Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Is Predicting that Easy?

After reading Roberts article about Napster, it raised more questions then answers for me personally. Like Josh said although napster is no longer around the similar sites are and the music industry continues to loose money. I am not sure what time frame Roberts was speaking of but it is 7 years later and no technology has overcome the "free" music online industry. I am sure his prediction will eventually be right but in how many years?

"As weird as it seems, car owners can actually be better off, at least in the long run, in a world where car stereo theft is ignored by the law. That produces a profit opportunity for manufacturers to create technologies that are cheaper for car owners to use to protect their stereos compared to the resource costs and higher taxes of using police and the courts."

I have a hard time believing this statement. Upon doing further research auto manufactures were installing high quality factory radios that they could make more profit on. People don't steal factory radios because they don't fit in other cars. I do realize my last statement could be twisted to the point that auto manufactures used this to deter radio theft but I am apt to think the bottom line was the ultimate reason.

I guess you could argue his hypothesis could be have been right. But if I made the statement that we would be better off by eliminating coal power plants, would that be correct? What if I said that we are actually better off keeping the coal power plants, would that be correct? Depending on what facts or how we look at it both statements could be correct. My point is making a predictions that cant be tested or on vague ideas is easy. For example I think that the Montreal Expos would have won the world series this year, they may have but we can't know (they no longer exist for you non MLB fans) so I guess I am neither wrong nor right. But I could find facts out there that would support my view.

I can't disagree or agree with Roberts statements especially since my Delorean is back in Illinois.

3 comments:

  1. Nate, I think someone just stole the radio out of your Delorean!

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  2. It's cool though dude, he can just take his Delorean back to the future and stop the thief before he steals it.

    /too obscure?

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  3. In response to your first paragraph-
    It doesn't really matter what kind of technology comes out to try and stop the "free" music industry, there will always be those techy geeks (said with all the love in my heart) who find ways around it and get the free tunes anyway. If someone really wants a that song for "free" and they're willing to work a little bit, they'll get it. There's ways and software out there now that changes DRM songs into not-so DRM songs. And if you REALLY don't want a DRM song, you can buy it for a higher price off of iTunes.
    Entertainment in general is turning into more of a public good, and with the way technology functions, I make the argument that this is only going to continue. Getting music from your friend used to be difficult, now you have a host of programs you can rip cd's into. Getting music from a friends ipod used to be next to impossible, but now we have Senuti. Ripping a DVD is easy. Ripping a Blu-Ray, not so easy. Yet. I can say with all confidence, though, that given time, Blu-Ray will be just as easy to rip as DVD's are. The market will respond with some new technology that's harder to steal with current technology, and new technology will emerge to crack it. The cycle will continue.

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