That's not even remotely fair. We expect people, in real day-to-day life, to speak a sentence without having look up every other word. There is no analogue for maths.
in theory, maximising profit could include making a decent product etc etc in practice, it means branding, monopolization, etc so you don't have to work hard and make a profit.
Show me one company, marketing to the public, that has succeeded without making a product/service that people want to buy.
that you think large companies act to please people, and that this is how they make money shows how little you know.
If you read my post a little more carefully, you'll see that this argument is actually a strawman. I do not think that. Not for one second.
do you ever wonder why salespeople are so rude, esp at stores that serve poor people ? It's because the store owners want you to feel hopeless, that there is no choice, so you just buy and buy without thinking
Oh, so corporate headquarters is sending out memos to all its minimum wage employees to be rude to the customers? And these minimum wage employees, being ruthless cut-throat corporate climbers, obey their requests to the letter? There's something not quite right about your story, but I just can't quite put my finger on it...
Most salespeople I know range from smarmy to almost irritatingly polite. I don't actually know where you're even getting this impression (let alone the conspiracy theory invented from it). In my experience, when people find a snooty sales staff, they generally avoid the place, but that's actually pretty rare.
Innovation is not something perpetually hiding around the corner. We can't just take for granted that it exists. If it does, it's up to people to find such innovations. If it doesn't, then it's useless accusing people of not innovating.
The question is, how would you improve on Google's search engine? I know it's difficult to suggest improvements when you don't have access to the pagerank algorithm, but by the same token, it can't be easy to say that there's significant room for improvement or innovation. Perhaps Google is more or less as good as we're going to get. Perhaps foiling the people gaming the algorithm would just make the algorithm worse in other respects, and would eventually lead to them gaming it in some other respect.
Anyway, the point is that innovation is not necessarily a given.
I am amazed that people think google is (a) a good search engine, rather then soemthing to generate profit for google, and (b) that as alarge corporation, google can be trusted to do anything other then max profits. The idea that a large public company like google will do anything other then maximize profits is silly beyond belief; There is one small exception: if a company is a quasi monopoly, as google is, then it can indulge in some luxuries, like sponsering summer of code; the epitome of this was the old Bell Labs research center in Murray HIll NJ (at least one Nobel Prize for fundamental science, microwave background).
The fact that you think that's an exception shows how little you understand about maximising profits. Maximising profits also can include making a decent product, and generating goodwill. You make the mistake of assuming that the motive for profit and the motive to please people are mutually exclusive, when in fact, they almost always coincide, to a point.
Look, parents should keep a closer eye on their kids. They need to spend more time with them, listen to them, and play a more active role in their child's development.
If parents don't, then they should be jailed until they do.;-)
It's funny, given your cautiousness in your second sentence with your assumptions, that you abandon all such caution in order to declare the case closed.
So, how do you determine the difference between a passionate supporter of an idea and a troll? Or between a fan/apologist and a shill? Because, I gotta tell you, I've seen from first-hand experience that most slashdotters have traditionally got it woefully wrong. When I see someone being accused of being a troll or a shill, I do a cursory check the person's post history, to see whether their posts have a common theme. More often than not, the accusation of being a troll is misplaced, and I have yet to see an accusation of being a shill that has held any water.
If you don't want to waste your time on an argument, then don't reply, don't moderate, don't get involved. It's not really any of your business. It's business between those who do want to argue the point, and take it seriously. I don't care what trolls or shills want; a well-argued opinion not yet countered deserves the same respect as any other well-argued opinion not yet countered.
Cable companies aren't the issue. NBC, ABC, and CBS are not cable companies.
Well, cable companies are who the OP was complaining about.
What utter bullshit. Yeah, you don't mind if we do away with copyright as long as we first replace it with something exactly the same.
It doesn't need to be exactly the same, it needs to fulfil the same basic purpose; to further science and art. I suggest you read my reply to the guy who posted above you for an expanded version of what I meant.
The buskers don't think so. They get quite upset at people who listen but don't donate.
Copyright has clear drawbacks compared to not having copyright; so it stands to reason that when we consider removing copyright, we should do an overall tradeoff, not just "It should give us all the advantages".
Any alternative system will be better in some ways, and worse in others. The question is what the net result is.
Sure, I can respect that. I was too busy offloading a shitload of polemic to actually explain what I meant.
