Many of those hurdles could no doubt be covered by patents (such as "A Package To Mail A DVD without Breaking It") and good old fashioned business acumen ("We cut an exclusive deal with Fed Ex, and pass the savings on to you") in a way that encourages competition.
Being first matters a lot. It instills loyalty. But it's not a guarantee. And you know what? If some guy can come along and beat you at your own game, that's not inherently a bad thing. And if Blockbuster jacks up the price, someone else will just come along and compete with them, undercut them, and the cycle continues. There's no free pass in the market.
The *real* problem with NetFlix's model is that it's impersonal. It's just a DVD in the mail. Nobody cares about the color of the envelope. In fact, the NetFlix business model is the IDEAL "faceless corporation" business, because it's a
a) middle man service b) driven by economies of scale c) for a product everyone wants.
It's not a lemonade stand or a piano lesson. It's hegemony waiting to happen.
The flip side to this, though (and it's an uncanny idea) is that if YouTube didn't do it, *someone would*.
It is simply a desired niche of the Internet to have video clips of all varieties easily available for searching, posting, and referencing.
And ultimately there's no business model to support this. The SOLUTION is to subsidize this service with another service. It can be video-related (charge content producers for placement, or charge users for higher quality), or it can be otherwise (Google Video subsidized by all other things Google.)
So what'll happen? YouTube will get bought by someone who can subsidize this in exchange for the goodwill of being YouTube. Someone like Time Warner or Disney/ABC or Blockbuster. In fact, if I were kind of invested in an old media (Blockbuster, New York Times, etc.) I would be verrrrry interested in acquiring YouTube to complement my actual moneymaking ventures.
But the ultimate point is that whether or not YouTube has a viable *business* model is not relevant. A centralized video clip repository is something everyone wants, but no one is willing to pay for.
The #1 reason cables aren't included in most peripheral devices is because the user most likely already has a cable just like the one needed. You buy a new VCR, you don't need a new cable, you just unhook the old one, and attach the new one. And trust me, nobody is throwing in HDMI cables for free, for any HDMI-ready device.
I see this as more of a case of "letting the consumer figure out their own way to getting things hooked up" than "we're trying to shaft you by making you pay extra for HDMI cables."
And don't worry, there will be a $99 package right next to the PS3 with an extra wireless controller, memory card, and HDMI cable. Maybe a demo disc, too - oo!
It may be abstract and not quite as apt, but clearly the pipes and the elctrons being served are discrete units that can be measured for each user. So yes, there is a physical object here - it's just not as easy to see as an acre of land.
A better analogy (and a car-related one at that) is an actual highway.
You build a 4 lane private tollway between two specific points. You promise high speeds for toll access. Then you oversell access.
The thing in question here is sentence 2: "promise high speeds." What does that mean? Clearly we can quantify that.
And guess what? In our ISP service contracts, we've quantified it, too. It's fairly simple; either
a)charge me bit-for-bit and quit throttling b) up everyone's price until you're not overselling any more because of lower demand c) offer tiered pricing for higher bandwidth users. That's great for me; I don't mind slower speeds, so I can save me some dough.
If any project ever screamed out for a fork, it's Wikipedia, for exactly the reasons you state.
It is a wiki, it is an encyclopedia. Weren't we promised a "stable" version of Wikipedia? Where has that agenda gone?
Prominently link back and forth between the two - stable to wiki, wiki to stable. Make changes to the stable be part of a rolling process, constantly updated by approved personnel. The equivalent of the peer-reviewed thing.
This decision is stupid, because it simply removes the most important aspect of a wiki - INSTANT gratification. It solves one underlying problem, but creates another. A fork could solve both.
C'mon, people, it's just bits and bytes. We can do this.
Ridiculous. Almost all behavioral problems ARE related to boring lectures. See this article. Boys are treated different in our new reverse affirmative action educational system.
