Slashdot Mirror

Many manufacturers have reduced their warranties to 1 year but the difference between 3 year and 1 year warranty is only 1 dollar or so according to this story from the inquirer.
Therefore going in for a longer warranty makes more sense now.

thats a pretty impressive open source project. although in the long run i think instead of using COM you would be better off using .NET. At least you are not currently using closed standards for TV application delivery like Europe has mandated - which my Coleagues and i have campaigned hard to prevent.

I rank those guys somewhere between The Register and the Weekly World News on the journalistic integrity scale.

This story was in the Inquirer, not the Enquirer.

But is there a difference?

Here is how the Inquirer reported the story on friday: April fools day comes early?

Do try to keep up, Slashdot.

All they have to do is follow through on this. That should increase available bandwidth.

1. Somebody overhears something about chips sampling and makes the utterly ridiculous assumption that PS3 will launch this year.
   
   
2. Gutter media (like The Inquirer) are all over the story.
   
   
3. Gamer sites don't want to be left behind ("Hey, it may be bullshit, but our readers better read bullshit on our pages than on The Inquirer") and quote each other as authorities.
   
   
4. Everyone with a little insight in the console business and general common sense dismisses the story as crap. General consensus is reached.
   
   
5. Mainstream media picks up the story a week after it's all calmed down, e.g. CNN posts an article of three screenfulls of text which says absolutely nothing.
   
   
6. Slashdot editors decide that any mention of the word "Playstation" on CNN is techno-culture, cyberpunkish, and, most of all, worth posting as news.
   
   
7. Slashdot readers ("commenters") wage a bloody flamefest over "my console is 1337er than yours", mentioning "attention to gameplay", "Microsoft world domination" and "games in ye good olden days" many times without giving a clock cycle to think about what they actually mean. But, hey, that's okay, that's Slashdot!

1. Somebody overhears something about chips sampling and makes the utterly ridiculous assumption that PS3 will launch this year.
   
   
2. Gutter media (like The Inquirer) are all over the story.
   
   
3. Gamer sites don't want to be left behind ("Hey, it may be bullshit, but our readers better read bullshit on our pages than on The Inquirer") and quote each other as authorities.
   
   
4. Everyone with a little insight in the console business and general common sense dismisses the story as crap. General consensus is reached.
   
   
5. Mainstream media picks up the story a week after it's all calmed down, e.g. CNN posts an article of three screenfulls of text which says absolutely nothing.
   
   
6. Slashdot editors decide that any mention of the word "Playstation" on CNN is techno-culture, cyberpunkish, and, most of all, worth posting as news.
   
   
7. Slashdot readers ("commenters") wage a bloody flamefest over "my console is 1337er than yours", mentioning "attention to gameplay", "Microsoft world domination" and "games in ye good olden days" many times without giving a clock cycle to think about what they actually mean. But, hey, that's okay, that's Slashdot!

Going by a mailing list I'm on it seems that some of the early buyers actually had their credit cards charged for this. Now under UK law these make a legally binding contract as payment has been made. Its going to be interesting to see how Amazon reacts to this one.

There was a similar case a few years back with Kodak where the mispriced a camera and finally ended up honouring the deal. Details on the inquirer.

The story was originally on the inquirer. The original came out and amazon noticed and pulled the whole site down for couple of hours, fixed the problem and put it back online. Only then does the slashdot story come online. I was wondering when the story being shown to subscribers first will come into problems.

If you are approved by the US government you are safe (except for the occasional snafu). If you are an independent journalist reporting what really is going on you will likely die

The new story about this should be AMD's numbering stratergy

Unfortunately, the Opteron boards in the pictures on amdboard all have one thing in common; the lack of an AGP interface. If this this story is correct, that's not an inherent limitation of the 8200 chipset. The Gigabyte board for instance is supposed to come with an AGP8x slot.

While I realise that AGP is not a requirement for AMD's envisioned Opteron target market, I can't imagine I'm the only one who is toying with the idea of getting an Opteron setup as a personal workstation, what with the earlier availability as well as the larger cache (and the resulting higher performance compared to the consumer CPU, presumably).

Anybody have any clues if there will be Opteron boards with AGP at launch?

Good point. By the time Doom 3 makes it to retailers, everything will have changed in graphics and central processors. ATi and nVidia should have plenty of great new offerings available in video cards, plus this generation's products will be relatively cheap. S3's DeltaChrome also looks promising, though S3's historically been inept at writing drivers. Perhaps we'll even see 64-bit AMD CPUs by that time.

yeah, [www.theinquirer.net] has had this news for at least several days now (1 web day =? 1 normal year)

Motherboards, Blades and even a peek at Win64 at CeBit

Here is a similar story on CNet.

And, for more on the "cell" technology, check out this Red Herring article from last summer, and this Inquirier.net article that includes a picture from the USPT office.

Given all that, I'd still be surprised if this was in US stores in time for XMas. I just don't think they'll have enough time to hype it sufficiently. On the other hand, if the tech is really almost done, do they want to wait until XMas 2004? Hrm....

There are certainly lots of Americans loitering in hotel lobbies !

I'd say that while there are more stupid rich Americans than Brits, the percentages are likely to be similar.

colleague of mine just informed me that the European Commission (governmental body of the EU) has prohibited sale of ink cartridges that cannot be recycled because of a nasty chip inside, that makes your cartidge reject by your printer after refill.

Reason for this is that printer manufacturers were trying to shield of the market for refill or cartridges and refilled cartridges by their monopoly, which is not allowed under European law.

Here is a link on the investigation, I am not able to locate any news on the final decision on the net. Super Mario strikes again or at least will strike again.

