Slashdot Mirror

I've been a member of Salon for quite a while and did what I could to support them. I would be sorry to see it go. I think it's funny that people think Salon is "left". I mean, if it is left, what is the Boston Phoenix or the Village Voice?

I also would be sorry, and more pertinently to Slashdot, because I think their design for semi-automated publishing was kind of neat, and it is one of the last examples of a house doing their own development work I know of. That is a dwindling group.

While I cannot address the questions of rent for their offices -- which if true, I agree seem excessive -- I think "the end of the dot-com bubble" means more than the crashing of way-out business models, excessive spending, and such. I mean, when MoTown was starting up, they were excessive in parties, liquor, etc

To me, these companies are failing as much because of deflation in the information technology industry as anything else. That deflation is caused:

• partly because of low interest rates in the economy
• partly because the hardware component of the industry is now commodity-based and people have an expectation that prices should drop, for those and telecommunications costs
• partly because programming labor is cheaper and more widely available
• partly because non-IT businesses are fiercely cutting costs, including moving to shrinkwrap solutions for their IT needs, even if they are not a good match
• partly because the Internet marketplace has long had expectations that things there should be free or available at modest charges.

The last effect is a subtle, I think. Since good news coverage and similar entertainment is now available on the Internet and cheaply, any premium or brick-and-mortar company has to deal with not so much with e-business competition but with the expectation that new can be had for much less. Why subscribe to the New York Times paper when most of what's good about it is available online for zip?

I think whatever happens to Salon is part of a trend, because what we earn for doing information technology is diminishing and will continue to diminish.

This is one of the best breakdowns I have ever seen and it is the one that I point all of my friends to when they ask (along with Salon's Courney Love Does The Math).

But I don't understand why everyone gets so bent about Hillary Rosen and focuses all their attention on her. She's just a prostitute. The industry will ALWAYS have a prostitute. It almost seems like the Slashdot et al crowd is almost in collusion with the RIAA in this blatant misdirection. Is she scum? Yeah. But who cares? So is Valenti but he's a salesman, not the guy driving the vehicle.

It isn't anything you said, I'm just ranting.

In a 2000 speech to the Digital Hollywood online entertainment conference. It shows how a million dollar advance and a million copies sold can equal zero dollars.

Pretty much all of my favourite albums from the last year were produced well by talented producers, and released on labels run by people who care about music. More importantly, I've seen all the bands multiple times in great intimate venues.

I don't know if any of these acts will ever be well-known by anyone outside of Vancouver/Edmonton and area, but so what? Why should music be national? Why is that even important to people? There are hundreds of amazingly talented people in every city who could work on music full-time if more than a couple of thousand people cared to listen to something produced for the love of it and the love of doing something new rather than some celebrity death-wish.

The whole notion of national celebrities is one of the strangest consequences of copyright law and if we lost it I'm convinced we'd be ther better for it. Having the state sponser monopolies by restricting speech, funnelling money into cartels and creating the celebrity-class is at best bizzarre, at worst it's seriously fucked.

See Courtney Love does the Math.

The most intellegent thing I've ever heard on this topic was in "Tom the Dancing Bug" cartoon.

> So you slashbots should come down from your high horse.

Yeah... it's an fallacy to think that someone has to commit a crime to actually be guilty and punished.

>And "profiling" is a much better way of stopping terrorists instead of stripping down some 80 year old grandma from Kansas City all in the name of political correctness.

Instead, they deny some 74 year old catholic nun from Wisonsin from flying, based on their participation in the pacifist movement. This is, of course, much better.

Be aware of those militant pacifist.

Or those pesky tree-huggers. They cannot be allowed to fly either. Surely, they just want to fly to do some terroristic act. For what other reason should they want to fly? It is against their believe.

So, building up a list of people, who are not allowed to fly, based on their political, social and cultural background is not dubious?

By the way, book stores are also required to tell the FBI about who has bought which books and diving-schools have to inform them about their students. But they are not allowed to make this public.

This is, of course, not the slightest bit disturbing.

Especially since they are either reading books, Muslims, politically active....

