The problem is that this hurts companies that are genuinely making a loss through a genuine need for restructuring and so forth.
What really needs to happen is to reorganise the way in which profits are calculated and at what point tax occurs.
Right now, the problem is that tax is taken after every other possible deduction on revenue has been calculated. The key is to move it up the chain of importance (but not all the way up to revenue). Realistically tax should come after genuine expenditure like staff wages, but before things like royalty payments which are heavily abused. This would keep royalty payments purely for what they're intended, as there'd be no reason to make them up arbitrarily for tax dodging purposes.
Tax shouldn't be pretty much the last thing (or in many cases, the last thing) to be calculated, it should be forced to be prioritised higher, and should come after only real expenses. This would also force companies to have sane policy on royalty payments and such because it wouldn't help them avoid tax, but would have a real impact on their real actual profit.
These parliamentary committees exist to investigate issues in society. They have the option of summoning individuals or representatives of corporations to get to the bottom of those issues. If those individuals lie to them (as Google did in this case) then they have the right to recall them and question them hard about that.
Saying it's a waste of time and is guaranteed to achieve nothing is absurd, how the fuck do you think policy gets made if politicians aren't allowed to call in relevant people to explain how things work and to see if they can provide any justification for their position if they lie, or are perceived to be on the wrong side of public opinion?
The whole reason this committee has been pursuing these lines of questioning is to see whether the law needs to change precisely so HMRC can prosecute, but when companies like Google and Amazon come to the committee and either lie, or fail to answer simple questions, then it's not really surprising the committees push them a bit harder for justification is it? The point being that if even after all these chances, even after all this deep questioning they can't provide reasonable answers to questions such as "Why is your corporation tax payment so low, when you make so much profit here?" then yes, the law is going to change, and yes, if they persist after that, they will be prosecuted. The law can't change in an effective way however if MPs don't understand the problem in depth to make sure the changes work, and are relevant.
For the same reason newspapers get to "reject" the implementation of the Leveson enquiry.
Companies rule the government, apparently for corporations, the law is optional and something they get to decide whether they opt in to or not.
Meanwhile it's just forced on the rest of us which is a shame, because I'd also quite like to "reject" the digital economy act and RIPA just like the papers say they're rejecting legislation against their decades of abuse and illegal intrusion into people's private lives.
Absolutely but the difference is that whilst Microsoft, Facebook et. al. seem happy to sell your data as is and without even bothering to anonymise it to whoever has a bit of cash even if that means breaking privacy laws in some of the jurisdictions they operate then they do, but in contrast, Google at least doesn't seem to.
It's that subtle difference between not giving a shit about where your data goes and what happens to it with Microsoft and Facebook and actively profiting off it's distribution, even if illegal compared to at least trying their best to keep it safe and secure with companies like Google and Twitter that really matters.
One thing I've always wondered about regarding large desert solar arrays, is what happens when there's a sandstorm? I mean, what fills the generation gap when the sky is blanked out, and how does sand get removed from the array afterwards? Are the panels safe from damage from the scraping of sand being blown about or will this damage them? Will the weight of deposited sand after a sandstorm cause them to break or collapse?
I think people assume solar arrays in deserts are a magical problem-free solution, and I understand not all deserts are prone to particularly bad sandstorms, but the sahara is and it's often cited as a place for such a solar array. Has any effort been made into researching and finding solutions to such problems?
Yes, because contrary to all the pro-Microsoft, anti-Google FUD that gets posted around, Google is one of the few companies that's actually done a fairly decent job of protecting data. Even in the case where they collected a bunch of Wifi data with their street cars there's a) No evidence they did anything with it, and b) It was them who approached the various government agencies responsible for protecting privacy around the globe admitting they fucked up rather than simply deleting it and trying to cover it up.
Compare this to companies like Microsoft, whom I know has sold my MSN contact list details on given that links have been made to people with whom I have zero connection other than via MSN messenger on Facebook and LinkedIn and Facebook that has explicitly broken the law by breaching the Data Protection Act by allowing friends to opt 3rd party companies in to accessing my data - something which only I can legally do.
Therein lies the problem, the gulf between the FUD spread by Microsoft and Facebook about Google and the reality of how bad Google actually is is quite large. I've yet to find one shred of evidence of Google passing my data on without my permission, or in a way I did not expect, which is more than can be said by just about every other tech company including companies like Oracle that explicitly send me marketing e-mails despite explicitly opting out on sign up.
As the summary points out, Google also publishes a transparency report and such, and provides links to original copies of DMCA requests where they've received them and had to act on them. This is all far more than most other companies.
It's not that I'm a fanboy, I can't particularly say I support any company given that they're there to make money off me at the end of the day so hence I can never trust that they have my best interests at heart, but what I can personally judge companies on is the reality of how they've acted with regards to me personally, and both right now and historically, Google is still by far one of the most ethical tech companies out there based on empirical evidence in my experience.
For one, Google doesn't seem to need to pay for stupid FUD campaigns that have become so obvious and annoying that Microsoft and others have been doing so prominently. That alone says a lot.
I have an iPad 2 and a Nexus 7 and I don't really use either for anything anymore.
I did use them for web browsing, I don't use them for games because it's nearly all nickel and dime the fuck out of you shit, oh sorry, I mean "Free to play". Problem is my Galaxy Nexus is always in my pocket so I can rarely be arsed to go and find where I put my tablets last or whether they're still charged if all I want to do is browse the net quickly so the phone does the job fine. If I want to look at something on a bigger screen that means I have to bother to go and find where I put the tablets, but if I'm going to do that I also might as well just go straight to the PC which doesn't move such that I always know where it is and has a bigger screen and better set of input devices.