Read about it here. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7920

"An Nvidia technical marketing manager confirmed to us that Geforce FX has 4 Pipelines and 2 Texture Memory Units that can results with 8 textures per clock but only in multitexturing.
However, Nvidia did say that there were some cases where its chip can turn out 8 pixels per clock. Here is a quote:
"GeForce FX 5800 and 5800 Ultra run at 8 pixels per clock for all of the following: a) z-rendering b) stencil operations c) texture operations d) shader operations"
and
"Only color+Z rendering is done at 4 pixels per clock"

We talked with many developers and they said me that all games these days use Color + Z rendering. So all this Nvidia talk about the possibility of rendering 8 pixels in special cases becomes irrelevant.
The bottom line is that when it comes to Color + Z rendering, the GeForce FX is only half as powerful as the older Radeon 9700."

Actually, the Alpha EV7 may be even faster, but HP is suppressing benchmarks.
See http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7034 for more info.

I find this real hard to understand from a strategic viewpoint. (Maybe they are just late and do not want to hold up 2003). If indeed they have been strongarm'ed (bad joke) or something by Intel. It seems to me they are forcing a Linux / Opteron attack precisely where they want to go themselves. The middle tier server market.

With no immediate support from Windows what other choice is there for AMD than to embrace the only credible OS for their chip, Linux. They want to position Opteron against Xeon but the volume is not there initially so what else can they do than make special deals for Linux based servers. Now, this will hurt Dell as a Intel only supplier. Dell can not afford to loose momentum so either they have to get huge discounts from Intel, or embrace AMD. Either way it's bad long term for both Intel and Microsoft.

Once the middle tier market is gone to linux, they can kiss .Net goodbye. Just look at the Webserver market. No "innovations" from MS, since forever. Why?, because of Apache. They can't find traction for an embrace and extend strategy with 26% share. Same for .Net once the middle tier market is gone.

Not supporting AMD's x86-64 is like trying to corner an amimal thinking it wil not strike back. Strange.

Look at this story today about Sun using Mobile Opterons in their new Blade offering.

Interesting that Windows 2003 is going to Release to Manufacture (RTM) with support for the Itanium but not for AMD's x86-64

The supposed 64-bit extensions for the Intel x86 chips that has been floating around at Intel is called Yamhill (which is named after a county, city, river and Indian tribe in Oregon).

Yamhill was killed back in September. It's highly unlikely that Intel is still actively working on it, what with the need for disclosure to investors and whatnot.

I doubt Intel trashed the work done on the project to date, but it's not like it could be integrated into a CPU core and produced in a short period of time. Lead out time on silicon can be huge, especially for newly developed stuff. Half a year of processing on a single wafer is not unheard of during intial development and fabbing. While Intel is renown for it's top notch fabs and processes, you still have to retrofit an entire new section of core onto an existing design and then start testing production - a 90 day leadtime for alpha silicon would be insanely optimistic.

Intel spent a way too much resources for Itanium and it doesn't want to admit that it was a mistake.

Now Intel and HP are downplaying Alphas superior speed.

""If HP still believed the Alpha chip was worth the candle, rather than being cosy with its friends at the Intel Corporation, and marketed it properly, it might render all other server platforms into carbonised bread, otherwise known as toast".

But that will never happen. My sources claim that HP realises the EV7 is a fantastic chip and wants to stop potential buyers of the HP Itanium servers from buying EV7 instead.

And, we understand, the HP suits have now laid down a diktat saying that not one Alpha benchmark will be released until the Itanium platform(s) is/are faster"

It is precisely MS that is causing delay, therefore the server version of x64 is being launced in April with SUN / IBM / NewiSys as initial launch partners.

To the court case is at the Inququirer

There is the old Ezra and the new Nehemiah. The latter uses full speed FP (Ezra runs a half the processor speed = reason for being so slow on most benchmarks)

If it is upgradable this might be a pretty good deal after all. The CPU sells for $35+ or so.

More infor on Via C3 chip here

Not that good of deal right now. Story

I agree - this is news if a major phone vendor is abandoning Symbian. Especially if they are one of the Symbian founders and own 20% of Symbian!

ITANIC SINKS YOU!

IN SOVIET RUSSIA
itanic
sinks
YOU!

I've been staying on top of this right over the weekend (and had a /. story about it rejected 36 hours ago, grrrrr), so for those new to it, some links:


Massive thread on nthellworld.com, a offical ntl gripe site.

Complaint site

Basically, ntl are somewhat losing their nerve. I've exchanged emails with the MD of their home products range who claims to have only found out about this key strategic business decision on Saturday morning; he's either lying or incompetent, I suggest. The biggest gripe amongst the sane posters (barring all the "I pay for 24/7 and I'm going to damn well get it" breast-beating") is that the 128bps, 600kbps and 1024kps services all have the same download limit, making you wonder why you pay for the higher speed service.

It should also be pointed out that, unlike many other ISP's schemes, NTL offer no FTP mirror service with "free" bandwidth and recently started dropping alt.binaries groups from their newsspool, which is in any event so slow as to be unusable. So for big alt.binaries downloads or Linux ISOs, for example, customers are forced to external sites, pushing up ntl's bandwidth.

The biggest fear is that this is the thin end of the wedge. In the last two weeks, ntl have dropped a few warez newsgroups and introduced a fairly generous cap that won't inconvenience too many people. That's all well and good, but many think it won't stop there; once you get the caps in place and the groups erased, you can squeeze them down and down. ntl is desperately short of cash, newly emerged from Chapter 11 protection, and this would appear to be a beancounter-led efficiency drive that is turning into a PR nightmare.

I was part of a similar revolt over a no-servers line in the AUP a few years back (more info) and ntl backed down and clarified their position with a set of clear-cut and sensible rules. Let's hope that happens again.

Lack of an "Ultra" type solution from nVidia would leave ATI's Radeon9700 uncontested as the defacto performance part

The Radeon 9900 is expected out next month, with the new R350 core.

I am glad I don't have Nvidia stock right about now.

This is the same site that posted the fake id memo. Is their record besides that one mostly spotless? It seems no one here is doubting whether or not this is real.