Well, let's turn in around, they are not democrats or republicans or policitally uninterested, and white.

I will avoid the obligatory cites:
1,2

"When you type "NameBase" into Google, Brandt's site comes up first, but Brandt is not satisfied with that. "My problem has been to get Google to go deep enough into my site," he says. In other words, Brandt wants Google to index the 100,000 names he has in his database, so that a Google search for "Donald Rumsfeld" will bring up NameBase's page for the secretary of defense. "

So, in other words, Brandt built a search engine... but really wants to just build a database and use Google's search engine to search it - he realizes that they have a better search engine than his, and wants to use it to search his entire site, and is pissed that they aren't doing his business for him.

Additionally, Brandt has a political agenda that he wants Google to enforce: (also from the article)

"In other words, Brandt recognizes that there has to be some order to Google's results, and that some sites might deserve to come up before others. He just disagrees with the way Google does it. In Brandt's ideal world, if you searched for "United Airlines," you would see untied.com -- a site critical of United -- before you see United's page. And if you searched for Rumsfeld, you'd see NameBase's dossier on him before the Defense Department's site on the "The Honorable Donald Rumsfeld." "

This guy is a kook and a troll.

-T

Meet Mr. Anti-Google The most interesting thing in there to me is that he is not happy about his PageRank score!

Now, this doesn't necessarily obviate his concerns, but Brandt is a veteran conspiracy-watcher whose obsessions include mind-control projects and secret cults amongst the elite -- and this tendency to indulge in, as Wm. Gibson would put it, "apophenia" is certainly likely to color his view of Google.

To my eye, his concerns display a kind of parochial paranoia: obviously, we're all aware of the uses and limitations of cookies, none of us want to see the cache (or the Wayback Machine) go away, and his comments about Google's "monopoly" and the "[y]oung, stupid script kiddies" who "think Google is 'way kool'" are just inexplicable.

Telling, I think, is his concern about Google having a former NSA developer on staff -- I've worked with a fairly large number of former spooks from the NSA, CIA and civilian contractors, and to suggest that having the NSA on your resume makes you some kind of Coder in Black is absurd. But, of course, YMMV.

In my biased opinion, this article has one major flaw, which is that it seems to totally ignore the role of law libraries - particularly academic law libraries and court libraries. I can only speak for the academic law library where I work. Although we mainly exist to serve our students, faculty and alumni, we never turn anyone from the public away who needs help with legal research. We are trained to help people find what they want or need without crossing over into the area of unauthorized practice of law. At the risk of blowing the profession's own horn too much, I say that the the assistance of a good law librarian - who is armed with a standard collection of printed materials and the resources available on the "free web", including the Legal Information Institute, West's FindLaw and LexisOne - will usually do a much better job for the pro se patron than free access to LexisNexis or Westlaw. The printed sources aren't all bad. They are very strong with the older materials, which Ms. Barr uses as an example, and they make it more difficult to full into the full-text infoglut trap - where the few pearls are hidden in a tonne of garbage.

Law libraries should do a better job of communicating all this to public libraries. I know that some of the professional associations, including the Minnesota Association of Law Libraries are already doing some work in this area.

None of this is to say that I don't have my issues with LexisNexis or Westlaw - or think that they're perfect, altruistic companies. But now there are more free electronic alternatives (or cheap ones, like VersusLaw) available for legal research. They don't have the all the fancy bells & whistles of Westlaw or Lexis, but they still offer the public access to primary legal materials that would have seemed unthinkable 15 years ago.

In my biased opinion, this article has one major flaw, which is that it seems to totally ignore the role of law libraries - particularly academic law libraries and court libraries. I can only speak for the academic law library where I work. Although we mainly exist to serve our students, faculty and alumni, we never turn anyone from the public away who needs help with legal research. We are trained to help people find what they want or need without crossing over into the area of unauthorized practice of law. At the risk of blowing the profession's own horn too much, I say that the the assistance of a good law librarian - who is armed with a standard collection of printed materials and the resources available on the "free web", including the Legal Information Institute, West's FindLaw and LexisOne - will usually do a much better job for the pro se patron than free access to LexisNexis or Westlaw. The printed sources aren't all bad. They are very strong with the older materials, which Ms. Barr uses as an example, and they make it more difficult to full into the full-text infoglut trap - where the few pearls are hidden in a tonne of garbage.

