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"To preserve indefinitely and without question everything Chopin created."

This indefinite preservation technology is actually known as a musical score. It's the technology Chopin used, and it's a pretty good preservation system, with infinitely high resolution, flexibility and scalability. Admittedly it's more ambitious but it's ultimately a more future-proof project to teach music literacy ... and it has a far simpler interface that's been out of beta for a couple of centuries.

Dennis
http://maltedmedia.com/bathory/

Live tweeting is already happening at a lot of nonpop concerts ... chamber music, especially, and even at symphony concerts -- by the performers. I follow a harpist who tweets and posts photos during long periods of rests.

The whole discussion is really deep desperation on the part of orchestras, and not just in the U.S. Orchestras are shutting down across Europe as well. As likely one of the few actual composers on Slashdot (this is me), I'm not awfully sorry about it. I've written a few dozen orchestral compositions, with half of them played. Audiences of all ages -- I recall one SRO with listeners ages 15-20 paying for tickets with whatever cash they had just to hear my new piece -- want to hear new music, and not just game or movie music rewritten for orchestras. But the orchestras depend on those conservative and wealthy patrons for whom the boxes at a symphony concert are a status trinket.

I'm neutral about live tweeting ... just so long as the sound is off and the screen is dim, because there are other folks who really do focus on the performance and not broadcasting their reactions to it. There's room for everyone from my point of view. But just get in there when there's new music on the program ... let the powers-that-be know that you'll come back for more new music. Otherwise it's more Beethoven for you.

As a music copyist for 40+ years, I'd say this may be a cool concept but has dreadful results. There have been hundreds of programs that produced amateur results like this since the early 1980s, and most of them couldn't (and still can't) do basic contemporary notation. That's why ABC notation is also pretty useless. If it can come close to doing this with good character balance and incorporation of graphical elements -- most of which Finale could do 15 years ago and Score could do long before that -- then it's a start.

I love new implementations, but as any professional in any field knows, ultimately it's what you implement that matters.

Dennis

Please back my project! at Kickstarter.

I'm not sure composers are raising a ruckus on this at all. Bars and restaurants and clubs are businesses engaged in making a profit, or attempting to, and part of that profit is engendered by the music they use.

If the business owners use the music well, it will draw in customers. For an establishment open six days a week, the basic fee comes to a buck a day. How many customers does one need to attract with music to cover that buck? A restaurant that isn't selling 100 drinks a day with a one-penny surcharge isn't going to have live music anyway, is it? And for places with a cover charge, it's paid for and more, effortlessly. Music makes the business attractive, and earns money; it doesn't lose it. (I don't blame the clubs and restaurants for wanting free stuff. We all do. But casting it as a 'right' is deception.)

Creative people are embarrassed when their representatives go over the top, as ASCAP did with the Girl Scouts. But when we join ASCAP or BMI or SESAC, we are engaging in a contract with them to represent us to collect a fee that we are legally and ethically due, and they do it in the fairest way possible to everyone involved. As I've said, at least little collections of lawyers aren't running around representing a handful of artists here and there; the restaurateurs would be up to their eyeballs writing tiny royalty checks. The flat fee is a convenience that they don't have to accept. If they want to pay piece by piece, they can, but it will be another up-to-the-eyeballs situation.

I can understand why a small businessperson wouldn't understand the notion of royalties. Some guy in a bad suit comes in and says "Give me money." It feels like a shakedown, and they're certainly too busy to see that somebody is actually out there who wrote the music that brings in customers. But as musicians, the band members know full well -- and should educate those who hire them -- about who actually owns what they're playing.

To put it in a personal context, an orchestra played several of my pieces, big pieces. They never paid for their use. I've been trying for seven years to get those royalties, and finally ASCAP succeeded in having them pay up their back dues. Royalties like these are my income; I accept small commissions, which come out to a few cents an hour to create the music, and I sell printed music through my distributor, but the sheet music downloads are free. That is a fair deal.

But back to those restaurants. There are indeed other commercial music representatives out there, smaller than ASCAP and BMI and SESAC. They do exactly that, representing smaller numbers of artists, and collecting royalties for them -- usually collecting larger fees per composition than the big licensing agencies, and so younger composers are heading their way. So unless you believe no royalties should ever be due, be careful what you wish for. (And I assume you're posting from the United States, so be glad that you don't also pay the taxes on media in many other countries, where the fees go to artist agencies along with royalties.)