There was never anything particular productive I did on the tablets, the apps are all just shite for the most part, e-mail clients, office software etc. is all just cut down crap that is largely worthless and awkward to use compared to desktop equivalents.
Don't get me wrong, they're lovely devices in themselves, I'm just not entirely sure what I can do with them anymore that isn't better on my other devices (my phone is more portable, my desktop/laptop is more flexible and easier to use).
I notice others suggested they use them as media consumption devices, but again I don't know why I'd ever use it for this, I have a 55" TV in the living room, a 24" monitor on my computer, and a 36" screen in the bedroom. All these offer far better experiences for media consumption than the tablet.
I'm not going to agree with the Blackberry CEO and predict their demise, but I do think they're a bit like the Wii - awesomely interesting new gadget at first, but eventually just fade into the realm of uninteresting device that doesn't do anything better.
I guess it'd come in a bit more useful if my house wasn't already kitted out with decent hardware, gaming consoles and TVs/Screens in all the rooms that matter, but the fact it is means I'm always going to default to those devices, because those sorts of combinations do everything a tablet does but better, and then does some more on top.
The only use my partner has found that they beat other devices at is as digital recipe books in the kitchen, but that's really it. I suppose when I go on holiday this year they may take the dullness out of the flight too if I can find some games that aren't monotonous nickel and dime shit, but even there I'm still more inclined to just use my laptop which has full proper Minecraft on it, the Command & Conquer Collection, Diablo 3, and Starcraft II heart of the swarm.
"I honestly dont see the difference between this and a debit card as this system still uses a "broker" in the middle that knows the value of your account."
Not if you top it up from any payment method and the only value it needs to know is what's stored on the card.
Same in the UK, problem is some companies took the piss and charged more than the fee - i.e. rather than 3% they charged as much as 20% and pocketed the rest.
That practice has just been stamped out thankfully, though it didn't stop an airline doing it to me the other day, which reminds me, I have a complaint to write and a refund to demand.
I still have a supply of imidacloprid that I can cycle in when thiacloprid is ineffective in all honesty so I doubt I'll need to try anything else for some time, but I think I'd probably avoid the tobacco solution regardless simply because I'd rather not support that industry in the slightest given it's historical assaults on science.
I think you're probably right though, I think perhaps buying pure tobacco would probably be more effective than using ash or butts.
"It's actually not a bad idea if you can somehow figure out how to apply it to Disney without essentially destroying the market for unique or limited run pieces."
The issue here is that as has been alluded to in both our posts is that unique or limited run needn't be given the ease of creating high quality duplicates of each nowadays.
I don't think such markets are worth protecting if the only reason they exist is because we all just have to pretend there's something special or magical about them when in reality anyone could knock off an identical quality copy for next to nothing.
I'm not really an extreme free market advocate in that I think anything that can't stand on it's own two feet doesn't deserve to exist or anything like that, but I do think there are limits to how much support should be given to artificially created markets. In the case of single run or limited edition items I don't really have a problem if duplicates are made - people can still opt to pay for the originals if that's their thing, but anyone else who also wants one can also acquire one as a copy.
The problem with artificial markets is that you inevitably have to spend a fortune continuously propping them up. You only have to look at the methods used to try and keep the existing music recording business afloat in the last few decades - the amount of police, legislative and other public money that has been blown trying to keep that industry going under it's existing model across the globe is absurd. It would've been far better to just let the existing music industry with it's bloated monolithic organisational model collapse and newer models arise naturally (contrary to popular belief, music wouldn't just vanish - it's always existed, since man first learnt to make noise). I'd have no problem with artificial markets if they came at no cost, but when you create and maintain them you're basically using tax payers to subsidise their existence indirectly through legislative time and law enforcement - you're basically getting the many to pay so that the few who partake in such artificial models can continue to get rich. That's really not acceptable, even though that's what happens, fundamentally artificial markets bring out the worst in people.
Somewhat amusingly just this last week I've been watching the drama unfold as Lego decided to release a special edition gold lego man as part of their new range of figures and people are feeling the packets to see if there's a gold one hidden inside, and scratching and damaging the contents in the process, as well as tales of people buying 7 entire boxes ($800 or so worth and something like 400 packets) to feel through them and then return them to walmart when they don't get them. It's sad and pathetic when we're just talking about a plastic toy that isn't real gold and that could instead just be mass-produced for peanuts, the adults have gone mad and are spending hundreds each searching for the things which is great for Lego's financials, but it's a bit shit for the kids who find their toys broken and scratched, or sold out after the adults have spent a fortune and fucked around with them looking for a rare "Mr Gold". Another example is for music concert tickets, we always hear about how they sold out in seconds and how vultures then sell tickets on ebay for a fortune when they never had any intention of actually going because they're not fans. Then to make things worse, you get the stars complaining they don't make enough money because of piracy expecting copyrights to protect their ability to get rich - here's an idea, the demand is obviously there for your concerts given the speed they sell out and the amount people buy second hand tickets for, so why not fucking work for a living by doing more concerts and filling the demand miss prissy layabout popstar (or whoever) who wants to be rich for doing a few hours work a year?
