The Political Thread

[Steven Denton]

There is a link in that "opinion piece" to the actual pdf put out by the BoE, so you can read the actual facts straight from the horse's mouth, if you like.

The idea in the opinion piece that seems to be at it's core, but obviously false, is that banks can create as much debt as people are willing to take on because all the borrowed money will end up in a bank any way seems to completely ignore the banking crisis caused by banks abusing the lack of regulation by over lending against poor assets. We have in recent memory an example of exactly what happens if banks over value assets or lend against earnings that are a lie.

[The Legendary Shark]

See also Autodesk. They had 3DS Max, bought Maya, and Softimage - which gave them the big 3 3D apps, and ended up killing Softimage because they didn't know what to do with three of them. Their rental prices are something like £200+ a month these days - crazy.

I hear Blender is quite good but I don't really know. I've faffed about with it but all it ever did was make my head spin (as did just about every over 3D program I've ever faffed with).

[Steven Denton]

Okay, Steven, so we disagree. Fine. You don't believe me and I don't believe you. It's not the end of the world, is it?

I obviously don't read anything and am as thick as pig sh*t as well as being unpleasant to converse with and condescending to boot. Boo-frikkin'-hoo.

So we'd best just call it quits, eh?

There you go putting words in my mouth AGAIN! I didn't call you thick, I didn't say you don't read things, but yes inventing ways I have insulted you as a defence mechanism does make you unpleasant to converse with. You however did say I ignored your link (that I'm not obligated to read) and you did say I was wrong and intimated that I was some how suffering angst over the cognitive dissonance of being empirically wrong but unable to admit it.

[Steven Denton]

See also Autodesk. They had 3DS Max, bought Maya, and Softimage - which gave them the big 3 3D apps, and ended up killing Softimage because they didn't know what to do with three of them. Their rental prices are something like £200+ a month these days - crazy.

I hear Blender is quite good but I don't really know. I've faffed about with it but all it ever did was make my head spin (as did just about every over 3D program I've ever faffed with).

Blender has a very powerful, hugely customisable interface but it's unusable until you set the working environment up to your taste. it's not really ready to go 'out of the box'

[Professor Bear]

On the "any old text editor"/open source software thing, across at least six different PCs, I've found Openoffice to be far more reliable than Word, so I don't think Sharky's too far off the mark with his open source fruitopian fantasy idea about monopolies being threatened by crowd-sourced software at some future point - just not any time soon, and certainly not while people have access to perfectly functional copies of Photoshop/Illustrator.

On a related note, I found Ubuntu to be a pretty great alternative to Windows, I just wish it ran the software and drivers that I have a PC for in the first place.

[The Legendary Shark]

...I read quite a lot believe it or not.

Why would I not believe that? Why even say that if not to imply that I do not read or read inferior things or do not understand the things I read? I think it's a bit low to chuck out passive aggressive statements like that then cry your eyes out when they come back to bite you.

I don't need a summary of the bank scene from it's a wonderful life (and you call me condescending!) to understand what a run is. Sometimes it comes across like you think you are talking to idiots.

Simply because I'm trying to be clear, and keeping in mind that it's not just you reading this, does not mean I think everyone is an idiot. Why would I even engage with you in the first place if I thought you were an idiot? If you think I think that then I suggest you examine your own sense of self-worth.

I think you are wrong in your beliefs about money creation, fundamentally and spectacularly wrong, and I have tried to explain, in as simple and entertaining a way as I can (which, I admit, is not very much of either at times) why I think so. Being wrong is not a sign of idiocy, no matter what you think. My thinking you are wrong is not an indication of my opinion of your overall character or intelligence.

Finally, this is the Political Thread and no place for thin skins or fragile egos.

[Steven Denton]

...I read quite a lot believe it or not.

Why would I not believe that? Why even say that if not to imply that I do not read or read inferior things or do not understand the things I read? I think it's a bit low to chuck out passive aggressive statements like that then cry your eyes out when they come back to bite you.

I don't need a summary of the bank scene from it's a wonderful life (and you call me condescending!) to understand what a run is. Sometimes it comes across like you think you are talking to idiots.

Simply because I'm trying to be clear, and keeping in mind that it's not just you reading this, does not mean I think everyone is an idiot. Why would I even engage with you in the first place if I thought you were an idiot? If you think I think that then I suggest you examine your own sense of self-worth.

