It's difficult to get any kind of information prior to a product launch (one of the reasons I never buy until a few weeks post launch so I can see what the early adopters are saying online), consumers have to pretty much rely on the reviews in mainstream media, many of which (and this is not specific to Apple products) often gloss over the issues and regurgitate the marketing spiel, probably because they don't want to risk not being sent new products for review.
Actually, Win7 runs pretty well on a 2008 netbook. Much better than Vista and not noticably different to XP that was supplied with most such devices. In many ways, a lot of MS's issues stem from the very fact that they try for so much backwards compatability that it often bloats the OS and hobbles newer functionality. Apple have always been a lot more willing to just raise the requirements and bar a lot of older hardware users, which I guess allows them to better leverage newer innovations, but it's often at the expense of people who supported them by buying their hardware, so we shouldn't be surprised when there is some backlash. If Apple really wanted to do the best by the users, they'd give the option to enable or disable different parts of the iOS4, so users of 3GS/3G devices coule pick and choose and find a balance between performance and functionality, but that would mean some additional bloat for iPhone 4 users and some added complexity in the OS as a whole which runs contrary to their business practice.
Do you naively believe that it's not possible for more than one company to care more about profits than customers? Most companies have the same attitude, with varying degrees (the degrees generally being governed by how much they think they can get away with).
You can generally insist on a signature instead of PIN, for accessibility reasons (certain people have issues using the PIN entry pad) regardless of the value of the sale - it's just that stores don't advertise it because it's more hassle and they want to train everyone to use the keypads as a first resort.
And remember, Fight Club was written before the internet was popular. In those days it was much more difficult for people to find others who had been mistreated by companies, and much easier for companies to brush their indiscretions under the carpet. Now, people can band together much more easily and some companies understand how damaging mis-steps can be to their image and respond well, while others struggle with this new found consumer voice and seem to stagger from one mistake to another. Publicity was definitely always a factor in the equation, but I bet it was a much smaller part of it back when FC was written than it is today.
Second, that forced insurance was also taken out of your paycheck. Maybe if so much money hadn't been going to "insurance" you could have saved some money so you wouldn't be a burden on society when you were laid you off.
Oh, definitely. We know people are great at saving, it's not like the finances of the western world are screwed right now because so many people spent way beyond their means. I say this as someone who didn't take out credit, built up a savings pot and always lived within my means even when times were hard and am now spending my own money to bail out the people who weren't so responsible, so I don't disagree that people ought to save, but experience tells me very few of them would save, even with a little extra in their monthly paycheque.
Third, as one of the people paying you to sit on your ass wasting time and money on the internet, get a job, you fucking bum.
And then you can get paid to sit on your ass wasting time and money on the internet?
In the United states, FICO Credit scores range from 300-850, with 723 being the median FICO score of Americans. FICO scores below 600 are considered high risk borrowers, 620 being the dividing line between good and bad, 640 or above being "pretty good", 650 as average general credit-use behavior, and above 690 or 720 being excellent. Scores are based on payment history, outstanding debts, credit history, new credit, and credit in use. In addition, Experian's PLUS score system ranges from 330-830, and the VantageScore ranges from 501-990. The variations can be easily confusing to consumers.
That was the same excuse they used when they wanted to keep DRM on music downloads, now we have DRM-free music everywhere. There's no reason, beyond the blinkered greed of a few people, that this couldn't work for games. I agree with your basic point though - that blinkered greed, misplaced as it is, would have been enough to kill Steam without DRM, or at least relegate it to a matchmaking system for MP games.
Consider that most people will want a PC anyway, even if they already have a console. Therefore the only thing you're weighing against the cost of the console is the difference between your good run of the mill PC and a very good gaming PC, it's not that different. Actually I was just thinking myself, after being almost exclusively a console player for the last 6 or 7 years, that it might be time to go back to the PC. Not because of hardware constraints, but because of the worrying trends in stupid console hardware requirements. I like the current balance of Wii for casual gamers and XBOX/PS3 for serious gamers, but it seems the latter two are now starting to follow suit with (in their own words back at the time Wii was released) gimicky controllers. I don't want to think that, in a year's time, I'll have to be leaping about my living room to play an FPS, I just want to relax and play games after a long day at work. I specifically moved to consoles because they let me do that better than PCs, if they change that dynamic I'll switch back without a second thought.
Novelty, too I guess. Most people have used paper books their whole lives. I'd be interested to see the tests in 20 years of kids who have grown up with ebooks as their primary source of reading material and how they get on when they're handed a real book.
