and the mice have the cats massively outnumbered, though the cats have more money, so that might level the field.
it's a battle of attrition. the mice have infinite resources (talent and time) while the cats have finite resources (money). on a long enough time line, the mice will *always* win.
Well, it's either that or you're a drooling simpleton.
i am an oversimpleton thankyouverymuch.
Same thing with The Daily Show. John Stewart doesn't actually exist at all: he's a transient phenomenon which just happens to manifest at exactly the right time to interact with the random people who wander in off the street and coincidentally stand in front of the cameras that, purely by chance, are positioned in the building which houses all the production facilities that mysteriously dropped out of the sky one day for no apparent reason.
those facilities were built for one very apparent reason: to make large amounts of cash for everyone who works there.
it's true that you need a bunch of overpriced shit to make TV shows... why do you think that is?
is it because quality people, facilties and equipment cost lots of money?
is it because those prices are inflated to keep new innovators out of the TV business?
is it because media conglomerates have show business and investment banking ass backwards?
i think the answer is "yes". yes you need money for the best stuff, yes media companies collude to keep prices high and competitors out, yes big media forgot that show business is the business of making shows and not the use of shows to produce tons of money.
i think that viacom sees the writing on the wall and they want to stall the coming new-media induced price war for as long as they can.
the funny thing is... i don't think there will *be* a pricewar. do you think that people are calling and canceling their cable subscriptions and saying "i don't need comedy central, i have youtube!"?? do you think that companies like coke are going to stop advertising on TV and start advertising on youtube?
it's not like youtube clips are cutting into viacoms TV business. their programming gets into more people's hands without costing viacom a dime. it's free promotion. they should be happy that people are bothering to do it for them in the firstplace. it's not like youtube or it's users are saying that the daily show is their creation.
the world of content production is in chaos right now. the old way of using overpriced people, equipment, and facilities to produce a relatively small number of shows is giving way to more efficient methods of production and distribution. just like the gutenburg press replaced the scribe to produce way more copies of the bible that were of significantly lower quality. the fact is that thanks to the internet, content can be produced and distributed by any drooling simpleton. check out youtube sometime, it's full of them.
a glut of low cost, low quality, and low value content is not a direct threat the the existing high priced high quality content market. neither is taking your high cost, high quality, high value content and dumbing it down for the internet. it might cause the consumer to question why there are so many ads, but the 85% of the TV watching world won't notice or care.
Perhaps your tune would change some if you'd spent a full year of your life, working 8-12 hour days pulling a full novel "out of your ass"
i don't have to worry about that. i have a grownup job. i work 8-12 hours a day for assholes and no one will ever ask me for an autograph. if you are so worried about people taking your imaginary product, perhaps you should get a grownup job too, or maybe you should diversify your offerings with stuff that can't be easily duplicated. or better yet, thank your lucky stars that you are able to make a living as a writer and that you don't have to get a grownup job like the rest of us.
let's say that i "steal" your book... as in i tried to pass it off as mine and make money from it. is that really what youtube does? can you really watch a YouTube Productions Ltd. of "Desperate Housewives" in HD quality?
no, you can't. you have to watch shitty clips that are in no particular order. i can see that the TV networks are in real danger.
now, let's say i took your book, and said to everyone i know "mcrbids wrote a cool book and i want you to read it... here take this shitty copy of part of it." if it was a hardcopy book that would be fine, but if it was a PDF the shit would hit the fan.
how can you say, with confidence, that the 10, 100, or 1000 people i gave the PDF to would actually have bought the book before i gave them a digital copy? how many of them would say "thanks! i was just about to pay money for that." you can't, therefore the damages you claim are imaginary.
on the other hand, i can say with relative certainty that if i emailed your book to a thousand people, at least one of them would go out and buy it. especially if it was good enough for me to bother copying and distributing it in the first place.
people treat intellectual property the same way that they treat real property. that's just how it is. you can waste your writing time fighting that battle or you can find a way to capitalize on it. the choice is yours. the only difference between you and viacom is that viacom can afford to sue for billions and all you as an aspiring writer can do is cry about it.
