Of course I am! Spending money doesn't guarantee success (see Mission Earth for a good example) But name a blockbuster movie that DIDN'T involve a billion-dollar budget.
Give me a definition of a blockbuster. Is Clerks a Blockbuster? It's made well over 1000% of its production cost (~20K to make, financed on credit cards, grossed boxoffice of around $2 million and that doesn't even come close to its total profit to date from home video and merchandising). I can't even name a movie that had a billion dollar budget in adjusted dollars.
Sure can. China has over a BILLION people. China also has crap for Intellectual Property law. Are you going to tell me that despite having 5 TIMES the population of the United States, that a decent movie idea hasn't come out of there? And, perhaps you could tell me where the epicenter of the large, booming Chinese movie industry is?
Wow, talk about missing the mark with your example. First off, the Chinese movie industry is pretty extensive considering that a huge percentage of their population is essentially living in third world conditions. Secondly, the means of distribution are severely limited in terms of venues due to little things like censorship review boards. Third off, China has been through several social upheavals in the last 100 years that have turned their society upside down, not to mention having had many art forms (at the least) suppressed. Piracy is waaayyyy down on the lists of factors that keep China from making "Armageddon".
Where's the Chinese version of the Matrix? Their movie industry is weak and pathetic.
Aside from the fact that a ton of the conventions used in the Matrix came from chinese and japanese cinema, it seems that you equate "expensive and pretty" with "good". China has lots of good movies, they're just not massively expensive to make. Furthermore, the Matrix really didn't break new ground in terms of movie making aside from Bullet Time. In terms of plot and cinematic ideas, the basis goes back to 19th century philosophy, if not further (i.e. Plato's Cave). Not to mention that the Wachowski brothers deliberately based the visual look on Ghost in the Shell (making the conceptual designer watch the GitS movie and say 'we want it to look like that' - literally).
No, but later in this post you imply that very strongly when you write: Anyone can make anything, but they are not and should not be entitled to make money from it. What part of my "straw man" argument is not well supported by a statement like this?
I said they are not entitled to make it. Entitlement means that simply by making something, they *entitled* to make money off it. If I make a little doodle and put it on a website, no one is obligated to pay me anything for it. I can *try* to make money off it, but I probably won't. That is the difference. I didn't say everything should be free, I said no one should be entitled to profit.
Pay close attention: Copying copyrighted materials in an infringing way reduces the likelyhood of a purchase of that material. In an indirect way, such activities take away the profit potential of said created material. I know it's a very difficult concept for you to understand, and that's why words like "idiot" come to mind. Sorry you're taking it personally. Feel free to call me a "shill" or something if it makes you feel better.
You seem to be a person who has a hard time controlling their temper. Unfortunate.
Your reasoning is questionable. By that same thought process, I can argue that competition is theft, since they take away the potential profits of a creator. I'm pretty sure that Microsoft would like this to be true in, say, the realm of IIS vs Apache.
Because they created it. It's theirs. We want to encourage more to be created so we all have something to enjoy. I like good quality software, (like Linux, OpenOffice, KDE) good quality books (Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, et
At the risk of posing a truism, fixed costs are only fixed until they're not. Consider the fixed business costs of the past that are no longer fixed today in a whole variety of industries.
This guy pretty much hits it dead on. Just because a company makes something and it takes money, doesn't mean that its smart for them to sell it at price point that makes consumers look elsewhere for it. Under the gp post's ideas, Waterworld is entitled to make money because it cost money, just so long as people are somewhere torrenting it (which, while making me ask "WHY?", I'm sure is happening as we speak).
It seems an odd bit of cognitive dissonance to say on one hand, "let the market decide" and on the other "the market isn't letting me make money, so we should change the rules so that I'm guaranteed profits". The market changed, content creators are in the process of learning how to change with it. Some will figure it out faster than others, and the behemoths like the RIAA and MPAA are gonna take a long while before they can overcome their corporate inertia and adjust (if ever).
Gotta love the personal attacks that come out in these discussions.
It takes time and money to create the "stuff" in question. Of course it does, I didn't say it doesn't.
There are very, very VERY few "free" movies worth anything. There are a few Star Trek fan mini-movies that are almost watchable, usually about on par with the original (cheesy, campy) original ST series. Otherwise, that's it.