If they were universally accepted, maybe. I've never been able to buy anything from the US (I'm in the UK) with a debit card - it's always credit or, very rarely, paypal. I've not had a credit card since 2001, and I can vouch that the last time I wanted to buy something from Steam (Peggle last year) I couldn't (they weren't accepting debit or paypal at the time, I don't know if this has changed).
You make some excellent points - can you point me in the direction of which of the major parties that have a chance in hell of being voted in actually oppose copyright extensions and are in favour of shortening the terms, I'd like to make a difference.
Yes, that all sounds like a plausible thing for a minor to do to get something they can get for free. Or alternatively the guy could be a little less short sighted and realise that, while she's downloading his stuff today, once she's independent and got a job she'll more likely be buying his stuff. All he's done is alienate a fan, he's not earned an extra penny. Kids with little money won't buy content that they can get for free - we can discuss whether it's right or wrong until we're all blue in the face, it won't change that fact. We can either punish them for their enthusiasm (great life lession) or we can give them a little leeway and realise that the long term benefits are probably worth it. While we're talking about payment methods - most banks let kids open accounts even though it likely costs the bank a lot more than they make in return because they know the kid will be more likely to stick with them in the future when they're earning big money. These are banks, prepared to lose money in the short term in order to make money in the long game. Banks! Quite the apt analogy, if only people weren't too blinkered by their greed and self righteousness to see it.
A colleague introduced me to them 11 years ago, however I've not seen them promoted ever, back then it was a specialist service you had to seek out from your credit card company. I don't ever remember seeing them offered at any time in between, which is a shame as they seem like a wholly sensible idea.
The governments still think they can solve this with stricter laws and harsher punishments. The problem is, the stricter the laws, the quicker some bright spark finds a way to bypass them with or hide behind technology, which in turn leads to even more strict laws and harsh punishments. What government should be asking is how they can make copyright more equitable for everyone, but they're too busy pandering to the whims of the big labels and forgetting who voted them in. We're finally reaching a point where the people who care about file sharing are entering the "more likely to vote" demographic, so maybe we'll eventually see a sensible approach tabled by one of the big parties.
So how do people fix a broken system when the only two realistic "democratic" choices they have both support the system (likely because the same corporations are lobbying both sides with large sums of cash to prop up said system)? There is a long standing tradition or people disobeying laws they see as unfair or undemocratic - if a handful of people do so, they're criminals, if a large section of society do so, they can be a powerful force for change. It's a perfectly valid way of fixing the system - as a teen I saw the poll tax riots in the UK, mass civil disobedience, old age pensioners going to jail rather than paying unfair taxes, and this wrought a real change. Did they break the law? Yes. Were they right to do so? Damn right. Governments would love us all to be good little sheep and believe they're the best, final arbiter of what's right and wrong. When they refuse to listen to what people say, action is the next logical step.
We'd all probably like to earn a little more though - the fact that this guy might be earning less than recording artists doesn't necessarily mean that his sheet music isn't still overpriced in the market, though (I'm not saying it is, but we can't automatically assume that it's either priced just right or underpriced). It doesn't mean he doesn't work as hard - I'm sure there are plenty of examples of the guy who hauls the garbage for a corporation working harder than the 6 figure CEO who ultimately signs the cheques.
Not only that, it requires a significant investment of time and effort, and some personal skill. If the cost of something is justified by what the customer gets out of it, this guy would have to offer refunds to anyone who failed to master his songs. Since he doesn't, we can assume GP is wrong that the cost is not determined by what the material gives.
Well it's a little unfair without knowing more about who the downloaders are and who his customers are. If he makes his money from people staging his musicals, then likely he won't make much money because there will never be sufficient numbers of musicals happening. On the other hand, if these downloaders are just hobbyists looking for something to learn, he still wouldn't make money if they stopped downloading his stuff because they'd find something else that was free. In the end he's making the common mistake of assuming every download is a lost sale, but how does he know the people downloading aren't the same ones driving the demand for the musicals? This could be entirely self-defeating if he annoys his fan base and in turn he falls out of favour, meanwhile if they like his stuff enough to start playing it professionally, they'll eventually contribute to his royalties. Whichever way I look at it, unless this guy is offering a product so amazing that people won't just go elsewhere, it's only ever going to be self defeating to pursue his current course of action. It's his choice to do so, of course, but considering the music labels have been doing this for over a decade AND bringing high profile legal proceedings and still haven't made a dent in downloading, I can't see him getting far.
