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1: More Flaming Laptops? (And This Time They're Not PowerBooks!)

The PowerBook 5300 has been unfairly saddled with a reputation as "the incendiary PowerBook" since one test unit caught fire in an Apple lab back in 1995. Actually, it was the Sony-supplied lithium ion battery and not the 5300 itself that started the conflagration, but that hasn't stopped even some Mac advocates who ought to know better from propagating the "flaming 5300s" myth.

So wearily, once again, are the facts:

- Only one 5300 caught fire
- Apple quickly recalled the few machines in distribution channels at the time and replaced the suspect li-Ion batteries with NiMH units.
- No consumer machines caught fire
- The 5300 has proved to be no more fire-prone than any other laptop -- less so in fact than the G3 Series 'Books, a handful of which actually have caught fire in consumer use.

2: a few units used at Apple actually burst into flames [2] due to problems with then-novel Lithium Ion batteries made by Sony (earning the 5300 the nicknames "FireBook", and "HindenBook", after the Hindenburg disaster). While no consumer models suffered this fate, Apple was forced to recall the entire product line and delay its availability while they downgraded to proven nickel metal hydride batteries

3: Before the system was released in a few rare instances the battery caught fire. This was fixed before the computer was released, but this problem helped create a lot of bad press for Apple.

4: Given the hysterical and mythologically persistent exaggeration of the problem with the PowerBook 5300 back in '95, it's understandable that Apple would be hypersensitive about this matter. The reality check is that, as far as I've been able to determine over the past 11 years of following this story, there was one Sony Lithium Ion PowerBook 5300 battery that spontaneously caught fire in an Apple test lab. The 1000 or so 5300s that were in distribution pipelines at the time were immediately recalled and refitted with Nickel Metal Hydride batteries (which were already in production for the lower-priced but identical form factor 68k-based PowerBook 190), which proved completely reliable. The PowerBook 5300 had other issues, but catching fire in consumer hands was not one of them, despite it's mythological "blazing PowerBook" reputation.

5: Apple announced it has stopped shipments of the new PowerBook 5300 product line due to potentially dangerous problems with the product's lithium-ion battery packs. The problems do not impact any other PowerBooks, including Apple's new PowerBook 190 and Duo 2300 models (see TidBITS-292). Apple has recalled the roughly 1,000 units shipped to dealers and resellers, and reports indicate only about 100 units actually reached customers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook (Search for "Sony")

http://www.macopinion.com/columns/roadwarrior/02/0 4/02/ (Search for "IBM")

Also, Apple's ODM makes PC laptops already, or did you think that Steve Jobs sits at home with a SMT workstation and puts them together himself? Arguably it would explain the initial shortages of new models.

I have about 300 cds taking up 70% capacity of three 6' IKEA cd towers. The empty space is staggered in the towers, and each is filled with a little "pretty". A bright red little box holds matches, another holds carving from my trip to Italy five years ago.. you get the idea. The cds add to the look.

I'm biased against DVDs, but I'd still say lose them. How many times can you watch a DVD? How many times can you watch 1000 hours of DVDs? (the horror!)

I imagine you want the 6x6 table for projects or gaming. Could you replace it with a fold-away or an extendible table? We're all curious, what it's for?

A single shelf near the ceiling, going around the room can look very nice, and feel comfortable. Ditch any books that you haven't cracked the cover of in three years. (be honest) You can buy or borrow the two or three books of the lot that you find you need a couple years from now. Ditch the ugly ones, the old and fading 8088 instruction set manuals.. keep the rest arranged neatly on the shelfs and use the extra space for decorative storage or photos. You can use colored boxes for in-view storage.

IKEA shelves have optional frosted or solid doors that you can use to hide tools, tech stuff, and camping equipment.

Don't stack boxes. You'll never open the bottom ones, so why not just donate their contents? You can get bin racks for the same purpose.

Trying to find the brand of my laptop stand (Travelrite), I came across this, which has some interesting hidable laptop desks: http://www.macopinion.com/columns/roadwarrior/05/0 2/15/

You can easily replace the DVD and CD players with a Mac Mini. A digital wall projector (if you have the money-- only about 100 DVDs worth) can replace a bulky TV, and looks really sharp at night for movies or gaming. If you don't have the wall space, set up a retractable screen. Mount the projector on the wall above the sofa, and for god's sake hide the cables! :)

Watch a couple of the Queer Eye shows for inspiration; every once in a while they do up a one-room home for a work-at-home artist type-of-show.

