Because the Egyptians used damnatio memoriae to remove heretics, assassins, and other 'unpersons' from their records, it's impossible to show that someone like Moses didn't exist. Something as important as a large group of slaves leaving, though, would probably have an impact that would show up in their records.
Keep in mind, though, that Disney would never bribe senators. That might get people arrested! All Disney needs to do is offer millions of dollars (in Campaign Contributions) to people who support extending copyright. It works like this:
Disney: Canidate A, do you support extending copyrights?
A. No, I think it's stupid!
Disney: Too Bad.
Disney: How about you, Canidate B?
B. Yes! I do!
Disney: Okay, B! Here's a big sack of money! Now go get elected!
B. Woohoo!
Disney: How about you, Mr. C?
(C looks at A and B)
C. Um, yes, I support enlarging those copythingies!
You see, to the casual observer it may look like bribery, but to the discerning eye, it's clear that Disney is merely donating money to people who share idealogical similarities with Disney. Nowhere does Disney 'buy' votes, or 'bribe' people, it merely 'helps out' those who 'happen' to support Disney's viewpoints. I am in no way accusing Disney of bribery, or of the many fine senators in P2im3's list of accepting bribes. That would be libel!
But his conclusions are entirely wrong. Patents give you the right to keep others from using your invention, but they don't give you the right to use it. Thus, when you take someone else's patent and improve it, you can patent the improvement, but you still can't make the device without the permission of the original patent holder. Likewise, the original patent holder can't make use of your improvement without your permission.
The real question then is: How does this impact the $Altairian-for-cash trade? Does this system lower the value of the Altairian Dollar (Or whatever Eve's Currency is)? If so, by how much?
Clearly we have a problem with gold sellers now, and the gold sellers have lots of cash (and gold). Let me draw you an illustration, with arbitrary numbers:
Currently the gold re-sellers sell 100 gold for $1. The pay individuals $1 for 200 gold (the need to make a profit). However, anyone with brains would auction off his first 2000 gold they are selling for $15 at the Auction house- that way he both makes more than he would selling it to the gold sellers, and undercuts them at the same time.
If there is truely a lack of supply, then the price of gold in the Auction House will increase until the demand = supply (see: Econ 101). However, it's both better for sellers (they get more money) and better for buyers (they can't get ripped off) to use the official auction house as opposed to the 'black market' of the gold re-sellers. Therefore, the gold resellers will need to sell their gold for less than the AH price (otherwise no one would pay for it) AND buy their gold for less than that (otherwise they can't turn a profit). If it's always better to sell at the AH than to the re-sellers, the gold re-sellers market will crumble.
A market never 'fails' due to lack of supply. I think it's pretty clear that a legal market for gold trades would severly hurt (possibly even destroy) the illegal one. Most people complain about gold sellers because their profit drive is destroying parts of the game. By hurting the illegal market (and capping the profit possible from the legal one) there would be much less motivation for gold sellers to act that way.
And you couldn't regain gold if a database error killed it? Somehow the gold bits would have less protection than the fuzzy-wuzzy little pets? Like Blizzard isn't tracking what people do with their gold? Somehow you are under the impression that the gold bits could just 'magically disapear' and that there would be no records, backups, or traces.
I still go with my original assumption that you don't know what you're talking about. You somehow think that the bits that mean 'gold' are more likely to be destroyed than the bits that say 'pet' or the bits that say 'account', and harder to recover. You even admit that the pets have value, but somehow the pets are okay while selling gold wouldn't be. Silly seebs- even you accept that Blizzard can sell bits, and now you're saying that they can sell some bits but not others? Like there is some sort of difference between selling someone a virtual pet and selling them virtual money? The only difference you propose is that you can 'regain' them, but it's trivial to do that with virtual money as well, you just don't seem to realize this.
What if a database error deletes your character? Does your character not have known economic value? I think it's pretty silly of you to imply that losing character data is okay now but not okay if there happens to be a few more bits set because someone bought gold from Blizzard. Or that some of the extras you can buy now from Blizzard (primarily pets) which Blizzard sells have no economic value, but that gold would if Blizzard sold it.
