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PG might not have hit a home run, but the author's arguments here are generally either flawed or unfounded, and the ends with a giant piece of _spam_. I'm sure

PG might not have hit a home run, but the author's arguments here are generally either flawed or unfounded, and the ends with a giant piece of _spam_. I'm sure I could spend my time much more productively than arguing with this article, but it's hard not to comment when someone is wrong on the Internet. 1. "It is frankly amazing...that we pretend [communication] should cost dramatically less to obtain on a monthly basis than...other less valuable things." There is no denying the fact that supply and demand have an impact on pricing, but let me be clear here: the price of Internet connectivity is going down. No company is going to decide that connectivity is really 'worth' more than they're charging and raises prices. It would be suicide. As for the technical side, wireless and wired solutions are being brought forth every day that reduce cost. There is no implicit 'value' being provided than shuttling some bits down a tube (or a series of them). 4."Every TV will soon have a unique IP address." Excuse the ad hominem attack, but any person well enough acquainted with technology to say "Paul Graham is wrong." should understand how the Internet works well enough to avoid making incorrect statements like this. Even if he did mean that each TV would have a distinct IP address on networks, that really has no bearing at all on the discussion at hand. 3."To give you some Big TV math to work with: One hour of Prime Time TV is worth approximately .64 cents for every single viewer (32 :30 second ads * .02 cents per ad)." Here it is again. That etherial substance called 'worth.' Even assuming these numbers are correct (the article cites no sources), the current going rate has almost no bearing on the future. And then the kicker: 4. "Our new company, SaysMe TV has a new model, ... a new form of TV commercial, available for national 'local cable' campaigns meant to be 'Tivo-resistant.'" This is as close as the author comes to simply admitting that this post is an ad. In summary, this article is flamebait, linkbait, and spam.

jerf 18y ago
I bailed halfway through the first full paragraph: "From 30K feet, all video is becoming Internet video; it is digital and accessed via standard http (progressive download) protocols. However video being on the Internet doesn’t mean that it will be freely available." I said to myself, "I don't recall Paul making that argument." And I looked back, and he didn't. Modern-day piracy is cited as being part of the reason internet video is winning (a simple observation), but he also says: "But iTunes shows that people will pay for stuff online, if you make it easy. A significant component of piracy is simply that it offers a better user experience." Clearly his argument is not that internet video will be or should be free. With a strawman in sentence two, I'm not terribly impressed.
brlewis 18y ago
It does look that way on first reading, doesn't it? I wouldn't have seen it except Fred Wilson commented, saying he agreed with most of it. But look a little more and it does seem to add some interesting perspective to the discussion, not in spite of, but because of the writer's vested interest in having big customers to sell commercial advertising to.
crux 18y ago
The—what is it that Merlin Mann calls him, the Webcock?—is quickly mutating on our internet. No longer is he simply knocking on the doors of the internet, asking for 30 seconds of your time. Now he does this. He writes a long, mildly controversial blog post as an opinion piece, disagreeing with someone else on the basis of well-traveled platitudes like worth and eyeballs and valuations—you know, the things that only professional-marketing-consultants-cum-bloggers-cum-entrepreneurs ever, EVER talk about—but every inch of his fucking copy is riddled with self-serving spam like that. He's the grown-up version of the Techcrunch commenter who says 'It's very interesting. I am glad that you wrote about this. I have also made a web app using SMS perhaps you would find it interesting kill kill kill kill kill kill' Nothing invalidates an opinion faster than a plug.

jerf 18y ago

I bailed halfway through the first full paragraph: "From 30K feet, all video is becoming Internet video; it is digital and accessed via standard http (progressive download) protocols. However video being on the Internet doesn’t mean that it will be freely available." I said to myself, "I don't recall Paul making that argument." And I looked back, and he didn't. Modern-day piracy is cited as being part of the reason internet video is winning (a simple observation), but he also says: "But iTunes shows that people will pay for stuff online, if you make it easy. A significant component of piracy is simply that it offers a better user experience." Clearly his argument is not that internet video will be or should be free. With a strawman in sentence two, I'm not terribly impressed.

brlewis 18y ago

It does look that way on first reading, doesn't it? I wouldn't have seen it except Fred Wilson commented, saying he agreed with most of it. But look a little more and it does seem to add some interesting perspective to the discussion, not in spite of, but because of the writer's vested interest in having big customers to sell commercial advertising to.

crux 18y ago

The—what is it that Merlin Mann calls him, the Webcock?—is quickly mutating on our internet. No longer is he simply knocking on the doors of the internet, asking for 30 seconds of your time. Now he does this. He writes a long, mildly controversial blog post as an opinion piece, disagreeing with someone else on the basis of well-traveled platitudes like worth and eyeballs and valuations—you know, the things that only professional-marketing-consultants-cum-bloggers-cum-entrepreneurs ever, EVER talk about—but every inch of his fucking copy is riddled with self-serving spam like that. He's the grown-up version of the Techcrunch commenter who says 'It's very interesting. I am glad that you wrote about this. I have also made a web app using SMS perhaps you would find it interesting kill kill kill kill kill kill' Nothing invalidates an opinion faster than a plug.