Dennis
We Are All Mozart

I don't even know where to begin.

The radio play (etc.) was traded for the extended copyright several years ago.

The license is for live music, and the royalties (less about 10% admin) go directly to composers, and the formula, though complicated to a layperson, is pretty clear.

The license for broadcast music is different, and because of the massive number of broadcast stations, is pro-rated by random surveys.

The copyright for arrangements lies with the original owner, but arrangements of public-domain materials can be (depending on the extent of new material) be copyrightable and licensable.

The Girl Scout thing was just stupid -- even though the law was on their side, we ASCAP members (it's a membership organization where each composer votes on the board) raised a ruckus.

What's the fee? It depends. We have a performance organization and our royalty bill for 2006 was $29 because we listed what we played. Want a cheaper bill? Have the cover bands keep a performance log, and pay exactly the amount of the bill.

Nothing is hidden. ASCAP operates under a decades-old court order allowing it to represent its member artists, and has to go back to the court for every change. Otherwise, we'd each negotiate individually, and the last thing a presenter needs is to be descended on by the lawyers for thousands of composers.

I know this is Slashdot, but this multi-age mangle is just bizarre.

Dennis
We Are All Mozart

"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" applies to some degree to the responses to the review.

We use math for these machines because that's how they were designed. They didn't have to be, although from our perspective a half-century on, it seems impossible that they might work any other way.

Computers may need math because of how they were created, but consider that an animator didn't need math to animate, rotate or transform a figure. Though it may be reduced to math, an artist doesn't need math to give depth, shading and perspective to an image. In fact, computers make such analog tasks incredibly math-intensive, as a previous poster noted.

Despite the depth and complexity of the resulting orchestrations, no math created -- though it may describe aspects of -- Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Learning language and grammar remain elusive to mathematicians, and even Chomsky's "universal" theories end up flummoxed by the Pirahã language. The multiple readings of T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland would take more time to track than the Internet in real time.

Even in the sciences from antiquity, increasing description and formulation result in increasing complexity, but not necessarily increasing understanding. Earth, air, fire and water made sense in societal context; then extended elements; then the periodic table; then subatomic particles, light as particles and waves, and behavior of quarks. Magnetism remains elusive, as does an elegant theory of everything.

Each of these may use math as a description or even a tool, but the careful tuning analysis of the different kinds of gamelans does not apply to the gamelans, but only their analysis. The reference is to itself, and the gamelans go on with or without analysis.

In other words, were our computers not based initially in creating algorithms to manipulate the basic elements chosen to operate them, impelling the ultimate triumph of binary data over other representations, math may have receded to its place as just one tool of computer activity.

Dennis
We Are All Mozart

Very good points, and lost in the crowd.

Anonymous C, could you please contact me so I can attribute a quote to you?

Thanks,
Dennis
http://maltedmedia.com/bathory/

Entirely right, except it's not limited to academics. Thousands of us doing this have never been part of academia. I've been including mathematically-based pieces in my work for more than 30 years.

As far as money goes, Tom Hamilton did his hot price of gold piece in 2003 ("London Fix," on Muse Eek 118). And Charles Dodge's gorgeous "Earth's Magnetic Field" was a top-selling classical LP ca. 1969, on Nonesuch.

Dennis

Buy my stuff before it's done:
We Are All Mozart

amelith: The ones who are likely to welcome this are people who already work freelance in jobs such as writing and journalism, like the author of the article maybe? They already have to do time management and have a large amount of control over their working hours. Nobody is likely to ring them at 3AM to complain about a typo in their last article for example.

Spoken like a non-freelancer? You're mostly right. I've been a freelance writer (as well as composer, engraver, consultant, programmer, and photographer) for the past 30-plus years. As a freelancer on the US east coast, I work "in" a dozen times zones, from Prague to Portland, and until I set clear rules, that phone would ring at any hour of the day or night.