Viacom invests many millions of dollars to produce these shows "out of their ass".
have their ratings suffered? don't they get paid by the networks before the shows go on the air? has some network threatened to drop the show as a result of youtube? won't the shows end up on DVD and in syndication eventually where there are profits from those sales just like every other studio? if anything, viacom can justify raining the price of it's show to the networks thanks to all the buzz on the net over their fabulous shows.
how much money does viacom need to keep producing shows? how much do you need to write a book? is a billion dollars really justified?
is there value in putting your life on hold to create something of value forthe world to enjoy? of course there is. are the people at viacom doing the same thing that the aspiring writer is doing? hell no. they are a huge corporation with billions and they are only interested in making more billions. i'm a little light on sympathy for giant media companies at the moment.
artists need to make livings in order to keep producing, but at some point in the pursuit of a living it stops being about the art and starts being about enriching the lifestyle. it happens to artists and it happens to people with grown up jobs.
i think suing google for a billion dollars is a clear message that it's stopped being about the art for viacom.
and just where else would you pull estimated damages for unauthorized sharing from?
everyone in the intellectual property business pulls damages out of thier ass... that's standard operating procedure. the IP business is about selling stuff that doesn't really exist... it's stuff you pull it out of your ass and sell to other people. clearly, if someone distributes your imaginary product without your authorization, you can sue them for all of the imaginary sales that you have lost out on. as long as we are working in the realm of the imagination, you might as well imagine big and try to jack google for a billion dollars.
i know he can keep a secret. he helped me out that time i woke up in a strange hotel room in denver next to a dead hooker.
as luck would have it, getting rid of dead hookers is a common problem and there are many useful articles on wikihow. i can tell you from experience that your company's helpdesk is NOT very cooperative in a situation like that.
these laws, like seatbelt laws and random insurance checks (and every seemingly pointless "highway safety" law) are tools for the cops to have probable cause to pull you over and toss your car. most cops don't want to cite you for something mundane (unless there is a quota drive that month) they want to bust you for something cool (like drugs, a gun, a DUI, etc.) but it's hard to get probable cause for the really cool stuff. therefore we make all kinds of potentially dangerous stuff illegal so we can pull more people over.
how many times have you been pulled over for a minor infraction, had your license and plates run, only to be let go? chances are your "failure to signal" was no big deal, but your nervous reaction to seeing the cop in your rearview mirror was.
here's a fun experiment: next time you drive on the hiway and a cop gets near you, have your passenger look at them and then quickly look back. then change lanes to the slow lane and go just under the speed limit. chances are you'll get tailed for a few miles and get pulled over for some minor infraction (going 3 miles over the limit, failure to signal, crack in your windshield), get your license, plates, and insurance run and be let off with a verbal (and otherwise undocumented) warning.
seeing as how science projects rarely make time for state governments.
perhaps the linux community needs to reach out. you know what might do the trick is yet another repackaged ubuntu distro that caters to some cultural minority. maybe you can call it illinibuntu or just dabuntu.
i guess phones are like text editors. i think texting on a moto (of any kind) is frustration incarnate. nokias are my first choice, and my LG is decent now that i have been using it for over a year.
Right now if a mobile phone gets popular it's because it has features that more people want, not because 'everyone else uses that one'.
a mobile phone gets popular because it's "pretty". case in point: the razr which is functionally worthless, hella expensive, and in the purses or pockets of nearly every human in the continental united states.
community support is all you get now, even if you use windows. that's why there are so many support sites on the web for things other than linux. that's the tech support landscape today. dell's software support (reboot, then reformat) mirrors their hardware support (verify warranty and submit diagnostic code for replacement part). support is expensive regardless of the operating system. if you slap the big scary "L" word on your product then not only will you need to hire patient people who can read and talk at the same time... you will have to find ones that can think as well. thinking is expensive. you will have to put the word "technical" back into the term "technical support" instead of the "offshore apology service" that it is today.