If the demand can be filled it should be, it stops people getting rich off other's misery and helps ensure people don't act like dicks to obtain someth
"Likewise, if you and your wife videotaped yourselves having sex 6 years ago, and someone repairing your home found it and copied it, they'd be free to release it to the public with no repercussions because it was public domain."
Yeah except for the small problem of them being liable for invasion of privacy and theft or unauthorised use of your equipment to make a copy.
This sort of thing would be blocked by other laws, copyright is irrelevant to it as it's never really copyright that's brought into question for stolen sex tapes anyway - usually just outright theft of the original recording, trespassing on top if they went somewhere they had no permission to go to acquire it, or simple invasion of privacy and the reputational damages done to you you could sue them into the ground for.
Yes absolutely, if someone has sold you a one of a kind painting then it's yours and should be entirely up to you what you do with it then.
If it's a painting that money can be made from by selling duplicates then it's not unfair on the artist if you do that - the artist could just as well have done it themselves but they opted to sell it you.
I don't see the problem with your hypothetical scenario to be honest.
I think it's key to realise why most people would say the torrent was like a form of advertising - the chances are 99% of the people that downloaded that torrent had never even heard of the game but were just browsing the torrent sites looking for something to do. Along comes this game torrent as they refresh the site and they think "Oh, that sounds alright, I'll try that". Had the torrent never been there they may never have known the game even existed. So here's the thing - if instead of a crippled version of the game, what would've happened if he'd posted a "Lite" version of the game that made it clear a full version was available at a certain URL for $8? I'd wager a non-negligible proportion of those 3104 downloaders would've been turned into customers if they liked the game. I suspect others would've gone to pirate the non-Lite version if they could find it, and more would just not bother full stop because they thought it was shit, but either way they created a problem for themselves here and missed and opportunity to boost sales.
For what it's worth I'm a developer by profession also, and have also made some efforts into indie development (and plan to ramp that up this year) but here's the thing - I don't do it with the expectation that I'm going to profit, that I'm going to make money. I'm not going to risk giving up my day job which I know I can make money in because I get a decent salary from it. I'm going to do it as a hobby, because I enjoy it, and I'm going to make something I want to make. Any sale I then make is a bonus, if I really succeed then maybe one day I will quit my day job and go full time. What I'm not going to do though is assume I have some god given right to make money doing it and complain if it turns out that I actually don't.
"You say these guys are whining. I disagree. I read their "blog". 93.6% non-legit downloads is not whining. That's a wake up call to the morals of our society and the morals of our IT community."
No it is not, what it should be is a wake up call to them that their strategy is flawed, that people don't know about the existence of their game, and that far more people heard about their game via their torrent site posting than they did. What this should tell them is that their marketing campaign is a complete failure.
"These guys did everything I want a gaming company to do. They put out a demo for free -- try before you buy."
Which is what use if no one even knows it exists?
"They made a cheap game and put an affordable price tag on it."
Same as above.
"93.6%, however, is everyone's problem -- theirs, mine, and yours."
No it's not, it's entirely their problem. Ask Popcap, ask Rovio, ask Notch - these guys show that if you get the marketing right and produce decent products then you don't have to care about piracy, you can make millions regardless.
Piracy as always is being used here as a target of blame. They're blaming piracy because it's easier than admitting they fucked up in ensuring the first place people even heard about their game was a torrent site. The fact only what, 200 people bought the game legit demonstrates that awareness outside of the torrent was basically non-existent.
If you genuinely want to go into indie dev you have to get passed that "I'm much more developer than salesman." - you're going to have to be more than that, you're going to have to manage your finances, be a chief exec, be a project manager, be technical support, and yes, be a salesman/marketer - don't go into it assuming you can be just a developer and just automatically succeed - that's exactly where these guys have failed. The market and industry wont bend to the way you want to do things, you have to adapt to the market, that's the reality, and again, that's what these guys simply did not and apparently still cannot grasp, instead preferring to blame everyone else for their failings.
"AC, maybe instead of ranting against the devs, you should comment about a way around this mess that we as developers and consumers have dug ourselves into."
There is no mess, it's just the market, and that's why it's fine to rant against the devs - the devs have no concept of the market they've entered but are whining about it anyway.
People have a finite amount of money to spend on entertainment each month, for some that figure might be $0 if they're cash strapped, for others it may be $2,000, or for Bill Gates it might be $200,000,000. For most people though it'll probably be around the $50 - $500 mark I would guess, and that figure is what's left after they've bought food, fuel, paid their mortgage, their bills, and all the other essentials to live.
Competing for that money, you have everything from restaurants, bars, cinemas, theatres, holidays, computer games, blurays, music cds, gadgets, cable TV subscriptions, books, and so on. If you enter into any one of these industries you have to realise that you're competing against not just everyone else in that industry, but all these other industries and their constituent participants too.
What this means in practice, is that when you provide a product in this industry, you have to ensure that people prioritise that product enough to justify it's purchase over all the other potential entertainment expenditures before that monthly disposable income runs out. It may be that someone runs out before their next pay day, so are still bored, but they've run out, so they either stay bored, or they resort to piracy. Either way, if they pirated your product, they had no money left so couldn't have bought it anyway, and you weren't competitive enough against all the other entertainment outlets to get their money when they had it.
This is a simple fact of making music, or working in the games industry - you have to have a product competitive enough to beat absolutely everyone else in so many other industries.