I've been computer-connected 24/7 since 2001, but now the phone and Skype are answered only automatically and a message must be left, even if I am here. I suggest callers always send an email to confirm their call and their question, because my clients know that their calls will be returned only when I can focus adequately on their question. Usually that is promptly, sometimes it isn't ... but the delay helps them both realize what is actually important and clarify the problem for themselves (and consequently for me). Their deadline is my deadline, but their panic is not my panic. The work always gets done, in time and well.

As you say, always-on is a great advantage for those who can manage their time and insist they not be taken advantage of. Managing it also helps clarity of thought and family life. But I had to develop the ability to say no to unacceptable work, even if it means a light diet for a while.

Dennis

My latest project

Since everyone's telling personal stories, I'll tell mine, with a short preface: keep in mind that those who work in IT and wonder who will be the bus drivers and janitors ... you are the bus drivers and janitors. Janitors clean up to make work easier, cleaner and safer for others; programmers are largely involved with the same task. Even when you are in 'creative' mode, you become the bus driver, finding the best route to accomplish a task.

I'm a composer. That means I've done many things -- driven a truck, run a printing press, done programming, designed hardware, put down sidewalks, written books, shoveled dirt, run a business. I've learned a great deal doing it: That little of what we do is lovable work. That what we work hard to learn and put to use grows stale as society moves on. That as focus sharpens on a goal, scope of vision fades.

Let me fork this. I live in a rural area now, to which I moved 30 years ago. When I have focused, career-driven visitors from the city, it astounds me how few can experience what is before them. The cannot taste the air, hear the wind, see the grass beneath their feet. Who they are has become what they do. And I can't help but fear that their lives will empty out over broken levees when society's wind and rain blow in another direction.

Here in this topic, for example, a momentary subthread about 8-bit processors and math appeared. And, having been an 8-bit programmer who even wrote a book about it, I got a momentary historical shiver from it. And I thought, yes, I once loved doing that. But it was not lasting in my life. Technology moves on, and eventually everyone will either keep up or leave -- and the latter will dominate. The love will turn into what? A hobby pursued from a rocking chair? Anecdotes from Ye Olde Programmer? Forgetfulness?

I suppose that's why the Trumps of the world build great architectural monuments with their names on them. It's been said that one doesn't die until the last person who personally knew you dies -- or until your last monument crumbles. But I also suppose that a painting or a novel or a symphony is a kind of lasting persona.

And now to the other fork. As a nonpop composer, I know that my culture has shifted for a few generations away from this artform, and that there much less room for composers than for bus drivers or programmers. I had the misfortune of being born smack in the middle of the decline, which reached its bottom a few years ago. Now that I've been composing for 42 years, there's a chance that what I love may also be what I do. (At the rate of change, I will be about 120 years old by then.)

It has been possible to stay a composer with other work. This is the situation most artists find themselves in, and others in this topic have pointed to their novels and screenplays sitting on shelves. But the astounding thing is that it's not just the Sunday-afternoon artists who are in this position. Just one of the more than hundreds of composers I've known personally over the years is living on the results of that work.

I can hear the thoughts. That's the way the market works. On the other hand, only a kind of capitalist theocracy (a capitaliban, if you will) defines everything in terms of its monetary value and its place as a 'product'. (Those who know the opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny will recognize the theme, where the worst crime was not murder, but bankruptcy.) The point of this statement is not to complain about an artist's condition, but to identify a dramatic flaw in the theme of "how to do what you love": What you love to do cannot be fully brought to fruition within a society that does not value the results.

The results can be weakened, the quality reduced, the visibility lowered. And yet, these cultural artifacts are what define the meaning of our societi

Okay, I'm glad you took the time for this reply so late in the ever-decreasing slashdot interest curve...

#1: The Internet is here to stay.

Remember the Dark Ages. The real Dark Ages, and the reason for them. It was a political choice based in religion and power. Future technologies, for some period of time, simply may not exist. We may indeed have a kind of Dark Ages that will remove this option. As the Internet is politically segregated today, it can be further segregated, then destroyed. These scenarios have been proposed, and they are not impossible, just unlikely.

#2: The most treasured knowledge will always be migrated to newer technologies.

Here's a problem -- knowing what that 'treasured knowledge' may be. If Bach or Mahler lived today, for example, most of their works will have been permanently lost because their work was not treasured as they grew old when they did live. We tend to treasure what's personal or what's popular, but rarely have the cultural vision to understand what is ultimately culturally lasting. Imprisoning cultural vision in technologies that quickly fade is a mistake. Sure, I may migrate my material (I believe I'm a very good composer), but who will do the next generation of work?