So he doesn't already earn royalties for production of his work? What's that? He does and he not only wants to keep earning on the same piece of work for the entirety of his life, he wants to earn on it two times over for the entirety of his life, even though these downloaders are probably helping promote his work and helping him get paid the initial royalties in doing so? Okay - I just like to understand someone's viewpoint before he starts pointing the finger at those greedy downloaders:)
Economies of scale? Is that why, when MP3 sites first took off, all songs were priced the same regardless of how popular they are? In fact, these days (and this is purely anecdotal based on my experience so YMMV) it seems the more popular songs (particularly chart music) are actually more expensive, surely they should be much cheaper.
Nobody's saying creators don't have a say, either. In fact, there are plenty of creators who firmly believe in the shortening or complete abolition of copyright, just as there are people who've never created a thing but still believe that copyright is right. In the end, the only way to decide this is by following the will of the majority of the people - and increasingly it looks like that majority are in favour of sharing (maybe this is the record labels shooting themselves in the foot by publicising this so much that it just feels that almost everyone's doing it, when in fact it's not so ubiquitous, if that's the case they'd best be careful they don't score a spectacular own goal).
Who are we? When you say "Copyright is a right given to people", WE are the ones who give that right. We are society, and we are legion. When society agrees that there should be copyright, you get copyright. It seems more and more of society no longer agree, and those of us who don't (or at least believe it should be a much shorter term) are starting to voice that opinion - most of what we see at the moment are the final railings of a bunch of industries that desperately need a new business model. Of course, as part of society you are entitled to voice your dissenting opinion, but as a developer relying on copyright (and there are other models than first sale - subscription or OSS and paid support for instance) you have no right to tell us not to voice our opinions. What you are doing is called biting the hand that feeds for a reason, bite long enough or hard enough and society might decide it doesn't want to feed you anymore.
You're assuming the current model is the only way to financially motivate artists, though. What's wrong with public performace, or patronage (in this day and age, sponsorship - I'm sure some artists already get corporate sponsorship), models that worked well before the introduction of copyright?
Car locks are an enhancement - they prevent other people stealing the car, and certainly it's not as convenient for you as being able to own a car that has no locks so you don't have to remember your key, but most people are happy to accept the trade off, it's not crippled, just inconvenient. DRM-encumbered items, on the other hand, provide zero benefit to the owner, it's all negatives - increased cost, increased complexity, impossible to format shift in its DRM form, can potentially be deleted without your permission after sale, etc. It's all negatives from the consumer's perspective, hence it's crippled purely for the benefit of the vendor and to the detriment of the owner.
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It's difficult to get any kind of information prior to a product launch (one of the reasons I never buy until a few weeks post launch so I can see what the early adopters are saying online), consumers have to pretty much rely on the reviews in mainstream media, many of which (and this is not specific to Apple products) often gloss over the issues and regurgitate the marketing spiel, probably because they don't want to risk not being sent new products for review.
Actually, Win7 runs pretty well on a 2008 netbook. Much better than Vista and not noticably different to XP that was supplied with most such devices. In many ways, a lot of MS's issues stem from the very fact that they try for so much backwards compatability that it often bloats the OS and hobbles newer functionality. Apple have always been a lot more willing to just raise the requirements and bar a lot of older hardware users, which I guess allows them to better leverage newer innovations, but it's often at the expense of people who supported them by buying their hardware, so we shouldn't be surprised when there is some backlash. If Apple really wanted to do the best by the users, they'd give the option to enable or disable different parts of the iOS4, so users of 3GS/3G devices coule pick and choose and find a balance between performance and functionality, but that would mean some additional bloat for iPhone 4 users and some added complexity in the OS as a whole which runs contrary to their business practice.
Do you naively believe that it's not possible for more than one company to care more about profits than customers? Most companies have the same attitude, with varying degrees (the degrees generally being governed by how much they think they can get away with).
You can generally insist on a signature instead of PIN, for accessibility reasons (certain people have issues using the PIN entry pad) regardless of the value of the sale - it's just that stores don't advertise it because it's more hassle and they want to train everyone to use the keypads as a first resort.
And remember, Fight Club was written before the internet was popular. In those days it was much more difficult for people to find others who had been mistreated by companies, and much easier for companies to brush their indiscretions under the carpet. Now, people can band together much more easily and some companies understand how damaging mis-steps can be to their image and respond well, while others struggle with this new found consumer voice and seem to stagger from one mistake to another. Publicity was definitely always a factor in the equation, but I bet it was a much smaller part of it back when FC was written than it is today.
Second, that forced insurance was also taken out of your paycheck. Maybe if so much money hadn't been going to "insurance" you could have saved some money so you wouldn't be a burden on society when you were laid you off.