Basically, if Blizzard is only selling you a service now, then I'm sure that Blizzard would only charge you for the 'service' of delivering you gold. Since they are really buying from another player anyway (the premise of my whole auction house system) there's probably a way of doing that even you would accept.
If you're still confused, just think of how the bits that say 'Player seebs has a valid account he paid money for' are almost as likely to be screwed up as 'Player seebs has 1,000 gold he paid money for'. You might also want to consider that such transactions will be logged (and backups made), and therefore fixable if something does go wrong.
If you really think that all you are paying for now is the ability to log in sometimes, but Blizzard can do whatever they want with the data, why should that change just because you paid Blizzard a few bucks to alter some of their bits once? I'm sure whatever you agree to when you buy gold will cover the exceedingly improbable and bizarre events that you describe.
But is it more cost effective to get free play time or sell the currency to others? If it takes 10,000 Altarian dollars/month, but I can make $20 selling those to another player, it's always worth taking the $20 and paying my subscription with that. The auction system has the advantage of being self-correcting (but the disadvantage that it doesn't take money out of the system).
Everyone is paying $15 a month already, so everyone has incentive to sell up to $15 worth of gold a month. This means no one person has incentive to sell huge amounts, but everyone has incentive to sell a little.
Some servers will have the money-for-gold option, others won't. What would be interesting is seeing if the servers without the money-for-gold Auction House have bigger problems...
If Blizzard lets you play their game for money, they've just established time online as having monentary value, making them potentially liable for server crashes and so on.
Letting you purchase gold from them is no different than charging you to play in the first place.
Why would the gold seller site pay you more for your gold than they could get from the auction? Gold re-sellers would always pay you less for your gold than the going rate at the official Auction house. (They would, however, pay you in real money instead of credit toward your subscription). Likewise, they would have to charge less than the official Auction prices, because the auction would be safer and easier than going through a third party.
My feeling is that too many people would feel the same and just like auction house prices, you'd settle into a price that is, on average, profitable for the person selling and a good deal for the person buying.
What you just described is called a market. Amazingly, this is exactly what we want. By forcing the gold sellers to compete against the general market, we reduce their profits (and therefore the motivation they have to screw up the game).
Further evidence that you can be "addicted" to just about anything. As other people pointed out, It's possible to become addicted/obsessed over almost anything.
(I will use WoW as my example- but I don't play it, so I apologize if I get terms or numbers wrong).
I think this could solve the problems of gold selling. You have an in-game auction house where you can sell and buy gold for real money, using the credit card you have on the account. Blizzard would probably take a small cut of the money (say 5-10%). However, it would be set up so that the gold you sell will be taken off next month's bill, with the stipulation that you can reduce your bill to 0, but you can't reduce it past 0. People trying to make a profit would have to use another system (and since people aren't actually making money with this system, Blizzard can avoid alot of IRS madness).
This would pose a huge problem for dedicated gold sellers.
1. Since you can't earn more money than you are paying Blizzard anyway, you can't turn a profit using this system.
2. People trying to turn a profit will need to establish a secondary 'black market'
3. The black market would be less convinient than the legitimate one- you'd have to set up a meeting outside of the game entirely, just like gold sellers do now.
4. The black market is less trustworthy than Blizzard's market- your gold isn't guaranteed the way Blizzard's system would be.
5. Since anyone can sell gold easily, the competition in the legit market would be huge.
6. #3 and #4 means that the black market would have to sell gold at a fraction of the price of the legit market to sell gold at all- and #5 means the base price is low.
7. End result: Gold farming for massive profit is impossible. Gold farming for minor profit is really hard. Gold farming for for free WoW time is possible, and those with plenty of time will be able to.
I know some people object to gold buying because they believe that it's cheating. These people could be placed on server(s) that don't have the cash-gold auction house. Most people's objections to gold farmers, though, is that profit-seeking groups destroy fun by wrecking economies, camping mobs, hogging quest items, etc. Those groups will cease to exist once they can't turn a good profit. Everyone wins- people who object to the trade get their own server where there is no selling, and people who want to trade get servers where gold farming groups don't have a motive to disrupt anyone else. Oh, I guess the gold farmer's don't win, but that's sorta the point.