But, introduce money into the equation, and suddenly you get watchable, interesting content. So if we don't provide some mechanism to fund the creation of these valuable works, what do you suggest we do to encourage their creation? Are you seriously suggesting that what separates a good movie from a lackluster movie is money? Is that really what you want to argue? What about movies that take a lot of money to make, but do poorly due to the fact that they suck? Can you name an example of a movie that was "good" but wasn't profitable due to "pirating"?
Oh, that's right - you figure it all should be free, and you should have an unlimited right to take it, under the misguided notion that whether or not copyright infringement is stealing involves the other consumer? Ah, strawmen. I do love them. I didn't say all content should be free. It's easy to win an argument when you make up the opposing side from whole cloth.
idiot. "Copyright infringement" is theft (directly or indirectly) from the producer of the copyrighted work! Even the beloved "super free" GPL only works in the presence of strong copyright law! I say that we let the producer decide how he/she/they want(s) to get compensated, and let the marketplace decide the best formula.
Indirect theft? Is that when I steal from someone who has stolen? Maybe I get someone else to steal it for me? Or maybe I use one of those little plastic grabber things to take something off a shelf...
Why do we want to let the creator decide how they get compensated? Anyone can make anything, but they are not and should not be entitled to make money from it. The most successful creators/businesses/etc figure out what their target audience wants and then figure out how to profit by getting it to them. The entire "zomg pirates" rationale hinges on the idea that a huge percentage of consumers don't buy anything that is in any possible manner freely obtainable. If that were the case, no one would buy just about anything. This is, of course, the rationale behind DRM, where the attempt is to raise the level technological expertise necessary to make a digital copy above that of the general consumer population. And to some extent it works, except that it also violates things like fair use in the process, and makes it difficult for consumers to do things they are used to being able to do, like play music on other people's devices without jumping through hoops. That's pretty much the definiton of "not giving the consumer what they want."
No it doesn't. Theft can (and is) defined in various ways - it basically gets down to depriving a rightful owner of something that is due. Ever heard of theft of service? This can happen when you dump your truckload of garbage into someone else's dumpster, tap into a cable feed without paying for it, or any of several other means of gaining undue benefit.
While your point is well taken, I'd argue that in the garbage case you're depriving someone of their ability to dump their own garbage, so not a really direct comparison.
And I'd argue that "theft of service" is BS unless your action deprived someone from getting something they should. No one really deserves revenue, though they certainly can strive to gain some.
Note that I never said above that in the current legal environment that "piracy" isn't illegal, just that I find the entire thought process behind it highly suspect, since people are perfectly capable of profiting without making things up like IP.
Gotta love frothing rants in response to well-reasoned arguments, but I'll respond in spite of it.
oh please... you are missing out the description of your brave new world business model. Where nobody gets paid for creating ANYTHING that can be easily copied.
I suspect that you've deliberately misunderstood and are intentionally misrepresenting my statements, since I didn't write that. However, if you make paper airplanes and try to sell them, should no one else be able to make copies of your paper airplane?
Do you have ANY idea how much work is involved in making something like Photoshop, or The lord Of The rings? or Halo? Why the fuck is anyone going to spend any money on making entertainmnt if it can be freely copied without compensation?
Because by and large consumers like to pay for the Real Thing. This is the idea behind the Windows Genuine Advantage bit, though obviously it was clumsily implemented. If you have a shitty product, no one is going to buy it. Should we be also legally guarantee that if someone makes something, they will get revenue from it, even if it sucks?
Lord of the Rings cost a ton to make, but also made a hojillion dollars in merchandising, home video releases, etc. Why? Quality product and merchandising that consumers wanted, and it was all sold at a price they wanted to pay. Photoshop may indeed cost a lot to make, but it's obviously not sold at a price consumers want to pay. Adobe's answer to this, it seems, was to make Photoshop Elements. PSE is up to version 4.0 I think, so it at least hit some sort of pricing sweet point.
let me guess, you dont care, because like most copyright infringers, you dont make creative content for a living, and are just loving the excuse to take other peoples work for free arent you?