Well... The Inquirer had a blurb about this about a week ago, before anyone heard about any "memo".

Well... The Inquirer had a blurb about this about a week ago, before anyone heard about any "memo".

I first saw this story on the inquirer - See:

The article and

my letter in response

I first saw this story on the inquirer - See:

The article and

my letter in response

I think it's a little weird that people are calling this an "article". It's supposedly an internal memo posted on the same site that hosted the fake id memo about them punishing ATI for leaking the Doom 3 alpha.

1. 
   Pentium Floating-point division bug (it's close enough, isn't it?)
   Invalid Operand Instruction crashes original Pentiums Pentium crash codes
   Pentium Pro/II still having problems with floats Unable to convert to int
   Pentium III can't even start up You went faster with an 8088
   SSE is great for when you want your PIII to crash Pretty blue screens abound.
   PIII Xeon, quality you can count on, except at high CPU usage Watch the task manager, Phil.
   Yay, PIII MTH crashes! Does MTH stand for Meth?
   Total Recall 2: PIII@1.13GHz Fastest crashes ever.
   Total Recall 3: PIII Xeons@800/900Mhz More Xeon quality in a box.
   Total Recall 4: CC820 How many defects? Can't recall...
   Pentium 4 overwriting data Hope it wasn't something important.
   Pentium 4 chipset bug Fast video performance? Naaa.
   P4 Oracle/Sun problems More workarounds than work
   Itanium shipments halted That's an expensive oops.
   

They are busy with their demands that Verizon
provide the name of a user who may have downloaded some music which may be
copyright and they are busy with their allegations about KaZaA music service,
a company which has the good sense to challenge the operation of the RIAA.

In the same manner it used in the Napster trial,
the RIAA is making wild assertions that gullible media, public and even legal
authorities appear to be accepting as fact. So far at least, it has managed
to give the impression that everyone apart from its members are to blame
for a slump in music sales. It can't be them - it must be those evil people
using the Internet.

No doubt the RIAA was emboldened by the judgment
against Napster and this gives it the feeling it can flex its muscles at
the world at large.

There is little doubt that Napster was guilty
of copyright infringement but only directly in so far as they themselves
copied music; that Napster had knowledge that users were infringing copyright
but only in so far as they could ascertain that copyright applied to certain
tracks; that they were guilty of contributory copyright infringement but
only in so far as they encouraged users to infringe copyright, and that they
were guilty of vicarious copyright only in so far as their income was dependent
on the use of copyrighted material.

That they themselves copied music from CD into
digital form is not clear. That they knew users were making illegal copies
is true, but the means of policing such action was beyond them if they had
no list of copyrighted works or any other means of checking. That they encouraged
others to infringe copyright is also probably true, but again the exact extent
of this and its influence on users is impossible to gauge. That its income
was dependent on copyright infringement is an accepted fact but again the
exact extent of this is impossible to determine.

For the record, Napster did not store music
on its own servers - it simply held the databases of music tracks that could
be accessed from users' own systems. The software they offered for peer-to-peer
copying between systems was also standard, although some minor enhancements
were made to improve the copying of large MP3 files. Providing something
as a legitimate use means it cannot be banned on the basis of possible
illegal use.

Findlaw.com has an archive of documents related to the trial and they
make very interesting reading. Time and time again, there are assertions
that Napster caused a slump in record sales but none of the many witnesses
- and there were many because the RIAA has deep pockets - presented any more
than circumstantial evidence.

How bad were the lies and distortions? The
response by Peter S Fader of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
provides an interesting rebuff to many of the witnesses. (You can find it
here.)

For example, one music storeowner near Syracuse
University in New York attributed a steep decline in music sales to the use
of Napster. He forgot to mention that in the time period to which he referred,
he had changed his emphasis from CDs to vinyl records and had moved to a
new store which was outside the main local shopping area. He later reluctantly
agreed that perhaps these were significant factors in his drop in income
and that perhaps he was making an assumption about Napster.

In a survey commissioned by the RIAA, the results
to open-ended questions (i.e. those with no specific choices) were interpreted
with a strong bias towards that association. This survey also concentrated
on college and university students then attempted to generalise the results
and paint a grim picture. More thorough surveys by other researchers indicated
that these "financially challenged" students were not typical Napster users
because more than 50% of users were over 30. Scattered through the various
submissions are all kinds of assertions that Napster was taking large numbers
of customers away from legitimate enterprises. Not one of these submissions
produced any incontrovertible evidence that showed a direct connection between
the use of Napster and a decline in music sales.

Several musicians who had been either ignored
or badly treated by record companies saw Napster as highly beneficial. Some
submissions are included in the Findlaw archive but other such as Janis Ian,
with 25-years in the recording business, chose to make their own public statements.
Janis's two postings can be found here.
She notes that Napster created a lot of interest in her work, far more than
before Napster arrived on the scene.

Other artists also commented on this phenomenon,
a point that dovetails nicely with numerous surveys - including some from
the RIAA itself - that showed consumers used Napster for sampling different
music. A shock horror tale in one pro-RIAA trial submission was that only
25% of the surveyed users went out and bought the CDs for at least 1 in 4
of the tracks they downloaded. Oddly enough, that corresponds well to the
idea of sampling. What a pity the same survey did not ask about deletions
of downloaded music too, because a large number of deletions within a few
days of downloading would further confirm this sampling.

Various surveys also supported these claims.
A survey by Jupiter Communications in July 2000 concluded that Napster users
were 45% more likely to have spent more buying music than non-users. This
survey was of 2200 online music fans and it found that the only people who
were not likely to increase their music purchases were 18 to 24 year old
"cash-strapped, computer-savvy users".

Jupiter Communications was certainly not alone
in these findings. The consensus was that Napster let people listen to music
that they would not otherwise made the effort to consider. As a result, musical
tastes spread. Another report mentioned that it made it easy to rediscover
artists or to find additional material by them. Both cases meant an increase
in sales of CDs and of vinyl records. There were several comments - of course
from people outside the RIAA - that Napster looked far more likely to increase
music sales than diminish them.