> > However, it's a known fact that the mechanics of microwave cooking
> > are fundamentally different from traditional cooking

> No, it's not. Like all forms of traditional heat-utilizing cooking,
> you heat up the food at some place, which heats the rest of it.

You are wrong.

When I cook something in normal fashion, I can be sure that the temperature of the food is BELOW the temperature of my heat source - the grill, open fire, oven, steam, etc. Not so with microwave cooking - I can't reliably estimate temperatures reached within the food. Certain parts of the food can reach temperatures never attained in normal cooking (since the food as a whole would be destroyed at those temperatures.) Localized reactions can generate harmful compounds at such temperatures, which would be masked by the taste of the bulk of the food.

If you think this cannot happen, that's just an article of your blind faith. As for me, I know the cheese in my pizza tastes funny when I reheat it in a microwave.

And that's just the thermal effects of microwave radition. There is growing body of evidence for non-thermal effects: see interesting opinion here and a summary mention here that says: It is clear, though, that nonthermal effects do play a role in some reactions.

Actually, having brushed up on my reading, let me correct the subject of my thread - I WOULD worry about the laptop, but perhaps more on where the built wifi antenna is positioned.

Why? It's not as if no one else has mentioned that e-mail address before.... http://www.macopinion.com/columns/tangible/01/01/1 1/talk/5.html

The iBook is legendarily unreliable. My friend's iBook (nicknamed "iBork") has had to be sent back to apple for repairs no less than 3 times...

apple faced class action lawsuits over the iBook fiascos.

I'd seriously reconsider recommending an iBook to anyone. Just because it didn't happen to you doesn't mean it won't to the person you recommend it to. And statistically speaking, the ibook is very prone to failure compared to other laptops.

A powerbook is probably ok though.

As was mentioned above, it is not the technical compliance with the machine that would cause the switch (ipod already works with PCs,) it is the "ease of use," fit and finish, attention to detail that makes PC users "mac curious."

The "fit and finish" that causes the cheap-ass titanium paint on the TiBooks to flake off after two weeks?

Or the "attention to detail" lets through serious defects in the screen? And what about the high rate of premature logic board failures?

My ipod is the only gadget I own that I can let someone play with and have them understand it immediatly and enjoy the the design of not only the hardware but also the software.

Which, of course, explains why iTunes should crash repeatedly when syncing a 40gb ipod on a four-month-old powerbook. And why Applecare won't help the guy, because his 4-month-old powerbook is now "out of warranty."

Yeah, these thousands of people are probably just doing something wrong. Their problems aren't Apple's fault, with their "beautiful hardware," and their "joyful software." After all, everything JUST WORKS, right? Right?

But did you buy copy protected VHS tapes or DRMed DVDs?

If so you're part of the reason the labels believe that DRM works!

How well has CD copy protection been received? Does it actually increase sales, or just break Macintoshes? Why do you think Sony is scrapping copy protected CDs?

• Predicted the death of Apple for years and years,
• Predicted that the stratospherically successful iBook would be a disaster,
• Most recently, he predicted in March of 2003 that Apple would move the Mac to Intel in the next 12-18 months. Apple's got 3 months left to do it... what do you think the odds are?

You thought that "looking nice with your furniture" was more important than the spec of the system, or the OS it ran.

Yes--why is that so difficult to understand? If you have a machine in your living room, wouldn't you like it to look nice? Oh, I see, you probably don't really have a living room.

You were so taken with how much they matched your furniture that you bought 3 of them before you realised that you didn't like Mac OS.

No, I realized that after the first one. But, hard as that may be for you to comprehend, sometimes people buy machines because they need to get work done, and if that work happens to involve MacOS, then they buy a Macintosh, whether they like the OS or not. You know, just like lots of people buy Windows machines even though they don't like them. You, as a Mac zealot, should be able to relate to that, since Mac users often complain about having to use Windows machines.

Fortunately, after one is through using them for their work-related purpose, one can install Linux on both Macs and Windows machines, which makes me really happy.

"It just works" is about useability,

You mean like QuickTime? Or dragging volumes into the trash in order to unmount them? Or replacing a three button mouse with Apple-Option-click combos? Or the Top Nine Reasons the Apple Dock Still Sucks? The last one was written by that anti-Mac bigot and well-known troll by the name of Bruce Tognazzini. And then there are well-known anti-Macintosh rags like MacOpinion pointing out usability problems in OS X.