The great thing about copyright is that it's completely optional for the artist. If an artist feels they can better serve us by not using copyright, then it's their prerogative. If we want them to use a specific system, it's up to us to persuade them to use it. If a sustainable system that doesn't rely on copyright (or any of its fruits) comes into fruition, one that artists and consumers alike are happy with, then I would fully support the redaction of copyright.
But I would support it only then. I think it's madness to destroy a system, and hope one will come along and replace it satisfactorily. Especially when we can have such a system working in parallel.
You seem to have a fine compromise lined up anyway: limiting copyright to restricting professional use. All artists have to do is license under some creative commons license. I'm sceptical that many artists would go for such a system, even if people started boycotting traditionally copyrighted works, but there's absolutely no reason not to try. I admit, if artists do go for it, we would (most probably) be better off.
The fact that the game is still popular despite having these features removed proves only two things: 1: The game is a good game anyway so people play it 2: The people who know about the feature are such a minority that any drop in sales they cause has no effect on the overall popularity
Having played neither starcraft, I don't know which features you're talking about, but the following are also possibilities:
3. Few people cared about the features anyway 4. Many enjoyed the game more without those features
Remember that measuring quality in a game is not just a matter of counting features. Sometimes not including features makes a game more balanced, more lean, or more focused. But again, I have no idea which features you're referring to, so you'd know better than me.
I'm sorry, resisting what hackel wants is not what makes them dinosaurs. Resisting what the market wants is what makes them dinosaurs.
If I, personally, was given the choice between being called a dinosaur by morons and working thanklessly for them for free, I would rather be called a dinosaur. I'm not sure I could afford anything different.
The market is waning for broadcast, timeslotted, shut-up-and-eat-your-spam programming now that new technology allows time shifting and format shifting.
Cable companies are now supplying DVRs, and, like I said, providing free versions of their shows online. I can't think of a format shifting example, but then again, I can't think of anyone who expects to be able to format-shift their TV. Bitch all you want, but cable companies are adapting, and you whiny pirates are revealing yourselves to be the greedy, inflexible ones in all of this. Whodathunkit?
Oh wait, it's not about what we want. It's about what you want. You still want us (eg, everyone else) to bleed in order to finance your pork barrel programming.
Citation needed. Why on earth would I want anything like that?
What I do want is sustainable practices when it comes to art. I don't mind if we do away with copyright, only if we have a working, implemented, and already used system that replaces all of copyrights functions. I'm sceptical that we can find one that embraces the self-justifying pirate's sense of self-entitlement and abject greed, but like any good sceptic, I'm open to the possibilities.
I remember this conversation! We're still weeping for the impending demise of the $300 million blockbuster.:D
Have you spouted this same crap before to me? I'm sorry if I don't remember you; you sound just like all the other self-entitled pricks I've argued with: rhetorically empty, with arguments pasted together purely out of insults.
As for the $300mil blockbuster, I think the market should decide. Nobody is forcing you, or anyone else, to see them.
Wasn't the point recently discussed that the shows are not products, our eyeballs are? We don't show demand, the advertisers do? We're not being sold cheese it's just baiting the mousetrap. How is sneaking the cheese off the mousetrap the "worst thing that we can do, yes worse than walking into the trap" when most every natural food source was paved over long ago by the powers that be?
Let's get this straight. You took a half-truth like "eyeballs are the product" (advertising is only a portion of their revenue), you used that to create a laughably bad analogy, and then concluded something from it about something that was only tangentially related to thing you created the analogy about? That is seriously the worst argument I have heard in at least a month or three.
When you find independant programming that you like, rejoice! Involve yourself in the communities. Buy the merchandise. Support the cause! But to this date, there's not a lot of independant material to choose from.
I certainly agree with that. Supporting alternatives is what will get us off our dependence on Big Media. Not just downloading more from them.
In any event, "not watching" material just because it's commercial and someone is hoping to extort you is precisely as disingenuous as deciding you must plug your ears when walking past a street musician you have no intention of tipping. You'd better close your eyes too, or you might see an expensively produced billboard advertisement for a product you don't intend to purchase.
Let's get this straight. Choosing to search for and illegally download from a torrent is not the same as walking down the street, hearing buskers and seeing billboards. To claim otherwise is utterly dishonest.