Another reason that students used Napster was
that it let them access one or two good tracks on an otherwise forgettable
CD. I am sure that we all have CDs that fall into that category. The attitude
of the RIAA seems to be that consumers must buy the rubbish in order to get
the few small jewels.

The fact that music sales were declining just
as the use of Napster was increasing presented the RIAA with the perfect
scapegoat, so absolving the music industry of blame and saving it the effort
to think there might be other reasons behind the slump.

After Napster died, the RIAA spouted the same
assertions about online music, whether or not such opinions were false, ill-founded
or unrepresentative.

Here's a typical pronouncement published by DC.Internet during February 2002. "The
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is blaming online piracy
and CD burning as the major culprits for a 10.3 percent slide in 2001 music
sales. According to RIAA data, total U.S. shipments dropped from 1.08 billion
units shipped in 2000 to 968.58 million in 2001. ... Coinciding with the increase
in copying music, the study found that ownership of CD burners has nearly
tripled since 1999: in 2001, two in five music consumers owned a CD burner
compared to 14 percent who owned one in 1999."

At the same time the RIAA declared the rise
in sales of blank CDs was further proof of music piracy, and that blank CD
sales should be curtailed.

Let's dispose of this whole nonsense about CD
burners and blank CD sales quickly and then move back to the more important
issues.

Computer security is not something that the
RIAA is very familiar with, judging by the number of times its own Web site
has been hacked.

Blank CDs are used to back-up computer data.
When one blank CD costs about the same price as one diskette but stores
about 460 times the amount of data, is faster to record and takes far less
space than the equivalent thousands of diskettes, it would be stupid not
to use CDs for backups. The RIAA was quite adamant that the 10% drop in
CD sales in the USA in 2001 as compared to sales in 2000 was purely due to
music piracy but this assertion has to be very seriously questioned.

Firstly, if the RIAA is correct, it would follow
that the general interest in music was unchanged and that attendances at
concerts would be about the same as previous years. They weren't. According
to MTV's reports on the web, concert attendances dropped off by about 15%
in 2001 and revenues were down. The average ticket price rose by about 7%
during the year but as usual it is difficult to say if this deterred ticket
buyers or generated the best possible revenue in a bad situation.

An article in the Miami Herald of March 2002 provides a more balanced
commentary about the slump in music sales than the RIAA's rants. It attributes
a lot of problems in the industry to the fact that the record companies were
under attack from many directions - the government was threatening investigations
into payola, the companies were suffering the excesses of the technological
boom and bust, costs were rising and recording artists were in revolt about
the terms and conditions of their contracts with the record companies.

The terms and conditions are normally that artists
are contracted to produce a certain number of CDs in a certain time - but
it is the companies which dictate what music is acceptable to be marketed
and the manner in which a CD will or won't be marketed. For all this, the
artists receive 10 to 20 percent of the profits of the sale, but only after
the record companies charge them for promotional and marketing costs. Janis
Ian has in fact described the situation as being like indentured slavery,
and it is therefore no wonder that some artists were very pleased with using
Napster to get their music more widely known.

According to the same Miami Herald report,
sales of Latin music were up by 9% in 2001 but "In Latin America itself,
riddled with economic hardship and rampant piracy, mid-2001 sales fell about
20 percent." At least someone made the connection between personal wealth
and piracy.

For a further commentary about issues within
the music industry that were contributing to its slump, try this article
which also provides a far better analysis of the situation that the RIAA's
allegations. This gives an indication of the tone of the piece: "Given the
slight dip in CD sales despite so many reasons for there to be a much larger
drop, it seems that the effect of downloading, burning, and sharing is one
of the few bright lights helping the music industry with their most loyal
customers. "

One obvious factor that seems to have been ignored
by the RIAA is the nature of the music being released by the record companies.
Let me throw some names at you ... Sex Pistols, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd,
Rod Stewart, Moody Blues, Brian Ferry, Genesis, Elton John and Cliff Richard.
If you are old enough to remember them you will probably like some of them
but dislike others. That is not the point; the point is that they co-existed
on the music charts in the late 1970s and this kind of variation is a far
cry from the kind of music that has been dominating the charts.

The current number of "revivals" or modern versions
of old songs suggests that the music from the 60s, 70s and 80s had something
that is seriously lacking in modern music. Perhaps the record companies
should spend time figuring out just why this is so.

The RIAA's claims that piracy has caused a worldwide
slump in music sales are questionable. By virtue of its population size,
the figures for the USA distort the total picture. The claims also ignore
the fact that US music sells across the world - so if US music is unappealing,
sales will be down everywhere.

To refute the RIAA's claims, CD sales in the
UK actually increased by 5% in 2001 and in France by a similar amount. (The
BBC News report here has the usual comment about piracy but mentions
this very important point only as a final comment.) I would not be at all
surprised if the influence of US music on the UK and French was somewhat
less than for other countries - or that the locally produced music in 2001
was rather more appealing than US music.

To label all US music as unappealing is quite
unfair. Latin and Country music sales have been quite good - probably because
they offered variety, positive energy and far broader appeal than mainstream
pop.

The possible causes of a decline in music sales
go further than these reasons.

Potential music consumers today have far more
choice in their form of entertainment than just listening to music. They
also have other things on which to spend their money and in many cases, they
have less money to spend than they did a few years ago.

Computer games continue to improve and they
are a big leisure activity. Games cost money that might otherwise be spent
on music. Further, games have audio and there is little point playing a
CD if the game's audio will drown out the music.

DVD sales continue to be good and the availability
of "home cinema" systems with DVD player and high quality audio has made
this a popular pastime. Entertainment has become more visual, at least for
those with time to sit and enjoy it. Music videos themselves have increased
the emphasis on the visual aspect of music.