This is also why some people are bitching at the developers and quite rightly so - they don't get it. Yes their game may only be $8, but they're assuming everyone has $8 spare that they wouldn't rather spend on someone else's product at a point at which they're bored. They're making one of two assumptions - either that people have an infinite pool of money and so could easily just buy their product, or that everyone believes their product is simply that much better than every other game, music cd, pub, restaurant, film and so forth on the market.
Both these assumptions are false, and they're idiots for not understanding otherwise. This is why the "make a better product" argument is the only argument that makes sense- because the first assumption will never be true, so the only option is to try and make sure that your product is in fact a priority purchase for people over the competition.
But these things don't occur in a vacuum, it may be that if they improve their product so that everyone buys it, that's $8 that isn't going to go to say, a restaurant chain, and so maybe that restaurant chain is going to go bust instead.
In a competitive market not everyone can survive, someone is going to go bust one way or the other, the only way to make sure it's not you is to provide a product people want to pay for over your competition.
Or maybe it's simply that the UK and US have the most successful university systems in the UK and so foreign researchers are happy to flock here because they recognise that.
There are far more "foreigners" than there are Brits or Americans, so if we allow the best and brightest in from other countries it makes sense that we're going to be outnumbered.
Personally I welcome it. More intellect in our society is a fantastic thing.
Sure, I'm told used cigarette ash soaked in water is effective too, presumably because some of the nicotine gets into the water, but I don't smoke nor do I know anyone that does so I can't vouch for it personally!
The problem is that all of these are contact insecticides though and require you to both be able to see the pest (which isn't easy with true RSM) and get to it.
I grow quite a lot of cacti and one some the ribs or wool is so dense there's absolutely no hope of hitting them with a contact insecticide, so systemics are the only option.
I do use natural controls where I can, I've even placed a lot of insect houses and attractants round the garden for predators such as ladybirds and lacewings, but there are some plants where systemics are the only option, and when I keep those plants in isolation and only spray in the garage etc. where the impact on insects is going to be non-existent it's a bit frustrating.
It's more than just common thinking, when you order online groceries in the UK just about every supermarket I can think of (and some other stores even, like John Lewis) will, when selecting delivery time slots, show you slots where a delivery van is going to be in your area delivering to someone else so that you can select it as an eco option.
We didn't need a university study for this, in the UK companies have been aware of it and offering it as an option for customers for many many years already.
"Kind of puts holes into all of the "just make a better product" arguments, huh?"
How do you come to that conclusion? Even if the pirated copies were all sales this game would still be a complete flop so can't by any measure be deemed to be a "better product". If anything this proves the point - if you produce crap, people aren't going to pay for it.
That'd be true if it was done right, but the decision is a complete and utter screw up.
Only 3 types of neonicotinoid insecticides have been banned - imidacloprid, clothianidin, and thiamethoxam. The problems with the ban are twofold:
1) There are other neonicotinoids such as thiacloprid that work in an almost identical manner to imidacloprid. These will be used instead, hence if neonicotinoids are the problem, then this temporary ban is going to give misleading results as the problem will still exist due to other neonicotinoids in use.
2) For some reason the ban covers amateur gardeners and use on house plants and agricultural use of flowering crops, but not non-flowering crops. I can't for the life of me fathom why very light use on the order of only millilitres by people on house plants is banned, but not the millions of acres of European farm land that grows non-flowering crops. This means bees are still going to pass through vast swathes of farm land that are covered in this stuff - but don't worry, if one flies into your house at least it wont get caught by the stuff in there. Stupid, really stupid.
So you'll have to excuse me if I can't help but feel this experiment has been engineered to fail and to piss off the public. There's literally no logic in allowing it's use to remain on so many millions of acres, and to allow continued use of other neonicotinoids when you're supposedly trying to isolate them as part the problem. There's also no logic in allowing it to remain on such cereal crops etc. whilst preventing the average joe using it as pest control in their house or in tiny amounts and tiny areas of their garden or greenhouse where the impact will be negligible - this seems designed simply to piss off the public.
The cynic in me says this is the EU commission trying to pretend it's listening to the public whilst creating a climate of support for the chemical companies involved. Companies like Bayer will be able to scream "Look, we told you it wasn't our insecticides, the problem is still there!" even though it'll likely be there other insecticides like thiacloprid that are the very reason the problem is still there. Amateur gardeners and house plants owners will get repeatedly fucked off that they now have much more limited options in dealing with invasive pests such as mealy bugs, red spider mite and so forth which can and have gained immunity to thiacloprid due to the fact it's now the only thing on the market for amateur growers. As a result you have amateurs up in arms that they now have no pest control outside thiacloprid - other insecticides exist for commercial use that aren't available to amateur growers so immunity on commercial crops isn't a problem as they can cycle through the options.
It's just a complete failure of a decision all around. I'm 100% behind the cause of helping bees, and I don't like how much pesticides are sprayed not just that are systemic and end up in our food chain like all those I've discussed here, but that end up in our environment too. Despite this I can't support this ban because it seems engineered to fail and may set back public opinion on the issue by decades. This is not the solution.
It's not a full ban on neonicotinoid insecticides, only three of them. Other neonicotinoid insecticides like Thiacloprid exist and act in pretty much the exact same way as Imidacloprid and the others that were banned anyway, so I suspect they'll just use that.
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The problem is that this hurts companies that are genuinely making a loss through a genuine need for restructuring and so forth.
What really needs to happen is to reorganise the way in which profits are calculated and at what point tax occurs.