Law libraries should do a better job of communicating all this to public libraries. I know that some of the professional associations, including the Minnesota Association of Law Libraries are already doing some work in this area.

None of this is to say that I don't have my issues with LexisNexis or Westlaw - or think that they're perfect, altruistic companies. But now there are more free electronic alternatives (or cheap ones, like VersusLaw) available for legal research. They don't have the all the fancy bells & whistles of Westlaw or Lexis, but they still offer the public access to primary legal materials that would have seemed unthinkable 15 years ago.

Maybe you should ask this self-described nerdy girl which site she used while writing this "blog" (hint).

What it is is a time-honored Microsoft tactic to diminish consumers' opinion of competing products. There's a new browser war being fought, only this time, the battleground is the mobile market, where the biggest threat to IE arguably comes from Opera, and it's very much in Redmond's interest to make people think Opera's a crappy browser that doesn't display sites correctly.

As to the pettiness of Opera's response, I think it's a clever move. It's irreverent, it makes a pop-cultural reference, and it'll reveal Microsoftian assholishness to a bigger audience than the more reasonable explanation can.

Børk! Børk! Børk!

I was referring to this sort of thing

In Salon. I laughed because I can relate to dealing with people like that (though not necessarily while trying to get hired). And you gotta love the lingo.

You can't just squeeze the company and get more money from it, and make everything fine. The people at dot-coms, American Airlines, Enron, WorldCom, AOL, etc, are just going to have a rough time of it.

You're kidding, right? The CEO's of Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia, etc, etc, "just squeezed the company" to the tune of billions of dollars! These companies aren't unprofitable because the WORKERS were making too much money, or even because the economy is bad... it's because they were raped by their management. And this story has been repeated all across corporate America.

Sean

One side of the issue is that if you attempt to look at any sufficiently large and complex system it will overwhelm you with its complexity. The human mind can only deal with a certain amount of complexity at a time before overloading. That's the reason why object-oriented methodologies were invented, to attempt to chop up a large and complex problem into smaller and more manageable pieces, so you can deal with certain things as "black boxes" and move on to the bigger picture. Sort of like zooming in and out. A graphic artist would never think of working at a single zoom scale when editing a picture, she would zoom in for fine work and zoom out for an overall view. Treating things as black boxes is done so that you don't lose sight of the forest for the trees, not the other way around!

But of course, as my own experience in embedded systems development and electronics work has taught me as well, it does no good to simply leave things as black boxes. You also have to know how the black box works on the inside before you can go on to treat it as a black box. I had to learn the ins and outs of semiconductor and transistor physics before I learned how to use logic IC's, which have these components as their basic building blocks, so that I'd understand the limits and quirks of these devices. I think the big problem we have is that people are generally unfamiliar with how the many black boxes they use actually look like on the inside, so if their system winds up eventually tickling limitations or quirks (which, as the complexity of the system they're building grows becomes more and more likely), they have no idea what the hell is going on or what to do about it. In other words, too much zooming out, not enough zooming in, so you get work which has too many rough edges and not enough fine detail.

Salon had a highly insightful article some years back about this very topic as it pertains to software engineering: "The Dumbing Down of Programming", by Ellen Ullman, Part One and Part Two. She talks about the way too much knowledge is disappearing into code, and the problems that causes.

One side of the issue is that if you attempt to look at any sufficiently large and complex system it will overwhelm you with its complexity. The human mind can only deal with a certain amount of complexity at a time before overloading. That's the reason why object-oriented methodologies were invented, to attempt to chop up a large and complex problem into smaller and more manageable pieces, so you can deal with certain things as "black boxes" and move on to the bigger picture. Sort of like zooming in and out. A graphic artist would never think of working at a single zoom scale when editing a picture, she would zoom in for fine work and zoom out for an overall view. Treating things as black boxes is done so that you don't lose sight of the forest for the trees, not the other way around!