Oh, definitely. We know people are great at saving, it's not like the finances of the western world are screwed right now because so many people spent way beyond their means. I say this as someone who didn't take out credit, built up a savings pot and always lived within my means even when times were hard and am now spending my own money to bail out the people who weren't so responsible, so I don't disagree that people ought to save, but experience tells me very few of them would save, even with a little extra in their monthly paycheque.
Third, as one of the people paying you to sit on your ass wasting time and money on the internet, get a job, you fucking bum.
And then you can get paid to sit on your ass wasting time and money on the internet?
Depends on the system you use, apparently:
In the United states, FICO Credit scores range from 300-850, with 723 being the median FICO score of Americans. FICO scores below 600 are considered high risk borrowers, 620 being the dividing line between good and bad, 640 or above being "pretty good", 650 as average general credit-use behavior, and above 690 or 720 being excellent. Scores are based on payment history, outstanding debts, credit history, new credit, and credit in use. In addition, Experian's PLUS score system ranges from 330-830, and the VantageScore ranges from 501-990. The variations can be easily confusing to consumers.
That was the same excuse they used when they wanted to keep DRM on music downloads, now we have DRM-free music everywhere. There's no reason, beyond the blinkered greed of a few people, that this couldn't work for games. I agree with your basic point though - that blinkered greed, misplaced as it is, would have been enough to kill Steam without DRM, or at least relegate it to a matchmaking system for MP games.
Consider that most people will want a PC anyway, even if they already have a console. Therefore the only thing you're weighing against the cost of the console is the difference between your good run of the mill PC and a very good gaming PC, it's not that different. Actually I was just thinking myself, after being almost exclusively a console player for the last 6 or 7 years, that it might be time to go back to the PC. Not because of hardware constraints, but because of the worrying trends in stupid console hardware requirements. I like the current balance of Wii for casual gamers and XBOX/PS3 for serious gamers, but it seems the latter two are now starting to follow suit with (in their own words back at the time Wii was released) gimicky controllers. I don't want to think that, in a year's time, I'll have to be leaping about my living room to play an FPS, I just want to relax and play games after a long day at work. I specifically moved to consoles because they let me do that better than PCs, if they change that dynamic I'll switch back without a second thought.
Novelty, too I guess. Most people have used paper books their whole lives. I'd be interested to see the tests in 20 years of kids who have grown up with ebooks as their primary source of reading material and how they get on when they're handed a real book.
If they were universally accepted, maybe. I've never been able to buy anything from the US (I'm in the UK) with a debit card - it's always credit or, very rarely, paypal. I've not had a credit card since 2001, and I can vouch that the last time I wanted to buy something from Steam (Peggle last year) I couldn't (they weren't accepting debit or paypal at the time, I don't know if this has changed).
You make some excellent points - can you point me in the direction of which of the major parties that have a chance in hell of being voted in actually oppose copyright extensions and are in favour of shortening the terms, I'd like to make a difference.
Yes, that all sounds like a plausible thing for a minor to do to get something they can get for free. Or alternatively the guy could be a little less short sighted and realise that, while she's downloading his stuff today, once she's independent and got a job she'll more likely be buying his stuff. All he's done is alienate a fan, he's not earned an extra penny. Kids with little money won't buy content that they can get for free - we can discuss whether it's right or wrong until we're all blue in the face, it won't change that fact. We can either punish them for their enthusiasm (great life lession) or we can give them a little leeway and realise that the long term benefits are probably worth it. While we're talking about payment methods - most banks let kids open accounts even though it likely costs the bank a lot more than they make in return because they know the kid will be more likely to stick with them in the future when they're earning big money. These are banks, prepared to lose money in the short term in order to make money in the long game. Banks! Quite the apt analogy, if only people weren't too blinkered by their greed and self righteousness to see it.
A colleague introduced me to them 11 years ago, however I've not seen them promoted ever, back then it was a specialist service you had to seek out from your credit card company. I don't ever remember seeing them offered at any time in between, which is a shame as they seem like a wholly sensible idea.
The governments still think they can solve this with stricter laws and harsher punishments. The problem is, the stricter the laws, the quicker some bright spark finds a way to bypass them with or hide behind technology, which in turn leads to even more strict laws and harsh punishments. What government should be asking is how they can make copyright more equitable for everyone, but they're too busy pandering to the whims of the big labels and forgetting who voted them in. We're finally reaching a point where the people who care about file sharing are entering the "more likely to vote" demographic, so maybe we'll eventually see a sensible approach tabled by one of the big parties.