Apple is paying attention to usability, but so is everybody else. Apple doesn't have any magic solutions, and their products have the same kinds of problems that all other operating systems and GUIs have. They just make theirs look prettier and pretend they aren't there.

That doesn't make their machines bad, it just makes them not as good as Apple likes to claim.

Anyway, we both know full well that you're trolling.

No, the trolls are people like you who post to discussions about Linux that people should just use OS X instead because it "just works".

And when someone like me says that Apples are pretty nice, but that Apple, like everybody else has usability problems, you throw hissy fits.

Not really, because you didn't pay money. You bought a computer. You didn't buy an extended waranty. Your computer failed out of waranty, you decided to sell the computer. Apple owes you nothing. Now, had you paid for a repair, and it still failed, out of waranty and they wouldn't fix it again, then I would say they owe you something.

Having to pop up to 25 percent of the price of the computer for two extra years of warranty coverage because of strong odds you'll need it is not a fair or satisfactory solution to what is obviously a serious design or production quality defect.
[...]
Anything as expensive as a laptop computer, even a relatively low-priced one like the iBook, should be reasonably expected to work for much longer then the eight, 10, 12, 14 months that are being reported without suffering a major component failures. This is more than a routine warranty issue.
[...]
However, as I said, having to pay for AppleCare in lively expectation that you're going to need it cancels out much of the price advantage of buying an iBook instead of a PowerBook.

Added to this heady mixture in recent weeks is a new generation of digital copy protection that's been showing up on music CDs distributed by Sony in Europe. Fast becoming known as the case of "Celine Dion Killed My iMac," initial reports indicate that these discs are not only unreadable by computers, but may actually crash them and prevent them from rebooting, necessitating a service call.

I came to that conclusion from reading the specs (400 vs 480), and from others' experience. I have no real-world experience of firewire.

However I did just google for some comparisions, and this was the first I found.

The tests seem rather crude, but to quote "As I've been saying all along, Firewire and USB 2.0 are pretty close to being equal in terms of throughput and in real world use, neither will have 100% of their channel capacity used even by sustained hard drive access. The performance gain of Firewire over USB 2.0 is probably small enough in most situations that either will be perfectly usable for storage devices. "

Good enough for me.

http://www.macopinion.com/columns/macskeptic/00/11 /21/

MacOS 9 made a call to Gilligan's Island and tried to send some information to its little buddy at littlebuddy.apple.com. This was supposed to be a one time event at the end of the install process - but of course, Apple, forgetting that not everyone on the planet has 24/7 high-speed internet to their homes, created a situation where if it fails (ie: God forbid, you're not connected to the internet while installing MacOS 9), it repeatedly tries to get through. This first surfaced because someone noticed that their Mac was trying to make a net connection when nothing was supposed to be doing that.

Apple was the one that introduced Apple-C, Apple-V, etc. of course, because nobody else had an Apple key. :) But they picked z,x,c,and v to emulate Wordstar's keystrokes.

http://www.macopinion.com/columns/macskeptic/00/05 /19/

And the basic keystroke is still essentially universal regardless of who invented it - it may be a different key, control, command, apple, whatever, but it's all fairly consistent on Windows and Mac, and at least on the Linux distros that I've used more recently. They all use c,v, and x, and a typical shift-type modifier key.

The 1.8ghz version draws 42 watts.

Of course, you should undoubtedly use caution when burning at speeds not recommended (and in fact restricted) by Apple: Use on a flat surface in no more than room temperature conditions. If you are extra cautious, you can purchase a cooling fan, put it in the refrigerator or heck, even resort to not installing this unsupported firmware.

Surely they would never do a thing like that!

2 problems with this argument:

1) Linux users are soon to outnumber Mac users. See here for a Mac user's take on this.

2) Since OS-X is based on BSD, making a Linux OR Mac version of an app is doing most of the ground work for the other anyway. If you're going to go after one minority market, why put in another 5% effort and go after the other as well?

Of course, the evidence. This is what happens when someone innocent is framed for violating IP rights if DRM and government big brother monitoring becomes successful. Although it is old (2001), it is a good read and strangely fits into this event.

I actually attached this link to the parent article, but I think it fits here better.

Although this is fictional, the events of this story is already happening now.