But of course, as my own experience in embedded systems development and electronics work has taught me as well, it does no good to simply leave things as black boxes. You also have to know how the black box works on the inside before you can go on to treat it as a black box. I had to learn the ins and outs of semiconductor and transistor physics before I learned how to use logic IC's, which have these components as their basic building blocks, so that I'd understand the limits and quirks of these devices. I think the big problem we have is that people are generally unfamiliar with how the many black boxes they use actually look like on the inside, so if their system winds up eventually tickling limitations or quirks (which, as the complexity of the system they're building grows becomes more and more likely), they have no idea what the hell is going on or what to do about it. In other words, too much zooming out, not enough zooming in, so you get work which has too many rough edges and not enough fine detail.

Salon had a highly insightful article some years back about this very topic as it pertains to software engineering: "The Dumbing Down of Programming", by Ellen Ullman, Part One and Part Two. She talks about the way too much knowledge is disappearing into code, and the problems that causes.

So don't get too offended when Spirited Away loses to Lilo & Sitch, and The Two Towers gets beaten by Chicago.

Yeah, i`ve read that comic strip too! ;)

After all, anything written by a group called "The Cyberknights" has GOT to the authoritative!

The "group" in question is a business. Perhaps it's a slightly flippant name for a business, but given that I've done business with GODGames, Two Men and Truck Moving, and a host of other businesses with silly names, I don't hold it against them too much. No, they're not the most polished looking company, but having worked for a number of small businesses it's very typical. Most of the local consulting companies here look for less professional.

His educated reference to Star Trek really helped me to understand the situation, and make an informed decision.

I trust that Microsoft's educated reference to the classic video game Pac-Man helped your decision making process just as well? How about labelling the GPL, a license that only affects you if you chose to let it, as viral? Labelling Linux as a cancer? Implying that the GPL is un-american?

Just because the document lacks the the meaningless business jargon of typical whitepapers doesn't invalidate it. It certainly doesn't justify your smear tactic of suggesting that the author is twelve and not worthy of consideration.

Well, either lawyers don't use the internet, or you belong on Penn & Teller's Bullshit!.

Sorry -- but you, sir, are in another EXTREME minority. As in, 9/282 extreme, or 3% extreme. And 2 of the 9 quotes seem to be from a feline-o-phile story... which sort of worries me. I really had no clue that such literature existed, until today. Another 2 of the 9 are from the same person, Ed Arditti. So, striking out the unusual literature, and not giving credit for dupes, I'm down to 6. Which makes it a 98% advantage for the non-points team.

If you'd like, I'll email Ed Arditti and see if he can shed some light on to his wildly unsupported claim.

Now, if only 3% of the connected world says you're right, you'll need to provide me with some much harder evidence. Like, perhaps, at least an actual known slashdot account that you're willing to back up that claim with (both that it's a misquote, and what the difference is, exactly. Preferably referring to the UK, which is the land we're talking about). Otherwise, I'm more likely to believe I've been probed by aliens. At least in that case I'd have a reason for my constipation today that isn't related to McDonald's.

From near the end of the article:

"It raises a lot of serious concerns and is troubling as a generic matter that they have gotten this far along and tell people that there is nothing in the works. What that suggests is that they're waiting for a propitious time to introduce it, which might well be when a war is begun. At that time there would be less opportunity for discussion and they'll have a much stronger hand in saying that they need these right away."

This has been the tactic of the Bush administration from the very beginning - control and timing of information to maximize spin and reduce adverse effects on the administration's goals. Yes, other administrations have done this, but this one has an incredible mastery of it. Or are we just not paying attention? The author of this article "gets it."

I've got a hundred dollar bill that says that, even though we've already seen the first drafts of what they propose, it won't be sent to lawmakers until the war starts... or ends. And there is going to be a war, Bush needs it to prop up his approval ratings. And he has to have it now, Next year will be too close to the election.