In the USA the price of movie tickets compared
to CDs shows a dramatic difference, with movie tickets reportedly less than
half the price of a CD. Recent reports also say that movie attendance figures
are very high.

Finally, mobile telephone use is on the increase
especially among teenagers who might otherwise buy music CDs. Music might
be aimed at this demographic but most of them are still reliant on pocket-money
and probably have to pay their own mobile phone charges. Little wonder then
that they cannot also afford CDs when some of them rack up bills equivalent
to the GDP of a small country.

The RIAA is under threat from a number of directions
and it is fighting, on behalf of its members, for continued monopolistic
existence. They are under attack from increasing diversions in entertainment
and for the would-be music buyers' money. And they are also under attack
from a new medium that threatens to drastically change the way that music
is distributed and to reduce their control.

They are also seriously concerned about copyright
law and fear that as copyrights expire they will lose significant profits
and, even more importantly, their control over music distribution.

Since the RIAA started raising a fuss with Napster,
the US copyright laws have been changed and the period for which copyright
applies has been extended. Depending on your source you will find that this
is either the eleventh or fifteenth extension of copyright period in about
forty years. One report also indicated that many of these extensions have
occurred as various Walt Disney characters were nearing the end of their
copyright. (For more details see here).

Those with an interest in extending copyright
are more organised and have much deeper pockets than those opposed to change,
and so can finance a greater amount of pro-extension lobbying than those
who are opposed.

In 1998, an extension to the copyright laws meant
that period would last 70 years after the death of the creator, while works
owned by corporations were extended to 95 years. The RIAA is pleased with
this decision because we would otherwise been nearing the time when certain
music from about the early 1950s - the early days of rock and roll - would
have moved to the public domain. Anyone would have been free to publish
it and equally free to take the profits.

This 1998 extension to copyright period was
challenged but in mid-January of this year (2003) the court upheld the earlier
ruling and the RIAA and its cohorts were able to relax in the comfort that
their various treasure chests would not be released to the public. Don't
forget though, when the RIAA was fighting Napster, this outcome was far from
certain.

Cynics among us look at the notions behind the
copyright law and shake our collective heads. The US law was first introduced
in 1790 for a 14-year period with the aim of encouraging creativity and ensure
that the artists or thinkers could enjoy the profits of that creativity.
Extension of the copyright period is only in the interest of groups like
the RIAA because it means they can rely on older material and can minimise
any efforts to find new talent.

The battle for copyright is not yet over because
European authorities do not kowtow to American interests quite so easily.
EU copyright protection lasts only 50 years, as opposed to 95 in the US,
and so music recordings from the 1950s are becoming public domain in Europe.
The 1950s were a boom in popular music with rock and roll exploding and a
big jump in the number of records being released. Elvis Presley's first
record appeared in 1956 and Chuck Berry's first just two years later.

US music distribution companies have indicated
that they will start to fight CD imports, declaring that the import of European
CDs would be an act of piracy and that customs agents have the authority
to seize these imports.

Make no mistake, the RIAA is under attack from
many different directions, some legislative, some social, some from their
artist "slaves" and others from technology. Loss of control of the music
business would mean a dramatic loss of profit for these companies and it
is for those reasons they are currently embarking on a scare campaign about
music piracy around the world.

Again, European authorities are not impressed
by this blathering. According to a recent BBC report here, the European Commission has only outlawed commercial
(i.e. for profit) piracy but has decided not to criminalise people who download
music from the Internet for their own use. Needless to say the RIAA, and
its international counterpart the IFPI, are up to their normal tactics and
alleging - on no proven basis - that this will cause losses of 4.5 billion
euros annually.

In the bigger picture, these organisations are
out to police everything on the web that just might be somehow related to
the copyrighted works that they jealously guard.

In July 2002 a bill was introduced to the US
House of Representatives to permit the owners of material under copyright
to hack into any computer that accesses or uses a peer-to-peer file transfer
service to see if it was holding any illegal copies of the material. It
was described as vigilante justice in the 21st century. I think I know how
commercial enterprises such as banks would view such intrusions!

It appears that they need no "due cause" which
is what even the various law enforcement agencies require for any similar
search activity.

Using similar wild claims about piracy destroying
their business, the RIAA and IFPI are embarking on what amounts to a marketing
campaign to protect their backsides. Unfortunately the assertions are getting
lots of press attention, and there is a danger of the old problem that if
a lie is repeated often enough it gets accepted as truth.

In their latest moves the RIAA and other are
trying to persuade legal authorities to hold ISPs responsible for any illegal
material that is stored on their servers. (For example, see this report). I am
not certain if the ISPs will be required to call out the rottweilers (i.e.
the RIAA) or to decide if a music file is public domain, copyright but authorised
or copyright and illegal, and then act as judge and jury to decide the form
of punishment.

As I have argued earlier, the ISPs should not
be held responsible because it is not their problem if a user wishes to risk
prosecution for whatever crime. I am waiting for the day when ISP operations
can be fully automated and there is no need for any middle-person who currently
provides a ready and easy target for legal authorities and those who pretend
they are legal authorities.

Already the RIAA has managed to convince a
US court into demanding that Verizon hand out the personal details of a user
who is supposed to have copied music files. I know of no other legal situation
where a middle party has been obliged to provide these details to someone
who believes that they may have been a victim of some crime.

Fortunately Verizon is already objecting to
this demand

This Verizon case was discussed in an Australian
article, which went on to blame music piracy for a drop
in CD sales (yet again) and make the typical kind of claim that we have already
seen from the neo-Luddites. "The finger of blame is pointed at the internet,
as industry officials cite a corresponding increase in broadband adoption
as proof that increasing numbers of people are stealing music and movies."

The truly sad thing is that the RIAA is not
acting in the interests of consumers or even their musical artists. It is
only protecting its members, but a lot of influential people are swallowing
the story hook, line and sinker.

