"somebody please give me an example of why I should ever want to control my dishwasher from my phone or my web browser."
MMmmm well I have a suggestion. If the devices in my house were to measure their power usage, then connect via wi-fi to the net, I could use my browser to figure out which appliance(s) is/are costing me the most per month.
That may not entice you much, but I've had roommates that didn't think they were the cause of the expensive utilities.
"Commercial comes on? Flip flip flip flip flip. You get to ignore commercials, zone out, and satisfy your OCD all at once."
a.) Commercials are syncrhonized across nearly all channels.
b.) I doubt this is all that handy for those of us using Digital services with 500 channels and a pause between each channel change.
"Sure, you can alt-tab to another browser window, but once the ad is done, you'd have to task-switch your brain back away from whatever it was you were doing to distract yourself from the ad."
Heh. Well that's easy, just make a comment on Slashdot. It's like an automatic transmission for your brain!
"Has anyone here ever intentionally clicked on a banner ad? A text ad? Any ad?"
Think Geek.
That's besides the point, though, you don't necessarily need to click for the ad to be effective. Before I had ever clicked on an Think Geek ad, I had remembered their name from their countless banners on Slashdot. When I had a lil spending money I wandered over there. Without the ad, I'd never have been their customer.
"But so far, Google shows NO signs of abuse. In fact, far from it. They seem to want to work with just about everybody, and expand the market rather than control it."
"Even many teachers are afraid of anything they can't buy at WorstBuy or the Apple store."
Question: Suppose you have a class to teach and you're using a device that you already know backwards and forwards. Then, suppose, I come up to you and say you need to use this other device you've never heard of before. Are you going to be afraid of my superior device and keep using the tried and true?
"Well, keeping the same Executives certainly won't."
Not necessarily. The execs are in charge of marketing. For example: Circuit City has a policy of giving you a $24 gift card if your on-line purchase for in-store pickup isn't ready within an hour. That's an edge they have over say Best Buy's in-store pickup policy. That's the sort of thing that'll drive more business towards them.
"2) Who else's fault would it be, except the one that are making the big decisions? The poor minimum-wage-earning schlub who has exactly Zero input on how the company is run? (Hint: if the company is being run badly, then blame the ones who are running it!!)"
I get what you're saying, but they're not necessarily 'punishing' people, here. They're trying to fix their broken business. It's a question of which is the wisest move. (This is why I don't necessarily disagree with you.)
"Um, the Sales people ARE MAKING THE INCOME. you know, by SELLING stuff."
Okay. Go to Circuit City and wander around a bit. Can you tell me that more or better sales people would have caused you to make a purchase?
"Well, the way I see it, they had their chance, and fucked it up."
That's a distinct possibility. The only thing preventing me from solidly agreeing with you is that I don't know what Circuit City's real moneymaker is. If it's DVDs, for example, more sales people won't make a difference. In that case, they aren't necessarily in trouble because of bad decisions, but because of intense competition in the marketplace. If that were it, then it's not necessarily the execs' fault.
But we're getting into a rather murky hypothetical and likely useless discussion. When it's clear that it was stupidity on the executives part, then I'll happily agree. Until it is, I'm on the fence. Even the best player in the world can lose a game.
"Only reality is playing along with my theory. After all, look at the top of your web browser where the headline appears."
Yeah, it says one store is scalping them. Heh.
"You're the one relying on anecdotes."
The one? Hahaha okaaaaaaaaay.
"The 100s of millions of console owners out there buy dozens of games per system, most years after the initial purchase, so where you get your games means more than where you get your console in the grand scheme."
This is the only real point you've made that I at least partly agree with. I'm unlikely to order a Wii from Amazon, then purchase games from them(aside from the initial purchase) because there's a local place I like to go to. I get that, no argument there. However, Amazon doesn't just make money from people who purchase Wii consoles from them. This is why I do not agree with you. You end up buying the games from the place it makes sense. But if none of the retailers carried the console, then nobody'd be able to buy the games. This is why we're reading about some rinky-dink store putting them on eBay as opposed to a major retailer like Walmart. None of these stores are selling consoles for a profit. That has been the case since even before the 16-bit days.
You cannot reliably paint broad pictures based on an extreme situation.
"Lastly, what is it about trolls and fisking? It's not hard to come up with your own argument structure."
Ah, I disagree with you therefore I'm a troll. As for 'fisking'... sure, call it whatever you want. It actually makes sense in light of Slashdot's moderation system, but hey, you're not really asking to get an interesting answer from that, are you Mr. Kettle?