Aggressive, rational-dominated, left-brained boys are given short shrift. They are punished for questioning anything, particularly the purpose of assignments. They are forced to adopt coping mechanisms that are inappropriate for school.
Boys are troublemakers, girls are not.
The flipside: girls are subservient, obedient "yes men" in the world of schooling. They do everything without question. They don't like to think for themselves, because it posits them as disobedient.
It's practically Freudian, the difference in "looking for approval" between boys and girls.
In the early half of the 20th century, most schoolteachers were female, and lived in a pre-feminist world. They taught to boys and girls, cajoled them both, catered to them individually if need be, and especially tolerated some of the more "wild side" of "boys will be boys" attitude.
Today's female teachers have grown up not only deifying their own equality cum superiority as canon, but also with a wanton disregard for "cutting someone slack" and, more importantly, the individual nature of students. Thus upon entering the classroom, they immediately identify their problems, which *surprise surprise* are always boys.
So, is this the answer then? Boys are just more problematic than girls, by an astounding margin? Or, in fact, are boys being emasculated and marginalized in the classroom? There is a lot of good literature on this, by the way. Check out "Raising Cain", or "Johnny Won't Read" or any other number of scholarly books on the increasing condescension and inflexibility displayed towards the male psyche in America's classroom.
Back to the topic, boring lectures are just the tip of the iceberg. They constitute a perpetual pattern of overinvolvement on the part of the teacher. Education after 13 used to consist of the Socratic method and a whole lot of "personal reading." They expected results, but they did not predetermine them.
Welcome to the 21st century of education. It's going to get worse, too.
You don't think the producers of content won't PROVIDE a financial incentive to refuse to play non-DRM content? The same people who sue all of their customers? Sony just has to walk down to its own manufacturing factory and say no. Toshiba, JVC, Hitachi, Microsoft, Apple all have partnerships with major labels.
Once all the labels have a good DRM that works, they can all just walk out on iTunes and anyone else who doesn't want to play by their rules. And the DMCA and other laws are there to help them. It's not about the market and choice any more. It's about legislation, collusion, and the shift to a "you rent your content" philosophy. Fight it or die trying.
So, uhh, how exactly would everyone "collaborate" with MS products if the networks is down?
I mean, when your network is down, you're on your own. So the trick then is just to have offline equivalents of your online programs. And once your system goes online again, it syncs everything up again in one shot.
I agree completely with the idea of having offline access to your files, but the point of all this "web competition" is the collaborative/groupware aspect, not the slim software setup.
Isn't that the point of the GP? That Wikipedia isn't a fork?
And I'd be surprised if it was a fork in 25 years. The Internet, maybe; but if you ask 100 people in 25 years, "Do you know how to edit a Wikipedia article?" I guarantee half will look at you with confusion and despair.
All medical decisions viewed under judicial purview are considered as state interests vs. private interests. Operative word being private. See the recent case where the state attempted to force a minor to undergo chemotherapy by taking him away from his parents who intended to use a nutritional therapy instead.
I do NOT need a piece of paper to give me my inalienable rights.
The Constitution may put it in writing, but the freedom of speech, religion, travel, press, assembly, petition, and, yes, PRIVACY are not given to us by the government. The right to a fair trial, the right to remain silent, the right to bear arms, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - these are not given to us by the Powers That Be. They are our rights as humans, in every county of the world. People who deny you these rights are 100% in the wrong, and you should not feel beholden to your citizenship beyond any duties that YOU feel incumbent upon to act.
And ultimately, you either believe that a woman's right to PRIVACY exceeds an unborn child's right to LIFE, or you do not. If medical evidence suggests the child is, in fact, not a human, then they have no rights. If the evidence suggests it is human, then the original question remains. THAT is where the fight lies; not in whether or not the Constitution allows it. The Constitution allows nothing; it only AFFIRMS the inalienable truth of being a human.
