked as intended.
In Korea only old people welcome overlords...
or Wikipedia itself for that matter...
It's interesting that you bring up Shakespeare - after all, "Forbidden Planet" which is an excellent very-pre-SW SciFi movie, is based on The Tempest. I think there were also a few of the original ST episodes derived from Shakespeare.
So, while it's true that there are only a few great writers in every generation (for any genre, not just SciFi), that isn't necessarily a stumbling block if classic stories can be successfully adapted to the SciFi genre.
Apparently he wanted to release a directors cut of the movie, but the studio wouldn't agree to it. That is something that I'd really like to see.
I couldn't agree more! Lem seemingly enjoyed it much more than the Tarkovsky version too. Yet I do still meet self styled film buffs who are snobbish about the Tarkovsky version and deride Soderberg's for its Hollywood stars.
It's a movie that needs to be seen 3 or four times to truly get the full depth of it. Soderberg's decision to shoot it in HD video was masterful. It added a super-real quality to the shots which you'd struggle to get from film.
It's a well produced, directed, acted, beautiful, artistic movie.
Oh, and Natasha McElhone is hot - if anyone needed another reason to see it.
You need to wait until Jumbo Wales develops Wikichart - THE best way to monitor and cross-reference elephant population through time.
Yes, absolutely right.
Something that I've never understood, is the nature of swear words.
For example "fuck, dick, wank" etc are considered unacceptable words to use, are censored, and children who use them are usually chastised. We all do these things or possess a part of the body that's referred to. We enjoy them, and to not enjoy them is widely accepted as dysfunctional.
However, such words as "murder, kill, maim, torture" etc. have no censorship, have no disapproval in polite conversation, and children can cheerfully use them frivolously in the playground to express themselves. However, to actually do any of these things is horrific and would rightly get you a long term in jail.
Just never made any sense to me at all. It surely desensitizes us to violence, and creates repression in the sexual sphere. It's lose, lose.
They are just another example of many in the entertainment industry who are like King Canute trying to hold back the tide. Sink or swim - people want their entertainment for free, and whenever they choose to sit down and view, regardless of schedule. There's no reason whatsoever they can't have it, and the producers will still make as much, if not more than they did before.
Bear in mind also - the real loser in this is Nielsen. Direct stats on downloads views give you a true measure of your viewing figs and demographics - Nielsen is just extrapolated guesstimates. Maybe the right shows will get picked up for once.