Book II CD or DVD

[macdude22]

It's sad that the mis-Information Age has changed people so much that they now consider "enough text to make a reasoned argument" to be "so much text it must break the keyboard." Once upon a time, that much text would barely cover the abstract for a good paper explaining something in great detail, with research to back it up.

Where's the facebook *like* button. Hell I'm only 27, graduated with a BA in 2006 with a smattering of Grad courses after and there's some sort of generational gap between my gen and the next gen. I'm not trying to be mean here but my anecdotal experience from interacting with family, friends, and students has been that in the past 2-4 years students have really lowered the bar on themselves or the bar has been lowered for them. I hear constant complaints abou having to write papers that are so hard and so long, upwards of 10 pages!!!

I'm like bloody hell I've probably written abstracts that were 10 pages. Granted I went to school in the Social Sciences but damn kids, that's not a lot. I fear of the educational system my son is going to grow up into. Nobody is interested in complex and independent thought. I once has to write a discussion on how Kant would have dealt with string theory. That's something you can't google. You had to have a strong grasp of the abstract thought processes of Kant.

/endrant

[CrazyBernie]

Where's the facebook *like* button.

Ha! That would have been completely conter-intuitive to the point, as you might have been less likely to provide a lengthy response.

[macdude22]

Where's the facebook *like* button.

Ha! That would have been completely conter-intuitive to the point, as you might have been less likely to provide a lengthy response.

There's no question that modern tools have made me lazy as all hell. Point Click it's on demand.

[silverkitty]

I fear it's a pet peeve of mine. See http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedt ... ent-149257 for more on the "mis-Information Age" . Admittedly, I tend to write short opinion pieces myself, but I don't get up in front of college students and present them.

[The Noid]

I think that it's very important to make a distinction in this discussion between art that can easily be copied and art that can not.

Art that can not easily be copied has no problem at all. If no-one wants to pay for your paintings, no amount of copyright protection is going to help you. The only area where there is a possible problem is with products that can easily be copied.

The question society has to ask itself: will that type of art (the easily copyable one) still be created in the absence of copyright? If the answer to that question is yes, then society has no reason to maintain copyright law.
Personally, I think the answer is yes. One look at the open-source community shows this quite well.

But even if the answer would be no, what's the benefit for society of protecting works of artists that have been dead for 70 years?

Are you familiar with this book? http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/i ... tfinal.htm

If we're going the patronage system: we'd have to go back to talking about Communism... or at least to establish an enormous system where the government pays artists to be artists... which would -- let's face it -- cost a brutally excessive amount of money, and probably face abuse.

You must be American. That's the only people that think that anything that is not 100% pure capitalist has to be evil communism...

Here in the Netherlands (not a communist country by any measure) there are plenty of grants for artists. Building code even specifies that at least a certain percentage of the cost of any significant building has to be spent on art.

I don't see how that setup is a problem. It does not generate abuse. It does not generate brutally excessive costs. It does generate art. And since that art is publicly funded, I think it should be freely available to everyone.

(I'm an artist myself (trained painter (and, yes, I can draw, ahem) as well as a writer, so I, like every other artist on these forums, can attest to the fact that our human nature is no different from anyone else's human nature. We take what we can get. When we see an advantage we take it. We all need to survive, and if we're surviving and making a little extra: we want things. It's only natural.)

And once the basic needs are met, we want to spend time doing things we like. And there are lots of people who like creating things. It's fun. No special protection needed.

The Arts enrich the mind and senses; they do not make a person healthier or safer.

Citation needed. A healthy mind in a healthy body. Have you ever visited an average iron-curtain industrial city? They're depressing. The total absence of beauty is bad for your (mental) health. And a problematic mental health does have a very real effect on ones physical health.
So it is the job of the government to supply a (mentally) healthy public space. That includes art. And I think that locking away art with lots of laws is not the way to get art to the people.

[silverkitty]

You must be American. That's the only people that think that anything that is not 100% pure capitalist has to be evil communism...

I must take umbrage. I'm an American and I was clearly advocating non-communist forms of patronage. As a side note, though you have no evidence for it, I strongly recognize a middle ground between capitalism and communism. But before I digress further, let me get to my point of umbrage. While I do not believe that Evnissyen is a nut-job, I must point out that extremist nut-jobs can occur in any country. Yes, the United States of America is currently teeming with people who believe all these propositions:
* USA's current corporation-centric policies are actually capitalism
* any deviation from USA's corporation centric policies is automatically socialism
* socialism is basically Stalinist communism in infancy
* no difference exists between Stalinist communism and Marxist communism

However, despite that vocal group of people, there are plenty of people from the USA who harbor no such misconceptions. Further, I guarantee that in a large enough population of people from other countries, you'll find at least one example of someone who believes those same ridiculous propositions.

While it's true that in USA politics, the Democrats stand for what the Republicans stood for in 1976, and the Republicans stand far to the right of anything ever stood for before in the USA, and no significant political voice actually represents anyone with a liberal viewpoint - that does not equate to what the people on the ground believe. There are too many people in the USA to hold any election results or media quotes as an absolute (and especially in countries with "single, final vote" schemes - it's too easy to ignore reasonable third parties due to their lack of votes because people fear "throwing their votes away.")