Ahh, strawmen. I make plenty of creative content. Don't make much money from it, but I do make it. But let's apply this to a well-known set of intarwebs content creators: Gabe and Tycho of Penny-Arcade. They're on record (as a matter of fact in writing at the back of their first hardcopy collection, of which there are 3 so far, and I've bought all 3 because of the added value in buying them at a decent price) as saying that hiding your content from your users because you're afraid they'll take it is kinda silly (which I tend to agree with, and why I think the subscription based Modern Tales group goes about the whole thing the wrong way - and why I think PVP's add-on animated subscription featurettes are a great idea; you get the meat for free, and if you want the dessert you shell out a little cash for it). PA was once in dire straits due to the ad network collapses and the loss of revenue thereof. They didn't have the financial resources to go down the failing route of the RIAA and MPAA, instead they adapted and are thriving to this day. None of their strips require you to pay for them, and there's no silly DRM preventing you from doing Save-As on a strip. Even so, people pay cold hard cash to get their books and their merchandise. Why? Cuz they know how to make what their target audience wants and what price their audience will shell out for extra stuffs.
It's not pseudo intellectual. Theft requires you to actually take something from someone, and deprive them of the use of that thing. "Piracy", as it is today online (and perhaps incorrectly termed), is making an exact copy (or, frequently, an inferior copy; if it was superior I think that's called "competition") of something.
Now, let's use the slashdot car analogy. If you made a car, and then I came along with a technology that can exactly (or almost exactly) produce a copy of that car by pointing a little device at it, result would be that you have a car and I have a car that looks almost, if not exactly, like your car. I haven't deprived you of anything, so it isn't theft.
This is of course why the legal fiction of "intellectual property" has become such a hot topic in the last 10 years or so. The feeling is that if I made something, under the "old" commercial system, in order for someone else to get that thing (during the tenure of my patent or copyright), someone must pay me for it since I am the only one who knows how to do it, has the equipment to do it, employ the people who have the knowledge to make it, etc. But now with digital things, anyone with the proper tools can make a copy and not have to pay me for it. Now, while that must suck, I've yet to understand why people feel entitled to make money from "stuff" they have. Enter DRM, which attempts to make people unable to make their own from "my" original. The result of this is the folks that put images on public webpages and then get mad when people copy them straight from the webpage (now, the cases where someone takes a piece and represents it as their own original work fall under copyright, which I tend to be more sympathic to, but wish the Sonny Bono Act never happened; plus that's just lame), leading to all those silly Javascript tricks on images to try and prevent right-clicking.
Sure, in an ideal world we'd all make little things and buy them from each other, and all would be well. However, that's not how it works in the world of digital stuffs. The artificial scarcity that makes physical goods producers able to (to an extent) manipulate their asking prices is, by the nature of the medium severely limited. Yet, online content producers find ways to make respectable livings without silly DRM schemes. The key is, of course, to offer something people want at a price they are comfortable paying. There's lots of ways to do this. However, pricing Photoshop at $700 for a single license (and wondering why everyone and their brother copies it instead of buying it) probably isn't the best way to do it (for one example).
In short, no, it isn't theft unless you change the meaning of the word. Like the pony express, if a company can't adapt their business practices in the face of new technology, they're gonna go out of business. No one is entitled to a profit.
Ditto. We get Gold support on everything Dell related, and a lot of the time when I call I say, "Hey, this part is broken cuz of , I need a new one." After asking if I need someone to come replace it for me (answer: no), I get the part the next day. Couldn't be easier.
I also believe that there is nothing that you can imagine yourself doing (within certain realities of physics, of course) that you cannot conceivably do. Have you seen every Jackie Chan movie ever made?
There, fixed that for you. Tony Jaa is impressive, but Chan is the master. (Yeah okay, Shanghai Knights he used wires for some, but he's pretty frickin old now!)
There were a fair number of state congresscritters, I am told, who were firmly against the mass transit and maintained it wouldn't even be used because people liked their cars. In the first week they had to put the reserve trains on active duty because the existing routes weren't being serviced often enough to pick up all the people efficiently. Since then they've added several new routes and more are in the works (I think the best would be if they had routes all the way to Boulder and down to Colorado Springs, personally). One of the few things this state seems to have gotten right lately.
The i-Phone, like many current Apple products, a fashion accessory as much as a functional device. That's as much of a reason as any why someone will pay $600 for a cellphone.
Because of this, major improvements in public mass transportation need to be the answer to the oil crisis. Yep, pretty much. Check out Denver's light rail system (continuing to expand) and then hope that the rest of the US follows suit.
Er, so don't go to the movies you don't want to see? Seriously. I have friends who go to see movies that I have no interest in, and so I just don't go with them. Not a difficult situation to fix.
The plus side of this is that you can hear from them whether or not you want to go see it later, or get it on netflix (or the like).