"Spoken like someone who doesn't create. Thanks for being a leech on society."
Actually I am a content creator whose livelihood would be destroyed by people not buying movies. I don't think suing the customer base, calling all of them thieves, making the products do less (i.e. format/time shifting), ignoring obvious markets like on-line purchases of movies, or demanding the pay for things they don't want will result in making more money. I also don't think that everybody who downloads content is automatically a lost sale. I do think that keeping people excited about the new things coming out far more beneficial to the bottom line, and this has been proven in Japan with fans of manga selling their fan-fiction. What you lose in an occasional lost purchase is made up on the next round of releases.
Thanks for speaking so clearly despite having your anus in the way.
"Baker points out that each one of these bonuses represents 35 years' salary for one of the fired salespeople."
Right. There's a small little detail, though: The execs make the decisions that make the difference between making and losing millions of dollars. The sales people, even if they were paid 1 million dollars, would not generate anywhere near that much income to save the company. If Circuit City's business model is broken, then it makes sense they try to keep the decision makers from leaving the sinking ship. If anything, to devise and carry out a new strategy. What they're doing actually makes some sense, even though that little blippet was intended to make them sound idiotic.
But, that's just me responding to sensationalist bullshit. I personally think they should use those retention bonuses to hire new execs, preferably those with a proven track record in this sort of business. Hypocricial? Nah. Still non-sensical? Yeah, maybe.
I bought four total with a console purchase. I got my PS3 at a Sony Style store and have never made another purchase there. The wii I found at Toys R Us and I've never been in the store again. The 360 and PS2 I bought at Fry's, and I probably got a game or two there over the years, but the store would have made the same profit had they not sold the systems (that are easy to get). Almost all my game purchases are online. And that's going to get more and more true int he next ten years. Why stock the next gen system if all content is downloaded? I wonder what will happen to Gamestop... That's funny because just last night I was at Best Buy and they were nearly wiped out on Wii games. It wasn't for lack of shelf space, either. Heh.
"Oh, and wii sports is the sole reason for buying the wii for a great many people. You'd have to be pretty obtuse not to see that." Yeah, well, the freshly emptied aisle of Wii games obtusified my vision. Sorry.
These companies are stocking the wii because they have to, not because they want to. At least it's not wasting much shelf space! I'd be more inclined to follow your reasoning here if not for the attempts I've seen by a number of retailers to try to satisfy customers with regards to Wii shipments. Nintendo could be the most ruthless company in the world and they'd still not be able to force companies to stock their products. The only power they'd really ever have to do that would come from the threat of not shipping these companies products to make a profit from. Unfortunately for you, that defeats your point. These companies could easily refuse to stock Wii's, but they don't. They make money from the games.
"I'm just accepting that where I got my console had no impact on 99% of my game purchases."
That's fine except you're using yourself to represent 12 million people. Reality is not playing along with your theory.
In my opinion, I don't think you should for two reasons. First, don't risk it. Yes, we'd all like for people to take a stand against the RIAA, but it's a lot easier to back when someone else is doing it. Second, they'll use those numbers to prove that anti-piracy legislation needs to be strengthened. I don't believe that mass-downloading and mass-not-purchasing can bleed the RIAA fast enough to prevent them from sinking ridiculous amounts of money into the pockets of politicians. To me, that's a no-win scenario.
I have an alternative, though. You could try a music subscription service. For $10 a month, you could get Rhapsody. You'll have instant access to all of their music. You don't get to keep it, but for less than the cost of a new CD a month you have something like 4 million songs. If you pay an extra $5 a month, they'll sync up with certain MP3 players, so you can take care of your mobile needs, too. I am a Rhapsody subscriber, so if you have questions about specifics about it, feel free to ask. I'm reluctant to say too much initially, though, for fear of being branded a Rhapsody shill. I don't know much about the other services like Napster so I cannot tell you which is the 'best'.
I think this suggestion might be a solution to both your problems. One of my main attractions to Rhapsody (besides not having gigs of MP3s to try to keep synced across all my machines....) is that I've broadened my tastes in music. That sounds like something your wife is looking for. It also proves the point to the RIAA that you actually are willing to spend money on music, but that you need their business model to be modernized. I could save a few bucks and just go download a bunch of MP3s. But I don't because I'm happy with the service I'm getting. If money's being made this way, they're more likely to be open to alternatives. But if money is being 'lost' (by lost I mean their silly definition of it... like billions of dollars evaporating into kazaa smelling vapour even though their sales are higher than the previous year's) they're more likely to fight back via lawyers. It's the carrot vs. the stick. Tempt them with the possiblity of generating revenue instead of scaring them with the threat of losing it.