The history of tablet computing is littered with failure, and MS is joining the parade 10 years late (though, as a history lesson, MS crushed Go by promising pen-windows 3.1 and forcing vendors to dump Go to get seeded with pen windows, then after Go tanked, they pulled the plug).

If you could get a touch/pen interface for trivial incremental cost and no resolution/weight/durability penalty, people would probably go for it. Maybe someday, but not yet.

Until then, as for Apple taking the niche: I worked on Scribe, the ATG's predecessor to the PenMac, a project so lost to history you can only find references to references on the web.

And the PenMac had, back in 95/96, many of the features of the new windows versions, including pressure sensitivity, a very accurate neural net based natural handwriting engine, etc. It even seemed quite a bit more responsive on that old 68020. It sold briefly in Japan for Kanji entry...

One problem with tablets... who writes anymore? Have you tried to write a letter recently? If you're less than 20, you probably never did. It's a compelling paradigm, but ultimately retro. Honestly, I can't anymore; my hand gets tired after a few paragraphs. Sure I could if I did it every day but I still wouldn't write this much with a pen. (Would the quality of writing improve if we took away all the keyboards?)

To be sure, there are niche markets. It's a solid interface extension to existing touchscreen applications like POS and machine control, and it's a nice for sketching.

But niche markets won't make for profitable software or affordable hardware. The problem is, in a nutshell, if you do it really well - get the tactile interaction just right, eliminate the display parallax, get the contrast up, get the pen as light and durable as a regular pen, even make the display flexible, make the whole thing weigh only a few hundred grams, and make it "instant-on," uncrashable, and with failsafe archival data retention and you've got....

...paper.

I don't think the 970 will ever scale down well for laptop usage, it's from a family of CPUs with no power considerations to worry of.

Shortsighted

One of the reasons DRM is so insane is because it is incredibly short sighted. I have records that are over 50 years old. I can play those records on virtually any turntable out there. Imagine if those records had been made with some sort of primitive DRM that required them to be played on a specific machine or required a call into a company to input a code before they would play. The truth is that most of those record companies don't even exist today. A huge cultural legacy would be lost.

The truth is obsolescence is already built in. Formats change computer file systems change, OSes change, our standards of quality change. My bet is that 50 years from now it will be just as rare to find someone playing mp3 files as it is tto find people playing old records now. You will have find a machine to read a certain kind of hard disk, find a way to read a particular file system, and then to interpret the format. Making those formats closed is virtually insuring the digital death of the music (or the video or whatever data they happen to contain).

I already see this problem with old software and data. I have a ton of programs from the apple ][ days. With some doing I can get that data off the old 5 1/2 inch disks and into an emulator under OS X. Most programs work and I can see the data (mainly high school book reports in appleworks), but it's a lot of effort. Luckily I was pretty good about keeping serial numbers around, but the programs that inevitably fail are the ones with anti-copy copy protection. Even back then the odd sector layout would cause problems on certain disk drives. Now the programs are essentially dead. With enough work I could probably revive them, but who has the time? We see the same problem now with certain cds with bad data written in on purpose to foil copying, but also foil playing on certain systems (actually in this case maybe it is a good thing to prevent Celine Dion from propagating her evil).

I have the same problem with my old Mac data circa 1984/85 even without copy protection. I have data in formats of programs that simply don't exist anymore (does anyone remember Fullwrite...so far ahead of it's time, but doomed by MS Word). My only hope for reading this data is finding an old machine or waiting until someone builds a good 68000 emulator (vmac has a ways to go)

Doing this to music (on purpose no less) is particularly insidious because music is one of the things that should live on as a cultural legacy. When I buy a CD I want it to last and I want to be able to play it whether I am here in LA or in a Kashgari taxi. I doubt that 2053 my grandkids will enjoy my Nada Surf mp3s the way I enjoy my grandfather's Vera Lynn and Tex Williams records, but I would like them to have the chance at listening to them in the first place.

Pretty good article here, where a guy tested out and compared USB 2.0 to Firewire on both a PC and a Mac. I remember reading somewhere that Firewire gets 400Mbps sustained whereas USB 2.0 gets the 480Mbps in bursts. Nevertheless, the tests conclude that they're virtually the same as far as performance--FW actually did do a tiny bit better. I'd be interested in hearing your results.

It already meets it, and because there aren't incumbering patents, it is cheaper to implement.

Here's an article to back up my claims that the speeds are similar. This is not a conclusive comparison, but it will show that USB 2.0 is comparible in speed to Firewire IN PRACTICE.