If it started next year and dragged on into the time of the elections, it could be a benefit for him as the people don't usually like to change administrations in the middle of a war. But if it went badly, there wouldn't be enough time to spin it positively before the election. But this year is perfect. If it goes well, he will be "the war-time president that kept us safe from those dirty terrorists." If it goes badly, the people will forget or at least the emotional intensity about it will fade by election time. (BTW, regards the 'dirty terrorists' issue, there was a poll conducted (not by salon, but by the Princeton Survey Research Associates) that said that 50% of the American public believed that one or more of the 9/11 hijackers was an Iraqi, 33% didn't answer and only 17% knew the truth that none were. - That's how well the spin and disinformation works.)

The chief architect of the administration's PR, spin and disinformation organization is Karl Rove, one of the members of Richard Nixon's dirty tricks squad and a long-time political strategist who has been a consultant on many campaigns over the years. There is a good article here that describes Rove's tactics.

The key points of this strategy are:

Use whatever excuse is available at the time to justify the administration's long-term ideological agenda. That's what we're talking about here.

Count on the American public's (and the media's) inability to remember anything from one year to the next. Ok, pop quiz. Who remembers that in the debates Bush said that the military should not be used for 'nation building'? Sort of like what we're doing in Afghanistan and about to do in Iraq?

Keep everything under wraps. J. H. Hatfield's book Fortunate Son - The Making of an American President (70,000+ copies of the uncomplimentary biography suggesting Bush's cocaine conviction were recalled by the publisher and shredded at the reqest of the Bush campaign. Hatfield himself turned up dead a few months later. I had a helluva time finding any information on that. The book is still available here but it's not on the newsstands or in bookstores.) Dick Cheney's energy task force - the court has ordered him to turn over the list of the attendees (not even the notes) and the administration is still fighting it. Not a document has been produced yet. Just the list of attendees eems sort of innocuous, doesn't it? Jose Padilla, the 'dirty bomber'? (See more below on this.)

Cut embarrassing players loose and pretend they're exceptions. Harvey Pitt resigning on the eve of the election. Trent Lott stepping down as Senate majority leader after failing to get the backing of the White House.

And as an example of the biggest threat to our hard-fought constitutional rights, does anyone remember the "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla? He had been in custody for some time before Ashcroft announced his alleged activities and his arrest. Ashcroft made the announcement on the day that FBI agent Coleen Rowley was scheduled to give a press conference to discuss her observation of failures in intelligence analysis that might have helped the FBI uncover the 9/11 hijacking plan. Without question, this was timed to steal the media attention from her press conference.

On the same day, the administration labeled Padilla an "enemy combatant" and had him moved from the civillian justice system (a New Jersey jail) to a military brig in North Carolina where he remains to this day with no contact from his attorney. His attorney has attempted to file a writ of habeus corpus on his behalf, but has been prevented from doing so because the writ must be signed by the defendent who she can't get in to see! (Sorry, it's realaudio but worth the listen) In effect, the administration has suspended habeus corpus, a 700 year legal tradition and one of the foundations (some say *the foundation*) of modern jurisprudence.

Many noble and honorable people have died to protect the freedoms that this administration is removing wholesale. The oft repeated Ben Franklin quote is right on the mark: The examples of Israel and Ireland have long proved that you can not "win a war on terrorism." And removing the very freedoms that the administration claims are the reason that the terrorists "hate us so much" results in a win for the terrorists. How about removing instead the real reasons that many in the Islamic world are opposed to the United States; forced exportation of our culture, religion and business interests to other countries through globalization and our interference in their affairs. The path we are on can only reduce our freedoms and turn more people of this Islamic world against us.

We need PATRIOT II like we need a damn hole in the head. I'm really concerned about the state of our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms in this country and I'm not sure who I should be more afraid of, George Bush, John Ashcroft or Karl Rove. I'm certainly more afraid of them than I am of terrorists.

Ok, I've got my Nomex undies on, flame away. But if you must, don't just label me a liberal, commie, pinko hippie, counter my logic or refute my facts. I'm not trying to be a troll, just covering my ass. :)

A complete listing of Salon articles on Moore, including the one I referred to above as well as another documenting a case of alleged plaigerism.