If you think that quest-grinding is bad in WoW, you never played DAoC. That was some seriously painful grinding, and frequently without the quests to make the objectives interesting.
The game's saving grace was the PvP endgame (and, to an extent, the 20-24, 25-29, 30-34, etc battlefields), which WoW could stand to learn from, IMHO. But man, getting there was brutal. You frequently didn't even get good equipment rewards for quests, which WoW was pretty good at with its pre-BC areas, and is top-notch with the new races in BC (I did a Draenai or however you spell them through to 28 so far, and until 21 I didn't have to buy any equipment from a vendor in order to adequately complete the quests given to me, aside from arrows; this is hugely different from many past MMO newbie experiences).
Any idea what the state of affairs is with AO? I always liked a lot of the ideas in AO, but the implementation seemed less than great the few times I tried to get into it.
"3D" isn't a requirement for an MMO. There's plenty that aren't
I played a bunch of MU*'s back in the day. All of them were on the Internet (accessable via Gopher a lot of the time). And a few hundred players at a time was "massive" for the time, given that they were free and run on timeshared systems. Massive is relative even today. EVE has now a top-end run of 28k users simultaneously, but has much fewer total subscriptions. WoW has millions of subscriptions, but can't run anywhere near 28k users on a single server, much less keep all their users in a single-shard universe.
I can't think of any MU* that ran on a BBS, but I imagine there must have been some. LoRD and Tradewars weren't MMOs, since they often ran on single-line BBSes, and I'm not sure if you could log more than one person into an installation at a time (been a loonngggg time).
Sure. However, some people are more likely to become addicted to an arbitrary thing than others. Not only that, but since this is not (technically) a physical addiction, it can't be compared equivalently to substance abuses where neutrotransmitters are changed due to the (typically) drug that is being used.
In any event, the point of this whole thread is that it's not WoW's fault his marriage broke up. I dunno who we should blame otherwise, that's another whole discussion, but it's definitely not a product that millions play daily without ill effect (aside from RSI...?)
I read an article a year or two ago about a study a group did regarding shopping. Turns out, getting "stuff", even though we're buying it ourselves, gives us an empirically observable "high". I would imagine that getting virtual "stuff" likely results in the same sort of chemical reaction.
Slashdot Mirror
Um... you mean Deadwood?
Of course I am! Spending money doesn't guarantee success (see Mission Earth for a good example) But name a blockbuster movie that DIDN'T involve a billion-dollar budget.
Give me a definition of a blockbuster. Is Clerks a Blockbuster? It's made well over 1000% of its production cost (~20K to make, financed on credit cards, grossed boxoffice of around $2 million and that doesn't even come close to its total profit to date from home video and merchandising). I can't even name a movie that had a billion dollar budget in adjusted dollars.
Sure can. China has over a BILLION people. China also has crap for Intellectual Property law. Are you going to tell me that despite having 5 TIMES the population of the United States, that a decent movie idea hasn't come out of there? And, perhaps you could tell me where the epicenter of the large, booming Chinese movie industry is?
Wow, talk about missing the mark with your example. First off, the Chinese movie industry is pretty extensive considering that a huge percentage of their population is essentially living in third world conditions. Secondly, the means of distribution are severely limited in terms of venues due to little things like censorship review boards. Third off, China has been through several social upheavals in the last 100 years that have turned their society upside down, not to mention having had many art forms (at the least) suppressed. Piracy is waaayyyy down on the lists of factors that keep China from making "Armageddon".
Where's the Chinese version of the Matrix? Their movie industry is weak and pathetic.
Aside from the fact that a ton of the conventions used in the Matrix came from chinese and japanese cinema, it seems that you equate "expensive and pretty" with "good". China has lots of good movies, they're just not massively expensive to make. Furthermore, the Matrix really didn't break new ground in terms of movie making aside from Bullet Time. In terms of plot and cinematic ideas, the basis goes back to 19th century philosophy, if not further (i.e. Plato's Cave). Not to mention that the Wachowski brothers deliberately based the visual look on Ghost in the Shell (making the conceptual designer watch the GitS movie and say 'we want it to look like that' - literally).
No, but later in this post you imply that very strongly when you write: Anyone can make anything, but they are not and should not be entitled to make money from it. What part of my "straw man" argument is not well supported by a statement like this?