Off topic? Do I have to link all of my irony posts for you to get it?

A Nation of Thieves?

Something happened on the way to the 21st century. Media and entertainment companies started "converging" and "shareholder value" became far more important than customer service and respect for company employees ever managed to be. Compensation packages for company executives hit the stratosphere -- while holding them accountable for their company's results became nearly impossible.

These executives are indeed very naïve if they think that people haven't noticed.

People are noticing that something isn't quite right -- that something is indeed very wrong. After a decade during which the stock market gained apparent respectability as a legitimate, sensible form of investing, the recent slew of huge corporate scandals reveals that it is still what it has always been: a sick place where neurotic, puerile gamblers get their kicks off the backs of millions of "anonymous" workers and individuals, who have no control over what happens to their hard-earned retirement savings.

Yet this is the place that most company executives feel is much more important to watch than the actual people for whom they produce their goods and services. This is the place where the fate of thousands of employees is decided every day by people staring at computer monitors showing ever-changing, meaningless lists of numbers and charts. And if you happen to personally hold shares in a company that has just announced that it is "restructuring" in order to improve its bottom-line and thus increase its "shareholder value", don't kid yourself: When the company is talking about "shareholders", it's not talking about you and your measly couple of thousands of shares. It's only talking about big shareholders -- i.e. other companies that own a more significant share of its market value.

This is a world where "hostile takeovers" and government-approved "mergers" are feeding a never-ending cycle of fewer and fewer executives wielding more and more power on a multinational scale. Soon enough, the "World Company" and George Orwell's 1984 will no longer be the stuff of satire or fiction -- but prophetic descriptions of a very real "New World Order" gradually unfolding before our eyes.

A Little History

Let's start with a simple list: America Online, Time, Life, Warner Bros., Fortune, Elektra, Sports Illustrated, HBO, Turner Broadcasting, CNN, Cinemax, Entertainment Weekly, New Line Cinema, In Style, Warner/Chappell Music, Time Warner Cable, WBN, ICQ, Warner Music Group, Netscape, People, Reprise, Rhino, Atlantic, WEA, TNT, MapQuest, WinAmp, In Demand, Erato, Moviefone, Road Runner, etc.. All owned by the same corporate giant (AOL Time Warner).

And another one: Universal Music Group, Verve, Nathan, Canal+, Impulse!, Cegetel, USA Networks, Decca, Interscope, Geffen, A&M, Barclay, Armand Colin, L'Express, Universal Studios, Larousse, Sierra, MP3.com, MCA Records, Deutsche Grammophon, Cineplex, etc.. All owned by the same corporate giant (Vivendi Universal).

And yet another one: Disney, ABC, ESPN, Hyperion, Miramax, Touchstone, Hollywood Pictures, A&E, The History Channel, E! Entertainment, RTL-2, Buena Vista, Mr. Showbiz, Wall of Sound, Mammoth Records, etc.. All owned by the same corporate giant (Walt Disney).

Need we say more? See for yourself... There's already only 7 of these corporate giants in total -- and how long will it be before there are even fewer?

It all began innocently enough. Young entrepreneurs in the early 20th century started up new companies with a mix of creative ambition and business acumen. Then these companies grew bigger and bigger, and whatever entrepreneurial vision was present at their birth became more and more diluted and less and less relevant. Then corporate accountants suggested merging with or taking over other companies -- and it all became an all-too-real game of Monopoly.

Then the Internet and "new technologies" came about, and the accountants' next big idea was convergence -- i.e. the merging of "content" providers and "access" providers in order to control everything from the inception of a "cultural product" to its ultimate consumption by the unsuspecting masses.

The Art of Manipulation

It is easy to guess what got lost along the way... Creativity. Artistry. Independence. Critical objectivity. Uncontrolled access. The ability to "break through" cultural barriers. Cultural diversity. Innovation. Freedom. Real music. Real art.

Juggling between art and commerce is a delicate balance at the best of times... and these are definitely NOT the best of times.

So now we have a so-called magazine "reporting" on the latest new blockbuster movie with a 10-page, full-color spread -- as if the reporters weren't aware that the same company that produced the movie also owns their magazine... Yes, this is still called a "magazine". These are still called "reporters". And this is still called "journalism"... And yet millions of people are gleefully letting themselves be had.

