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Thinking Outside the Box Office

“But that’s not even the interesting part. The movie goes out to theaters, DVD, and high-definition cable TV – all on the same day. […]

WIRED: Why did you decide to release Bubble in all formats at once?

SODERBERGH: Name any big-title movie that’s come out in the last four years. It has been available in all formats on the day of release. It’s called piracy. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, Ocean’s Eleven, and Ocean’s Twelve – I saw them on Canal Street on opening day. Simultaneous release is already here. We’re just trying to gain control over it.”

Wired

My God man, Sanity! When will this end?!

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The Piracy Threshold

“Give us convenient content at a reasonable price, and we’ll buy it. Sell the stuff without DRM, for a few dollars. Make it available to everyone, worldwide, at the same time. Then take the massive, unending pile of money, forever.

Or keep doing what you’re doing, and enjoy your ceaseless war of attrition, ever-rising tide of negative public opinion, and eventual forced irrelevance. And get fucked.”

Matt Gemmell

You should really the full article. Nothing that hasn’t been said endlessly but it’s a good summary of the subject. And the “piracy threshold” chart is also interesting as a tool for further business approaches to the subject.

The most strange think that i can’t understand is: if there are endless stories about how “easy and convenient and just” made people pay for their content, why is that some media executives never get to find it? Is the Internet Browser on their computers riddled with DRM to prevent them from ever reaching sane conclusions?

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Microsoft’s Biggest Miss

“Like the curtain finally falling from the Wizard of Oz to find just a small, frail, man pretending to be far more powerful and relevant than he really was. Microsoft’s biggest miss was allowing the world to finally see the truth behind the big lie — they were not needed to get real work done. Or anything done, really.”

Minimal Mac

Exactly! I also think/thought that MS should have put Office everywhere, and not a minute too late, but as stated by Patrick’s insightful wife, every minute they wait their mindshare erodes more and more.

That being said, i don’t think that there are a lot of good alternatives for Office right now. I like Libre/OpenOffice but it has so much limitations and just plain bad design (aesthetically and functional) that is hard to recommend it for other than the small “domestic” work. I do have high hopes for the IBM Lotus Symphony though. (( Soon to be known as Apache OpenOffice IBM Edition, a truly Microsoftian naming. ))