Right now, the problem is that tax is taken after every other possible deduction on revenue has been calculated. The key is to move it up the chain of importance (but not all the way up to revenue). Realistically tax should come after genuine expenditure like staff wages, but before things like royalty payments which are heavily abused. This would keep royalty payments purely for what they're intended, as there'd be no reason to make them up arbitrarily for tax dodging purposes.
Tax shouldn't be pretty much the last thing (or in many cases, the last thing) to be calculated, it should be forced to be prioritised higher, and should come after only real expenses. This would also force companies to have sane policy on royalty payments and such because it wouldn't help them avoid tax, but would have a real impact on their real actual profit.
These parliamentary committees exist to investigate issues in society. They have the option of summoning individuals or representatives of corporations to get to the bottom of those issues. If those individuals lie to them (as Google did in this case) then they have the right to recall them and question them hard about that.
Saying it's a waste of time and is guaranteed to achieve nothing is absurd, how the fuck do you think policy gets made if politicians aren't allowed to call in relevant people to explain how things work and to see if they can provide any justification for their position if they lie, or are perceived to be on the wrong side of public opinion?
The whole reason this committee has been pursuing these lines of questioning is to see whether the law needs to change precisely so HMRC can prosecute, but when companies like Google and Amazon come to the committee and either lie, or fail to answer simple questions, then it's not really surprising the committees push them a bit harder for justification is it? The point being that if even after all these chances, even after all this deep questioning they can't provide reasonable answers to questions such as "Why is your corporation tax payment so low, when you make so much profit here?" then yes, the law is going to change, and yes, if they persist after that, they will be prosecuted. The law can't change in an effective way however if MPs don't understand the problem in depth to make sure the changes work, and are relevant.
For the same reason newspapers get to "reject" the implementation of the Leveson enquiry.
Companies rule the government, apparently for corporations, the law is optional and something they get to decide whether they opt in to or not.
Meanwhile it's just forced on the rest of us which is a shame, because I'd also quite like to "reject" the digital economy act and RIPA just like the papers say they're rejecting legislation against their decades of abuse and illegal intrusion into people's private lives.
Absolutely but the difference is that whilst Microsoft, Facebook et. al. seem happy to sell your data as is and without even bothering to anonymise it to whoever has a bit of cash even if that means breaking privacy laws in some of the jurisdictions they operate then they do, but in contrast, Google at least doesn't seem to.
It's that subtle difference between not giving a shit about where your data goes and what happens to it with Microsoft and Facebook and actively profiting off it's distribution, even if illegal compared to at least trying their best to keep it safe and secure with companies like Google and Twitter that really matters.
One thing I've always wondered about regarding large desert solar arrays, is what happens when there's a sandstorm? I mean, what fills the generation gap when the sky is blanked out, and how does sand get removed from the array afterwards? Are the panels safe from damage from the scraping of sand being blown about or will this damage them? Will the weight of deposited sand after a sandstorm cause them to break or collapse?
I think people assume solar arrays in deserts are a magical problem-free solution, and I understand not all deserts are prone to particularly bad sandstorms, but the sahara is and it's often cited as a place for such a solar array. Has any effort been made into researching and finding solutions to such problems?
Yes, because contrary to all the pro-Microsoft, anti-Google FUD that gets posted around, Google is one of the few companies that's actually done a fairly decent job of protecting data. Even in the case where they collected a bunch of Wifi data with their street cars there's a) No evidence they did anything with it, and b) It was them who approached the various government agencies responsible for protecting privacy around the globe admitting they fucked up rather than simply deleting it and trying to cover it up.
Compare this to companies like Microsoft, whom I know has sold my MSN contact list details on given that links have been made to people with whom I have zero connection other than via MSN messenger on Facebook and LinkedIn and Facebook that has explicitly broken the law by breaching the Data Protection Act by allowing friends to opt 3rd party companies in to accessing my data - something which only I can legally do.
Therein lies the problem, the gulf between the FUD spread by Microsoft and Facebook about Google and the reality of how bad Google actually is is quite large. I've yet to find one shred of evidence of Google passing my data on without my permission, or in a way I did not expect, which is more than can be said by just about every other tech company including companies like Oracle that explicitly send me marketing e-mails despite explicitly opting out on sign up.
As the summary points out, Google also publishes a transparency report and such, and provides links to original copies of DMCA requests where they've received them and had to act on them. This is all far more than most other companies.
It's not that I'm a fanboy, I can't particularly say I support any company given that they're there to make money off me at the end of the day so hence I can never trust that they have my best interests at heart, but what I can personally judge companies on is the reality of how they've acted with regards to me personally, and both right now and historically, Google is still by far one of the most ethical tech companies out there based on empirical evidence in my experience.
For one, Google doesn't seem to need to pay for stupid FUD campaigns that have become so obvious and annoying that Microsoft and others have been doing so prominently. That alone says a lot.
I have an iPad 2 and a Nexus 7 and I don't really use either for anything anymore.
I did use them for web browsing, I don't use them for games because it's nearly all nickel and dime the fuck out of you shit, oh sorry, I mean "Free to play". Problem is my Galaxy Nexus is always in my pocket so I can rarely be arsed to go and find where I put my tablets last or whether they're still charged if all I want to do is browse the net quickly so the phone does the job fine. If I want to look at something on a bigger screen that means I have to bother to go and find where I put the tablets, but if I'm going to do that I also might as well just go straight to the PC which doesn't move such that I always know where it is and has a bigger screen and better set of input devices.