Maybe we should stop calling this "art", or even "entertainment" for that matter -- for what is so entertaining about being involved in a collective hallucination? Maybe we should start calling it what it really is, i.e. unfettered MANIPULATION.

In 1995, Clear Channel Communications owned 43 radio stations. Now it owns more than 1,200 -- and its army of so-called "independent promoters" are letting legalized payola dictate what you get (or rather don't get) to hear on the radio.

Everywhere you look, the story is the same: more and more money, less and less choice, less and less freedom of access, fewer and fewer companies. How far will this have to go before a big shift in people's attitude causes this commercial hubris to collapse onto itself and implode?

Power Struggles

The first major cracks in this highly concentrated corporate world have, of course, already begun to appear, in what has been making the headlines in the past few months, i.e. shady accounting practices involving enormous amounts of money -- enough to shake the economy of the most powerful nation of the world. And the hysterical stock markets have of course been swayed by this news, at the expense of tens of thousands of workers worldwide and millions of small investors who thought that their holdings had nowhere to go but up.

The value of AOL Time Warner's stock is now a quarter of what it was at the time of the merger between AOL and Time Warner, and this decline forced the company to take a $54 billion writedown earlier this year. And now it too is being investigated about its accounting practices. The story at Vivendi Universal is similar. Disney shares are near an 8-year low. And there is little doubt in people's mind that the problems are similar everywhere, in every big conglomerate that has become utterly out of touch with the reality of everyday work and the essence of human creativity.

In addition, people also realize all too well that governments have little -- if any -- power left when it comes to regulating these multinational monsters. Governments have much more power when it comes to regulating the lives of ordinary, law-abiding citizens -- and they use and abuse this power as a way to distract people's attention from how much control the conglomerates have over what we get to hear, watch, read, eat, drink, buy, and generally experience as "free" citizens of the world.

One of the areas where this struggle is most acutely felt is, of course, the online world -- a sprawling, anarchic community that is still in its infancy and whose exponential development in the last decade took everyone by surprise. And nothing exemplifies the struggle between government, big business, and individual rights better than the highly controversial issue of "peer-2-peer" file sharing and its many digital variations.

A Nation of Thieves?

Will the media/technology giants recover from the latest stock market slump? They probably will -- but at what cost? In all likelihood, the cost will be more "restructuring", more layoffs, more executive shuffles and golden parachutes, causing even further alienation from their own employees and customers. And this, in turn, will further encourage the very behaviors that they claim are illegal and want punished by criminal law -- all the while preserving their own impunity as they continue to carelessly flounder a capital that they do not own.

Napster may have gone bankrupt and become a closed chapter in the Internet's short history, but its death is by no means a reflection of a decline in peer-2-peer (P2P) file sharing, quite the contrary. If anything, P2P has grown even further -- but since it's becoming totally decentralized, there is no easy way to measure its significance.

What is for sure, however, is that, in spite of its many claims to the contrary, the recording industry has yet to provide evidence that P2P is actually detrimental to music making as an artistic endeavor, and even as a commercial venture. It is worth remembering, for example, that sales of music CDs actually increased when Napster was at its peak, and declined after Napster was abruptly shut down. Even economists who thought that file sharing "should be" hurting the recording industry are now expressing their doubts, based on what they say is simply not happening.

More importantly, many well-respected artists have sided with Internet users against corporate greed and actually use the Internet to promote alternative ways to distribute their music and reach out to a non-captive, legitimate audience of authentic music lovers.

This does not mean, of course, that all forms of file sharing are equally innocuous. There is little doubt that, when people use the Internet as a substitute for radio, i.e. as a way to discover new music, it can help promote the work of artists. But when a young junior high school student downloads tracks off the Internet and makes CD-R copies of them that he then sells for $5 in the schoolyard, it hurts sales of the original CD and it's disrespectful of the artist -- regardless of how small a cut of the actual CD price the artist actually gets after all the executives and the middlemen in the recording industry have taken their piece of the pie.

Still, can we really go as far as to say that digital technology is creating a "nation of thieves" who no longer recognize the just value of art?

Protecting the Product

It is worth noting, to begin with, that the recording industry itself is far from having distinguished itself by recognizing the true value of art. Instead, it has consistently fought to be allowed to deprive many artists of their most fundamental rights. It has allowed popular artists to go bankrupt even though their albums were selling by the millions. It has reduced the artists' cut of the album sales pie to a ridiculously small portion of the actual income generated by these sales. It has consistently pushed commercial musical products at the expense of real musical artistry.

