Nick Coghlan 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (284) comment rss

  • On the post: Now, Apparently It's Not Just Content Providers That Are Getting A Free Ride On Broadband Networks, But Consumers Too

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 22 Apr, 2010 @ 02:33pm

    Download quotas

    Download quotas and tiered service aren't great, but I don't think they're quite the "OMG the sky is falling" disaster they're sometimes made out to be by those accustomed to the US free-for-all model where the guy only using his net connection for email and Facebook pays the same as the one using it to watch HDTV video.

    Go over quota for the month and you have to live with a slow, dodgy connection until you hit your monthly quota reset.

    Then again, maybe the Australian ISPs just have us all conditioned to accept that way of doing things *twitch*

  • On the post: Now, Apparently It's Not Just Content Providers That Are Getting A Free Ride On Broadband Networks, But Consumers Too

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 22 Apr, 2010 @ 02:25pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Except that your uploads are going to *someone else* that is downloading the file. You can't count both upload *and* download bandwidth for your traffic volumes because every download is balanced with an upload somewhere.

  • On the post: Now, Apparently It's Not Just Content Providers That Are Getting A Free Ride On Broadband Networks, But Consumers Too

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 22 Apr, 2010 @ 02:22pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    This is all somewhat missing the point anyway. Downloads are always balanced by uploads from somewhere, the only question is who is doing the uploading.

    Conventional download of 1 GB file: 1 GB downloaded by recipient, 1 GB uploaded by content provider.

    P2P download of 1 GB file: 1 GB downloaded by recipient, 1 GB uploaded by peers.

    Either way, a total of 1 GB of content is transferred over the central network. However, most P2P applications are optimised to prefer "local" (i.e. same ISP) peers, so the providers are actually better off since transfers will typically require less upstream bandwidth.

  • On the post: Blizzard Sells $2 Million In Virtual Livestock In Four Hours

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 22 Apr, 2010 @ 01:07am

    Re: Re: Re:

    Nah, I don't work for them. I do play WoW though (and could easily afford to buy all of the in-game items, but choose not to - like you, I don't really see the point in spending real world cash on cosmetic items in a game).

    However, I also don't care to be overly harsh in judging how other people want to spend their money. I'll (somewhat grudgingly) drop $20 to go see a 90 minute movie. After I walk out of the cinema, the only thing I have left from that experience is a memory, but the well-designed cinemas around here mean I feel it is worth it.

    Ditto for $50 (or more) for a day at an amusement park, or a ticket to a concert, a sporting event, or whatever. All transient, ephemeral things with no lasting value (except memories), but I (and people around the world) regularly choose to pay for them. Heck, I'm sure a lot of people would consider me insane for the fact that I'm willing to pay $15 for the privilege of playing amateur cricket of a weekend (since a large part of the time is spent either watching from the shed or standing around fielding).

    When you play WoW, you spend quite a lot of time travelling around on your mount, so liking what you see on the screen is a good thing. The mount from the store also offers a few conveniences in the way it handles parts of the game where you aren't allowed to fly, as well as the fact that it applies to all current and future characters on your account (potentially saving a few hundred in-game gold when levelling a new character). While I personally don't want to buy the mount, I can easily see someone feeling that the (very pretty) appearance and the small conveniences are worth $25 to them.

  • On the post: Blizzard Sells $2 Million In Virtual Livestock In Four Hours

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 21 Apr, 2010 @ 09:53pm

    Re:

    How is this sheep shearing? It isn't like Blizzard are making any secret of the fact that all you get for your money is a cosmetic in-game item.

    (Plus, if people are genuinely unhappy with their purchase, I believe they can go through the Billing department to get the mount taken off their account and their money refunded)

  • On the post: Blizzard Sells $2 Million In Virtual Livestock In Four Hours

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 21 Apr, 2010 @ 09:50pm

    Re:

    I don't see anything in the article complaining about what Blizzard did in this case - just pointing to the rather loud discussion it caused amongst the more vocal part of the player base.

    Personally, I don't see any reason for Blizzard to ever stop the sales of these mounts or the in-game pets from the pet store. People don't buy them for the rarity (after all, most people that can afford a $15 a month subscription are going to be able to put together $10 or $25 for a cosmetic item they really want), they buy them because they think they're pretty.

    This is actually something Blizzard have been doing for quite a while through the trading card game - the Spectral Tiger is the one that sells for the most, but there are other cards in that game which provide loot codes for various novelty items (such as a toy train set, or a flying rocket mount). As with the pet store items that followed them, these are all purely cosmetic items - they don't help you level or get better gear or defeat other players in PvP in any way.