So how do people fix a broken system when the only two realistic "democratic" choices they have both support the system (likely because the same corporations are lobbying both sides with large sums of cash to prop up said system)? There is a long standing tradition or people disobeying laws they see as unfair or undemocratic - if a handful of people do so, they're criminals, if a large section of society do so, they can be a powerful force for change. It's a perfectly valid way of fixing the system - as a teen I saw the poll tax riots in the UK, mass civil disobedience, old age pensioners going to jail rather than paying unfair taxes, and this wrought a real change. Did they break the law? Yes. Were they right to do so? Damn right. Governments would love us all to be good little sheep and believe they're the best, final arbiter of what's right and wrong. When they refuse to listen to what people say, action is the next logical step.
We'd all probably like to earn a little more though - the fact that this guy might be earning less than recording artists doesn't necessarily mean that his sheet music isn't still overpriced in the market, though (I'm not saying it is, but we can't automatically assume that it's either priced just right or underpriced). It doesn't mean he doesn't work as hard - I'm sure there are plenty of examples of the guy who hauls the garbage for a corporation working harder than the 6 figure CEO who ultimately signs the cheques.
Not only that, it requires a significant investment of time and effort, and some personal skill. If the cost of something is justified by what the customer gets out of it, this guy would have to offer refunds to anyone who failed to master his songs. Since he doesn't, we can assume GP is wrong that the cost is not determined by what the material gives.
Well it's a little unfair without knowing more about who the downloaders are and who his customers are. If he makes his money from people staging his musicals, then likely he won't make much money because there will never be sufficient numbers of musicals happening. On the other hand, if these downloaders are just hobbyists looking for something to learn, he still wouldn't make money if they stopped downloading his stuff because they'd find something else that was free. In the end he's making the common mistake of assuming every download is a lost sale, but how does he know the people downloading aren't the same ones driving the demand for the musicals? This could be entirely self-defeating if he annoys his fan base and in turn he falls out of favour, meanwhile if they like his stuff enough to start playing it professionally, they'll eventually contribute to his royalties. Whichever way I look at it, unless this guy is offering a product so amazing that people won't just go elsewhere, it's only ever going to be self defeating to pursue his current course of action. It's his choice to do so, of course, but considering the music labels have been doing this for over a decade AND bringing high profile legal proceedings and still haven't made a dent in downloading, I can't see him getting far.
So he doesn't already earn royalties for production of his work? What's that? He does and he not only wants to keep earning on the same piece of work for the entirety of his life, he wants to earn on it two times over for the entirety of his life, even though these downloaders are probably helping promote his work and helping him get paid the initial royalties in doing so? Okay - I just like to understand someone's viewpoint before he starts pointing the finger at those greedy downloaders :)
Economies of scale? Is that why, when MP3 sites first took off, all songs were priced the same regardless of how popular they are? In fact, these days (and this is purely anecdotal based on my experience so YMMV) it seems the more popular songs (particularly chart music) are actually more expensive, surely they should be much cheaper.
Nobody's saying creators don't have a say, either. In fact, there are plenty of creators who firmly believe in the shortening or complete abolition of copyright, just as there are people who've never created a thing but still believe that copyright is right. In the end, the only way to decide this is by following the will of the majority of the people - and increasingly it looks like that majority are in favour of sharing (maybe this is the record labels shooting themselves in the foot by publicising this so much that it just feels that almost everyone's doing it, when in fact it's not so ubiquitous, if that's the case they'd best be careful they don't score a spectacular own goal).
Who are we? When you say "Copyright is a right given to people", WE are the ones who give that right. We are society, and we are legion. When society agrees that there should be copyright, you get copyright. It seems more and more of society no longer agree, and those of us who don't (or at least believe it should be a much shorter term) are starting to voice that opinion - most of what we see at the moment are the final railings of a bunch of industries that desperately need a new business model. Of course, as part of society you are entitled to voice your dissenting opinion, but as a developer relying on copyright (and there are other models than first sale - subscription or OSS and paid support for instance) you have no right to tell us not to voice our opinions. What you are doing is called biting the hand that feeds for a reason, bite long enough or hard enough and society might decide it doesn't want to feed you anymore.
You're assuming the current model is the only way to financially motivate artists, though. What's wrong with public performace, or patronage (in this day and age, sponsorship - I'm sure some artists already get corporate sponsorship), models that worked well before the introduction of copyright?
Car locks are an enhancement - they prevent other people stealing the car, and certainly it's not as convenient for you as being able to own a car that has no locks so you don't have to remember your key, but most people are happy to accept the trade off, it's not crippled, just inconvenient. DRM-encumbered items, on the other hand, provide zero benefit to the owner, it's all negatives - increased cost, increased complexity, impossible to format shift in its DRM form, can potentially be deleted without your permission after sale, etc. It's all negatives from the consumer's perspective, hence it's crippled purely for the benefit of the vendor and to the detriment of the owner.