Just because parents and gamemakers take real violence *more* seriously than cartoon violence doesn't mean they "write off" cartoon violence entirely. They just understand the difference. And as has been said many times before, any system which gives PacMan a 62% violence rating clearly is not using an appropriate scaling mechanism.
If you use Tetris as the baseline for 0% violent, and we'll say GTA3 constitutes 100% (there are worse games, but we'll go with that), then where does PacMan really fall on this scale for you?
If you're saying 62nd percentile - that PacMan is more violent than nearly 2/3 of the games out there - that's patently ridiculous. And I don't need a PhD from Harvard to know that.
You are not required by law to file a police report every time something is stolen.
My wife's iPod Nano was stolen out of a gym locker; perhaps it'll be found later containing mp3s with tags clearly indicating they're illegally downloaded copies. Am I going to be held responsible? Of course not. Ridiculous.
In 2002, I won the College Jeopardy! Tournament by correctly naming "One of the two planets Holst didn't write a movement for in his Planets suite." I, of course, said Pluto.
I wonder if I'll have to retroactively give back the Volvo...
I think in discussions like these, you should reveal your age, whether you're married, and whether or not you have any children. So at least we can separate out actual parents, potential parents, and all the teenagers.
I think we'd find a clear delineation of what the words "trust", "parenting", "privacy", and "responsibility" mean along these strata.
I am 23, married, and I have no children.
I think that this particular idea isn't the best one, but the idea that parents should simply rely on their teenager's good judgment is fairly ridiculous. My parents "bought" me a car with my college savings to reward me for earning a full-ride scholarship. By then I had earned their trust by borrowing their car for a year and returning it every night in good condition.
Automobiles are very dangerous - often times through no fault of the driver. Little things can have major consequences. EVERY first-time driver should be an extra-defensive driver. This goes against the natural instincts of putting people in cars (witness the first time you put a kid in a go-cart, or on a bike, or any other vehicle.) So literally, an instinct must be tamed, and this requires time and effort. It is not something you magically acquire on your 16th birthday.
I mean, nobody has seen the gold in Fort Knox in years, but it's been traded around left and right. Plenty of people are willing to pay for pieces of paper saying they own some gold - why not just prove it's there, stake a claim on it, and then sell it here on Earth?
We can have an entire imaginary Moon economy! Awesomeness++!
Isn't that the point of this argument? That music is not like books? Either a song is its own entity, or it is not.
If Radiohead really wanted you to listen to the whole album, they'd make it one long track.
The REAL artsy bands (Godspeed You Black Emperor, I'm looking at you) do this.
Now, you can complain about lack of context, and certainly the artist should have the right to control their medium of discussion, but ultimately, there is no right answer. The artist is right; the listener is right. Nothing is true; everything is permitted. Et cetera.
What you observed is called a "straw man" argument, and all talk radio (and television) personalities use it to their advantage. Every last one of them, liberal or conservative or anything in between. Because straw men lure people down a path towards extremism.
You call in to complain about wiretapping, and suddenly you're having to defend every judicial decision ever passed down. And so you do, because you are The Loyal Opposition. And then you lose, because you tried to hold up the straw man.
PS you should've said, "Yes, I'm a lawyer, just like Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, half of our Senate, and all of our judiciary. What about it?"
In violation of the prisoner's right to due process. So the judge did something illegal. And was likely not charged with manslaughter, given that it was the Old West, etc etc.
But the fact remains, that's an illegal act. (Although only after 1867, when the 14th Amendment was passed.)
Slashdot Mirror
Descrbing 0 degrees Celsius as "mildly" cold is like describing RIAA lawsuits as "mildly" aggressive.
Yes!
Many of those hurdles could no doubt be covered by patents (such as "A Package To Mail A DVD without Breaking It") and good old fashioned business acumen ("We cut an exclusive deal with Fed Ex, and pass the savings on to you") in a way that encourages competition.