i disagree. i think nintendo's strength has always been making unique game experiences. sony and MS would do well to treat nintendo as free R&D. sony and microsoft can battle head to head over technological superiority since they have the money to do so. MS is especially focused on delivering a highly polished titles from well established genres that appeal to hardcore gamers (shooters, GTA clones, major league sports... etc.) nintendo is much smaller, and does well making fun and quirky games with familiar characters that we fall in love with.
halo is a great game, but at the end of the day, it's just a highly evolved first person shooter. nintendo invents whole new categories of games, such as the party game or the team racer, using it's extensive library of characters to promote it. thier games appeal to more casual gamers like kids.
the only reason the wii fanbase currently loves sports and minigames is because those titles are so unique right now. once a new unique title comes out there will that will become the new fanbase favotite.
he may not be able to run a decent country, but his considerable holdings are proof that he has done a decent job of running the united states thus far:-)
the nielson statistic also suggest that twice as many households have game consoles then have been sold
i think the opposite might be true... at my house there are 3 adults (me, my wife, and my brother) and two children (i have two daughters ages 11 and 6). the living room has an xbox, a ps2, a gamecube, and an atari flashback and the girls' room has a ps1, a vSmile a GBA and a DS. there are also 6 pc's, countless romz, and a drawer full of those battery powered retro gaming appliances that you plug directly into a TV. not counting the PCs, i would wager the "consoles" outnumber the humans in the house by almost 2 to 1. PCs used to outnumber humans until i discovered VMWare.
the adults in the house are currently addicted to the LOTR online beta, but once that subsides and the supply lines become more reliable, we may acquire a wii and/or a 360. if the family were to upgrade to next generation platforms, the console to human ratio may skew to 3 to 1 thanks to backwards incompatibility issues.
i'll admit it's been a few years since i gave up on buying a linux laptop (when VA linux got out of the hardware game the only vendor left for a long time was emperor linux and their stuff doesn't come cheap.
it should also be mentioned that open office installs on windows as well, and so does clamAV
Slashdot Mirror
it's a battle of attrition. the mice have infinite resources (talent and time) while the cats have finite resources (money). on a long enough time line, the mice will *always* win.
i am an oversimpleton thankyouverymuch.
those facilities were built for one very apparent reason: to make large amounts of cash for everyone who works there.
it's true that you need a bunch of overpriced shit to make TV shows... why do you think that is?
is it because quality people, facilties and equipment cost lots of money?
is it because those prices are inflated to keep new innovators out of the TV business?
is it because media conglomerates have show business and investment banking ass backwards?
i think the answer is "yes". yes you need money for the best stuff, yes media companies collude to keep prices high and competitors out, yes big media forgot that show business is the business of making shows and not the use of shows to produce tons of money.
i think that viacom sees the writing on the wall and they want to stall the coming new-media induced price war for as long as they can.
the funny thing is... i don't think there will *be* a pricewar. do you think that people are calling and canceling their cable subscriptions and saying "i don't need comedy central, i have youtube!"?? do you think that companies like coke are going to stop advertising on TV and start advertising on youtube?
it's not like youtube clips are cutting into viacoms TV business. their programming gets into more people's hands without costing viacom a dime. it's free promotion. they should be happy that people are bothering to do it for them in the firstplace. it's not like youtube or it's users are saying that the daily show is their creation.
the world of content production is in chaos right now. the old way of using overpriced people, equipment, and facilities to produce a relatively small number of shows is giving way to more efficient methods of production and distribution. just like the gutenburg press replaced the scribe to produce way more copies of the bible that were of significantly lower quality. the fact is that thanks to the internet, content can be produced and distributed by any drooling simpleton. check out youtube sometime, it's full of them.
a glut of low cost, low quality, and low value content is not a direct threat the the existing high priced high quality content market. neither is taking your high cost, high quality, high value content and dumbing it down for the internet. it might cause the consumer to question why there are so many ads, but the 85% of the TV watching world won't notice or care.
i don't have to worry about that. i have a grownup job. i work 8-12 hours a day for assholes and no one will ever ask me for an autograph. if you are so worried about people taking your imaginary product, perhaps you should get a grownup job too, or maybe you should diversify your offerings with stuff that can't be easily duplicated. or better yet, thank your lucky stars that you are able to make a living as a writer and that you don't have to get a grownup job like the rest of us.