They are busy with their demands that Verizon
provide the name of a user who may have downloaded some music which may be
copyright and they are busy with their allegations about KaZaA music service,
a company which has the good sense to challenge the operation of the RIAA.

In the same manner it used in the Napster trial,
the RIAA is making wild assertions that gullible media, public and even legal
authorities appear to be accepting as fact. So far at least, it has managed
to give the impression that everyone apart from its members are to blame
for a slump in music sales. It can't be them - it must be those evil people
using the Internet.

No doubt the RIAA was emboldened by the judgment
against Napster and this gives it the feeling it can flex its muscles at
the world at large.

There is little doubt that Napster was guilty
of copyright infringement but only directly in so far as they themselves
copied music; that Napster had knowledge that users were infringing copyright
but only in so far as they could ascertain that copyright applied to certain
tracks; that they were guilty of contributory copyright infringement but
only in so far as they encouraged users to infringe copyright, and that they
were guilty of vicarious copyright only in so far as their income was dependent
on the use of copyrighted material.

That they themselves copied music from CD into
digital form is not clear. That they knew users were making illegal copies
is true, but the means of policing such action was beyond them if they had
no list of copyrighted works or any other means of checking. That they encouraged
others to infringe copyright is also probably true, but again the exact extent
of this and its influence on users is impossible to gauge. That its income
was dependent on copyright infringement is an accepted fact but again the
exact extent of this is impossible to determine.

For the record, Napster did not store music
on its own servers - it simply held the databases of music tracks that could
be accessed from users' own systems. The software they offered for peer-to-peer
copying between systems was also standard, although some minor enhancements
were made to improve the copying of large MP3 files. Providing something
as a legitimate use means it cannot be banned on the basis of possible
illegal use.

Findlaw.com has an archive of documents related to the trial and they
make very interesting reading. Time and time again, there are assertions
that Napster caused a slump in record sales but none of the many witnesses
- and there were many because the RIAA has deep pockets - presented any more
than circumstantial evidence.

How bad were the lies and distortions? The
response by Peter S Fader of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
provides an interesting rebuff to many of the witnesses. (You can find it
here.)

For example, one music storeowner near Syracuse
University in New York attributed a steep decline in music sales to the use
of Napster. He forgot to mention that in the time period to which he referred,
he had changed his emphasis from CDs to vinyl records and had moved to a
new store which was outside the main local shopping area. He later reluctantly
agreed that perhaps these were significant factors in his drop in income
and that perhaps he was making an assumption about Napster.

In a survey commissioned by the RIAA, the results
to open-ended questions (i.e. those with no specific choices) were interpreted
with a strong bias towards that association. This survey also concentrated
on college and university students then attempted to generalise the results
and paint a grim picture. More thorough surveys by other researchers indicated
that these "financially challenged" students were not typical Napster users
because more than 50% of users were over 30. Scattered through the various
submissions are all kinds of assertions that Napster was taking large numbers
of customers away from legitimate enterprises. Not one of these submissions
produced any incontrovertible evidence that showed a direct connection between
the use of Napster and a decline in music sales.

Several musicians who had been either ignored
or badly treated by record companies saw Napster as highly beneficial. Some
submissions are included in the Findlaw archive but other such as Janis Ian,
with 25-years in the recording business, chose to make their own public statements.
Janis's two postings can be found here.
She notes that Napster created a lot of interest in her work, far more than
before Napster arrived on the scene.

Other artists also commented on this phenomenon,
a point that dovetails nicely with numerous surveys - including some from
the RIAA itself - that showed consumers used Napster for sampling different
music. A shock horror tale in one pro-RIAA trial submission was that only
25% of the surveyed users went out and bought the CDs for at least 1 in 4
of the tracks they downloaded. Oddly enough, that corresponds well to the
idea of sampling. What a pity the same survey did not ask about deletions
of downloaded music too, because a large number of deletions within a few
days of downloading would further confirm this sampling.

Various surveys also supported these claims.
A survey by Jupiter Communications in July 2000 concluded that Napster users
were 45% more likely to have spent more buying music than non-users. This
survey was of 2200 online music fans and it found that the only people who
were not likely to increase their music purchases were 18 to 24 year old
"cash-strapped, computer-savvy users".

Jupiter Communications was certainly not alone
in these findings. The consensus was that Napster let people listen to music
that they would not otherwise made the effort to consider. As a result, musical
tastes spread. Another report mentioned that it made it easy to rediscover
artists or to find additional material by them. Both cases meant an increase
in sales of CDs and of vinyl records. There were several comments - of course
from people outside the RIAA - that Napster looked far more likely to increase
music sales than diminish them.

Another reason that students used Napster was
that it let them access one or two good tracks on an otherwise forgettable
CD. I am sure that we all have CDs that fall into that category. The attitude
of the RIAA seems to be that consumers must buy the rubbish in order to get
the few small jewels.

The fact that music sales were declining just
as the use of Napster was increasing presented the RIAA with the perfect
scapegoat, so absolving the music industry of blame and saving it the effort
to think there might be other reasons behind the slump.

After Napster died, the RIAA spouted the same
assertions about online music, whether or not such opinions were false, ill-founded
or unrepresentative.

Here's a typical pronouncement published by DC.Internet during February 2002. "The
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is blaming online piracy
and CD burning as the major culprits for a 10.3 percent slide in 2001 music
sales. According to RIAA data, total U.S. shipments dropped from 1.08 billion
units shipped in 2000 to 968.58 million in 2001. ... Coinciding with the increase
in copying music, the study found that ownership of CD burners has nearly
tripled since 1999: in 2001, two in five music consumers owned a CD burner
compared to 14 percent who owned one in 1999."

At the same time the RIAA declared the rise
in sales of blank CDs was further proof of music piracy, and that blank CD
sales should be curtailed.