Obviously the RIAA member record companies will have to consent and will be recieving royalties for these CD's. They own the songs (and the artists' souls) afterall. If Clear Channel were to try to do this without a contract from the labels, they would certainly be sued. I wouldn't be surpised to see the record companies bail on this deal though. We all know how open minded the major labels are towards creating new products, especially products people actually want. I'm sure they'll find some reason to be afraid of this.

According to this page on their Web site, the Clear Channel Entertainment "Music Group currently owns, operates and/or exclusively books 135 live entertainment venues, including 41 amphitheaters in the U.S. and 30 venues in Europe"; and, "In 2001 the Music Group generated approximately 70 percent of concert ticket revenue in the U.S." When you think about how many venues a typical US tour will play, you realize just how dominant this makes Clear Channel's position.

Their dominance is further fortified by their position in the radio market: Clear Channel radio "daily reaches 54% of all people ages 18-49" according to this page, which means they control what I think can safely be assumed to be the primary means of promoting large concerts and tours to a huge share of the concert-going population.

In other words: if bands or labels don't agree to let Clear Channel put out these concert CDs, Clear Channel can simply decide to kill the tour by 1) not letting the bands play the venues unless they let Clear Channel put out the CDs and 2) not promote tours where the band has not given Clear Channel permission to put out these CDs.

Without the blessing of Clear Channel, bands and labels are simply shut off from large-scale airplay and concert tours -- and, therefore, from commercial success. See, for example, Eric Boehlert's articles at Salon.com.

Something tells me that you'd like Lucky Ducky!

Something tells me that you'd like Lucky Ducky!

Something tells me that you'd like Lucky Ducky!

Something tells me that you'd like Lucky Ducky!

If the NYT--the "paper of record"--was so inaccurate about the facts of this case, how can we trust any of its content?

Welcome to the real world. People have been questioning the NYT for years.

Lets see, who's word should we trust more, a highly respected reporter for a very reputable newspaper or a convicted felon who had to go to jail multiple times before he finally got a clue?

Was Kevin Mitnick a national menace? No way. Was this a good yarn? I think so. I mean, it was an interesting sort of morality play for the information age we're moving into. Was Kevin Mitnick an information-age terrorist? No. His motivation is still a mystery to me. But I'll tell you one thing: he was an adult. He'd been arrested five times before. He had gone to jail three times before. He was systematically stealing software from dozens if not more computers around the Internet. He was targeting cellular telephone companies and stealing source code that major U.S. companies had spent millions of dollars developing. His motivations are not clear. He was tampering with the telephone network. He was costing Internet service providers tens of thousands of dollars or more just watching him -- and they were helpless to stop him.

I don't think you have to make the leap to say he was some grave terrorist. This guy was a hardened computer criminal. He is a guy who's been given many chances to get his act together. A lot has been made of whether or not he was "cyberspace's most wanted." I made that call when I wrote my first article in July, 1994, based on the fact that the U.S. Marshal service, the FBI, the California Department of Motor Vehicles, several local police departments and several telecommunications companies were all looking for him and couldn't find him. I think that's a good story -- end of case.

I've been sort of pinned with this conspiracy to catch Kevin. I wrote the first story because I was so intrigued with his ability to avoid these people. That first story had a modern Bonnie-and-Clyde aspect to it that I thought was revealing. The fact that people went nuts over the story -- that's something that I didn't expect. I don't fully comprehend the way the media works. But I didn't advertise him as a menace to the world -- just as a very persistent criminal. The words that I used to describe him were "Con man" and "grifter." I think that comes close to approximating what he did.

From a Salon interview with John Markoff

Dave,

How did the fallout from Bill Maher's infamous 9/11 comment effect you?

"In response to guest Dinesh D'Souza's assertion that people who are willing to die in service to their cause, whatever else they may be, are not "cowards," Maher said: "We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly.".

Cheers!

Bill (a different one)

I personally like this article (in Spanish though). A fast excerpt: the writer's group sold barely over 10.000 copies of their (then) last album in 2001. Only 0.7% of the musicians/singers/etc. that released something that year sold more. Yet, his part of the profits amounted to a meager EUR3000 ($3200 aprox?) for a three years' worth work, or about EUR80 per month, from which he has yet to discount the rent for an rehearsal(?) location. At each concert, he bags from EUR90 to EUR360, depending on attendants sponsors). Doing the math, he would rather have 100.000 pirate fans at his concerts than 10.000 legit ones.