Being first matters a lot. It instills loyalty. But it's not a guarantee. And you know what? If some guy can come along and beat you at your own game, that's not inherently a bad thing. And if Blockbuster jacks up the price, someone else will just come along and compete with them, undercut them, and the cycle continues. There's no free pass in the market.
The *real* problem with NetFlix's model is that it's impersonal. It's just a DVD in the mail. Nobody cares about the color of the envelope. In fact, the NetFlix business model is the IDEAL "faceless corporation" business, because it's a
a) middle man service
b) driven by economies of scale
c) for a product everyone wants.
It's not a lemonade stand or a piano lesson. It's hegemony waiting to happen.
The flip side to this, though (and it's an uncanny idea) is that if YouTube didn't do it, *someone would*.
It is simply a desired niche of the Internet to have video clips of all varieties easily available for searching, posting, and referencing.
And ultimately there's no business model to support this. The SOLUTION is to subsidize this service with another service. It can be video-related (charge content producers for placement, or charge users for higher quality), or it can be otherwise (Google Video subsidized by all other things Google.)
So what'll happen? YouTube will get bought by someone who can subsidize this in exchange for the goodwill of being YouTube. Someone like Time Warner or Disney/ABC or Blockbuster. In fact, if I were kind of invested in an old media (Blockbuster, New York Times, etc.) I would be verrrrry interested in acquiring YouTube to complement my actual moneymaking ventures.
But the ultimate point is that whether or not YouTube has a viable *business* model is not relevant. A centralized video clip repository is something everyone wants, but no one is willing to pay for.
Exactly, just write your page in XML and then transform it appropriately with XSL.
if (element in anchorList) {add anchor before element}
is a fairly simple conditional to apply.
Or add it to your processor as a function. But parents is right, granularity is the key to all good HTML specs.
Stringray City, in the Grand Cayman Islands, is one of its most popular tourist attractions.
The #1 reason cables aren't included in most peripheral devices is because the user most likely already has a cable just like the one needed. You buy a new VCR, you don't need a new cable, you just unhook the old one, and attach the new one. And trust me, nobody is throwing in HDMI cables for free, for any HDMI-ready device.
I see this as more of a case of "letting the consumer figure out their own way to getting things hooked up" than "we're trying to shaft you by making you pay extra for HDMI cables."
And don't worry, there will be a $99 package right next to the PS3 with an extra wireless controller, memory card, and HDMI cable. Maybe a demo disc, too - oo!
It may be abstract and not quite as apt, but clearly the pipes and the elctrons being served are discrete units that can be measured for each user. So yes, there is a physical object here - it's just not as easy to see as an acre of land.
A better analogy (and a car-related one at that) is an actual highway.
You build a 4 lane private tollway between two specific points. You promise high speeds for toll access. Then you oversell access.
The thing in question here is sentence 2: "promise high speeds." What does that mean? Clearly we can quantify that.
And guess what? In our ISP service contracts, we've quantified it, too. It's fairly simple; either
a)charge me bit-for-bit and quit throttling
b) up everyone's price until you're not overselling any more because of lower demand
c) offer tiered pricing for higher bandwidth users. That's great for me; I don't mind slower speeds, so I can save me some dough.
If any project ever screamed out for a fork, it's Wikipedia, for exactly the reasons you state.
It is a wiki, it is an encyclopedia. Weren't we promised a "stable" version of Wikipedia? Where has that agenda gone?
Prominently link back and forth between the two - stable to wiki, wiki to stable. Make changes to the stable be part of a rolling process, constantly updated by approved personnel. The equivalent of the peer-reviewed thing.
This decision is stupid, because it simply removes the most important aspect of a wiki - INSTANT gratification. It solves one underlying problem, but creates another. A fork could solve both.
C'mon, people, it's just bits and bytes. We can do this.
Ridiculous. Almost all behavioral problems ARE related to boring lectures. See this article. Boys are treated different in our new reverse affirmative action educational system.