I said they are not entitled to make it. Entitlement means that simply by making something, they *entitled* to make money off it. If I make a little doodle and put it on a website, no one is obligated to pay me anything for it. I can *try* to make money off it, but I probably won't. That is the difference. I didn't say everything should be free, I said no one should be entitled to profit.
Pay close attention: Copying copyrighted materials in an infringing way reduces the likelyhood of a purchase of that material. In an indirect way, such activities take away the profit potential of said created material. I know it's a very difficult concept for you to understand, and that's why words like "idiot" come to mind. Sorry you're taking it personally. Feel free to call me a "shill" or something if it makes you feel better.
You seem to be a person who has a hard time controlling their temper. Unfortunate.
Your reasoning is questionable. By that same thought process, I can argue that competition is theft, since they take away the potential profits of a creator. I'm pretty sure that Microsoft would like this to be true in, say, the realm of IIS vs Apache.
Because they created it. It's theirs. We want to encourage more to be created so we all have something to enjoy. I like good quality software, (like Linux, OpenOffice, KDE) good quality books (Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, et
Yeah but then I'd get (my) Big Brother to beat you up and take it back.
At the risk of posing a truism, fixed costs are only fixed until they're not. Consider the fixed business costs of the past that are no longer fixed today in a whole variety of industries.
This guy pretty much hits it dead on. Just because a company makes something and it takes money, doesn't mean that its smart for them to sell it at price point that makes consumers look elsewhere for it. Under the gp post's ideas, Waterworld is entitled to make money because it cost money, just so long as people are somewhere torrenting it (which, while making me ask "WHY?", I'm sure is happening as we speak).
It seems an odd bit of cognitive dissonance to say on one hand, "let the market decide" and on the other "the market isn't letting me make money, so we should change the rules so that I'm guaranteed profits". The market changed, content creators are in the process of learning how to change with it. Some will figure it out faster than others, and the behemoths like the RIAA and MPAA are gonna take a long while before they can overcome their corporate inertia and adjust (if ever).
Gotta love the personal attacks that come out in these discussions.
It takes time and money to create the "stuff" in question. Of course it does, I didn't say it doesn't. There are very, very VERY few "free" movies worth anything. There are a few Star Trek fan mini-movies that are almost watchable, usually about on par with the original (cheesy, campy) original ST series. Otherwise, that's it.But, introduce money into the equation, and suddenly you get watchable, interesting content. So if we don't provide some mechanism to fund the creation of these valuable works, what do you suggest we do to encourage their creation? Are you seriously suggesting that what separates a good movie from a lackluster movie is money? Is that really what you want to argue? What about movies that take a lot of money to make, but do poorly due to the fact that they suck? Can you name an example of a movie that was "good" but wasn't profitable due to "pirating"? Oh, that's right - you figure it all should be free, and you should have an unlimited right to take it, under the misguided notion that whether or not copyright infringement is stealing involves the other consumer? Ah, strawmen. I do love them. I didn't say all content should be free. It's easy to win an argument when you make up the opposing side from whole cloth. idiot. "Copyright infringement" is theft (directly or indirectly) from the producer of the copyrighted work! Even the beloved "super free" GPL only works in the presence of strong copyright law! I say that we let the producer decide how he/she/they want(s) to get compensated, and let the marketplace decide the best formula.
Indirect theft? Is that when I steal from someone who has stolen? Maybe I get someone else to steal it for me? Or maybe I use one of those little plastic grabber things to take something off a shelf...
Why do we want to let the creator decide how they get compensated? Anyone can make anything, but they are not and should not be entitled to make money from it. The most successful creators/businesses/etc figure out what their target audience wants and then figure out how to profit by getting it to them. The entire "zomg pirates" rationale hinges on the idea that a huge percentage of consumers don't buy anything that is in any possible manner freely obtainable. If that were the case, no one would buy just about anything. This is, of course, the rationale behind DRM, where the attempt is to raise the level technological expertise necessary to make a digital copy above that of the general consumer population. And to some extent it works, except that it also violates things like fair use in the process, and makes it difficult for consumers to do things they are used to being able to do, like play music on other people's devices without jumping through hoops. That's pretty much the definiton of "not giving the consumer what they want."
While your point is well taken, I'd argue that in the garbage case you're depriving someone of their ability to dump their own garbage, so not a really direct comparison.
And I'd argue that "theft of service" is BS unless your action deprived someone from getting something they should. No one really deserves revenue, though they certainly can strive to gain some.