What is the source of this myth that "computer screens" and "televisions" are different things, having different sizes and used in different rooms?
Real life. For every person I know who browses the internet on a screen equal to or larger in size than the screen on which they watch their television, I know about 50 people who do not, and at least 30 who wouldn't consider watching TV on their computer.
And no, I don't know too many computer geeks. How can you tell?
That particular quote was actually directly from TFA. It was included in TFS in quotes. I suppose the submitter or the editor could have resorted to dishonestly misquoting the article, or could have quoted like this:
"...such as their IP [the expansion of the abbreviation IP] address..."
It's kinda telling that, as soon as an article tries to explain one of the privacy issues on Facebook to the "dumb masses", you deride it, and tell us to "keep using Facebook". It's almost like you don't want to share that smug feeling of superiority with the dumb masses.
The traditional TV networks, recording companies, movie producers, etc. are *never* going to give up their business model. EVER.
But they have already modified their business model. They provide free streamed versions of many of their high-rating shows. It's perfect for those who want to "try before they buy". Oh wait, you weren't wanting a change in business model, you just wanted them to change to the business model you wanted. Doing anything else makes them a dinosaur.
hey will continue to fight us at every turn, but eventually, they will be gone. Until then, our job is to hang in there, continue to support independent projects, use torrents so that they lose advertising revenue, and teach as many people as we know to do the same.
They lose just as much advertising revenue if you don't watch the shows. Using torrents is about the worst thing you could do (yes, much worse than paying the cable companies). It allows them to erode our liberties, and it makes the process of change immeasurably longer and more painful. The government is never going to allow them to fail while we keep showing significant demand for their products.
It baffles me that the networks' left and right hands don't know what the other are doing. With one hand they gleefully provide online versions of the shows and with the other, they smack down anyone (Boxee, Google) that tries to make the consumption of those products easier.
Put it this way: if they wanted to make the free versions of their shows as easy to access as possible, they would provide downloadable DRM-free copies to anyone that wanted them. The point is not to make access easy, it's to make access difficult and annoying. It's to make the free versions good advertising, but not good enough to replace the paid-for experience. You have to remember that, for a lot of people, just turning on their computer and watching on their small computer screen is turn-off enough, compared to watching on the television.
Why? I don't see why, given that he had a conscious choice whether to act or not, why his choice should be biased towards his passenger. Sure, the passenger has the right to live but no more than the people on the plane. What this amounts to is several people all in the wrong place at the wrong time. Somebody had to be put at risk, and the choice was the driver's. By choosing to shield one person, the driver was risking the lives of the others. I don't think that, just because the passenger happened to be under the care of the person with control, the person needs to be given preferential treatment at the expense of others.
Ah, and because the people you know don't think like that, nobody thinks like that, right?
No, because people I know don't think like that, not everybody could possibly think like that. I was responding to a sweeping general assertion about people's thought processes and motives for watching television. The fact that I know counterexamples is a very good argument against such statements.
Not sure what you mean with your Simpsons statement.
I was trying to point out that I enjoy watching characters I do not identify with. Here's another example: the Loony Toons. They were very popular in their day, but I don't think they stood out for the realism. That is, I'm fairly sure most people who watched that particular show did not see themselves in their favourite characters.
You give people too much credit. People like watching TV because they think that much of what they see *could* be real.
I call utter bullshit. I don't know anyone who thinks like that, but I know a lot of people who watch TV.
The very fact that people pick up memes, mimic behavior, etc. from TV means they identify with the fiction they're presented.
One of my favourite Simpsons episodes is the Who Shot Mr Burns Episode, and I've been known to quote Mr Burns from that episode. Does that mean I have some secret desire to blot out the sun and be shot?
Slashdot Mirror
That's not even remotely fair. We expect people, in real day-to-day life, to speak a sentence without having look up every other word. There is no analogue for maths.
True dat. Studying formal logic in mathematics has helped my critical thinking and general bullshit-detection no end.
Nope, try again. I've met plenty of people who want to buy microsoft products, and if the posts here are to be believed, I'm not the only one.
The link is goatse.
I am genuinely sorry that I read your post.
Show me one company, marketing to the public, that has succeeded without making a product/service that people want to buy.