#3: If there is a will, there is a way.

This is a kind of American myth, like the unending frontier. It's very positive, but ultimately it fails. The forces of nature (including those involved in the deterioration of technology) need only be applied intermittently to break the chain of possibility. And that does not even include the question of cost, which every archivist faces.

These three points you make can be multiplied: there must be a technology, there must be cultural vision, and their must be will and funding. What in the world qualifies for all three, even now?

I covered this topic three years ago, by the way: http://maltedmedia.com/books/papers/sl-archv.html

Dennis

Funny this should suddenly become a topic now. It's hardly new. I've seen many great program-teaching games, and I even wrote "Simul-80", a programming game for the Z-80, back in 1980. It had both a real-person version (lots of running around with program counter wheels and scraps of paper with data) and I even created a program to emulate the simulation. Great fun. Anyone wanting to download it can find it at ftp://maltedmedia.com/simul-80/

Dennis

My first hard drive instrument was in 1994 -- the "Diskklang". A pix at the bottom of this page: http://maltedmedia.com/people/bathory/instruments. html

The platters were bigger then, and the sound was very nice.

Dennis

It's not the only problem. There is a huge issue with independent artists who buy in small quantities and pay a tax that goes to other, wealthy artists.

There are ways of opting out -- but they involve the expense of buying a business name, registering, and buying CDs only from approved vendors.

For more information, see my essay on copy protection and read the section covering the CPCC 'zero-rating' program. Dennis

That program was very innovative for the time. It might have looked a bit toyish and more like a game because of all the pretty graphics, but it was quite powerful, especially considering the platform.

Was? AudioMulch has yet to reach version 1.0, and is capable of an enormous range of manual and automatable music/sound processing tasks. My piece HighBirds (Prime) for 2 electric guitars (first guitar, second guitar) and playback, premiered last year at the Ought-One Festival, was created in AudioMulch.

There aren't many apps with a full range of oscillators, granulators, shapers, mixers, delays, reverbs, filters, modulators, etc., workable as an emulated equipment console as well as a patch bay.

Stretch AudioMulch across two 19-inch screens, and it's a powerful realtime audio (and Midi) processing and manipulation system. With a HD full of audio files for sources, I can compose/improvise a whole night's concert from a single application.

As for what it sounds like, it doesn't sound like anything except the composer who's using it.

Dennis

That program was very innovative for the time. It might have looked a bit toyish and more like a game because of all the pretty graphics, but it was quite powerful, especially considering the platform.

Was? AudioMulch has yet to reach version 1.0, and is capable of an enormous range of manual and automatable music/sound processing tasks. My piece HighBirds (Prime) for 2 electric guitars (first guitar, second guitar) and playback, premiered last year at the Ought-One Festival, was created in AudioMulch.

There aren't many apps with a full range of oscillators, granulators, shapers, mixers, delays, reverbs, filters, modulators, etc., workable as an emulated equipment console as well as a patch bay.

Stretch AudioMulch across two 19-inch screens, and it's a powerful realtime audio (and Midi) processing and manipulation system. With a HD full of audio files for sources, I can compose/improvise a whole night's concert from a single application.

As for what it sounds like, it doesn't sound like anything except the composer who's using it.

Dennis

It is impossible to reconcile the existenance of substantive choice and the influence of monopolists. They are mutally exclusive. Either choice exisits ergo their is no monopoly OR no choice exisits and their is a monopoly.

Monopoly is relative, even though it may seem absolute, and there's a semantic slipperiness because of the mix of antitrust and anti-monopoly laws. Monopoly also, for example, includes the creation of monopoly status through predatory action or other actions defined as monopolistic practices ... the deliberate move to limit choice.

Also, recall that Sherman in 1890 was talking about maintaining a decentralized economy. Even as late as 1952, Humphrey reinforced the civic intention of antitrust vs. a purely economic argument. Today's interpretation is quite different for the laws' and practices' origins, and evolution (or devolution) is a matter of perspective. The aggressive enforcement of antitrust laws has slowed considerably as Sherman's model is turned away from in a corporate-dominated legislative system.