Note that I never said above that in the current legal environment that "piracy" isn't illegal, just that I find the entire thought process behind it highly suspect, since people are perfectly capable of profiting without making things up like IP.
Gotta love frothing rants in response to well-reasoned arguments, but I'll respond in spite of it.
oh please... you are missing out the description of your brave new world business model. Where nobody gets paid for creating ANYTHING that can be easily copied.I suspect that you've deliberately misunderstood and are intentionally misrepresenting my statements, since I didn't write that. However, if you make paper airplanes and try to sell them, should no one else be able to make copies of your paper airplane?
Do you have ANY idea how much work is involved in making something like Photoshop, or The lord Of The rings? or Halo? Why the fuck is anyone going to spend any money on making entertainmnt if it can be freely copied without compensation?Because by and large consumers like to pay for the Real Thing. This is the idea behind the Windows Genuine Advantage bit, though obviously it was clumsily implemented. If you have a shitty product, no one is going to buy it. Should we be also legally guarantee that if someone makes something, they will get revenue from it, even if it sucks?
Lord of the Rings cost a ton to make, but also made a hojillion dollars in merchandising, home video releases, etc. Why? Quality product and merchandising that consumers wanted, and it was all sold at a price they wanted to pay. Photoshop may indeed cost a lot to make, but it's obviously not sold at a price consumers want to pay. Adobe's answer to this, it seems, was to make Photoshop Elements. PSE is up to version 4.0 I think, so it at least hit some sort of pricing sweet point.
let me guess, you dont care, because like most copyright infringers, you dont make creative content for a living, and are just loving the excuse to take other peoples work for free arent you?Ahh, strawmen. I make plenty of creative content. Don't make much money from it, but I do make it. But let's apply this to a well-known set of intarwebs content creators: Gabe and Tycho of Penny-Arcade. They're on record (as a matter of fact in writing at the back of their first hardcopy collection, of which there are 3 so far, and I've bought all 3 because of the added value in buying them at a decent price) as saying that hiding your content from your users because you're afraid they'll take it is kinda silly (which I tend to agree with, and why I think the subscription based Modern Tales group goes about the whole thing the wrong way - and why I think PVP's add-on animated subscription featurettes are a great idea; you get the meat for free, and if you want the dessert you shell out a little cash for it). PA was once in dire straits due to the ad network collapses and the loss of revenue thereof. They didn't have the financial resources to go down the failing route of the RIAA and MPAA, instead they adapted and are thriving to this day. None of their strips require you to pay for them, and there's no silly DRM preventing you from doing Save-As on a strip. Even so, people pay cold hard cash to get their books and their merchandise. Why? Cuz they know how to make what their target audience wants and what price their audience will shell out for extra stuffs.
It's not pseudo intellectual. Theft requires you to actually take something from someone, and deprive them of the use of that thing. "Piracy", as it is today online (and perhaps incorrectly termed), is making an exact copy (or, frequently, an inferior copy; if it was superior I think that's called "competition") of something.
Now, let's use the slashdot car analogy. If you made a car, and then I came along with a technology that can exactly (or almost exactly) produce a copy of that car by pointing a little device at it, result would be that you have a car and I have a car that looks almost, if not exactly, like your car. I haven't deprived you of anything, so it isn't theft.
This is of course why the legal fiction of "intellectual property" has become such a hot topic in the last 10 years or so. The feeling is that if I made something, under the "old" commercial system, in order for someone else to get that thing (during the tenure of my patent or copyright), someone must pay me for it since I am the only one who knows how to do it, has the equipment to do it, employ the people who have the knowledge to make it, etc. But now with digital things, anyone with the proper tools can make a copy and not have to pay me for it. Now, while that must suck, I've yet to understand why people feel entitled to make money from "stuff" they have. Enter DRM, which attempts to make people unable to make their own from "my" original. The result of this is the folks that put images on public webpages and then get mad when people copy them straight from the webpage (now, the cases where someone takes a piece and represents it as their own original work fall under copyright, which I tend to be more sympathic to, but wish the Sonny Bono Act never happened; plus that's just lame), leading to all those silly Javascript tricks on images to try and prevent right-clicking.