You fools owe the conservatives for everything you have. The worst atrocities in human history were all done by liberals. In fact, conservatives fought these liberals, because conservatives are for the "status quo." Liberals are all about growing in new directions.
We conservatives said the Communism was flawed. You didn't believe us. We argued against the Prohibition. You arrested us... The crackpot ideas of our time, the greatest wastes of human achievement known- these were caused by liberals, destroying the old to make way for the new...
Conservatives are the ones who like things the way they are. The liberals want to change things to make it 'better'. The liberals are certainly right sometimes, and clearly wrong other times. Any crackpot with delusions of grandeur can say how things should be, and everyone with fear of the unknown rails against change. Certainly liberals have been as horrible about purging those who opposed them as conservatives have been. Check out the French and communist revolutions.
Claiming that liberals and progressives are 'good' because they want to change things is silly. If the change is good, it should be made, if it's bad, it should be avoided. People who fear all change are the idiots you suggest them to be, and the people who radically transform society often make it into a much worse place.
Of course, it really sounds like your grief is with the current Republican party, and you're claiming that all the great accomplishments of Humanity were made against the will of idiots like them. I think they're idiots too, but I'm not going to lump them together with every other idiot throughout history. After all, there are at least 3 kinds of idiots, the ones who vote Republican, the ones who vote Democratic, and the ones who don't vote at all.
I'm actually slightly grateful to Jack Thompson. Someone competent could easily convince the majority of people that games like GTA are a bad influence on children. Thompson, on the other hand, is a walking PR disaster- he alienates people with even shreds of intelligence. He manages to consistently lose cases that even Darl McBride could win in court. Not to mention all the publicity he gives Rockstar...
Thanks for correcting me! After all, I used 'stealing' in the title, which someone who didn't read anything but my title would be confused by. Oh, and I like how you can use "theft of freedom" when referring to copyright without sounding like a total hypocrite.
In a free market, you would be absolutely correct. A free market has no copyrights, patents, barriers to entry, or other such trivialities, and performs exactly as you suggest. (Which, incidentally, is nothing like the real world). Are you suggesting that a totally free market is the ideal, and that anything that falls short of that ideal is bad? I personally think patents, copyright, and trade secrets encourage innovation and give me more and better options than your completely free market. I think my options would be even better if copyright terms were shorter and DRM was legal to circumvent. As for you, once you go beyond Econ 101 you might even learn that P>MC even though P->MC in your mythical free market.
Hey, I hate the Music And Film Industry Associations of America as much as the next guy. This doesn't mean that I think it's okay to short them out, though. We all know they've been giving most artists the raw end of the deal for years, but they've helped many talented artists get richer than they would have without them. (And it's not like the artists get money from your behavior). By your logic, we should all download copies of Vista because Microsoft is being mean to the Open Source community. (Nevermind that this gives M$ more mind share without helping Open Source projects at all).
Suppose it's during prohibition. Whose argument would trust most: The alcholic who wants his fix for cheap, the saloon owner who stands to profit, or the teetotaler who thinks that outlawing alcohol is wrong? My point is that the alcholics actually hurt the cause of legal alcohol by obviously abusing it. Likewise, the people who download all the hip singles without paying a cent to the RIAA or the artists only encourage worse DRM and laws against such behavior.
I don't understand what you are saying, and I don't think you do either. The MAFIAA either provides enough value to you to be worth paying them, or they don't provide enough value to be worth paying them. They only expect you to pay for their music if you 'aquire' it. The idiots I have a problem with are those who say "Their music is garbage, therefore I should be able to download it for free".
You are, of course, referring to the marginal cost of production, ignoring the costs of developing said movie in the first place. By your logic, people pay too much for virtually everything. The marginal cost of producing a brand new computer might be $50- but making the factories that can produce a $100 chip for $1 costs several million dollars, not to mention the salaries of the engineers who designed it and tested prototypes. If your argument is sound, one should be able to walk into a computer store, toss down $50, and walk off with a computer currently priced at $500, because that's the marginal cost of production. Technically the company you're stealing from isn't losing money, but that doesn't make it ethical.
If the MAFIAA provides a valuable service to you, and expects money in exchange, it seems reasonable that you should give them money. If they aren't providing a valueable service, then don't pirate their garbage. Jerks like you give the rest of us who oppose the current copyright regime a bad name.