Let's dispose of this whole nonsense about CD
burners and blank CD sales quickly and then move back to the more important
issues.

Computer security is not something that the
RIAA is very familiar with, judging by the number of times its own Web site
has been hacked.

Blank CDs are used to back-up computer data.
When one blank CD costs about the same price as one diskette but stores
about 460 times the amount of data, is faster to record and takes far less
space than the equivalent thousands of diskettes, it would be stupid not
to use CDs for backups. The RIAA was quite adamant that the 10% drop in
CD sales in the USA in 2001 as compared to sales in 2000 was purely due to
music piracy but this assertion has to be very seriously questioned.

Firstly, if the RIAA is correct, it would follow
that the general interest in music was unchanged and that attendances at
concerts would be about the same as previous years. They weren't. According
to MTV's reports on the web, concert attendances dropped off by about 15%
in 2001 and revenues were down. The average ticket price rose by about 7%
during the year but as usual it is difficult to say if this deterred ticket
buyers or generated the best possible revenue in a bad situation.

An article in the Miami Herald of March 2002 provides a more balanced
commentary about the slump in music sales than the RIAA's rants. It attributes
a lot of problems in the industry to the fact that the record companies were
under attack from many directions - the government was threatening investigations
into payola, the companies were suffering the excesses of the technological
boom and bust, costs were rising and recording artists were in revolt about
the terms and conditions of their contracts with the record companies.

The terms and conditions are normally that artists
are contracted to produce a certain number of CDs in a certain time - but
it is the companies which dictate what music is acceptable to be marketed
and the manner in which a CD will or won't be marketed. For all this, the
artists receive 10 to 20 percent of the profits of the sale, but only after
the record companies charge them for promotional and marketing costs. Janis
Ian has in fact described the situation as being like indentured slavery,
and it is therefore no wonder that some artists were very pleased with using
Napster to get their music more widely known.

According to the same Miami Herald report,
sales of Latin music were up by 9% in 2001 but "In Latin America itself,
riddled with economic hardship and rampant piracy, mid-2001 sales fell about
20 percent." At least someone made the connection between personal wealth
and piracy.

For a further commentary about issues within
the music industry that were contributing to its slump, try this article
which also provides a far better analysis of the situation that the RIAA's
allegations. This gives an indication of the tone of the piece: "Given the
slight dip in CD sales despite so many reasons for there to be a much larger
drop, it seems that the effect of downloading, burning, and sharing is one
of the few bright lights helping the music industry with their most loyal
customers. "

One obvious factor that seems to have been ignored
by the RIAA is the nature of the music being released by the record companies.
Let me throw some names at you ... Sex Pistols, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd,
Rod Stewart, Moody Blues, Brian Ferry, Genesis, Elton John and Cliff Richard.
If you are old enough to remember them you will probably like some of them
but dislike others. That is not the point; the point is that they co-existed
on the music charts in the late 1970s and this kind of variation is a far
cry from the kind of music that has been dominating the charts.

The current number of "revivals" or modern versions
of old songs suggests that the music from the 60s, 70s and 80s had something
that is seriously lacking in modern music. Perhaps the record companies
should spend time figuring out just why this is so.

The RIAA's claims that piracy has caused a worldwide
slump in music sales are questionable. By virtue of its population size,
the figures for the USA distort the total picture. The claims also ignore
the fact that US music sells across the world - so if US music is unappealing,
sales will be down everywhere.

To refute the RIAA's claims, CD sales in the
UK actually increased by 5% in 2001 and in France by a similar amount. (The
BBC News report here has the usual comment about piracy but mentions
this very important point only as a final comment.) I would not be at all
surprised if the influence of US music on the UK and French was somewhat
less than for other countries - or that the locally produced music in 2001
was rather more appealing than US music.

To label all US music as unappealing is quite
unfair. Latin and Country music sales have been quite good - probably because
they offered variety, positive energy and far broader appeal than mainstream
pop.

The possible causes of a decline in music sales
go further than these reasons.

Potential music consumers today have far more
choice in their form of entertainment than just listening to music. They
also have other things on which to spend their money and in many cases, they
have less money to spend than they did a few years ago.

Computer games continue to improve and they
are a big leisure activity. Games cost money that might otherwise be spent
on music. Further, games have audio and there is little point playing a
CD if the game's audio will drown out the music.

DVD sales continue to be good and the availability
of "home cinema" systems with DVD player and high quality audio has made
this a popular pastime. Entertainment has become more visual, at least for
those with time to sit and enjoy it. Music videos themselves have increased
the emphasis on the visual aspect of music.

In the USA the price of movie tickets compared
to CDs shows a dramatic difference, with movie tickets reportedly less than
half the price of a CD. Recent reports also say that movie attendance figures
are very high.

Finally, mobile telephone use is on the increase
especially among teenagers who might otherwise buy music CDs. Music might
be aimed at this demographic but most of them are still reliant on pocket-money
and probably have to pay their own mobile phone charges. Little wonder then
that they cannot also afford CDs when some of them rack up bills equivalent
to the GDP of a small country.

The RIAA is under threat from a number of directions
and it is fighting, on behalf of its members, for continued monopolistic
existence. They are under attack from increasing diversions in entertainment
and for the would-be music buyers' money. And they are also under attack
from a new medium that threatens to drastically change the way that music
is distributed and to reduce their control.

They are also seriously concerned about copyright
law and fear that as copyrights expire they will lose significant profits
and, even more importantly, their control over music distribution.

Since the RIAA started raising a fuss with Napster,
the US copyright laws have been changed and the period for which copyright
applies has been extended. Depending on your source you will find that this
is either the eleventh or fifteenth extension of copyright period in about
forty years. One report also indicated that many of these extensions have
occurred as various Walt Disney characters were nearing the end of their
copyright. (For more details see here).

Those with an interest in extending copyright
are more organised and have much deeper pockets than those opposed to change,
and so can finance a greater amount of pro-extension lobbying than those
who are opposed.