But, that's just my opinion. Other suggestions would include purchases of DRM-free music that's starting to appear. Purchases towards indie labels are potentially a win, too. If indies make money and the RIAA isn't, it's hard for them to claim that losses are due to piracy as opposed to boycotting. I don't personally back this option, though, simply because I haven't been all that impressed with indie offerings. Still, though, I'm at least a year or two overdue for re-examining that option so I really don't want to state that opinion too strongly.
"So? They had talking computers in Star Trek before that."
Not the same. Do you remember Short Circuit? Here's a little quote:
"You have to talk computer to him." *hand raised in the air* "How robot. Me- friend." "I said speak computer, not Apache." (Note: She means the Indian language, NOT the webserver!)
People still had to know how to speak to the computer. KITT, on the other hand, interacted as if he were human. He was aware of the situation and all of the context surrounding it and inteacted accordingly. The fictional computer in STNG couldn't even do that.
"Possibly because it's not the universal man/machine interface panacea that the uneducated think it is."
Um, no, it's because we haven't come up with a way to build a sentient computer. I'd go into more detail, but I'm being called uneducated by a guy that hasn't discerned the difference between a computer simply recognizing your voice and understanding it.
" Somehow I missed the specs for the inertial dampeners."
Actually... The original KITT had something called the Passive Laser Restraint System. That phrase would appear on the monitor whenever KITT went into Super Pursuit Mode. It was supposed to imply something like an intertial dampner. If you get bored, type Passive Laser Restraint into Wikipedia. (Although it won't tell you much more than I just said.)
That just proves my point... you are using 32 bit drivers with a 32 bit kernel!! Having partial 64 bit support at higher levels does NOT give you a 64 bit operating system. There's something else he said in his post that you are overlooking too: He said he uses 32 bit POWER PC DRIVERS in a 64 bit INTEL Macintosh. Please show me how this works... you can't. I have a semi-unrelated question, here. If I buy a MacBook Pro today, and I put 4 gigs of RAM into it, Will I be able to have one app use all four gigs? (Minus, of course, the memory the OS uses...) Up until now, I thought the answer was yes. But you kinda scared me a bit with what you said here.
"Except people buy games at their favorite electronics store. People buy Wiis whereever they manage to find them. So some stores are not going to sell wii games to wii console buyers."
Most people aren't just going to buy a Wii and leave. Wii Sports is okay but it's not the sole reason anybody's buying the system.
Slashdot Mirror
"No one's EVER going to crack the encryption algorithms so that a temporary movie becomes permanent! It's BRILLIANT!"
By the time somebody's gone through all that, they could have found Bittorrents of the movies and downloaded them. Non issue.
"No one buys a computer just for the hardware."
I don't think Linux users like it when you claim they don't exist.
"somebody please give me an example of why I should ever want to control my dishwasher from my phone or my web browser."
MMmmm well I have a suggestion. If the devices in my house were to measure their power usage, then connect via wi-fi to the net, I could use my browser to figure out which appliance(s) is/are costing me the most per month.
That may not entice you much, but I've had roommates that didn't think they were the cause of the expensive utilities.
"Commercial comes on? Flip flip flip flip flip. You get to ignore commercials, zone out, and satisfy your OCD all at once."
a.) Commercials are syncrhonized across nearly all channels.
b.) I doubt this is all that handy for those of us using Digital services with 500 channels and a pause between each channel change.
"Sure, you can alt-tab to another browser window, but once the ad is done, you'd have to task-switch your brain back away from whatever it was you were doing to distract yourself from the ad."
Heh. Well that's easy, just make a comment on Slashdot. It's like an automatic transmission for your brain!
"Has anyone here ever intentionally clicked on a banner ad? A text ad? Any ad?"
Think Geek.
That's besides the point, though, you don't necessarily need to click for the ad to be effective. Before I had ever clicked on an Think Geek ad, I had remembered their name from their countless banners on Slashdot. When I had a lil spending money I wandered over there. Without the ad, I'd never have been their customer.
"But so far, Google shows NO signs of abuse. In fact, far from it. They seem to want to work with just about everybody, and expand the market rather than control it."
Wow. That sent a chill down my spine.
"Even many teachers are afraid of anything they can't buy at WorstBuy or the Apple store."
Question: Suppose you have a class to teach and you're using a device that you already know backwards and forwards. Then, suppose, I come up to you and say you need to use this other device you've never heard of before. Are you going to be afraid of my superior device and keep using the tried and true?