There was never anything particular productive I did on the tablets, the apps are all just shite for the most part, e-mail clients, office software etc. is all just cut down crap that is largely worthless and awkward to use compared to desktop equivalents.
Don't get me wrong, they're lovely devices in themselves, I'm just not entirely sure what I can do with them anymore that isn't better on my other devices (my phone is more portable, my desktop/laptop is more flexible and easier to use).
I notice others suggested they use them as media consumption devices, but again I don't know why I'd ever use it for this, I have a 55" TV in the living room, a 24" monitor on my computer, and a 36" screen in the bedroom. All these offer far better experiences for media consumption than the tablet.
I'm not going to agree with the Blackberry CEO and predict their demise, but I do think they're a bit like the Wii - awesomely interesting new gadget at first, but eventually just fade into the realm of uninteresting device that doesn't do anything better.
I guess it'd come in a bit more useful if my house wasn't already kitted out with decent hardware, gaming consoles and TVs/Screens in all the rooms that matter, but the fact it is means I'm always going to default to those devices, because those sorts of combinations do everything a tablet does but better, and then does some more on top.
The only use my partner has found that they beat other devices at is as digital recipe books in the kitchen, but that's really it. I suppose when I go on holiday this year they may take the dullness out of the flight too if I can find some games that aren't monotonous nickel and dime shit, but even there I'm still more inclined to just use my laptop which has full proper Minecraft on it, the Command & Conquer Collection, Diablo 3, and Starcraft II heart of the swarm.
"I honestly dont see the difference between this and a debit card as this system still uses a "broker" in the middle that knows the value of your account."
Not if you top it up from any payment method and the only value it needs to know is what's stored on the card.
Same in the UK, problem is some companies took the piss and charged more than the fee - i.e. rather than 3% they charged as much as 20% and pocketed the rest.
That practice has just been stamped out thankfully, though it didn't stop an airline doing it to me the other day, which reminds me, I have a complaint to write and a refund to demand.
Ah yes, usually meaning "Only in the US". I forgot they made that braindead decision.
I still have a supply of imidacloprid that I can cycle in when thiacloprid is ineffective in all honesty so I doubt I'll need to try anything else for some time, but I think I'd probably avoid the tobacco solution regardless simply because I'd rather not support that industry in the slightest given it's historical assaults on science.
I think you're probably right though, I think perhaps buying pure tobacco would probably be more effective than using ash or butts.
"It's actually not a bad idea if you can somehow figure out how to apply it to Disney without essentially destroying the market for unique or limited run pieces."
The issue here is that as has been alluded to in both our posts is that unique or limited run needn't be given the ease of creating high quality duplicates of each nowadays.
I don't think such markets are worth protecting if the only reason they exist is because we all just have to pretend there's something special or magical about them when in reality anyone could knock off an identical quality copy for next to nothing.
I'm not really an extreme free market advocate in that I think anything that can't stand on it's own two feet doesn't deserve to exist or anything like that, but I do think there are limits to how much support should be given to artificially created markets. In the case of single run or limited edition items I don't really have a problem if duplicates are made - people can still opt to pay for the originals if that's their thing, but anyone else who also wants one can also acquire one as a copy.
The problem with artificial markets is that you inevitably have to spend a fortune continuously propping them up. You only have to look at the methods used to try and keep the existing music recording business afloat in the last few decades - the amount of police, legislative and other public money that has been blown trying to keep that industry going under it's existing model across the globe is absurd. It would've been far better to just let the existing music industry with it's bloated monolithic organisational model collapse and newer models arise naturally (contrary to popular belief, music wouldn't just vanish - it's always existed, since man first learnt to make noise). I'd have no problem with artificial markets if they came at no cost, but when you create and maintain them you're basically using tax payers to subsidise their existence indirectly through legislative time and law enforcement - you're basically getting the many to pay so that the few who partake in such artificial models can continue to get rich. That's really not acceptable, even though that's what happens, fundamentally artificial markets bring out the worst in people.
Somewhat amusingly just this last week I've been watching the drama unfold as Lego decided to release a special edition gold lego man as part of their new range of figures and people are feeling the packets to see if there's a gold one hidden inside, and scratching and damaging the contents in the process, as well as tales of people buying 7 entire boxes ($800 or so worth and something like 400 packets) to feel through them and then return them to walmart when they don't get them. It's sad and pathetic when we're just talking about a plastic toy that isn't real gold and that could instead just be mass-produced for peanuts, the adults have gone mad and are spending hundreds each searching for the things which is great for Lego's financials, but it's a bit shit for the kids who find their toys broken and scratched, or sold out after the adults have spent a fortune and fucked around with them looking for a rare "Mr Gold". Another example is for music concert tickets, we always hear about how they sold out in seconds and how vultures then sell tickets on ebay for a fortune when they never had any intention of actually going because they're not fans. Then to make things worse, you get the stars complaining they don't make enough money because of piracy expecting copyrights to protect their ability to get rich - here's an idea, the demand is obviously there for your concerts given the speed they sell out and the amount people buy second hand tickets for, so why not fucking work for a living by doing more concerts and filling the demand miss prissy layabout popstar (or whoever) who wants to be rich for doing a few hours work a year?
If the demand can be filled it should be, it stops people getting rich off other's misery and helps ensure people don't act like dicks to obtain someth
"created by natural persons"
Is there such thing as an unnatural person?