Ultimately, in absolutist terms, there is no monopoly where I can still drill my own well or produce my own electricity or grow my own food or create a computer from carved beads and twigs.

Dennis
http://maltedmedia.com/

Hmmm, this seems to be exactly what Cringley said in his article. Nobody, so far, has been able to make a profit and they are not likely to in the near(?) future.

(Raises hand.) We have a local cable TV company who put in cable modems in January. They had thought out putting glass in 5 years ago, and can now reap the benefits. 500 customers in a 2,500-population town. $40/month for broadband, $30 if you bring your own modem. ROI within 18 months. Disclaimer: I consulted on the project.

Maybe you have to be small, have to think ahead, or just be in the right place. Dunno.

Dennis

http://maltedmedia.com/

Good grief. I suppose I should stay out of this, but I've been a professional composer using orchestral and electronic media for more than 30 years, and the PC has always provided the breadth of tools and configurability that I need, especially if I need to quickly build up a control device of some kind.

Look, I know those who started with Macs are happy with their stuff. That's fine. But I can't be tied to an Apple corporate stamp of approval for a product. For example, I'd not likely see an AudioMulch for Mac -- unless you consider Max, priced at 10 times the cost for similar functionality (and with Max lacking the ability to produce techno quickly, for example). And Sound Forge, Cool Edit Pro, Cakewalk, Finale, Graphire Music Press ... all (and hundreds of other programs and advanced plugins) are wonderful and flexible PC software. Finale and Graphire both started on Macs, and Finale's first PC port was terrible. But once they started writing from the ground up for PC, the results were stunning. And according to users on both platforms, the Graphire PC version leaves the Mac version behind for ease and speed of use.

As for professional results, legacy studios with Mac equipment do not a case for Macs make. My CD was produced with PCs alone, as have been thousands of others. Likewise, as an editor and book designer, I have had no trouble accommodating the needs of legacy print houses who still use Macs.

I have no problem with Macs and those who love them, but you are presenting a bogus argument from the computer world of a decade past.

Dennis

MaltedMedia
Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar
Erzsébet the Vampire

ClayJar said: Or G'Kar, a flat, one-dimensional character who wanted nothing more or less than to see the Centauri exterminated, who by the end of the series not only had forged a lasting peace between their two races but had also grown strong enough to turn down the chance to be ruler of his entire world.

G'Kar exemplified Babylon 5 at its best. Andreas Katsulas gave a portrayal that was Shakespearian. G'Kar gave Londo meaning as well. Their moments when G'Kar was chained in the cell were extraordinary television.

Jerry Doyle's Garibaldi was always convincing, as was Walter Koenig's Bester, and Jeff Conaway's wonderfully underplayed Zack Allen. The only character that really fell apart was the cheap hippie imitation psi guy ... mercifully, I forget both his character and actor...

And everything was dirty on B5. I loved it. You know that people actually pissed and shat in that show!

Dennis
http://maltedmedia.com/

And you've studied and understand and speak both languages? Galois Theory and Serial Harmony? If your grasp of serial harmony is even at the mathematical level of algebra, then you should be able to whistle the Moses und Aron row... yes?

Dennis

hypergeek wrote: That's where the fuzzy gray area of "speech with functional significance" comes in...

This is so true. Remember that source and object code were validated as speech in the early 1980s during the copyright debate.

I'm baffled about this decision alters existing law, or if it merely reaffirms it -- or even if it limits it, because "speech with functional significance" is not what object code is. Yet object code is protected by copyright and was defended as speech.

Yes, copyright itself doesn't define speech, but its implementation has paralleled the Constitutional concept of speech for decades.

Perhaps the implications of tech have so befuddled (and broken down) the legal system that each turn and twist in the tech road has to be adjudicated individually to arrive at the same old conclusions.

Dennis

http://maltedmedia.com/
No Money (Lullaby for Bill)
http://www.mp3.com/bathory/

Many musicians already do this sort of thing.

For example, check out Dennis Bathory-Kitsz.

Please add two important factors: formats and applications.

I'm a Windows user now that I'm out of the programming world. Windows was there when I needed a cheap and functional GUI. Nobody else was. I've got no universities or big companies behind me. I'm an individual person with a family of computer users, and numerous clients.

