New Testingstan

that's lotsa picz

Were I an admin, I'd just grant out whatever titles people want*, and change their names to whatever color they want.

Except green because apparently adr didn't like green.

*Or just enable the setting so you can do it yourself, more likely.

green is a fine color

but it was so bright and my eyes hurt

today i just have a headache

adr wrote:green is a fine color

but it was so bright and my eyes hurt

today i just have a headache

So darker green. Gotcha.

And come to think of it, I don't know if phpbb would do individual name colors. It has to do with usergroups, IIRC. And making a ton of usergroups might bug adr. So you might get like a choice of three colors or something.

I dunno. Would it bug you?

idk

i don't give a shit unless i have to work with it


then i'll make a thread to bitch about it every week

"the new guy can do all the css and leave you alone!!!111!"

yeah that's great until i have to look at it or change anything then i see what a mess it is





anyway if i don't have to see it i don't care

adr wrote:S.L.Acker kinda annoys me.

he has bad opinions about things, so i am eagerly desiring to eviscerate them, and hopefully him with it

the game is afoot

VF5SS wrote:can't we just all install the scripts from http://sae.tweek.us/

and get the same thing

like a certain clique

is 'because 80% of them are shit' count

dude it's just script

just use the ones you want

adr wrote:S.L.Acker kinda annoys me.

Why?

(excluding his enthusiasm for the main site)

Chadz wrote:

i thought that was saddam hussein

i hear sopa was withdrawn and the internet claims victory

hahaha

that's funny

"don't watch tv guys! subscribe to arse technica guise!"

because companies of course will act very rational from the point of view of an internet person living on the internet, and stop caring about piracy if they see their profits fall, and not y'know start firing people, buy out the smaller firms, further strengthening the oligopoly, and start clamouring for even more ridiculous laws

have fun in some months when the next proposition comes!

You kinda have to prove that piracy has a substantial impact on their profits, which no one has ever done. The just go by the baseless assumption that anyone who downloads something illegally would have bought their product/ will not buy their product. Both are false.

that's not the argument at all

maybe the riaa assholes use that when doing their bloated lawsuits

but that's not the general argument

I still get a kick out of people saying that pirating a movie is stealing.

Flagg wrote:The just go by the baseless assumption that anyone who downloads something illegally would have bought their product/ will not buy their product. Both are false.

Then why pirate at all?

I mean, obviously they want the movie/TV show/game/whatever, otherwise why go through the effort of finding a decent torrent and all that? And if, in theory, there was no piracy at all that means they'd have to buy it or go without. But they clearly want it, so buying would be their only choice.

I dunno, when I see that I can't help but think, "Anyone who steals a big-screen TV probably would not have bought it anyway, guess it doesn't matter."

Either way, it's still obtaining a product through illegal means, whether or not you can technically classify it as "stealing" because you're not swiping a physical product from a store shelf somewhere. Stealing just happens to roll off the tongue easier than illegal distribution or whatever.

RogueIce wrote:
I dunno, when I see that I can't help but think, "Anyone who steals a big-screen TV probably would not have bought it anyway, guess it doesn't matter."

um, if i could get a big-screen tv without paying a cent or having to leave my house, and essentially risk-free, i would

i do not own a big-screen tv

there's two basic economic factors at work with piracy

elasticity of demand and competition


as the price goes up, generally, the quantity moved will go down

people who were willing to spend the small cost to pirate it aren't necessarily going to be willing to pay the bigger cost to buy it.

so "pirated copy = lost sale" is easily laughed at



but on the other hand consider competition. as a buyer, if you can get the same product for a high price or for a low price, many people will choose the lower price


with piracy, the producer is competing with the super low cost pirated version


so the shopper who is willing to pay a higher price, but is still looking for the best price does represent a lost sale, the same way something like wal mart moving in and rolling back prices can put local businesses out.




now how many sales are lost from the competition aspect? idk. it's certainly not one for one but it's certainly not zero either

there's any number of factors that would cause supposed "lost sales"

negative reviews

developers being assholes and alienating their audience

renting a movie and deciding it's not worth buying

so i don't believe the lost sale argument is actually worth a whole lot

with piracy, the producer is competing with the super low cost pirated version


so the shopper who is willing to pay a higher price, but is still looking for the best price does represent a lost sale, the same way something like wal mart moving in and rolling back prices can put local businesses out.

it's not just a matter of price

there's certain assurances that you're getting the real thing and a working copy that are nice to have

steam manages to do pretty well despite all the piracy out there, and who likes pirating something only to find out they got a copy that doesn't work?

personally i love the little notices they put on all dvds we buy, and i think they even did last time i went to the movies