Slashdot Mirror
Because the Egyptians used damnatio memoriae to remove heretics, assassins, and other 'unpersons' from their records, it's impossible to show that someone like Moses didn't exist. Something as important as a large group of slaves leaving, though, would probably have an impact that would show up in their records.
Keep in mind, though, that Disney would never bribe senators. That might get people arrested! All Disney needs to do is offer millions of dollars (in Campaign Contributions) to people who support extending copyright. It works like this:
Disney: Canidate A, do you support extending copyrights?
A. No, I think it's stupid!
Disney: Too Bad.
Disney: How about you, Canidate B?
B. Yes! I do!
Disney: Okay, B! Here's a big sack of money! Now go get elected!
B. Woohoo!
Disney: How about you, Mr. C?
(C looks at A and B)
C. Um, yes, I support enlarging those copythingies!
You see, to the casual observer it may look like bribery, but to the discerning eye, it's clear that Disney is merely donating money to people who share idealogical similarities with Disney. Nowhere does Disney 'buy' votes, or 'bribe' people, it merely 'helps out' those who 'happen' to support Disney's viewpoints. I am in no way accusing Disney of bribery, or of the many fine senators in P2im3's list of accepting bribes. That would be libel!
After all, who thinks we'd have the copyright terms we do now if it wasn't for Disney buying off congressmen?
But his conclusions are entirely wrong. Patents give you the right to keep others from using your invention, but they don't give you the right to use it. Thus, when you take someone else's patent and improve it, you can patent the improvement, but you still can't make the device without the permission of the original patent holder. Likewise, the original patent holder can't make use of your improvement without your permission.
The real question then is: How does this impact the $Altairian-for-cash trade? Does this system lower the value of the Altairian Dollar (Or whatever Eve's Currency is)? If so, by how much?
Clearly we have a problem with gold sellers now, and the gold sellers have lots of cash (and gold). Let me draw you an illustration, with arbitrary numbers:
Currently the gold re-sellers sell 100 gold for $1. The pay individuals $1 for 200 gold (the need to make a profit). However, anyone with brains would auction off his first 2000 gold they are selling for $15 at the Auction house- that way he both makes more than he would selling it to the gold sellers, and undercuts them at the same time.
If there is truely a lack of supply, then the price of gold in the Auction House will increase until the demand = supply (see: Econ 101). However, it's both better for sellers (they get more money) and better for buyers (they can't get ripped off) to use the official auction house as opposed to the 'black market' of the gold re-sellers. Therefore, the gold resellers will need to sell their gold for less than the AH price (otherwise no one would pay for it) AND buy their gold for less than that (otherwise they can't turn a profit). If it's always better to sell at the AH than to the re-sellers, the gold re-sellers market will crumble.
A market never 'fails' due to lack of supply. I think it's pretty clear that a legal market for gold trades would severly hurt (possibly even destroy) the illegal one. Most people complain about gold sellers because their profit drive is destroying parts of the game. By hurting the illegal market (and capping the profit possible from the legal one) there would be much less motivation for gold sellers to act that way.
And you couldn't regain gold if a database error killed it? Somehow the gold bits would have less protection than the fuzzy-wuzzy little pets? Like Blizzard isn't tracking what people do with their gold? Somehow you are under the impression that the gold bits could just 'magically disapear' and that there would be no records, backups, or traces.
I still go with my original assumption that you don't know what you're talking about. You somehow think that the bits that mean 'gold' are more likely to be destroyed than the bits that say 'pet' or the bits that say 'account', and harder to recover. You even admit that the pets have value, but somehow the pets are okay while selling gold wouldn't be. Silly seebs- even you accept that Blizzard can sell bits, and now you're saying that they can sell some bits but not others? Like there is some sort of difference between selling someone a virtual pet and selling them virtual money? The only difference you propose is that you can 'regain' them, but it's trivial to do that with virtual money as well, you just don't seem to realize this.
What if a database error deletes your character? Does your character not have known economic value? I think it's pretty silly of you to imply that losing character data is okay now but not okay if there happens to be a few more bits set because someone bought gold from Blizzard. Or that some of the extras you can buy now from Blizzard (primarily pets) which Blizzard sells have no economic value, but that gold would if Blizzard sold it.