Unlike our "suit" friend, I don't have time to explore document properties and chuckle at others' ignorance. I've got to exchange documents with sometimes a dozen colleagues or clients at different locations, all of whom expect a Word or Finale or Cakewalk document for the round-robin editing. I had to teach all (read: every one) of them what FTP was because the documents were too big for email! Some couldn't even get the hang of that, so I had to create web links for download/upload.

Would I like Linux? Personally? As a person who likes to have a machine configured to my taste, probably yes. But -- call me unimaginative -- there's not a whole lot of non-technie stuff that I haven't been able to do in Windows.

So what about format exchange? As a composer, I'd love to use other scoring applications, regardless of the computing environment. Why can't I? Because I have eight years of score production, representing over 30 years of compositions, in one file format. Even Windows applications have trouble importing/exporting readable files -- Unix has, what, Lilypond? It reads nobody else, nobody else reads it. Last I heard I couldn't even export a Midi demo with it. At least the major scoring programs come with Win/Mac file exchange and Midi output. So will a niche OS get attention from a niche field like musical scoring? Not likely, not until the niche OS is mainstream.

And applications? Even after 15 years in machine/assembly programming, I decided on Windows in 1992 because I had to get work done. I know Linux users hate that Neanderthal-sounding argument, but folks, I have a complete DAW running so I can do music production and scoring. The applications are install-and-run, with very little configuration, which most of them do automatically. Manual configuration is available for the tweaking. It's stable. It never crashes. That is what I need ... and it runs under Windows.

Example: I have an upcoming piece for string orchestra. From a single keyboard and screen I'm running four computers (all Win95b) with the desktop-in-screen (VNC Viewer). Each computer is running different sound/scoring apps (Finale, Cakewalk, Cool Edit, Audiomulch ...) and hardware (one with two 24-bit 96KHz sound cards, another with a 32-channel Midi card ...), graphical apps (Photoshop, Paint Shop, screen recorders ...) Most of the hardware doesn't even have Linux drivers, by the way.

One computer is also being used by my wife, another by my stepdaughter. So -- back to the example -- in a single day I produced the score and parts from my pencil sketches, output from it a General Midi demo which was then massaged by using audio samples and sequenced, produced PDF files of the score and parts, burned a CD of the demo for the reviewers, created an mp3 file for the conductor, edited my web pages to make the score and demo available, and uploaded it all. The conductor could then download and print the PDFs while listening to the demo, as I continued working on the score for another composer whose music was to be premiered in the same concert. The only time I had to leave my keyboard was to take a break or load a CD to burn into the machine in the next room.

The rest of the family continued working, writing, doing homework, browsing, checking email, etc., never noticing that I was using their spare CPU time for audio processing. I have a full four-track sound setup (no Linux drivers), a networked Palm V, and in the background I'm running SETI at Home, as well as FTGate mail server and Wingate networking over Linksys (no Linux drivers) cards. I run IRC, telnet, FTP, chat, and HTTP servers on a sporadic basis when friends or clients need stuff. Only one application -- the Java chat -- needs command-line configuration.

Some of this may be no big deal for Linux power users. But when I got hot for Linux, I went searching and couldn't locate even a fraction of the applications and drivers I'd need to do my daily work.

My point is this: Our "suit" was a clever and computer-savvy business user calling on commonplace applications. I could do what he does. But my day involves much more than text and spreadsheets and even images. I need easy movement from application to application, file to file, and client to client -- and I mean people, not software. My family and clients have never seen a command-line process!

I would love to get out of the MS world. MS is distasteful to me as a company. But those of you who are pioneers have much to do -- including making Linux (or any successor OS) work effortlessly (yes, appliance-level), and enticing companies (read: payback) to create drivers and software for it ... beyond a few commonplace applications.

Dennis

We do have the technology now, as the poster says, to migrate our data ever forwards into new storage, assuming no cataclysm occurs

But we don't have the time. You can increase data density and processor speeds, but not the human time to make the decisions on what to migrate where, when, and how. Not to mention you're only talking about digital data here, not the real world.

Heck, I was gone to a rehearsal one day and come back to find comments to this topic essentially over. With that kind of attention span, who's gonna do this stuff?

Dennis

Is this just an incoherent rant ?