Maybe you did benefit the artists, but trot this argument out in court and you'll be laughed all the way to the jail cell. It is considered theft, because theft is defined by the courts and not you.

Let me make something very clear: What I'm doing when I download music is completely illegal, and I know this. It's piracy. What I argued in my post was that it's neither theft, nor wrong, but it is definitely illegal. Theft is substantially different from piracy, however, and in my opinion, should carry stiffer penalties. (It doesn't.)

Shareware was crippled. It expired after X time or it was missing features. It was a SAMPLE.

Not all shareware is crippled, yet shareware companies seem to be doing just fine.

As for research, expensive market research may not have happened yet, but here's an analysis of some publicly available numbers:

It could be argued that MP3s are the greatest marketing tool ever to come along for the music industry. If your music is not being downloaded, then you're in trouble. If you can't give it away, you certainly can't sell it. Daniel Bedingfield recently had a top 3 song on the radio, with "Gotta Get Thru This." However, his music was hardly available through any of the P2P networks. His record lasted on the Billboard Top 200 for less than a month, even though the single had been on radio playlists all over the country for several months. It's also been widely reported that the most downloaded album of all time was "The Eminem Show," by Eminem. It was downloaded so heavily that Interscope took the unusual step of releasing the album a week early due to the rampant online sharing of tracks from the album. Fast-forward to the end of 2002, and "The Eminem Show" is the best-selling album of the year. This seems to indicate the opposite of what the RIAA would have you believe. When people share MP3s, more music is sold, not less. (full article here) (Note that correlation does not imply causation, so this is weak support. Real research is still required.)

Go in front of a court and try to argue that point and you'll be shot down before you finish the thought.

I'm not saying these arguments will keep me out of prison if the RIAA decides that's where I should be; I'm saying that my actions are neither morally reprehensible, nor detrimental to those who would try to stop me. In fact, what I'm doing seems to be benefiting those who would try to stop me, so I wish they would just let me keep doing it so I can continue to fund the creation of new, good music (it's not quite an oxymoron yet) with my small amount of disposable income!

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/02/01/file_ trading_manifesto/print.html

A.V. is a troll and a karma whore, of course, but if anyone isn't familiar with just what Clear Channel is, Eric Boehlert's series on Salon is a good place to start.

Now mod this offtopic, and let's get on with it.

[clip] It further enabled (what I consider) abuse; and it enabled the ability...

I learned about this scam (bolier plate editorials) via Salon. Google had nothing to do with it (I don't use Google). I validated all the links via other search engines. The internet (as an 'it') may have been helpful in uncovering the slime involved, but google has no special claim to fame in why the story surfaced. That's like giving Goodyear credit for your being able to travel to Grandma's for Christmas, when the highway that connects the two of you is more likely the main reason. Too many people have google on the brain.

There is more than one way up or down a mountain.

There is a convincing piece by Damien Cave on Salon.com titled "File Sharing: Innocent Until Proven Guilty" which argues that there is no proven correlation between downloaded music and the decline in CD sales. He continues to argue in "File Sharing: Guilty As Charged?" that a good deal of the 'sky is falling' rhetoric created by the record companies and the RIAA is based on supposition and self-interest. In addition, the article "RIAA's Statistics Don't Add Up To Piracy" analyzes the RIAA's own statistics and argues that they do not support the RIAA's conclusion that downloaded music is the cause for the decline in CD sales. In this detailed analysis, George Ziemann argues that the record industry released 11,900 fewer titles in 2000 than it released in 1999, a 25% decrease, yet the total number of units shipped decreased only 10.3% and the dollar value of these units fell by only 4.1%. It seems that the RIAA is misinterpreting its own statistics.