This hardly entitles the recording industry to lecture anyone about recognizing the just value of art.

It is also interesting to note that the cultural products that seem to be the primary concern of the industry giants are those that are already the most popular ones, and that things such as CD copy protection are being experimentally used mostly with items that will sell millions regardless of whether they are copy-protected or not.

So are most citizens really being completely disrespectful of the value of art and the need to provide appropriate compensation to the artists for their works? We've said it before and we'll say it again: the rise of digital technology and peer-2-peer file sharing has little to do with people's intrinsic respect for art and artists, and everything to do with the cynical attitude of big industry conglomerates, which have consistently pushed for more and more commercial, highly profitable products at the expense of authentic art and respect for artists.

If people do not feel enough guilt to prevent them from making digital copies of the latest episode of a popular TV show or hit pop song, it is precisely because the industry giants have succeeded in making these works purely commercial products, with little or no consideration for their actual artistic value. It is precisely because these companies have been consistently promoting commercial products at the expense of artistic works.

The fact that actual works of art still manage to seep through the cracks of this huge profit-driven industry does not change anything about the fundamental equations that have been driving and still drive the industry, today more than ever -- i.e. that art = money, artists = money-makers, and art lovers = consumers.

As a simple example of how little music is valued as an art form by the industry, it is estimated that only about 20 percent of music ever recorded is currently available -- and, of this 20 percent, what proportion is actually readily available to music lovers? What proportion is not the current 100 top albums on the SoundScan charts?

It simply appears that the instinctive reaction of the lover of art (be it music, TV shows, movies, or other forms of art) is such that, if the industry has no respect for his or her identity as an appreciator of art, then he or she has no reason to have any respect for the industry as a purveyor of art. By making digital copies of so-called cultural products, many people are not demonstrating their lack of respect for art and for artists, but are expressing -- consciously or not -- their frustration with the way the entertainment industry profits from art at the expense of both art makers and art lovers.

The consumers of the commercial products of the entertainment industry are only as cynical as the industry has deliberately made them, by dumbing down their products, by exploiting artists, by making profit-driven choices and decisions, and by providing their own kind with obscene compensations and legal impunity that are completely out of touch with the real world of ordinary people.

Don't Get It Twisted

That being said, the whole debate about file sharing and digital piracy is, most of all, a convenient way for industry conglomerates to deflect attention from their own shady business practices and dubious alliances.

For example, it is worth noting that the Warner Music Group is heavily involved in the recording industry's fight against piracy, but that its own parent company, AOL Time Warner, is directly benefiting from file sharing, as a provider of Internet access to millions of Internet users worldwide. When AOL Time Warner repeatedly flaunts its ever-increasing number of members (34 million and counting) and the billions of hours that they spend online, is there any doubt that a good part of this growth involves the "unlawful" exchange of computer files at the detriment of recording artists?

In other words, the real "thieves" are not necessarily those that are currently getting the blame... Rather than a "nation of thieves", the current situation looks, to us, much more like an "elite of thieves".

And the real victims of this thievery are very much, as usual, the recording artists themselves, who will never get their share of AOL's profits as an Internet access provider, even though these profits are partly based on the content that they originally provided. And the real victims also include authentic music lovers, who already suffer from restricted access to the full range of music that they would like to explore, and who are also likely to suffer from technological restrictions that will soon prevent them from making legitimate copies of the works that they have lawfully purchased for their own enjoyment.

Make no mistake: the entertainment industry (including TV, movies and music) might be big, but the technology industry is even bigger. Remember that it is AOL that bought Time Warner, and not the other way around. Remember that Sony makes much more money in electronics and computer equipment than it does in record sales...

If the technology industry ends up implementing technological limitations that prevent users from lawfully enjoying their purchases -- as it is threatening to do -- the beneficiaries will not be the artists whose works are thus being allegedly "protected". And it will certainly not be the art lovers whose enjoyment of art will thus be restricted. No, it will simply be, once again... the industry conglomerates, who will have yet another generation of incompatible media and devices to sell to us under the guise of "technological improvement".

Conclusion

The technology and entertainment industries are simply to big for us to expect any overnight changes. The industry giants will continue to do their best to deflect people's attention away from their own wrongdoings and to blame falling profits and commercial failures on piracy at the same time that they are encouraging their customers to adopt the very technologies that make piracy possible. Artists will continue to be lured by unrealistic promises and contracts with big numbers and lots of small print.