Aggressive, rational-dominated, left-brained boys are given short shrift.
They are punished for questioning anything, particularly the purpose of assignments.
They are forced to adopt coping mechanisms that are inappropriate for school.
Boys are troublemakers, girls are not.
The flipside: girls are subservient, obedient "yes men" in the world of schooling. They do everything without question. They don't like to think for themselves, because it posits them as disobedient.
It's practically Freudian, the difference in "looking for approval" between boys and girls.
In the early half of the 20th century, most schoolteachers were female, and lived in a pre-feminist world. They taught to boys and girls, cajoled them both, catered to them individually if need be, and especially tolerated some of the more "wild side" of "boys will be boys" attitude.
Today's female teachers have grown up not only deifying their own equality cum superiority as canon, but also with a wanton disregard for "cutting someone slack" and, more importantly, the individual nature of students. Thus upon entering the classroom, they immediately identify their problems, which *surprise surprise* are always boys.
So, is this the answer then? Boys are just more problematic than girls, by an astounding margin? Or, in fact, are boys being emasculated and marginalized in the classroom? There is a lot of good literature on this, by the way. Check out "Raising Cain", or "Johnny Won't Read" or any other number of scholarly books on the increasing condescension and inflexibility displayed towards the male psyche in America's classroom.
Back to the topic, boring lectures are just the tip of the iceberg. They constitute a perpetual pattern of overinvolvement on the part of the teacher. Education after 13 used to consist of the Socratic method and a whole lot of "personal reading." They expected results, but they did not predetermine them.
Welcome to the 21st century of education. It's going to get worse, too.
You don't think the producers of content won't PROVIDE a financial incentive to refuse to play non-DRM content? The same people who sue all of their customers? Sony just has to walk down to its own manufacturing factory and say no. Toshiba, JVC, Hitachi, Microsoft, Apple all have partnerships with major labels.
Once all the labels have a good DRM that works, they can all just walk out on iTunes and anyone else who doesn't want to play by their rules. And the DMCA and other laws are there to help them. It's not about the market and choice any more. It's about legislation, collusion, and the shift to a "you rent your content" philosophy. Fight it or die trying.
So, uhh, how exactly would everyone "collaborate" with MS products if the networks is down?
I mean, when your network is down, you're on your own. So the trick then is just to have offline equivalents of your online programs. And once your system goes online again, it syncs everything up again in one shot.
I agree completely with the idea of having offline access to your files, but the point of all this "web competition" is the collaborative/groupware aspect, not the slim software setup.
I think Cliff Lampe is working on a Slashdot-based Ph.D. (actually on Internet community interaction, but using Slashdot as the primary example.)
Isn't that the point of the GP? That Wikipedia isn't a fork?
And I'd be surprised if it was a fork in 25 years. The Internet, maybe; but if you ask 100 people in 25 years, "Do you know how to edit a Wikipedia article?" I guarantee half will look at you with confusion and despair.
All medical decisions viewed under judicial purview are considered as state interests vs. private interests. Operative word being private. See the recent case where the state attempted to force a minor to undergo chemotherapy by taking him away from his parents who intended to use a nutritional therapy instead.
No, you can submit prior art for free to the patent office, and if they agree with you (no lawyers necessary!), then the patent goes away.
I do NOT need a piece of paper to give me my inalienable rights.
The Constitution may put it in writing, but the freedom of speech, religion, travel, press, assembly, petition, and, yes, PRIVACY are not given to us by the government. The right to a fair trial, the right to remain silent, the right to bear arms, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - these are not given to us by the Powers That Be. They are our rights as humans, in every county of the world. People who deny you these rights are 100% in the wrong, and you should not feel beholden to your citizenship beyond any duties that YOU feel incumbent upon to act.