"Do you always get your part back at the mechanic? "
Do your car parts contain sensitive data?
"Well, keeping the same Executives certainly won't."
Not necessarily. The execs are in charge of marketing. For example: Circuit City has a policy of giving you a $24 gift card if your on-line purchase for in-store pickup isn't ready within an hour. That's an edge they have over say Best Buy's in-store pickup policy. That's the sort of thing that'll drive more business towards them.
"2) Who else's fault would it be, except the one that are making the big decisions? The poor minimum-wage-earning schlub who has exactly Zero input on how the company is run? (Hint: if the company is being run badly, then blame the ones who are running it!!)"
I get what you're saying, but they're not necessarily 'punishing' people, here. They're trying to fix their broken business. It's a question of which is the wisest move. (This is why I don't necessarily disagree with you.)
"Um, the Sales people ARE MAKING THE INCOME. you know, by SELLING stuff."
Okay. Go to Circuit City and wander around a bit. Can you tell me that more or better sales people would have caused you to make a purchase?
"Well, the way I see it, they had their chance, and fucked it up."
That's a distinct possibility. The only thing preventing me from solidly agreeing with you is that I don't know what Circuit City's real moneymaker is. If it's DVDs, for example, more sales people won't make a difference. In that case, they aren't necessarily in trouble because of bad decisions, but because of intense competition in the marketplace. If that were it, then it's not necessarily the execs' fault.
But we're getting into a rather murky hypothetical and likely useless discussion. When it's clear that it was stupidity on the executives part, then I'll happily agree. Until it is, I'm on the fence. Even the best player in the world can lose a game.
"Only reality is playing along with my theory. After all, look at the top of your web browser where the headline appears."
Yeah, it says one store is scalping them. Heh.
"You're the one relying on anecdotes."
The one? Hahaha okaaaaaaaaay.
"The 100s of millions of console owners out there buy dozens of games per system, most years after the initial purchase, so where you get your games means more than where you get your console in the grand scheme."
This is the only real point you've made that I at least partly agree with. I'm unlikely to order a Wii from Amazon, then purchase games from them(aside from the initial purchase) because there's a local place I like to go to. I get that, no argument there. However, Amazon doesn't just make money from people who purchase Wii consoles from them. This is why I do not agree with you. You end up buying the games from the place it makes sense. But if none of the retailers carried the console, then nobody'd be able to buy the games. This is why we're reading about some rinky-dink store putting them on eBay as opposed to a major retailer like Walmart. None of these stores are selling consoles for a profit. That has been the case since even before the 16-bit days.
You cannot reliably paint broad pictures based on an extreme situation.
"Lastly, what is it about trolls and fisking? It's not hard to come up with your own argument structure."
Ah, I disagree with you therefore I'm a troll. As for 'fisking'... sure, call it whatever you want. It actually makes sense in light of Slashdot's moderation system, but hey, you're not really asking to get an interesting answer from that, are you Mr. Kettle?
Ah damn. I thought you were replying to me. (I had more than one window open on this thread.)
:/
I'm sorry about that. Yeesh, talk about humble pie.
"Spoken like someone who doesn't create. Thanks for being a leech on society."
Actually I am a content creator whose livelihood would be destroyed by people not buying movies. I don't think suing the customer base, calling all of them thieves, making the products do less (i.e. format/time shifting), ignoring obvious markets like on-line purchases of movies, or demanding the pay for things they don't want will result in making more money. I also don't think that everybody who downloads content is automatically a lost sale. I do think that keeping people excited about the new things coming out far more beneficial to the bottom line, and this has been proven in Japan with fans of manga selling their fan-fiction. What you lose in an occasional lost purchase is made up on the next round of releases.
Thanks for speaking so clearly despite having your anus in the way.
"Hire the right sales people, and they can turn the company around with astounding jumps in sales."
We're talking about a store that sells DVDs and video games, not a used car lot.
"Baker points out that each one of these bonuses represents 35 years' salary for one of the fired salespeople."
Right. There's a small little detail, though: The execs make the decisions that make the difference between making and losing millions of dollars. The sales people, even if they were paid 1 million dollars, would not generate anywhere near that much income to save the company. If Circuit City's business model is broken, then it makes sense they try to keep the decision makers from leaving the sinking ship. If anything, to devise and carry out a new strategy. What they're doing actually makes some sense, even though that little blippet was intended to make them sound idiotic.
But, that's just me responding to sensationalist bullshit. I personally think they should use those retention bonuses to hire new execs, preferably those with a proven track record in this sort of business. Hypocricial? Nah. Still non-sensical? Yeah, maybe.
