71–80 of 737 posts
With regards to the end of the article. > Can I work for a bad company and still be a good person? > No. https://apenwarr.ca/log/20201121
I'm glad we cleared that up. Now all that remains is a good, measurable definition of what a bad company is.
> Software developers are the wizards and shamans of the modern age. We ought to use our powers with the austerity and integrity such power implies. This is one of the most powerful truths underlying the world we currently inhabit. The sooner we can agree to behave accordingly, the better our prospects for ripping the reigns of society from the hands of those whose only animating principles are avarice and exploitati…
https://web.archive.org/web/20200915000000*/https://try.newr... [pdf]
This sort of ticketing thing is a trivially solvable problem. It is solved at every airport in the entire world millions of times per day. You provide the name of each concertgoer when you buy a ticket, and they show up with their ticket and ID. You often need to show your ID at these kinds of venues to prove you're old enough to drink beer anyway.
But also, the hell with this. I'm still sour enough about the TSA without the concept of, "I'll buy tickets for me and three of my friends then see who wants to go," becoming impossible or gated by ticket transfer fees.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. I have to believe the reason the likes of ticket master isn't fixing this is because they are selling/auctioning/reserving some percentage of tickets to scalpers or "3rd party sellers". Requiring ID is such an obvious solution that I have to believe these convoluted approaches are only there so the secondary market can exist and so ticket master can wash their hands when prices get out of control on that market.
I have to presume that the driving impetus of all of this is that they're trying to avoid the actual requirement of checking the ID. Like, they want to improve the flow of traffic through admissions. But I mean, obviously, any kind of system like this strikes me as the same sort of thing as DRM. That you can somehow protect the message from the person you're sharing the message to. How can you avoid reselling if you…
We check IDs for flights because airline yield management demands that there be no resale, or business travelers would be traveling on leisure fares.
I agree with the bad implement but the opening complaining that "old way of printable tickets was great why change it" have so many problems. Scalpers are the problem that you have to accept. At the time of purchase, there's no way to tell the difference between a legit purchaser and a scalper or even someone who bought it and simply can't go and needs to resell. IDs, ticket limiters, CCs, etc, etc. All methods can b…
Buying something at a low price and selling it at a high price is arbitrage 101 and is free money. The "true solution" is to sell tickets at their actual market price instead of pretending that the face value of concert tickets isn't increasing due to a larger population and greater demand.
A bit of a nit pick, but this isn't "free money" unless you have a guarantee that someone will actually buy at the higher price. You could buy low, be unable to sell, and end up eating the "buy low" cost.
> sell tickets at their actual market price
How do you know what their actual market price is? You have to open it up to a market, where supply/demand get to play out.
IIRC some ticketing company tried doing something to this effect by scaling prices in realtime based on how many people were also trying to buy. I believe it was widely criticized as unfair/exploitive.
So you're back to square one then, where you have to set some price.
With regards to the end of the article. > Can I work for a bad company and still be a good person? > No. https://apenwarr.ca/log/20201121
I'm glad we cleared that up. Now all that remains is a good, measurable definition of what a bad company is.
> Software developers are the wizards and shamans of the modern age. We ought to use our powers with the austerity and integrity such power implies. This is one of the most powerful truths underlying the world we currently inhabit. The sooner we can agree to behave accordingly, the better our prospects for ripping the reigns of society from the hands of those whose only animating principles are avarice and exploitati…
This is not only a truth of the world we currently inhabit, it has always been a truth, of all the worlds we have inhabited. Power and greed go hand in hand for a reason and the struggle to find the balance is, and will always be present.
I agree power and greed go hand in hand - absolute power corrupts, absolutely - but this bit? This is new.
> Software developers are the wizards and shamans of the modern age. We ought to use our powers with the austerity and integrity such power implies. This is one of the most powerful truths underlying the world we currently inhabit. The sooner we can agree to behave accordingly, the better our prospects for ripping the reigns of society from the hands of those whose only animating principles are avarice and exploitati…