[iamrichard]

It's sad that the mis-Information Age has changed people so much that they now consider "enough text to make a reasoned argument" to be "so much text it must break the keyboard." Once upon a time, that much text would barely cover the abstract for a good paper explaining something in great detail, with research to back it up.

It still is milady. Iam in my 30 ish and from the netherlands (The place with one million rules+ ).. so i do know what you mean

However my comment was mearly to tickle Evnissyen.

[The Noid]

You must be American. That's the only people that think that anything that is not 100% pure capitalist has to be evil communism...

I must take umbrage.

You're right, my generalisation was way to broad. For that I apologise. I know plenty of Americans that have very sensible opinions.

As a Dutchman I expect the media and politics to reflect the voice of the people. Apparently it doesn't work that way in the USA, which is something that I find very odd. How can there be such a huge divide between what the people "on the ground" think and what the media and politics appear to say?

Or am I just seeing a very non-representative portion of American media and politics?

While this might seem to be off topic, it is politics that brought us the current ridiculous copyright and patent laws, much of which is (indirectly) coming from the USA.

[CrazyBernie]

You're right, my generalisation was way to broad. For that I apologise. I know plenty of Americans that have very sensible opinions.

As a Dutchman I expect the media and politics to reflect the voice of the people. Apparently it doesn't work that way in the USA, which is something that I find very odd. How can there be such a huge divide between what the people "on the ground" think and what the media and politics appear to say?

Or am I just seeing a very non-representative portion of American media and politics?

While this might seem to be off topic, it is politics that brought us the current ridiculous copyright and patent laws, much of which is (indirectly) coming from the USA.

The only goal of the media o'er here in the USA is to get ratings. That's why there's never any good news on television... because the media competes to see who's best at showing the worst in everything.

[Unclever title]

The only goal of the media o'er here in the USA is to get ratings. That's why there's never any good news on television... because the media competes to see who's best at showing the worst in everything.

Fittingly enough this is also a result of the US capitalistic lifestyle.

In general it's not so much that we consider communism 100% pure evil (or that capitalism isn't at least 80% evil) but that we like capitalism too much for its advantages. Which of course doesn't stop us from whining about it's disadvantages ALL THE TIME.

[BasiliskWrangler]

Er...um....I broke something.

After seeing this topic stray from the subject, I decided to split it with the intention of moving this half to the "General Discussion" forum. However, it seems that the entire first half of this thread (regarding the topic mentioned) has been obliterated.

Oh how I wish there was an undo button.

The reason I was going to split the topic is because I had something to add to the original conversation and didn't want to step on the current discussion...and that is we are looking into going with DVDs this time because we can't get 3 full games, plus extras, on a single CD.

[CrazyBernie]

Er...um....I broke something.

After seeing this topic stray from the subject, I decided to split it with the intention of moving this half to the "General Discussion" forum. However, it seems that the entire first half of this thread (regarding the topic mentioned) has been obliterated.

Oh how I wish there was an undo button.

The reason I was going to split the topic is because I had something to add to the original conversation and didn't want to step on the current discussion...and that is we are looking into going with DVDs this time because we can't get 3 full games, plus extras, on a single CD.

Save the breakin' stuff for the beta... =P

Is that going to affect the price? Would it be more cost effective to have 2 CDs... one with the installs, and another with the extras (I have a feeling that would be more appealing to the "extra stuff" freaks anyway ) ?

[ChrisHallett]

Save the breakin' stuff for the beta... =P

Is that going to affect the price? Would it be more cost effective to have 2 CDs... one with the installs, and another with the extras (I have a feeling that would be more appealing to the "extra stuff" freaks anyway ) ?

Dunno about you mate, but where I live a 50-pack of CD-Rs is $19.95, and a 50-pack of DVD-Rs is $32.95 from the post office.

So maybe it would add 50 cents or so to the cost of the hard copy version? Not a big hit, by any means.

[CrazyBernie]

Save the breakin' stuff for the beta... =P

Is that going to affect the price? Would it be more cost effective to have 2 CDs... one with the installs, and another with the extras (I have a feeling that would be more appealing to the "extra stuff" freaks anyway ) ?

Dunno about you mate, but where I live a 50-pack of CD-Rs is $19.95, and a 50-pack of DVD-Rs is $32.95 from the post office.

So maybe it would add 50 cents or so to the cost of the hard copy version? Not a big hit, by any means.

No, I just would rather not see Basilisk try to eat it. 0_o

[Elveronion]

Save the breakin' stuff for the beta... =P

Is that going to affect the price? Would it be more cost effective to have 2 CDs... one with the installs, and another with the extras (I have a feeling that would be more appealing to the "extra stuff" freaks anyway ) ?

Dunno about you mate, but where I live a 50-pack of CD-Rs is $19.95, and a 50-pack of DVD-Rs is $32.95 from the post office.

So maybe it would add 50 cents or so to the cost of the hard copy version? Not a big hit, by any means.

i know somethign about this because i worked at a duplication facility for a couple months. the extra cost in not just the blank dvd, it is also because of additional data and more expensive duplication euipment being used. bw can correct me if i am worng, but i bet for low volume duplication run a dvd will be a couple dollars more per unit than a cd. not cheap unless you are doing 50k units or more!!