How long, however, before a critical mass of established artists realize that it is in their best interests, both artistically and commercially, to leave the system for good? How long before a critical mass of young aspiring artists become aware of the enslaving aspects of the system and are careful not to get involved in it without a maximum of precautions? And how long before a critical mass of art lovers get together to provide these artists with a real, valuable, legitimate, truthfully enthusiastic alternative audience that completes the process of rendering the existing system artistically irrelevant?

It all depends on us -- and it all depends on you.

[Ed: original used "2" for both "to" and "too" -- grammatical errors in that department are my fault. Only changes should be related to spelling, formatting and links preserved. Various Unicode characters translated to ASCII for the benifit of Slashdot. "Peer-2-peer" is kept as original.]

According to this site:
"The current dual USB iBook has no cooling fan at all..."

I couldn't find any info regarding the iBook's cooling fan (or lack thereof) on Apple's site (even tried the ADC docs).

There's a pretty good opinion piece on MacOpinion titled The Number of the Beast" that you guys might find interesting. Talks about how the government has always been listening in on the Internet and points out some fairly interesting facts...

Check it out.

There's a pretty good opinion piece on MacOpinion titled The Number of the Beast" that you guys might find interesting. Talks about how the government has always been listening in on the Internet and points out some fairly interesting facts...

Check it out.

Bob spoke at a private Macworld Expo event this last January that I attended. One of the most interesting things about him is how he's built his career. If you really think about it, RXC is really just a guy who happened to do the right things at the right time (and I mean that with all due respect), and now he has the power to meet and interview ANYONE in the tech industry (and probably has already). He probably also gets to see most every new piece of software and hardware months before anyone outside of the company knows about it. His opinion is highly valued. I wouldn't be surprised if he knew about the new Apple G4 Cube waaaay before the Expo last week.

I wish I could go into the stories he told, but most of the stuff is either just expansion of what he talks about in his "I, Cringely" column, or it's just not for public consumption. :-)

Here is a good anecdote. Considering how high profile RXC is, think about how many other people with similar positions would do the following... not many I would guess.

The Macworld event that he attended? Basically a private gathering of journalists and webmasters from a few medium-sized Mac websites (MacOPINION [the site I used to run/own], Applelinks, My Mac).

How did we get Cringely to speak at our gathering? We just asked. Of course, we paid for his plane ticket, fancy dinner, and such, but that's it. He didn't charge any kind of outrageous fee or anything (afaik).

What a great guy. Everyone should have a chance to hear RXC speak, he is brilliant.

Ben

The troll (or, if he's not a troll, the guy with severe reading comprehension problems) neglected to preserve the emphasis on the word "sell" in his quote, altering the meaning somewhat.

Check out John Martellaro's take on it. John is writing about the Macintosh Web, but his arguments scale quite well, I think. Basicly, he is saying that publishing, whether on the web or in paper, is a business, and web business model has some big problems. If you think its hard for magazines to do good reviews, what do you think a web site with one advertiser on a page is going to do?

There is no problem with Apple raising its prices. That it can do whenever it wants to. (Even if we don't like it.)

The problem comes when Apple cancels orders that it has already taken.

The cancellation of confirmed orders is what is making customers angry.

When Apple took these orders, Apple agreed to deliver its product for a given price. Now Apple is backing away from its agreement and alienating nearly 80,000 customers by not honoring its contract with them.

A great analysis of the situation (before the flip-flop of the flip-flop) can be found at MacOpinion.
I do smell a class-action lawsuit brewing here, but for those who don't wish to make an attorney richer, please take the time to let the Federal Trade Commission know how you feel about this using the FTC Complaint Form.

Btw, in the two scenarios you present, Apple ships more units the first way, not the second (with the worst case being an equal number of shipments).
----

Before anyone gets out of shape, take a visit to the usual Mac web sites:

it's not wise to base your judgements on something coming from ZDNet

Posted by ChristianC:

See 'Sex and the single geek' at MacOPINION. Pretty funny.

Every *really* irks me with his Religious Zeal sometimes.

I suggest that some of you Basher-types Try reading MacOpinion for a better idea of what sane, civil Mac folks are like. D. Every is a relic, of a time loooong gone.

He's the kind of 'Evangelist' that gives Mac Professionals and Users a bad name. Trouble is, can't figure out a way to shut him up...

Real Good Mac Writing macOpinion.