Also, the record companies just settled a price fixing suit in which they admitted they were overcharging consumers. This point seems to be overlooked by the RIAA in its attempt to place all blame for the woes of the music business at the feet of mp3's. Is it possible that the decrease in CD sales is related to the conspiracy by the major record labels to inflate prices?

There is a convincing piece by Damien Cave on Salon.com titled "File Sharing: Innocent Until Proven Guilty" which argues that there is no proven correlation between downloaded music and the decline in CD sales. He continues to argue in "File Sharing: Guilty As Charged?" that a good deal of the 'sky is falling' rhetoric created by the record companies and the RIAA is based on supposition and self-interest. In addition, the article "RIAA's Statistics Don't Add Up To Piracy" analyzes the RIAA's own statistics and argues that they do not support the RIAA's conclusion that downloaded music is the cause for the decline in CD sales. In this detailed analysis, George Ziemann argues that the record industry released 11,900 fewer titles in 2000 than it released in 1999, a 25% decrease, yet the total number of units shipped decreased only 10.3% and the dollar value of these units fell by only 4.1%. It seems that the RIAA is misinterpreting its own statistics.

Also, the record companies just settled a price fixing suit in which they admitted they were overcharging consumers. This point seems to be overlooked by the RIAA in its attempt to place all blame for the woes of the music business at the feet of mp3's. Is it possible that the decrease in CD sales is related to the conspiracy by the major record labels to inflate prices?

.haeger

Gerry Sussman (one of the authors of the famous 'Wizard' book taught in beginning computer science classes) has been working on biology-inspired programming paradigms over at MIT. The correspondance between the structure of living systems and computing systems was pointed out by John von Neumann quite at the dawn of both fields, and these notions seem to be alive and well today. In this view, the genome is like the assembly code of a program which, when run, is capable of replicating itself, developing from a single cell, maintaining and healing itself. Wouldn't it be great if we could write computer programs that had these same characteristics? It's an inspiring conception of biological systems and an incredible vision for a future for programming.

Jarod is a bit of a galactic gas-bag, having stated publicly that 'nothing good at all will come from biotechnology', but that information technology is 'almost all good' (interview on NBC, as I remember), but in this interview, I think he's on the mark.

And Here's the article you read it in. Bet you didn't realize you were admitting you read Salon :) Of course, so am I, but only for the articles.

Salon had a great article about the way that names were created (back in 99). The company came up with a name JamCracker that no-one wanted:

It seems that when Altman and Manning presented the name Jamcracker to a client recently, the reception was not everything they had hoped for. "I put the name up in front of their creative people," Manning says. "There were a couple of women sitting in. One of them got up and said, 'Oh, that's disgusting.' Another said, 'This is really sick.' I said, 'Excuse me, what are you talking about?' They said, 'We can't explain it, but that name is just creeping us out. We don't know what it is, but could you take it off the wall, please?'" Manning remains mystified by the incident. "There's apparently some strange, uncomfortable meaning attached to it in the minds of some women," he says. "God knows what that could be."

I was somewhat amused in 2000 when a company started up using that name!

The Boston Globe gave it a "D".

Here's Salon's review: Looks like a "D" to me.

The Boston Globe gave it a "D".

Here's Salon's review: Looks like a "D" to me.

These have been mentioned on Slashdot before, but worth mentioning again here:

Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a fun read. Besides, the "true" first edition seems to be the online one available for free download. The print edition is still unavailable on amazon.

You might check out salon for his stories Ownz0red and Liberation spectrum. Both are somewhat didactic, but they contain messages that most of this crowd will appreciate.

These have been mentioned on Slashdot before, but worth mentioning again here:

Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a fun read. Besides, the "true" first edition seems to be the online one available for free download. The print edition is still unavailable on amazon.

You might check out salon for his stories Ownz0red and Liberation spectrum. Both are somewhat didactic, but they contain messages that most of this crowd will appreciate.

Bruce Sterling, Tomorrow Now.

Is it fiction? Is it nonfiction? Is it all SWAG? You decide!

Also, I met Sterling last week and he listed Cory Doctorow as one of the two English SciFi writers he was reading right now. I haven't had the opportunity to read anything from him except 0wnz0red yet, but he certainly looks promising.