    Blizzard are well aware of the line between acceptable items and those which affect the competitive aspects of the game (raiding achievements and PvP combat), and recognise their customers would have great cause for complaint if people could legitimately buy their way to an in-game advantage over other players.

  • On the post: Can Virtual Conferences Replace Real World Boondoggles?

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 21 Apr, 2010 @ 07:45am

    Re: Re:

    But why do suppose we haven't found a way to duplicate those things in a virtual environment?
    Because our inter-personal sensory systems have been honed over millions of years, but we've only been messing around with digitising them for a paltry handful of decades.

    Once we meet someone in person, our mental impression of them incorporates the full sensory bundle - sight/sound/smell/etc. Without that, our brain is missing a lot of the data it expects to have for people it is dealing with. Body language counts for an awful lot in conversation, especially in mediating things like who gets to talk next.

    It's impressive that we *can* imagine a real living person that we've never met at the far end of a text-mediated conversation, but we're still happier when we don't have to.

    Video and audio conferencing help, but the affordable systems still offer relatively poor resolution or are a pain to setup and use (or both), while high resolution systems are still a pain to setup and use and are hellishly expensive to boot.

  • On the post: McDonald's Laughs Off Criticism Embedded In April Fool's Joke

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 21 Apr, 2010 @ 07:20am

    More on the sponsored post deal

    It would actually be good to get a post explaining how this whole "sponsored post" deal works.

    Is it just a straight advertising gig? (i.e. X number of posts per day get the AcceptPay blurb on them)

    Are AcceptPay able to pass links/stories over and say "we'd like your thoughts on this topic" (again, capped to a certain number of stories per day)

    It doesn't bother me, but we're fairly interested in business model experiments in these parts, and there's bound to be some natural curiousity as to what lies behind this one.

  • On the post: McDonald's Laughs Off Criticism Embedded In April Fool's Joke

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 21 Apr, 2010 @ 07:16am

    Pretty good response from McDonalds actually

    Angry response? "Geez, it was just a joke, chill out"
    Factual response? "Geez, it was just a joke, no need to get all serious about it" (plus, a restaurant publishing details on how long it typically takes their meals to decompose would be kinda disturbing)

    Genial response, acknowledging the joke and laughing it off? Probably about the best thing they could do.

    McDonald's are dealing with complaints about the quality of their food in many different ways (and to give them credit, the ones around here really do have a much better menu selection and level of quality than they did even 5 years ago). There was no need for them to bring all that into their response to a well-executed April Fools prank.

  • On the post: The Future Of Print: Better Connect With Your Audience

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 20 Apr, 2010 @ 02:50pm

    Re: Migrating a community to Apps or Migrating Content to Apps to Create Community. Which is easier?

    Uh, apps are a sideshow on mobile devices compared to their builtin web browser.

    Yes, the apps are cool and an important part of the attraction of these devices, but mobile-friendly websites are even better (e.g. the m.cricinfo.com site is great, so it doesn't matter that the cricinfo app is truly rubbish).

    Things like the iPhone even let you link a site from the main page of the phone as if it was an app.

  • On the post: Dungeons And Dragons Players Revolt, Storm Super Rewards Castle

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 19 Apr, 2010 @ 02:32pm

    Re: Re: Re: not horse armor! :)

    The most important part though is likely just that the mount graphic in-game is very, very pretty.

    There are also a couple of in-game achievements relating to the number of mounts you collect, and this one probably counts as one more for the tally.

  • On the post: Measuring Success By Fan Passion, Not Billboard Chart Position

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 17 Apr, 2010 @ 02:59am

    Re: Snakes on a Plane

    The SoaP phenomenon wasn't passion, it was just a funny one-liner/mental image.

  • On the post: Infographic Does A Great Job Misrepresenting Opportunities Of The Digital Era

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 14 Apr, 2010 @ 10:46pm

    I think you're agreeing with what the graphic shows

    While you're right that the graphic blends all sorts of different things together, it is still a good illustration of the relative significance of "unit sales" via different channels when it comes to artists' incomes.

    You're right in saying an album is not a track is not a streaming "listen", but that's *exactly* what the graphic shows. See how the number of album sales needed to make minimum wage under a low end record deal is actually higher than the number of track sales needed through cdbaby. That's an *excellent* illustration of the point that many bands are actually much better off now than they were under the old record label controlled system, because the artists got such a lousy deal. And selling entire albums through CD baby nets you a significantly better deal than even the biggest artists get from their labels, while still giving you global reach.