Sure, in an ideal world we'd all make little things and buy them from each other, and all would be well. However, that's not how it works in the world of digital stuffs. The artificial scarcity that makes physical goods producers able to (to an extent) manipulate their asking prices is, by the nature of the medium severely limited. Yet, online content producers find ways to make respectable livings without silly DRM schemes. The key is, of course, to offer something people want at a price they are comfortable paying. There's lots of ways to do this. However, pricing Photoshop at $700 for a single license (and wondering why everyone and their brother copies it instead of buying it) probably isn't the best way to do it (for one example).
In short, no, it isn't theft unless you change the meaning of the word. Like the pony express, if a company can't adapt their business practices in the face of new technology, they're gonna go out of business. No one is entitled to a profit.
Ditto. We get Gold support on everything Dell related, and a lot of the time when I call I say, "Hey, this part is broken cuz of , I need a new one." After asking if I need someone to come replace it for me (answer: no), I get the part the next day. Couldn't be easier.
Yeah but at least Nietzsche existed at some point
(cue flamewar)
You sir, receive a well-deserved, "heh".
I believe that is the embodiment of the phrase "Relaxen und watchen das Blinkenlights"
That's a pretty "small time" business indeed if you can't afford a $500 capital expense like a Mac Mini.
Why is it important that you, joe-nobody, make the distinction known?
There, fixed that for you. Tony Jaa is impressive, but Chan is the master. (Yeah okay, Shanghai Knights he used wires for some, but he's pretty frickin old now!)
There were a fair number of state congresscritters, I am told, who were firmly against the mass transit and maintained it wouldn't even be used because people liked their cars. In the first week they had to put the reserve trains on active duty because the existing routes weren't being serviced often enough to pick up all the people efficiently. Since then they've added several new routes and more are in the works (I think the best would be if they had routes all the way to Boulder and down to Colorado Springs, personally). One of the few things this state seems to have gotten right lately.
The i-Phone, like many current Apple products, a fashion accessory as much as a functional device. That's as much of a reason as any why someone will pay $600 for a cellphone.
Er, so don't go to the movies you don't want to see? Seriously. I have friends who go to see movies that I have no interest in, and so I just don't go with them. Not a difficult situation to fix.
The plus side of this is that you can hear from them whether or not you want to go see it later, or get it on netflix (or the like).
If you think that quest-grinding is bad in WoW, you never played DAoC. That was some seriously painful grinding, and frequently without the quests to make the objectives interesting.
The game's saving grace was the PvP endgame (and, to an extent, the 20-24, 25-29, 30-34, etc battlefields), which WoW could stand to learn from, IMHO. But man, getting there was brutal. You frequently didn't even get good equipment rewards for quests, which WoW was pretty good at with its pre-BC areas, and is top-notch with the new races in BC (I did a Draenai or however you spell them through to 28 so far, and until 21 I didn't have to buy any equipment from a vendor in order to adequately complete the quests given to me, aside from arrows; this is hugely different from many past MMO newbie experiences).
Any idea what the state of affairs is with AO? I always liked a lot of the ideas in AO, but the implementation seemed less than great the few times I tried to get into it.
"3D" isn't a requirement for an MMO. There's plenty that aren't
I played a bunch of MU*'s back in the day. All of them were on the Internet (accessable via Gopher a lot of the time). And a few hundred players at a time was "massive" for the time, given that they were free and run on timeshared systems. Massive is relative even today. EVE has now a top-end run of 28k users simultaneously, but has much fewer total subscriptions. WoW has millions of subscriptions, but can't run anywhere near 28k users on a single server, much less keep all their users in a single-shard universe.
I can't think of any MU* that ran on a BBS, but I imagine there must have been some. LoRD and Tradewars weren't MMOs, since they often ran on single-line BBSes, and I'm not sure if you could log more than one person into an installation at a time (been a loonngggg time).
Sure. However, some people are more likely to become addicted to an arbitrary thing than others. Not only that, but since this is not (technically) a physical addiction, it can't be compared equivalently to substance abuses where neutrotransmitters are changed due to the (typically) drug that is being used.
In any event, the point of this whole thread is that it's not WoW's fault his marriage broke up. I dunno who we should blame otherwise, that's another whole discussion, but it's definitely not a product that millions play daily without ill effect (aside from RSI...?)
I read an article a year or two ago about a study a group did regarding shopping. Turns out, getting "stuff", even though we're buying it ourselves, gives us an empirically observable "high". I would imagine that getting virtual "stuff" likely results in the same sort of chemical reaction.