let's say that i "steal" your book... as in i tried to pass it off as mine and make money from it. is that really what youtube does? can you really watch a YouTube Productions Ltd. of "Desperate Housewives" in HD quality?
no, you can't. you have to watch shitty clips that are in no particular order. i can see that the TV networks are in real danger.
now, let's say i took your book, and said to everyone i know "mcrbids wrote a cool book and i want you to read it... here take this shitty copy of part of it." if it was a hardcopy book that would be fine, but if it was a PDF the shit would hit the fan.
how can you say, with confidence, that the 10, 100, or 1000 people i gave the PDF to would actually have bought the book before i gave them a digital copy? how many of them would say "thanks! i was just about to pay money for that." you can't, therefore the damages you claim are imaginary.
on the other hand, i can say with relative certainty that if i emailed your book to a thousand people, at least one of them would go out and buy it. especially if it was good enough for me to bother copying and distributing it in the first place.
people treat intellectual property the same way that they treat real property. that's just how it is. you can waste your writing time fighting that battle or you can find a way to capitalize on it. the choice is yours. the only difference between you and viacom is that viacom can afford to sue for billions and all you as an aspiring writer can do is cry about it.
have their ratings suffered? don't they get paid by the networks before the shows go on the air? has some network threatened to drop the show as a result of youtube? won't the shows end up on DVD and in syndication eventually where there are profits from those sales just like every other studio? if anything, viacom can justify raining the price of it's show to the networks thanks to all the buzz on the net over their fabulous shows.
how much money does viacom need to keep producing shows? how much do you need to write a book? is a billion dollars really justified?
is there value in putting your life on hold to create something of value forthe world to enjoy? of course there is. are the people at viacom doing the same thing that the aspiring writer is doing? hell no. they are a huge corporation with billions and they are only interested in making more billions. i'm a little light on sympathy for giant media companies at the moment.
artists need to make livings in order to keep producing, but at some point in the pursuit of a living it stops being about the art and starts being about enriching the lifestyle. it happens to artists and it happens to people with grown up jobs.
i think suing google for a billion dollars is a clear message that it's stopped being about the art for viacom.
and just where else would you pull estimated damages for unauthorized sharing from?
everyone in the intellectual property business pulls damages out of thier ass... that's standard operating procedure. the IP business is about selling stuff that doesn't really exist... it's stuff you pull it out of your ass and sell to other people. clearly, if someone distributes your imaginary product without your authorization, you can sue them for all of the imaginary sales that you have lost out on. as long as we are working in the realm of the imagination, you might as well imagine big and try to jack google for a billion dollars.
that's an excellent point... whom in your opinion would the allies be?
i guess they took them down. probably some commie bullshit about "terms and conditions".
my attorney won't let me go into the specifics... but it invovles lyeaye in the athtubbaye.
i know he can keep a secret. he helped me out that time i woke up in a strange hotel room in denver next to a dead hooker.
as luck would have it, getting rid of dead hookers is a common problem and there are many useful articles on wikihow. i can tell you from experience that your company's helpdesk is NOT very cooperative in a situation like that.
when i saw the ad for GOW2 my first reaction was "shit! now i have to take back what i said about the PS3."
when i saw that it was for the PS2 i breathed a sigh of relief and went to retrieve my PS2 from it's exile in the basement.
these laws, like seatbelt laws and random insurance checks (and every seemingly pointless "highway safety" law) are tools for the cops to have probable cause to pull you over and toss your car. most cops don't want to cite you for something mundane (unless there is a quota drive that month) they want to bust you for something cool (like drugs, a gun, a DUI, etc.) but it's hard to get probable cause for the really cool stuff. therefore we make all kinds of potentially dangerous stuff illegal so we can pull more people over.
how many times have you been pulled over for a minor infraction, had your license and plates run, only to be let go? chances are your "failure to signal" was no big deal, but your nervous reaction to seeing the cop in your rearview mirror was.