"I'm just accepting that where I got my console had no impact on 99% of my game purchases."
That's fine except you're using yourself to represent 12 million people. Reality is not playing along with your theory.
"Should I spend the effort to help her out?"
In my opinion, I don't think you should for two reasons. First, don't risk it. Yes, we'd all like for people to take a stand against the RIAA, but it's a lot easier to back when someone else is doing it. Second, they'll use those numbers to prove that anti-piracy legislation needs to be strengthened. I don't believe that mass-downloading and mass-not-purchasing can bleed the RIAA fast enough to prevent them from sinking ridiculous amounts of money into the pockets of politicians. To me, that's a no-win scenario.
I have an alternative, though. You could try a music subscription service. For $10 a month, you could get Rhapsody. You'll have instant access to all of their music. You don't get to keep it, but for less than the cost of a new CD a month you have something like 4 million songs. If you pay an extra $5 a month, they'll sync up with certain MP3 players, so you can take care of your mobile needs, too. I am a Rhapsody subscriber, so if you have questions about specifics about it, feel free to ask. I'm reluctant to say too much initially, though, for fear of being branded a Rhapsody shill. I don't know much about the other services like Napster so I cannot tell you which is the 'best'.
I think this suggestion might be a solution to both your problems. One of my main attractions to Rhapsody (besides not having gigs of MP3s to try to keep synced across all my machines....) is that I've broadened my tastes in music. That sounds like something your wife is looking for. It also proves the point to the RIAA that you actually are willing to spend money on music, but that you need their business model to be modernized. I could save a few bucks and just go download a bunch of MP3s. But I don't because I'm happy with the service I'm getting. If money's being made this way, they're more likely to be open to alternatives. But if money is being 'lost' (by lost I mean their silly definition of it... like billions of dollars evaporating into kazaa smelling vapour even though their sales are higher than the previous year's) they're more likely to fight back via lawyers. It's the carrot vs. the stick. Tempt them with the possiblity of generating revenue instead of scaring them with the threat of losing it.
But, that's just my opinion. Other suggestions would include purchases of DRM-free music that's starting to appear. Purchases towards indie labels are potentially a win, too. If indies make money and the RIAA isn't, it's hard for them to claim that losses are due to piracy as opposed to boycotting. I don't personally back this option, though, simply because I haven't been all that impressed with indie offerings. Still, though, I'm at least a year or two overdue for re-examining that option so I really don't want to state that opinion too strongly.
Cheers and have a good weekend.
"still stealing music?"
Still don't know what you're talking about? Fucking RIAA executives.
"So? They had talking computers in Star Trek before that."
Not the same. Do you remember Short Circuit? Here's a little quote:
"You have to talk computer to him."
*hand raised in the air* "How robot. Me- friend."
"I said speak computer, not Apache." (Note: She means the Indian language, NOT the webserver!)
People still had to know how to speak to the computer. KITT, on the other hand, interacted as if he were human. He was aware of the situation and all of the context surrounding it and inteacted accordingly. The fictional computer in STNG couldn't even do that.
"Possibly because it's not the universal man/machine interface panacea that the uneducated think it is."
Um, no, it's because we haven't come up with a way to build a sentient computer. I'd go into more detail, but I'm being called uneducated by a guy that hasn't discerned the difference between a computer simply recognizing your voice and understanding it.
"I'm a little confused. Do those fall under "news for nerds," or "stuff that matters?""
It's specs for a fictional super-car! How is that not news for nerds?
Uninteresting? Perhaps. Non-nerd-news? Uh, no. This has a chick repellent factor of 9.
" Somehow I missed the specs for the inertial dampeners."
Actually... The original KITT had something called the Passive Laser Restraint System. That phrase would appear on the monitor whenever KITT went into Super Pursuit Mode. It was supposed to imply something like an intertial dampner. If you get bored, type Passive Laser Restraint into Wikipedia. (Although it won't tell you much more than I just said.)
"But Nintendo does know about these scalpers, and is well within its rights not to send them any more product."
Nintendo knows some people scalp. They don't know when they're filling inventory that they're scalping.
"And Nintendo has the freedom not to sell to the scalpers."
And scalpers are free to not tell Nintendo they're scalping.
"Except people buy games at their favorite electronics store. People buy Wiis whereever they manage to find them. So some stores are not going to sell wii games to wii console buyers."
Most people aren't just going to buy a Wii and leave. Wii Sports is okay but it's not the sole reason anybody's buying the system.