If you read my post a little more carefully, you'll see that this argument is actually a strawman. I do not think that. Not for one second.
Oh, so corporate headquarters is sending out memos to all its minimum wage employees to be rude to the customers? And these minimum wage employees, being ruthless cut-throat corporate climbers, obey their requests to the letter? There's something not quite right about your story, but I just can't quite put my finger on it...
Most salespeople I know range from smarmy to almost irritatingly polite. I don't actually know where you're even getting this impression (let alone the conspiracy theory invented from it). In my experience, when people find a snooty sales staff, they generally avoid the place, but that's actually pretty rare.
Innovation is not something perpetually hiding around the corner. We can't just take for granted that it exists. If it does, it's up to people to find such innovations. If it doesn't, then it's useless accusing people of not innovating.
The question is, how would you improve on Google's search engine? I know it's difficult to suggest improvements when you don't have access to the pagerank algorithm, but by the same token, it can't be easy to say that there's significant room for improvement or innovation. Perhaps Google is more or less as good as we're going to get. Perhaps foiling the people gaming the algorithm would just make the algorithm worse in other respects, and would eventually lead to them gaming it in some other respect.
Anyway, the point is that innovation is not necessarily a given.
The fact that you think that's an exception shows how little you understand about maximising profits. Maximising profits also can include making a decent product, and generating goodwill. You make the mistake of assuming that the motive for profit and the motive to please people are mutually exclusive, when in fact, they almost always coincide, to a point.
Look, parents should keep a closer eye on their kids. They need to spend more time with them, listen to them, and play a more active role in their child's development.
If parents don't, then they should be jailed until they do. ;-)
Shh! We're trying to RTFA, if you don't mind!
Oh wait... I momentarily forgot where I was.
Welcome to Slashdot, where everyone has an agenda except me!
It's funny, given your cautiousness in your second sentence with your assumptions, that you abandon all such caution in order to declare the case closed.
Worms
So, how do you determine the difference between a passionate supporter of an idea and a troll? Or between a fan/apologist and a shill? Because, I gotta tell you, I've seen from first-hand experience that most slashdotters have traditionally got it woefully wrong. When I see someone being accused of being a troll or a shill, I do a cursory check the person's post history, to see whether their posts have a common theme. More often than not, the accusation of being a troll is misplaced, and I have yet to see an accusation of being a shill that has held any water.
If you don't want to waste your time on an argument, then don't reply, don't moderate, don't get involved. It's not really any of your business. It's business between those who do want to argue the point, and take it seriously. I don't care what trolls or shills want; a well-argued opinion not yet countered deserves the same respect as any other well-argued opinion not yet countered.
Well, cable companies are who the OP was complaining about.
It doesn't need to be exactly the same, it needs to fulfil the same basic purpose; to further science and art. I suggest you read my reply to the guy who posted above you for an expanded version of what I meant.
Uhh, OK.
Sure, I can respect that. I was too busy offloading a shitload of polemic to actually explain what I meant.
The great thing about copyright is that it's completely optional for the artist. If an artist feels they can better serve us by not using copyright, then it's their prerogative. If we want them to use a specific system, it's up to us to persuade them to use it. If a sustainable system that doesn't rely on copyright (or any of its fruits) comes into fruition, one that artists and consumers alike are happy with, then I would fully support the redaction of copyright.
But I would support it only then. I think it's madness to destroy a system, and hope one will come along and replace it satisfactorily. Especially when we can have such a system working in parallel.
You seem to have a fine compromise lined up anyway: limiting copyright to restricting professional use. All artists have to do is license under some creative commons license. I'm sceptical that many artists would go for such a system, even if people started boycotting traditionally copyrighted works, but there's absolutely no reason not to try. I admit, if artists do go for it, we would (most probably) be better off.
Having played neither starcraft, I don't know which features you're talking about, but the following are also possibilities:
3. Few people cared about the features anyway
4. Many enjoyed the game more without those features
Remember that measuring quality in a game is not just a matter of counting features. Sometimes not including features makes a game more balanced, more lean, or more focused. But again, I have no idea which features you're referring to, so you'd know better than me.
If I, personally, was given the choice between being called a dinosaur by morons and working thanklessly for them for free, I would rather be called a dinosaur. I'm not sure I could afford anything different.