here's a fun experiment: next time you drive on the hiway and a cop gets near you, have your passenger look at them and then quickly look back. then change lanes to the slow lane and go just under the speed limit. chances are you'll get tailed for a few miles and get pulled over for some minor infraction (going 3 miles over the limit, failure to signal, crack in your windshield), get your license, plates, and insurance run and be let off with a verbal (and otherwise undocumented) warning.
that is so true. cory doctorow wrote a great paper on that very argument.
seeing as how science projects rarely make time for state governments.
perhaps the linux community needs to reach out. you know what might do the trick is yet another repackaged ubuntu distro that caters to some cultural minority. maybe you can call it illinibuntu or just dabuntu.
didn't that shit just come out?
why isn't it exclusive to the ps3?
no, they are using corporate kickbacks. your tax dollars go to pay for the stuff that the corporations don't pay taxes to support.
i guess phones are like text editors. i think texting on a moto (of any kind) is frustration incarnate. nokias are my first choice, and my LG is decent now that i have been using it for over a year.
i wish i had modpoints to mark this insightful :-(
yes they are a business... much in the way that your crackhead cousin who shows up at random times and begs for change is a "businessman"
both "business" models invovle being paid to go away.
a mobile phone gets popular because it's "pretty". case in point: the razr which is functionally worthless, hella expensive, and in the purses or pockets of nearly every human in the continental united states.
community support is all you get now, even if you use windows. that's why there are so many support sites on the web for things other than linux. that's the tech support landscape today. dell's software support (reboot, then reformat) mirrors their hardware support (verify warranty and submit diagnostic code for replacement part). support is expensive regardless of the operating system. if you slap the big scary "L" word on your product then not only will you need to hire patient people who can read and talk at the same time... you will have to find ones that can think as well. thinking is expensive. you will have to put the word "technical" back into the term "technical support" instead of the "offshore apology service" that it is today.
nah, 50 bil is about right once you take out all the taxes.
i disagree. i think nintendo's strength has always been making unique game experiences. sony and MS would do well to treat nintendo as free R&D. sony and microsoft can battle head to head over technological superiority since they have the money to do so. MS is especially focused on delivering a highly polished titles from well established genres that appeal to hardcore gamers (shooters, GTA clones, major league sports... etc.) nintendo is much smaller, and does well making fun and quirky games with familiar characters that we fall in love with.
halo is a great game, but at the end of the day, it's just a highly evolved first person shooter. nintendo invents whole new categories of games, such as the party game or the team racer, using it's extensive library of characters to promote it. thier games appeal to more casual gamers like kids.
the only reason the wii fanbase currently loves sports and minigames is because those titles are so unique right now. once a new unique title comes out there will that will become the new fanbase favotite.
he may not be able to run a decent country, but his considerable holdings are proof that he has done a decent job of running the united states thus far :-)
i doubt seriously anyone was trained in the first place. not re-training should cost pretty much the same.
Terrorist - noun
1. a person, usually a member of a group, who uses or advocates terrorism.
2. a person who terrorizes or frightens others.
3. a magic word of american origin invoked to negate all logic and facts in any argument.
i think the opposite might be true... at my house there are 3 adults (me, my wife, and my brother) and two children (i have two daughters ages 11 and 6). the living room has an xbox, a ps2, a gamecube, and an atari flashback and the girls' room has a ps1, a vSmile a GBA and a DS. there are also 6 pc's, countless romz, and a drawer full of those battery powered retro gaming appliances that you plug directly into a TV. not counting the PCs, i would wager the "consoles" outnumber the humans in the house by almost 2 to 1. PCs used to outnumber humans until i discovered VMWare.
the adults in the house are currently addicted to the LOTR online beta, but once that subsides and the supply lines become more reliable, we may acquire a wii and/or a 360. if the family were to upgrade to next generation platforms, the console to human ratio may skew to 3 to 1 thanks to backwards incompatibility issues.
i'll admit it's been a few years since i gave up on buying a linux laptop (when VA linux got out of the hardware game the only vendor left for a long time was emperor linux and their stuff doesn't come cheap.
it should also be mentioned that open office installs on windows as well, and so does clamAV