"you fucker you better not fucking pirate this fuck you fucking fuck"

way to trust your customers guys


anyway the real reason why they want to control the internet is because it's a very cheap means of distribution of their products which they currently have no control over and therefore can't profit off

it doesn't matter if at the moment piracy does not impact their profits; it's a potential competitor to them, so why would they wait until they actually start taking hits before taking action

that's not how capitalism works. it's easy to say "well the pirates also buy more music so it's a net benefit", but that's a very fragile symbiosis between the buyer and seller, which the seller has no control over and which can easily turn the other way around (should the buyer want to exercise some consumer action for instance), and that scares the shit out of shareholders

i'm sure they'd love if the tech companies took a hit from such action, because many of those companies; google, facebook, et. al. actually do have a lot of control over the internet and of course profits ridiculously from this, even from the piracy, and are rivals to some degree. that we have whole industries fighting against each other over the control of a means of distribution is very exciting, and fucking ridiculous, but capitalism etc. imagine if they were nations and the internet was an important seaport. waaaaar!

of course it must be understood that the tech companies aren't doing it because they love free speech or 4chan or anything but because they don't want to lose their control. if there comes a bill that will increase their profits but fuck people up, we can all laugh as we watch them fall all over themselves defending it. then get fucked up

then again they've mostly been arguing from the "they took our jurbs" angle anyway so it's nice they're not even pretending

speaking of lost sales, the best way to ensure i'll never buy your movie is to include a minute-long anti copyright notice at the start of it

an unskippable anti copyright notice

fuck you assholes i'm not buying it after this

Zod wrote: yah but all those things are people exercising rights they have independently of the thingy

the right to say nasty crap

the right to not spend your money

etc


with the copyright the whole idea is your supplier doesn't have the right to distribute it, so the lost sales coming from that are cuz of shit he wasn't supposed to do in the first place

Then it's not really a matter of lost sales, it's a matter of what they can get away with controlling. If they could outlaw negative reviews I'm sure they would.

now you could argue copyright itself shouldn't exist at all and that's a whole other discussion

but if you to accept it as existing, the lost sales are real (to some extent) and should be considered when talking about the damages or lack thereof

i think the current system is broken and should probably be rebuilt from the ground up, but that's just me

i mean comedians manage to steal each other's jokes all the time but they're still in business

adr wrote:

Zod wrote: yah but all those things are people exercising rights they have independently of the thingy

the right to say nasty crap

the right to not spend your money

etc


with the copyright the whole idea is your supplier doesn't have the right to distribute it, so the lost sales coming from that are cuz of shit he wasn't supposed to do in the first place

Then it's not really a matter of lost sales, it's a matter of what they can get away with controlling. If they could outlaw negative reviews I'm sure they would.

now you could argue copyright itself shouldn't exist at all and that's a whole other discussion

but if you to accept it as existing, the lost sales are real (to some extent) and should be considered when talking about the damages or lack thereof

i think the current system is broken and should probably be rebuilt from the ground up, but that's just me

i mean comedians manage to steal each other's jokes all the time but they're still in business

well that was dangerous

i managed to hit the edit button instead of the quote button by mistake

flip around the two names and you get the idea

the negative review thing is interesting because that has the potential to develop into a market of its own

or probably already has

"don't bribe us enough, we give you low scores. bribe us plenty, we give you high scores, even though we may write some negative things in the review to feign objectivity"

Zod wrote:speaking of lost sales, the best way to ensure i'll never buy your movie is to include a minute-long anti copyright notice at the start of it

an unskippable anti copyright notice

fuck you assholes i'm not buying it after this

I buy it anyway because the benefits on that Blu-ray disc outweigh a message I'll never see because I'll be leaving the room to get food. I buy 99.999999% of what I pirate. It may take a while, but Ill get it.

I hate to go Big Orange on you all, but the music industry is to blame for a lot of the pirating of TV shows. Take, for instance, one of my favorite series, Nash Bridges (Don Johnson and Cheech Marin, fuck yeah!). It first season was released on DVD with NONE of the music that was used during the original broadcasts. The originally broadcasted music was chosen specifically by the show's creators to fit scenes. It would be like FX releasing the first season of The Shield and the Kid Rock song not playing during the pilot's final minutes. The second season was released with SOME of the original music. The same goes for the season three release. The licensing fees are so high by those cocksucking labels that Paramount doesn't want to pay to please fans.

Irrelevant from the music industry, the second season of Nash Bridges had the episodes out of MOTHERFUCKING PLOT ORDER. So, one awesome character is introduced, the character is absent for episodes, then comes back. WHAT THE FUCK?! So, fans who care about the integrity of the broadcasts will have to scour the internet for TV rips and then compile them in the correct order and to hear the purposefully-chosen music.