And ultimately, you either believe that a woman's right to PRIVACY exceeds an unborn child's right to LIFE, or you do not. If medical evidence suggests the child is, in fact, not a human, then they have no rights. If the evidence suggests it is human, then the original question remains. THAT is where the fight lies; not in whether or not the Constitution allows it. The Constitution allows nothing; it only AFFIRMS the inalienable truth of being a human.
Young children can be affected by cartoons? So?
Just because parents and gamemakers take real violence *more* seriously than cartoon violence doesn't mean they "write off" cartoon violence entirely. They just understand the difference. And as has been said many times before, any system which gives PacMan a 62% violence rating clearly is not using an appropriate scaling mechanism.
If you use Tetris as the baseline for 0% violent, and we'll say GTA3 constitutes 100% (there are worse games, but we'll go with that), then where does PacMan really fall on this scale for you?
If you're saying 62nd percentile - that PacMan is more violent than nearly 2/3 of the games out there - that's patently ridiculous. And I don't need a PhD from Harvard to know that.
You are not required by law to file a police report every time something is stolen.
My wife's iPod Nano was stolen out of a gym locker; perhaps it'll be found later containing mp3s with tags clearly indicating they're illegally downloaded copies. Am I going to be held responsible? Of course not. Ridiculous.
Uhh - if something exists before the patent, it's called "prior art", not infringement.
In 2002, I won the College Jeopardy! Tournament by correctly naming "One of the two planets Holst didn't write a movement for in his Planets suite." I, of course, said Pluto.
...
I wonder if I'll have to retroactively give back the Volvo
I think in discussions like these, you should reveal your age, whether you're married, and whether or not you have any children. So at least we can separate out actual parents, potential parents, and all the teenagers.
I think we'd find a clear delineation of what the words "trust", "parenting", "privacy", and "responsibility" mean along these strata.
I am 23, married, and I have no children.
I think that this particular idea isn't the best one, but the idea that parents should simply rely on their teenager's good judgment is fairly ridiculous. My parents "bought" me a car with my college savings to reward me for earning a full-ride scholarship. By then I had earned their trust by borrowing their car for a year and returning it every night in good condition.
Automobiles are very dangerous - often times through no fault of the driver. Little things can have major consequences. EVERY first-time driver should be an extra-defensive driver. This goes against the natural instincts of putting people in cars (witness the first time you put a kid in a go-cart, or on a bike, or any other vehicle.) So literally, an instinct must be tamed, and this requires time and effort. It is not something you magically acquire on your 16th birthday.
Would they actually have to ship it back?
I mean, nobody has seen the gold in Fort Knox in years, but it's been traded around left and right. Plenty of people are willing to pay for pieces of paper saying they own some gold - why not just prove it's there, stake a claim on it, and then sell it here on Earth?
We can have an entire imaginary Moon economy! Awesomeness++!
Isn't that the point of this argument? That music is not like books? Either a song is its own entity, or it is not.
If Radiohead really wanted you to listen to the whole album, they'd make it one long track.
The REAL artsy bands (Godspeed You Black Emperor, I'm looking at you) do this.
Now, you can complain about lack of context, and certainly the artist should have the right to control their medium of discussion, but ultimately, there is no right answer. The artist is right; the listener is right. Nothing is true; everything is permitted. Et cetera.
What you observed is called a "straw man" argument, and all talk radio (and television) personalities use it to their advantage. Every last one of them, liberal or conservative or anything in between. Because straw men lure people down a path towards extremism.
You call in to complain about wiretapping, and suddenly you're having to defend every judicial decision ever passed down. And so you do, because you are The Loyal Opposition. And then you lose, because you tried to hold up the straw man.
PS you should've said, "Yes, I'm a lawyer, just like Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, half of our Senate, and all of our judiciary. What about it?"
In violation of the prisoner's right to due process. So the judge did something illegal. And was likely not charged with manslaughter, given that it was the Old West, etc etc.
But the fact remains, that's an illegal act. (Although only after 1867, when the 14th Amendment was passed.)