"Likewise, if you and your wife videotaped yourselves having sex 6 years ago, and someone repairing your home found it and copied it, they'd be free to release it to the public with no repercussions because it was public domain."
Yeah except for the small problem of them being liable for invasion of privacy and theft or unauthorised use of your equipment to make a copy.
This sort of thing would be blocked by other laws, copyright is irrelevant to it as it's never really copyright that's brought into question for stolen sex tapes anyway - usually just outright theft of the original recording, trespassing on top if they went somewhere they had no permission to go to acquire it, or simple invasion of privacy and the reputational damages done to you you could sue them into the ground for.
Yes absolutely, if someone has sold you a one of a kind painting then it's yours and should be entirely up to you what you do with it then.
If it's a painting that money can be made from by selling duplicates then it's not unfair on the artist if you do that - the artist could just as well have done it themselves but they opted to sell it you.
I don't see the problem with your hypothetical scenario to be honest.
By killing and breaking them?
I think it's key to realise why most people would say the torrent was like a form of advertising - the chances are 99% of the people that downloaded that torrent had never even heard of the game but were just browsing the torrent sites looking for something to do. Along comes this game torrent as they refresh the site and they think "Oh, that sounds alright, I'll try that". Had the torrent never been there they may never have known the game even existed. So here's the thing - if instead of a crippled version of the game, what would've happened if he'd posted a "Lite" version of the game that made it clear a full version was available at a certain URL for $8? I'd wager a non-negligible proportion of those 3104 downloaders would've been turned into customers if they liked the game. I suspect others would've gone to pirate the non-Lite version if they could find it, and more would just not bother full stop because they thought it was shit, but either way they created a problem for themselves here and missed and opportunity to boost sales.
For what it's worth I'm a developer by profession also, and have also made some efforts into indie development (and plan to ramp that up this year) but here's the thing - I don't do it with the expectation that I'm going to profit, that I'm going to make money. I'm not going to risk giving up my day job which I know I can make money in because I get a decent salary from it. I'm going to do it as a hobby, because I enjoy it, and I'm going to make something I want to make. Any sale I then make is a bonus, if I really succeed then maybe one day I will quit my day job and go full time. What I'm not going to do though is assume I have some god given right to make money doing it and complain if it turns out that I actually don't.
"You say these guys are whining. I disagree. I read their "blog". 93.6% non-legit downloads is not whining. That's a wake up call to the morals of our society and the morals of our IT community."
No it is not, what it should be is a wake up call to them that their strategy is flawed, that people don't know about the existence of their game, and that far more people heard about their game via their torrent site posting than they did. What this should tell them is that their marketing campaign is a complete failure.
"These guys did everything I want a gaming company to do. They put out a demo for free -- try before you buy."
Which is what use if no one even knows it exists?
"They made a cheap game and put an affordable price tag on it."
Same as above.
"93.6%, however, is everyone's problem -- theirs, mine, and yours."
No it's not, it's entirely their problem. Ask Popcap, ask Rovio, ask Notch - these guys show that if you get the marketing right and produce decent products then you don't have to care about piracy, you can make millions regardless.
Piracy as always is being used here as a target of blame. They're blaming piracy because it's easier than admitting they fucked up in ensuring the first place people even heard about their game was a torrent site. The fact only what, 200 people bought the game legit demonstrates that awareness outside of the torrent was basically non-existent.
If you genuinely want to go into indie dev you have to get passed that "I'm much more developer than salesman." - you're going to have to be more than that, you're going to have to manage your finances, be a chief exec, be a project manager, be technical support, and yes, be a salesman/marketer - don't go into it assuming you can be just a developer and just automatically succeed - that's exactly where these guys have failed. The market and industry wont bend to the way you want to do things, you have to adapt to the market, that's the reality, and again, that's what these guys simply did not and apparently still cannot grasp, instead preferring to blame everyone else for their failings.
"AC, maybe instead of ranting against the devs, you should comment about a way around this mess that we as developers and consumers have dug ourselves into."
There is no mess, it's just the market, and that's why it's fine to rant against the devs - the devs have no concept of the market they've entered but are whining about it anyway.
People have a finite amount of money to spend on entertainment each month, for some that figure might be $0 if they're cash strapped, for others it may be $2,000, or for Bill Gates it might be $200,000,000. For most people though it'll probably be around the $50 - $500 mark I would guess, and that figure is what's left after they've bought food, fuel, paid their mortgage, their bills, and all the other essentials to live.
Competing for that money, you have everything from restaurants, bars, cinemas, theatres, holidays, computer games, blurays, music cds, gadgets, cable TV subscriptions, books, and so on. If you enter into any one of these industries you have to realise that you're competing against not just everyone else in that industry, but all these other industries and their constituent participants too.
What this means in practice, is that when you provide a product in this industry, you have to ensure that people prioritise that product enough to justify it's purchase over all the other potential entertainment expenditures before that monthly disposable income runs out. It may be that someone runs out before their next pay day, so are still bored, but they've run out, so they either stay bored, or they resort to piracy. Either way, if they pirated your product, they had no money left so couldn't have bought it anyway, and you weren't competitive enough against all the other entertainment outlets to get their money when they had it.
This is a simple fact of making music, or working in the games industry - you have to have a product competitive enough to beat absolutely everyone else in so many other industries.
