JoshuaFalken

joined 1 year ago
[–] JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Agreed. The whole idea of these huge payouts could be eliminated and replaced with what exists for everyone else - severance pay. Calculated off a regulated minimum formula, based primarily on how long the person served the company.

I also agree with you that the top and bottom salaries should have a correlation. The C suite making the salary of a shelf stocker in one day should not happen. I think I could accept that the top gets somewhere around 10 or 20 times higher salary. Even 100x would be an improvement to the way it is now.

Like you point out, between stock options and whatever else, an executive salary could be a few hundred thousand, even if their total compensation is tens of millions. In fantasy land it would be nice if, once a company grows to a certain point, say a billion dollars in value, if it were required to convert to an employee owned cooperative entity.

It's a shame things are the way they are. Maybe one day we won't have politicians that can be bought. That's a different discussion altogether.

[–] JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

In an ideal world, the penalties you describe are suitable. Though, gaming industry aside, for the executive level of most any corporation, being a scapegoat and handed a golden parachute is the worst case scenario for them leaving. In many cases floating across the street right into another executive position.

Jail time isn't a likely outcome. It just isn't the world we live in, unfortunately.

[–] JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

I see what you're getting at but this would be difficult for a publisher to stick with in the event the game does horribly. Requiring them to keep their word to the date advertised would end up with them only guaranteeing a week, or send ramifications through all industries requiring truth in advertising.

A middle ground would be simply to legislate that when games require online connectivity for any reason, the appropriate software is released to allow a locally run server to enable online function at the time the company decides to decommission their servers. Then require them to hold these files in an accessible manner for at least as long as the servers had been active for.

That would be difficult in the event the company goes out of business, but I'm sure this would be a difficult thing to explain to most politicians so maybe not so simple after all.

[–] JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

I see what you're saying, but it wasn't too long ago a similar sentiment was said of motorized construction and farm equipment.

Ultimately, if each piece of equipment had a viable electric alternative that would operate all day without needing a charge, it wouldn't take that smart of a bean counter to realize there were a lot of savings to be had if they started projects with an electrical charging area for the new equipment that could potentially be repurposed for customer or resident charging once the job was done.

It would become an anticipated start-up cost, similar to the transport of the equipment itself, delivery of materials, set up of portable offices and toilets and the like. Obviously this would be out of reach for a small operation, but a company that's building out row houses or shopping centres I could see making the switch.

[–] JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

I think I explained what I was talking about rather well. Trying to view a piece of media in its highest release format isn't something that's always feasible. Anything even a few years old can to difficult to source. Ask anyone rebuilding a library after a drive failure. It's even worse if what you're trying to get had low viewership - it means an even smaller pool of people bothering to host the data.

While I'm sure this is a niche situation within a niche situation, hosting your own media library locally allows offline playback. Quite nice in during a thunderstorm. Not an option with what you've described as your methods, but again, definitely an uncommon use case.

[–] JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Time and time again, media will be removed from public viewing for nearly any reason. Online streaming services have what you want to watch only so long as their license to it is valid. Once it expires, it's gone off that platform - and not always to another one. Or the media gets edited to remove or alter something the owners don't want to promote.

This is even true for the varying methods of sailing. Not everything will be available indefinitely. Certainly not at zero effort. While not being as simple as signing up for a service and watching a low bitrate copy of something within thirty seconds, it's not rocket science. You can get Jellyfin running with a small library in half an hour.

Ultimately, do what suits you. A local media server works for some. Others will have everything in a single folder and view it through VLC. It's pretty irrelevant though when the vast majority just pay a subscription to one or multiple of the streaming companies that continue to serve watered down libraries at ever increasing prices.

[–] JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago

My work had to change auto insurance providers after they increased their premium by 350% at renewal time. No specific explanation given of course - "rising costs through the industry". Apparently the new provider is about double the original rate. Got us all worried it would happen to our cars too. No ones mentioned anything since though. Only a matter of time I suppose.

[–] JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

Fantastic, I'll certainly be making use of that. I've never been one for digital reading - I printed out Little Brother and read it that way - but with no DRM how could you complain. I appreciate the link.

[–] JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

On your recommendation, I picked up a copy from my library this morning. Only had time for the first chapter, but I'm already liking it. Thank you.

[–] JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I'd heard and used both phrases before but didn't realize they had the same author. Coincidentally, I recently reread one of his books, Little Brother, also by chance of reading about it on a Lemmy comment.

It's no surprise the author of that book has these views. I think I'll read more of his work.

[–] JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

We saw it the other day. Most of the main characters, the 'Furios Five', that have been in the other films are entirely absent from the storyline. When they do show up right at the end, they have no dialogue.

The entire film seemed to be geared to introducing a new character and explaining their backstory, with the pretext being the protagonist is looking for a successor. I'd expect this character to become the lead should there be future movies. Which of course there will be, when this latest one brought in $55M.

view more: next ›