It is coherent but not deep enough. I read with some horror the narrow use and time views, such as when you said, "Modern word processing still opens really old file formats like Windows .WRI and Word 1.0". Old? I have books in TRS-80 Model I Electric Pencil format!

But it's so much broader than that. We have created a society of ephermal materials, increasingly so each year. As we moved from stone to paper to magnetic and optical media, we gave up durability for fluidity and speed. But I won't repeat your arguments, only point to some other examples and questions...

Who has time for this? Every year there is more data to back up, more information to get in order. As a composer, I have scores in software now six versions old. The ability to understand the meaning of the data is compromised with each upgrade, so I have to re-work as well as convert and transfer them. And there are sequences created as far back as my hand-built digital box. Some I've brought forward through a TRS-80 Model I all the way into Cakewalk 9. So I'm a composer whose time is split between creating the new and re-archiving the old!

Sure, who cares if I can't recover my KIM-1 data (even now)? As an artist, I do care, especially if great works are lost. The breakthrough music of David Behrmann was done on a KIM-1. Frozen documents (CDs) of them have been released, but his music was interactive as far back as 1977. Behrmann is one of the last century's musical lights. His work will be lost unless some hardware is kept up or some software moved to another system. Who will do it? I may not come up to Behrman's genius, but I have several dozen interactive works starting in 1978, and some of these technologies are long lost already.

As an individual artist with a body of work spanning nearly 40 years, I have a room full of decaying and obsolete media ... artistic creations that only function on KIM-1 and TRS-80 or OSI or Color Computer with dozens of data formats and custom interfaces. Paper tapes, wafer tapes, 8-inch and 5-inch and 3-inch disks. 4-channel Dolby-B tapes. 2 channel 4-track dbx-1 tapes. 2-channel dbx-2 cassettes. Fostex 4-channel cassettes. DAT tapes. Minidiscs. 8mm and 16mm film. Beta video. 2-inch slides. Mylar overlays. Negatives in many formats. Even a bloody set of endless-loop Elcassettes and 8-tracks for a sound installation! And I'm just one guy.

But it's not just media decay. It's knowledge and understanding. Someone else pointed to a tricorder of the future, which could read the data and determine its purpose. A good idea, if such a tricorder could contain the historical thought of each individual. But even from Beethoven's sketchbooks, who could determine the 'correct' ending for a symphony? Reconstructing data might be possible; understanding it will be impossible.

A rant for a rant!

Dennis

When I originally submitted this Bill Gates piece to /. I provided some commentary, but the focus was on how my piece No Money (Lullaby for Bill) came about, being derived from Gates's voice.

Then I turned up the full interview transcript. It was more interesting for /. and so I was asked to write a new preface for the interview. Alas, the original brief article didn't make it. Instead, I posted it here on my Malted/Media site:

http://maltedmedia.com/books/pape rs/sf-gates.html

Dennis

When I originally submitted this Bill Gates piece to /. I provided some commentary, but the focus was on how my piece No Money (Lullaby for Bill) came about, being derived from Gates's voice.

Then I turned up the full interview transcript. It was more interesting for /. and so I was asked to write a new preface for the interview. Alas, the original brief article didn't make it. Instead, I posted it here on my Malted/Media site:

http://maltedmedia.com/books/pape rs/sf-gates.html

Dennis

The computer magazines of the 1970s and early 1980s were better than almost anything I have read since. For example, SoftSide and 80 Micro, the old TRS-80 rags, were amazingly valuable sources of information. They covered everything, from useful machine language subroutines to undocumented operating system features to the occasional hardware hack. I still miss Jake Commander's columns on the TRS-80 CoCo ROM, and Dennis Báthory-Kitsz's homebrew kit articles.

For years, these magazines were essentially the only broadcast outlet for source code among hobbyists. You could legitimately put these magazines among open source pioneers -- in those days, publishing source essentially was the only way to make your software available to a wide audience, and infused many of us with a healthy respect for the value of making source code available to everyone.

Not many magazines carry on the same sort of anything-goes attitude. Dr. Dobb's Journal comes close, and they usually provide an interesting read, but they often seem too easily distracted by vaporware and buzzware to be really compelling. The Perl Journal was pretty promising when I last saw it (but who has time to read magazines these days?)