In 1998, an extension to the copyright laws meant
that period would last 70 years after the death of the creator, while works
owned by corporations were extended to 95 years. The RIAA is pleased with
this decision because we would otherwise been nearing the time when certain
music from about the early 1950s - the early days of rock and roll - would
have moved to the public domain. Anyone would have been free to publish
it and equally free to take the profits.

This 1998 extension to copyright period was
challenged but in mid-January of this year (2003) the court upheld the earlier
ruling and the RIAA and its cohorts were able to relax in the comfort that
their various treasure chests would not be released to the public. Don't
forget though, when the RIAA was fighting Napster, this outcome was far from
certain.

Cynics among us look at the notions behind the
copyright law and shake our collective heads. The US law was first introduced
in 1790 for a 14-year period with the aim of encouraging creativity and ensure
that the artists or thinkers could enjoy the profits of that creativity.
Extension of the copyright period is only in the interest of groups like
the RIAA because it means they can rely on older material and can minimise
any efforts to find new talent.

The battle for copyright is not yet over because
European authorities do not kowtow to American interests quite so easily.
EU copyright protection lasts only 50 years, as opposed to 95 in the US,
and so music recordings from the 1950s are becoming public domain in Europe.
The 1950s were a boom in popular music with rock and roll exploding and a
big jump in the number of records being released. Elvis Presley's first
record appeared in 1956 and Chuck Berry's first just two years later.

US music distribution companies have indicated
that they will start to fight CD imports, declaring that the import of European
CDs would be an act of piracy and that customs agents have the authority
to seize these imports.

Make no mistake, the RIAA is under attack from
many different directions, some legislative, some social, some from their
artist "slaves" and others from technology. Loss of control of the music
business would mean a dramatic loss of profit for these companies and it
is for those reasons they are currently embarking on a scare campaign about
music piracy around the world.

Again, European authorities are not impressed
by this blathering. According to a recent BBC report here, the European Commission has only outlawed commercial
(i.e. for profit) piracy but has decided not to criminalise people who download
music from the Internet for their own use. Needless to say the RIAA, and
its international counterpart the IFPI, are up to their normal tactics and
alleging - on no proven basis - that this will cause losses of 4.5 billion
euros annually.

In the bigger picture, these organisations are
out to police everything on the web that just might be somehow related to
the copyrighted works that they jealously guard.

In July 2002 a bill was introduced to the US
House of Representatives to permit the owners of material under copyright
to hack into any computer that accesses or uses a peer-to-peer file transfer
service to see if it was holding any illegal copies of the material. It
was described as vigilante justice in the 21st century. I think I know how
commercial enterprises such as banks would view such intrusions!

It appears that they need no "due cause" which
is what even the various law enforcement agencies require for any similar
search activity.

Using similar wild claims about piracy destroying
their business, the RIAA and IFPI are embarking on what amounts to a marketing
campaign to protect their backsides. Unfortunately the assertions are getting
lots of press attention, and there is a danger of the old problem that if
a lie is repeated often enough it gets accepted as truth.

In their latest moves the RIAA and other are
trying to persuade legal authorities to hold ISPs responsible for any illegal
material that is stored on their servers. (For example, see this report). I am
not certain if the ISPs will be required to call out the rottweilers (i.e.
the RIAA) or to decide if a music file is public domain, copyright but authorised
or copyright and illegal, and then act as judge and jury to decide the form
of punishment.

As I have argued earlier, the ISPs should not
be held responsible because it is not their problem if a user wishes to risk
prosecution for whatever crime. I am waiting for the day when ISP operations
can be fully automated and there is no need for any middle-person who currently
provides a ready and easy target for legal authorities and those who pretend
they are legal authorities.

Already the RIAA has managed to convince a
US court into demanding that Verizon hand out the personal details of a user
who is supposed to have copied music files. I know of no other legal situation
where a middle party has been obliged to provide these details to someone
who believes that they may have been a victim of some crime.

Fortunately Verizon is already objecting to
this demand

This Verizon case was discussed in an Australian
article, which went on to blame music piracy for a drop
in CD sales (yet again) and make the typical kind of claim that we have already
seen from the neo-Luddites. "The finger of blame is pointed at the internet,
as industry officials cite a corresponding increase in broadband adoption
as proof that increasing numbers of people are stealing music and movies."

The truly sad thing is that the RIAA is not
acting in the interests of consumers or even their musical artists. It is
only protecting its members, but a lot of influential people are swallowing
the story hook, line and sinker.

The Inquirer has another interesting article on the same topic.

Good point read the article Intel hoist by Centrino megahurts petard stating how the new mobile processor Banias is running up to 1Ghz slower for same performance as the P4. Now how are they going to "Market" that thingy?

Quote from Article:

Given Intel's extreme assault on AMD's model number system, it'll be quite interesting to see how the company positions its new "Centrino" (Banias) line of processors. These CPUs will be released at a much lower set of frequencies then the current P4 crop of notebooks, even as much as a GHz lower. All of a sudden, Intel is in a bit of a tough spot -- will consumers want to adopt a notebook running so much slower than what appear to be competitive P4-M notebooks running even faster?

A story in the inquirer
says AMD is "waiting for the introduction of a suitable 64-bit operating
system. This, The INQUIRER believes, is the Windows 64 bit version specifically
for the Athlon64."

How many companies have died while waiting for Microsoft
to do something? (Note to AMD: Microsoft is *not* your friend.)

"XP does not support dual physical processores. However, it fully supports a hyperthreading CPU and it's second logical CPU."

He's right. I found some info on it here.

What it basically says is that XP Home and Pro will both support this processor, but 2K won't.

My company has a couple of HT machines here and when the POST comes up it says '2 processors'. Since we Linux on that machine, we never looked up Windows compatibility.

Boutin's Slate article has the dirt and is funny to boot.