Basically, if Blizzard is only selling you a service now, then I'm sure that Blizzard would only charge you for the 'service' of delivering you gold. Since they are really buying from another player anyway (the premise of my whole auction house system) there's probably a way of doing that even you would accept.
If you're still confused, just think of how the bits that say 'Player seebs has a valid account he paid money for' are almost as likely to be screwed up as 'Player seebs has 1,000 gold he paid money for'. You might also want to consider that such transactions will be logged (and backups made), and therefore fixable if something does go wrong.
If you really think that all you are paying for now is the ability to log in sometimes, but Blizzard can do whatever they want with the data, why should that change just because you paid Blizzard a few bucks to alter some of their bits once? I'm sure whatever you agree to when you buy gold will cover the exceedingly improbable and bizarre events that you describe.
But is it more cost effective to get free play time or sell the currency to others? If it takes 10,000 Altarian dollars/month, but I can make $20 selling those to another player, it's always worth taking the $20 and paying my subscription with that. The auction system has the advantage of being self-correcting (but the disadvantage that it doesn't take money out of the system).
Everyone is paying $15 a month already, so everyone has incentive to sell up to $15 worth of gold a month. This means no one person has incentive to sell huge amounts, but everyone has incentive to sell a little.
Some servers will have the money-for-gold option, others won't. What would be interesting is seeing if the servers without the money-for-gold Auction House have bigger problems...
If Blizzard lets you play their game for money, they've just established time online as having monentary value, making them potentially liable for server crashes and so on.
Letting you purchase gold from them is no different than charging you to play in the first place.
My feeling is that too many people would feel the same and just like auction house prices, you'd settle into a price that is, on average, profitable for the person selling and a good deal for the person buying.
What you just described is called a market. Amazingly, this is exactly what we want. By forcing the gold sellers to compete against the general market, we reduce their profits (and therefore the motivation they have to screw up the game).
Further evidence that you can be "addicted" to just about anything. As other people pointed out, It's possible to become addicted/obsessed over almost anything.
(I will use WoW as my example- but I don't play it, so I apologize if I get terms or numbers wrong).
I think this could solve the problems of gold selling. You have an in-game auction house where you can sell and buy gold for real money, using the credit card you have on the account. Blizzard would probably take a small cut of the money (say 5-10%). However, it would be set up so that the gold you sell will be taken off next month's bill, with the stipulation that you can reduce your bill to 0, but you can't reduce it past 0. People trying to make a profit would have to use another system (and since people aren't actually making money with this system, Blizzard can avoid alot of IRS madness).
This would pose a huge problem for dedicated gold sellers.
1. Since you can't earn more money than you are paying Blizzard anyway, you can't turn a profit using this system.
2. People trying to turn a profit will need to establish a secondary 'black market'
3. The black market would be less convinient than the legitimate one- you'd have to set up a meeting outside of the game entirely, just like gold sellers do now.
4. The black market is less trustworthy than Blizzard's market- your gold isn't guaranteed the way Blizzard's system would be.
5. Since anyone can sell gold easily, the competition in the legit market would be huge.
6. #3 and #4 means that the black market would have to sell gold at a fraction of the price of the legit market to sell gold at all- and #5 means the base price is low.
7. End result: Gold farming for massive profit is impossible. Gold farming for minor profit is really hard. Gold farming for for free WoW time is possible, and those with plenty of time will be able to.
I know some people object to gold buying because they believe that it's cheating. These people could be placed on server(s) that don't have the cash-gold auction house. Most people's objections to gold farmers, though, is that profit-seeking groups destroy fun by wrecking economies, camping mobs, hogging quest items, etc. Those groups will cease to exist once they can't turn a good profit. Everyone wins- people who object to the trade get their own server where there is no selling, and people who want to trade get servers where gold farming groups don't have a motive to disrupt anyone else. Oh, I guess the gold farmer's don't win, but that's sorta the point.
You fools owe the conservatives for everything you have. The worst atrocities in human history were all done by liberals. In fact, conservatives fought these liberals, because conservatives are for the "status quo." Liberals are all about growing in new directions.