    Basically, I think you're reading into the chart an agenda that isn't there. Yes, it focuses in on presenting one specific aspect of the data, but that's exactly what a good visualisation of a data set *should* do (it's also why relying overly on any one view of a data set is a bad idea - you need to consider the data from multiple angles in order to even begin to understand it).

    Now, an interesting number that isn't highlighted in the graphic is the return on investment of the different mechanisms - what are the up-front costs associated with distribution once you have the master recording in your hands (we'll assume the studio costs are the same regardless). That's where the cdbaby-style systems really come into their own. With self-pressed CDs you have an inventory management problem - you can only print as many CDs as you can pay for up front, and if you print more than you end up selling you'll lose money instead of making it. With record labels, you have to earn out your advance (and their accounting shenanigans mean that will most likely never happen).

    With CD baby, for as little as US$55, you can make your music available through a large number of channels, and your music is then available worldwide. That leaves the old models in the dust, even before you get into "CwF+RtB" schemes.

  • On the post: Mobile Phones Suck… But Isn't It Amazing That They Exist?

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2010 @ 06:23am

    Re: Oh, but you can! (Droid Does)

    Lots of phones have a setting to say whether SMS should be stored on the phone or in the SIM card. The storage in the latter is tiny (100 messages sounds about right).

    Most modern smart phones will store texts on the phone without asking, but others use the SIM by default.

  • On the post: Obama Administration Warns Australia About Its Internet Censorship Plan

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 30 Mar, 2010 @ 02:02am

    Re: Re: please

    Yeah, better to say "Steve Fielding's" plan, rather than Conroy's.

    It's Labour trying to keep the right wing nutters on side so they will approve legislation that Labour actually care about in the Senate.

  • On the post: If It's Newsworthy, Should A Website Reveal A Previously Pseudononymous Poster?

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2010 @ 10:51pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    Assuming they only tracked it per article, the chances of a coincidental IP address collision amongst commenters on a single article would be pretty low (such a collision would be far more likely to indicate multiple commenters from a single NAT-using organisation than two unrelated users commenting from the same public network).

    Trying to link anonymous users across multiple articles would be a mistake IMO (because the chances of coincidental collisions rise significantly).

  • On the post: If It's Newsworthy, Should A Website Reveal A Previously Pseudononymous Poster?

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2010 @ 10:44pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Yes it is...

    I think Derek summarises it well. By offering anonymous posting, the website is agreeing to respect that anonymity unless other significant obligations take precedence (responding to a legitimate court order being one such obligation).

    Describing a commenter in general terms that are relevant to their credibility (which may be quite appropriate) is a far cry from identifying a specific person (which will almost always be inappropriate).

  • On the post: NYTimes Has To Apologize, Pay $114k For Mentioning Singapore Had Father/Son Prime Ministers?

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2010 @ 10:36pm

    That's like saying...

    ...Dubya only became president because his fath... oh, wait...

    (Obvious joke is obvious, but I couldn't resist)

    On a more serious note, this definitely seems like a classic case of the Streisand effect. I wouldn't even have been able to tell you who the Singaporean prime minister was, let alone that there was a suspicion that he only got the job through paternal influence.

  • On the post: Boston Transit Authority Sued For Patent Infringement… For Letting You Know Your Train Is Running Late

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 25 Mar, 2010 @ 05:37am

    Re: Re: Obviousness

    Decent article on the topic:
    http://www.codeproject.com/KB/database/Modeling_DAGs_on_SQL_DBs.aspx

    (The "specific issue" I mentioned is exactly the one that article spends a lot of time talking about - SQL can't really handle recursive data structures so you need to do a procedural traversal of the graph either at lookup time or whenever the data is modified)

    Googling "sql directed acyclic graph" brings up quite a few interesting hits (it's how I found the article above).

  • On the post: Are Automated Status Updates From Location Check-In Apps Degrading Your Social Network?

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 25 Mar, 2010 @ 05:30am

    Facebook and hiding apps

    Facebook handles this pretty well. First time I see an automated status update from an app, I click hide, say I want to hide the app and not the person, and then I never see those automated messages again, no matter how many of my friends install the relevant app.

    Automated tools that post "normal" status messages are still a problem, but fortunately those seem to be pretty rare.

Next >>