This is also why some people are bitching at the developers and quite rightly so - they don't get it. Yes their game may only be $8, but they're assuming everyone has $8 spare that they wouldn't rather spend on someone else's product at a point at which they're bored. They're making one of two assumptions - either that people have an infinite pool of money and so could easily just buy their product, or that everyone believes their product is simply that much better than every other game, music cd, pub, restaurant, film and so forth on the market.
Both these assumptions are false, and they're idiots for not understanding otherwise. This is why the "make a better product" argument is the only argument that makes sense- because the first assumption will never be true, so the only option is to try and make sure that your product is in fact a priority purchase for people over the competition.
But these things don't occur in a vacuum, it may be that if they improve their product so that everyone buys it, that's $8 that isn't going to go to say, a restaurant chain, and so maybe that restaurant chain is going to go bust instead.
In a competitive market not everyone can survive, someone is going to go bust one way or the other, the only way to make sure it's not you is to provide a product people want to pay for over your competition.
Or maybe it's simply that the UK and US have the most successful university systems in the UK and so foreign researchers are happy to flock here because they recognise that.
There are far more "foreigners" than there are Brits or Americans, so if we allow the best and brightest in from other countries it makes sense that we're going to be outnumbered.
Personally I welcome it. More intellect in our society is a fantastic thing.
"At the least this dev deserves to have only those who have paid, receive this game."
Why? He was the one who fucking distributed the unpaid copy to everyone else in the first place.
Sure, I'm told used cigarette ash soaked in water is effective too, presumably because some of the nicotine gets into the water, but I don't smoke nor do I know anyone that does so I can't vouch for it personally!
The problem is that all of these are contact insecticides though and require you to both be able to see the pest (which isn't easy with true RSM) and get to it.
I grow quite a lot of cacti and one some the ribs or wool is so dense there's absolutely no hope of hitting them with a contact insecticide, so systemics are the only option.
I do use natural controls where I can, I've even placed a lot of insect houses and attractants round the garden for predators such as ladybirds and lacewings, but there are some plants where systemics are the only option, and when I keep those plants in isolation and only spray in the garage etc. where the impact on insects is going to be non-existent it's a bit frustrating.
It's more than just common thinking, when you order online groceries in the UK just about every supermarket I can think of (and some other stores even, like John Lewis) will, when selecting delivery time slots, show you slots where a delivery van is going to be in your area delivering to someone else so that you can select it as an eco option.
We didn't need a university study for this, in the UK companies have been aware of it and offering it as an option for customers for many many years already.
"Kind of puts holes into all of the "just make a better product" arguments, huh?"
How do you come to that conclusion? Even if the pirated copies were all sales this game would still be a complete flop so can't by any measure be deemed to be a "better product". If anything this proves the point - if you produce crap, people aren't going to pay for it.
That'd be true if it was done right, but the decision is a complete and utter screw up.
Only 3 types of neonicotinoid insecticides have been banned - imidacloprid, clothianidin, and thiamethoxam. The problems with the ban are twofold:
1) There are other neonicotinoids such as thiacloprid that work in an almost identical manner to imidacloprid. These will be used instead, hence if neonicotinoids are the problem, then this temporary ban is going to give misleading results as the problem will still exist due to other neonicotinoids in use.
2) For some reason the ban covers amateur gardeners and use on house plants and agricultural use of flowering crops, but not non-flowering crops. I can't for the life of me fathom why very light use on the order of only millilitres by people on house plants is banned, but not the millions of acres of European farm land that grows non-flowering crops. This means bees are still going to pass through vast swathes of farm land that are covered in this stuff - but don't worry, if one flies into your house at least it wont get caught by the stuff in there. Stupid, really stupid.
So you'll have to excuse me if I can't help but feel this experiment has been engineered to fail and to piss off the public. There's literally no logic in allowing it's use to remain on so many millions of acres, and to allow continued use of other neonicotinoids when you're supposedly trying to isolate them as part the problem. There's also no logic in allowing it to remain on such cereal crops etc. whilst preventing the average joe using it as pest control in their house or in tiny amounts and tiny areas of their garden or greenhouse where the impact will be negligible - this seems designed simply to piss off the public.
The cynic in me says this is the EU commission trying to pretend it's listening to the public whilst creating a climate of support for the chemical companies involved. Companies like Bayer will be able to scream "Look, we told you it wasn't our insecticides, the problem is still there!" even though it'll likely be there other insecticides like thiacloprid that are the very reason the problem is still there. Amateur gardeners and house plants owners will get repeatedly fucked off that they now have much more limited options in dealing with invasive pests such as mealy bugs, red spider mite and so forth which can and have gained immunity to thiacloprid due to the fact it's now the only thing on the market for amateur growers. As a result you have amateurs up in arms that they now have no pest control outside thiacloprid - other insecticides exist for commercial use that aren't available to amateur growers so immunity on commercial crops isn't a problem as they can cycle through the options.
It's just a complete failure of a decision all around. I'm 100% behind the cause of helping bees, and I don't like how much pesticides are sprayed not just that are systemic and end up in our food chain like all those I've discussed here, but that end up in our environment too. Despite this I can't support this ban because it seems engineered to fail and may set back public opinion on the issue by decades. This is not the solution.
It's not a full ban on neonicotinoid insecticides, only three of them. Other neonicotinoid insecticides like Thiacloprid exist and act in pretty much the exact same way as Imidacloprid and the others that were banned anyway, so I suspect they'll just use that.