Cable companies are now supplying DVRs, and, like I said, providing free versions of their shows online. I can't think of a format shifting example, but then again, I can't think of anyone who expects to be able to format-shift their TV. Bitch all you want, but cable companies are adapting, and you whiny pirates are revealing yourselves to be the greedy, inflexible ones in all of this. Whodathunkit?
Citation needed. Why on earth would I want anything like that?
What I do want is sustainable practices when it comes to art. I don't mind if we do away with copyright, only if we have a working, implemented, and already used system that replaces all of copyrights functions. I'm sceptical that we can find one that embraces the self-justifying pirate's sense of self-entitlement and abject greed, but like any good sceptic, I'm open to the possibilities.
Have you spouted this same crap before to me? I'm sorry if I don't remember you; you sound just like all the other self-entitled pricks I've argued with: rhetorically empty, with arguments pasted together purely out of insults.
As for the $300mil blockbuster, I think the market should decide. Nobody is forcing you, or anyone else, to see them.
Let's get this straight. You took a half-truth like "eyeballs are the product" (advertising is only a portion of their revenue), you used that to create a laughably bad analogy, and then concluded something from it about something that was only tangentially related to thing you created the analogy about? That is seriously the worst argument I have heard in at least a month or three.
I certainly agree with that. Supporting alternatives is what will get us off our dependence on Big Media. Not just downloading more from them.
Let's get this straight. Choosing to search for and illegally download from a torrent is not the same as walking down the street, hearing buskers and seeing billboards. To claim otherwise is utterly dishonest.
Real life. For every person I know who browses the internet on a screen equal to or larger in size than the screen on which they watch their television, I know about 50 people who do not, and at least 30 who wouldn't consider watching TV on their computer.
And no, I don't know too many computer geeks. How can you tell?
That particular quote was actually directly from TFA. It was included in TFS in quotes. I suppose the submitter or the editor could have resorted to dishonestly misquoting the article, or could have quoted like this:
"...such as their IP [the expansion of the abbreviation IP] address..."
It's kinda telling that, as soon as an article tries to explain one of the privacy issues on Facebook to the "dumb masses", you deride it, and tell us to "keep using Facebook". It's almost like you don't want to share that smug feeling of superiority with the dumb masses.
But they have already modified their business model. They provide free streamed versions of many of their high-rating shows. It's perfect for those who want to "try before they buy". Oh wait, you weren't wanting a change in business model, you just wanted them to change to the business model you wanted. Doing anything else makes them a dinosaur.
They lose just as much advertising revenue if you don't watch the shows. Using torrents is about the worst thing you could do (yes, much worse than paying the cable companies). It allows them to erode our liberties, and it makes the process of change immeasurably longer and more painful. The government is never going to allow them to fail while we keep showing significant demand for their products.
Put it this way: if they wanted to make the free versions of their shows as easy to access as possible, they would provide downloadable DRM-free copies to anyone that wanted them. The point is not to make access easy, it's to make access difficult and annoying. It's to make the free versions good advertising, but not good enough to replace the paid-for experience. You have to remember that, for a lot of people, just turning on their computer and watching on their small computer screen is turn-off enough, compared to watching on the television.
Why? I don't see why, given that he had a conscious choice whether to act or not, why his choice should be biased towards his passenger. Sure, the passenger has the right to live but no more than the people on the plane. What this amounts to is several people all in the wrong place at the wrong time. Somebody had to be put at risk, and the choice was the driver's. By choosing to shield one person, the driver was risking the lives of the others. I don't think that, just because the passenger happened to be under the care of the person with control, the person needs to be given preferential treatment at the expense of others.
No, because people I know don't think like that, not everybody could possibly think like that. I was responding to a sweeping general assertion about people's thought processes and motives for watching television. The fact that I know counterexamples is a very good argument against such statements.
I was trying to point out that I enjoy watching characters I do not identify with. Here's another example: the Loony Toons. They were very popular in their day, but I don't think they stood out for the realism. That is, I'm fairly sure most people who watched that particular show did not see themselves in their favourite characters.
I call utter bullshit. I don't know anyone who thinks like that, but I know a lot of people who watch TV.
One of my favourite Simpsons episodes is the Who Shot Mr Burns Episode, and I've been known to quote Mr Burns from that episode. Does that mean I have some secret desire to blot out the sun and be shot?