We conservatives said the Communism was flawed. You didn't believe us. We argued against the Prohibition. You arrested us... The crackpot ideas of our time, the greatest wastes of human achievement known- these were caused by liberals, destroying the old to make way for the new...
Conservatives are the ones who like things the way they are. The liberals want to change things to make it 'better'. The liberals are certainly right sometimes, and clearly wrong other times. Any crackpot with delusions of grandeur can say how things should be, and everyone with fear of the unknown rails against change. Certainly liberals have been as horrible about purging those who opposed them as conservatives have been. Check out the French and communist revolutions.
Claiming that liberals and progressives are 'good' because they want to change things is silly. If the change is good, it should be made, if it's bad, it should be avoided. People who fear all change are the idiots you suggest them to be, and the people who radically transform society often make it into a much worse place.
Of course, it really sounds like your grief is with the current Republican party, and you're claiming that all the great accomplishments of Humanity were made against the will of idiots like them. I think they're idiots too, but I'm not going to lump them together with every other idiot throughout history. After all, there are at least 3 kinds of idiots, the ones who vote Republican, the ones who vote Democratic, and the ones who don't vote at all.
But now there is an article about it on the internet, making it original, novel, and fit for Slashdot.
I'm actually slightly grateful to Jack Thompson. Someone competent could easily convince the majority of people that games like GTA are a bad influence on children. Thompson, on the other hand, is a walking PR disaster- he alienates people with even shreds of intelligence. He manages to consistently lose cases that even Darl McBride could win in court. Not to mention all the publicity he gives Rockstar...
Thanks for correcting me! After all, I used 'stealing' in the title, which someone who didn't read anything but my title would be confused by. Oh, and I like how you can use "theft of freedom" when referring to copyright without sounding like a total hypocrite.
In a free market, you would be absolutely correct. A free market has no copyrights, patents, barriers to entry, or other such trivialities, and performs exactly as you suggest. (Which, incidentally, is nothing like the real world). Are you suggesting that a totally free market is the ideal, and that anything that falls short of that ideal is bad? I personally think patents, copyright, and trade secrets encourage innovation and give me more and better options than your completely free market. I think my options would be even better if copyright terms were shorter and DRM was legal to circumvent. As for you, once you go beyond Econ 101 you might even learn that P>MC even though P->MC in your mythical free market.
Hey, I hate the Music And Film Industry Associations of America as much as the next guy. This doesn't mean that I think it's okay to short them out, though. We all know they've been giving most artists the raw end of the deal for years, but they've helped many talented artists get richer than they would have without them. (And it's not like the artists get money from your behavior). By your logic, we should all download copies of Vista because Microsoft is being mean to the Open Source community. (Nevermind that this gives M$ more mind share without helping Open Source projects at all).
Suppose it's during prohibition. Whose argument would trust most: The alcholic who wants his fix for cheap, the saloon owner who stands to profit, or the teetotaler who thinks that outlawing alcohol is wrong? My point is that the alcholics actually hurt the cause of legal alcohol by obviously abusing it. Likewise, the people who download all the hip singles without paying a cent to the RIAA or the artists only encourage worse DRM and laws against such behavior.
I don't understand what you are saying, and I don't think you do either. The MAFIAA either provides enough value to you to be worth paying them, or they don't provide enough value to be worth paying them. They only expect you to pay for their music if you 'aquire' it. The idiots I have a problem with are those who say "Their music is garbage, therefore I should be able to download it for free".
You are, of course, referring to the marginal cost of production, ignoring the costs of developing said movie in the first place. By your logic, people pay too much for virtually everything. The marginal cost of producing a brand new computer might be $50- but making the factories that can produce a $100 chip for $1 costs several million dollars, not to mention the salaries of the engineers who designed it and tested prototypes. If your argument is sound, one should be able to walk into a computer store, toss down $50, and walk off with a computer currently priced at $500, because that's the marginal cost of production. Technically the company you're stealing from isn't losing money, but that doesn't make it ethical.
If the MAFIAA provides a valuable service to you, and expects money in exchange, it seems reasonable that you should give them money. If they aren't providing a valueable service, then don't pirate their garbage. Jerks like you give the rest of us who oppose the current copyright regime a bad name.