I think you are wrong in your beliefs about money creation, fundamentally and spectacularly wrong, and I have tried to explain, in as simple and entertaining a way as I can (which, I admit, is not very much of either at times) why I think so. Being wrong is not a sign of idiocy, no matter what you think. My thinking you are wrong is not an indication of my opinion of your overall character or intelligence.

Finally, this is the Political Thread and no place for thin skins or fragile egos.

I said I read quite a lot because you implied I didnt read your link where as I had read the link and the connected article. Yet somehow, in your head, what I actually did was acuse you of not reading then cry my eyes out because of my fragile ego.

[IndigoPrime]

On the "any old text editor"/open source software thing, across at least six different PCs, I've found Openoffice to be far more reliable than Word, so I don't think Sharky's too far off the mark with his open source fruitopian fantasy idea about monopolies being threatened by crowd-sourced software at some future point - just not any time soon, and certainly not while people have access to perfectly functional copies of Photoshop/Illustrator.

I think it depends on various factors. With office-oriented apps, the reality is the majority of people even in professional circles use only a tiny number of the features. For most, the more basic apps can do the job, unless they're delving into very specific Excel functionality or certain editing features of Word. And at that point, you're talking about (like Illustrator) using a specific piece of software rather than a tier (because even the likes of Apple's suite won't be compatible enough). But in the creative filed, usage skews far more towards a large range of the less covered features, making such a transition much less likely.

Even so, Microsoft's shifted quite heavily of late towards a service model, and I see a lot of people in my industry getting sick of free/open alternatives for various reasons (such as Google Docs ronching insane resources for a web app, often bringing entire computers to a standstill). To my mind, writing is also one of those areas where we see a lot of genuinely healthy competition: on the Mac, there's iA Writer, Ulysses, Scrivener, Byword and a number of other products, all at varying price-tags and with a range of targets in mind. Word couldn't squash the competition, due to the nature of writing itself. On other areas – notably high-end creative fare – it's much easier for money to talk, and for companies to buy up all the competition, knowing that it's essentially impossible (or at least very, very unlikely) for a rival to ever emerge. Frankly, I'm slightly surprised Adobe never bought out Quark.

But then all this is where I run into a wall when it comes to leftie/libertarian thinking (despite being broadly in that area politically): I don't think this model can work in creative fields. On a more political sense, I had a discussion on Twitter about copyright recently. Back in 2015, the Greens had plans to radically overhaul copyright law (although seemingly had absolutely no understanding of how to make the ideas work internationally). The crux was to help creatives, at least ostensibly; but in reality their plans would have destroyed livelihoods, because they involved a much reduced term of copyright, after which point creations became public domain. They argued this would benefit creative people, by taking content from large corporations and making it available to all. This ignored individuals being able to profit from their work. The response I got from Greens was: "Well, creatives should just make something new then."

The bloke on Twitter still has this stance, arguing that copyright is an outdated concept and should just be done away with. He seems to have a similar line of thinking to Sharky about how people would broadly do the right thing, rewarding 'official' versions of content. I see such a model purely benefitting the rich – those with enough clout to get 'their' version of anything in front of enough people.

[locustsofdeath!]

My god, I sign into this forum for the first time in two years and people are actually still trying to talk sense into Shark! I'd say it's like I'd never left, but Shark is two years more delusional.

[Dandontdare]

Hay Matt, good to see you again! happy New Year.

No political stories of any interest on your side of the pond these says though....

[locustsofdeath!]

Hay Matt, good to see you again! happy New Year.

No political stories of any interest on your side of the pond these says though....

Hi Dan! How are you?!

Yeah...there have been a few things going on here. It's been...something else.

[The Legendary Shark]

Hey, Locusts - good to see you again. This old place hasn't been the same without you and I'm glad you're back. Hope things have gone okay while you were away and that they get as good as they can be in 2017.

And don't worry about people talking sense into me - it's never gonna happen. The reason for this is that the Universe likes to have some fundamental (emphasis on the mental) constants to rely on!

[M.I.K.]

I pretty much gave up after Antarctic Elvis duck.

[The Legendary Shark]

I said I read quite a lot because you implied I didn't read your link where as I had read the link and the connected article. Yet somehow, in your head, what I actually did was accuse you of not reading then cry my eyes out because of my fragile ego.

The second sentence in the overview of that BoE issued report reads, "Whenever a bank makes a loan, it simultaneously creates a matching deposit in the borrower's bank account, thereby creating new money." This is why I don't believe you when you claim to have read it.

[The Legendary Shark]

Third sentence, not second, sorry.