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David Bowie Opens His Own Online Bank
Anonymous Coward writes "David Bowie, the most wired rock star on the planet (he even has his own ISP!) has opened an online bank! What strange times we live in." Indeed. It's a shame there are no physical branches of the bank; I would probably trust banks more if the bank managers were dressed like Jareth from Labyrinth.
I think that's the same company that has TV ads saying they're "Y3K compliant". I wonder if they bothered running that slogan past their sysadmins. I suspect they aren't completely Y2038 compliant yet if they use 32 bit OSes for anything.
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"L'IT c'est moi!"
Bowix is actually a rebranded version of BeOS, with icons and the look and feel redesigned by David Bowie, and sounds taken from his back-catalogue. It ships with an exclusive interactive CD containing concert footage and unreleased songs.
And all that's fine and well. The trouble comes when our gods (and yes, you're right, it is we that make them) go beyond being the lucky beneficiaries of our adulation and start carving in stone the means by which the lucrative time-fold of the last few decades can continue forever.
After reading his articles, one gets the impression that he doesn't recite very often the mantra of "Their job is to make you feel good", as you put it. The element of feedback that is so important to the vast majority of artists seems to have got lost in a sea of business as usual, not in ignorance of the new technology but in active disregard of the calls for change. Of course, Bowie is not the only one that can be accused of protecting the hand that feeds him, but this thread is about him alone.
Hey man, the industry lawyers are tarring those techie upstarts good and proper, so why should I rock the boat when the old system is bringing in those dollars so reliably.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Don't be all that enamoured with Bowie folks. If you read his magazine interviews, it's clear that he believes in the good old standard way: the artist is God and will do whatever he/she wants and will charge whatever he/she desires and the rest of us are just one of two things --- either pirates, or suckers for the milking.
Yes, he's aware of the new technologies, but he doesn't accept that this means that earlier social relationships should change to match the new possibilities. Watch your back, as he's as likely as not to stab you in the back with an RIAA dagger. I wouldn't bank with him. One should trust one's banker.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
$55 million? I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing, but I know he managed to offer several hundred million in "stock" of himself, making him the first (and probably only) billionaire rock star.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
I guess now is as a good time to remind people that, instead of forking your hard earned money into some rock star's bank, why not charge it on a Linux credit card? Will Bowie give the proceeds to Linux developers and education? Slim chance. Linuxfund will.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Is David Bowie REALLY the person who fits that description? Yes, he has BowieNet, and now his bank, but on the other hand...
Thomas "Blinded With Science" Dolby runs a little company called Headspace. No, AFAIK they don't make Beatnik for Linux yet, but still, (minor rock star + internet software company) is arguably more wired than (major rock star + minor ISP).
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
Ah, I see, it looks like they're doing a close-up of his mis-matched eyes: www.bowiebanc.com
In related news, godlike jazz pianist Keith Jarrett announced his teaming up with Richard Stallman and Guy Steele to create a new integrated operating system/high-level language called "Concert" (in the tradition of "Scheme", "Planner", "Conniver" and other traditional Lisp-related systems). Reportedly, this system would feature complete model-level reflection, purely functional networking, a complete AI system for proving software correctness on the fly, zero-time automated garbage-collection, a direct telepathic user interface, and an uniform, self-documenting language syntax without any punctuation at all. The system is expected to run on top of no hardware whatsoever by the time of its first release.
Except for hardcore jazz fans or computer scientists, nobody really paid attention. The full sources are available at ftp://ftp.concert.ai.mit.edu/pub/concert/src, but nobody so far has downloaded them.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Well, I'm not sure what you are talking about, but here are the details on the Bowie bonds offering.
Mr Showbiz story on Bowie Bonds. (No, I don't normally read Mr. Showbiz).
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Well, this was the guy who managed to sell $55 Million in bonds based on the projected earnings from royalties to his songs, so I guess starting a bank isn't that much further afield.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Chaum has been sitting on his license for years, refusing to open it up to others until his company, Digicash, finally went bankrupt and he sold it to Ecash Technologies; if Bowie licensed it from them and started using it, it would be a big step forward for digital anonymous cash users.
For those of you who are unaware, anonymous digital cash has significant consequences for Internet commerce.
Big name, big money, big business. And maybe even crypto-anarchy to boot!
When I moderate, I only use "-1, Overrated". That way, I never get meta-moderated!
Excuse me, but this may just be one of the more ridiculus things I've heard in a while. OK, I (grudingly) accept the fact that we live in a society where we have Michael Jordan Sneakers, Spice Girls play dolls, 100 different Star Wars items, Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd endorsed cars (VW), and a lot of other bullshit.
Now we have David Bowie opening a bank. Come on! And there's a press release claiming that he has a passion for something. Well yes: His passion is milking his fans (or people who just happen to recognize his name/face) for even more of their money than they already gave him.
You want to be an artist? Stay an artist and try to produce something worthwhile. You want to be commercial whore? Fine, be that but don't pretend you're an artist. You can't be both. Stick to something you know, something you're good at. No, marketing your name does not count. Producing great art might. I guess the great irony of our age is that this bullshit actually seems to work: Why else would companies be doing it? Which in turn doesn't say much good about the average person's (the part of the population that goes for these items) intelligence.
I'm ranting; I'll stop now
This is a publicity/marketing stunt for USABancShares.com in the same vein as Planet Hollywood and other such ventures. Looks like it is working well as there is now a Slashdot article covering it and god knows how much other coverage it is getting in the media. I imagine you will be seeing this on ET and all the other entertainment news shows. Anything works better than banner ads I guess.
I think he's just experimenting with all facets of money, trying to get a handle on what it means and implies in our society. I mean, he sold stock in his back catalog, but I doubt he needed to raise money, which is the normal reason for selling stock. I think he's exploring money as an artist would, now that he has the means for these experiments... and how many artists have ever had as much financial means as he does today? Somehow this seems like a very Bowie thing to do.
According to industry analysts, the 128 Bit operating system is bound to pose a strong challenge to other operating systems such as Windows, Linux and MacOS.
"People worship me for my music, and people worship Linus for his OS system " David said, "But now they will worship me for both"