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Slashback: Universities, Piecemiel, Yakkin'
Allegedly U.S. $299, allegedly end-of-year, allege, allege. Good news for those of us equipped with the quaint alternative to Palm Computing's organizers, even if less than impressed by most combination PDA / phone attempts -- InaneBoy writes: "Handspring's got a bunch of pictures and details of their new 'Visor Phone' Check it out! Super-keen!"
Of course, hemos is right -- there's a reason that most phones aren't as wide as your average PDA. This one looks like a reasonable -- if expensive -- way to combine the two items, especially if it will work with the combination mic / speaker earbud things. (But shouldn't the people making Springboard modules be a little busier with my GPS reciever?)
Plus, many colleges have declined to ban copying machines, tape recorders and ethernet. carlocius writes: "It appears that my college, Michigan State University, just handed Metallica and Dr. Dre another loss in their attempt to get Napster blocked on large Universities. MSU's administators stated that the Acceptable Use Policy of the university already covers copyright issues and there is no reason for Napster to be banned before a trial. GO STATE!!!"
Likewise, jellings writes: "The University of Pennsylvania joined the ranks of leading universities who are refusing to shut down access to the Napster on their campus, according to an article from the university press. U Pres. Judith Rodin said that "banning the Internet service would go against the University's educational mission by denying students freedom of inquiry and expression" and pointed to the Digital Millenium Act for further justification, saying that limiting access is not her responsibility ("Internet service providers cannot be held accountable for illegal activity on their networks if they are unaware of the activity"). Although the awareness of the activity of the issue may be questionable, it is certainly good to see a big U not yielding to the demands of Dr. Dre & Metallica ..."
The list of schools refusing to buckle under keeps growing; campus admins and sysadmins seem justifiably adamant about letting their policies be dictated by corporate vulture groups. Bandwidth reasons may be another story entirely, though.
Of course, not everyone has the awesome power of ResNet behind them ... ca1v1n writes: "The awesome power of the record labels has come through again. The Offspring have cancelled their plans to distribute their next album for free, after legal action and the threat of a lawsuit from Sony music. Yahoo! news has the scoop. So much for protecting the artists' interests."
An enquiry into establishing a curve of electronic book sales ... Triumphant former astronomy student jamie points out this CNN story on the continuing book experiment by Stephen King, who is still selling his novel online. Here's a telling snippet:
...since the first installment's release July 24, the percentage of readers paying for their downloads has dropped from 76 percent to less than 70 percent for the second installment. Part three goes up on Monday.jamie points out that 70 "but he's giving us part 3 anyway. The more telling figures: 172,004 people had paid for part one and 74,373 people had paid for part two."
maomoondog pipes in: "Apparently, King's company is upset that too few of the downloads are being paid for. Stephen King comments on the progress here. Personally, I'm impressed that 70% of the downloads are being paid for. With as low a per-item cost as a text download is, the author should really clean up in this sort of arrangement."
If you're one of the 172,004, liked the story, but are not part of the 74,373, please consider joining the second group on jamie's behalf, because as he says: "It's actually not a bad story and I want to see how it ends :)"
King's experiment is just that: an experiment to judge the sense of honesty and obligation that people have.
When he released Riding the Bullet, he was surprised after a reader sent him money for the story. That gave him the incentive to start his little experiment.
Forcing people to pay isn't what this whole thing is about. Your arguments are sound, if you're trying to maximize profitablity. But that's not why King is proceeding with the street performer model.
Photoshop for the Mac is a complete re-write. A new product. It actually took more effort for Adobe to make it. But in the days before everyone had CDs, most software came on 3.5s and CDs... And before that, on 5.25s and 3.5s. And they did it for free, or at most a media cost of $5 or so.
King on the other hand wants to charge more for a text file which was simple run through a different filter.
Can anyone be more money-grubbing? Next he'll be applying to congress for a tax on disks and demanding his share because people who buy one copy of his lame little e-book will use the space to store multiple formats...
The guy's plainly a jerk looking for a free ride. He wants to make more money (no printing costs), take no risk (if it shuts down, he's out nothing) and no blame (if anything happens, it's the fault of the bad internet). So he'll screw over anyone dumb enough to give him any money.
Buy Dell. Buy HP. Buy Sony. Buy Compaq. Buy E-Machines. Buy a used Packard-Bell from the classifieds.
VA sucks and has never given a red cent of their hard-earned precious money to support "the community." They also don't support their own so-called kernel-hacker "programmers," none of whom have ever done a lick of work on anything important to do with the Linux kernel.
Slashdot is nothing but a collection of subliminal ads for VA Linux Systems, which wouldn't otherwise be able to sell more than 3 servers a year to a school of drugged albinos. Their machines are awful -- they don't stand up at all compared to the nice new 2-rack unit machines from SGI.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The administrators realized how much cheaper it is to copy things off of napster than buy the CDs themselves.
I do like his work (sue me) but I think he is screwing this one up for everyone. Not only is he buying into Big Publishings e-book pricing scheme ($13 US for an ebook? Are you nuts?!) He's also got hugely unrealistic expectations.
So we're basically screwed either way:
First outcome (most likely IMO): Experiment is an utter failure after, say, chapter 4. Big Publishing goes "Oh, look, I guess ebooks will never work."
Second outcome: Experiment is a success. Big Publishing goes "Oh, I guess we CAN charge $13 US for books that cost us next to nothing, and oh, look, we can even keep the same royalty rate!"
And the other thing that really po'ed me about his "comments" was where he basically trashes fair use.
It appears to us that some people are downloading two and even three times to different formats-to the Palm Pilot say, and also to whatever Microsoft uses. This may be based on a simple misperception. Let me put it this way: you couldn't go into a bookstore and say, "I want you to give me the paperback version and the audio version of this book free because I bought the hardcover." As simply as I can put it, you must pay for what you take every time you take it or this won't work.
I know that it's a book Mr King, but it's an E book now. That means there are no different editions.... dumbass. That customer you are talking to paid for it once. That means he can copy it (for his own use), and by extension he should even be able to download it from you again.
Argh. Ah well, had to vent.
In the law there is no overlap between theft and copyright infringement whatsoever.
If anybody is still having any delusions that the RIAA and Big Business are really out to protect their stable of cash cows, er, artists, the last few weeks destroy that notion. Courtney Love's share, anyone? Sony owning URLs for life? This Offspring deal? Etc. etc.?
Music companies could care less about their artists. And the sad thing is a lot of artists just let it happen, by not scouring contracts and not putting up a fight. Newer artists are just so happy to break into the business that they don't think about what'll happen to them in 6 months or a year. What if they leave their publisher after 5 albums and they want to set up a new web site? Oh, sucks to be you, artist, 'cause now instead of http://www.yourname.com you'll have to settle for http://listen.to/yourname, thank you very much SMEI.
The only artists now who still have the right to take a shit without their label's permission are the established, those who have been in the biz long enough that they make their own rules. But poor ol' Eiffel 65, N*SYNC and the rest (who I feel sorry for anyways, just listen to their "music") are pretty much screwed.
N*SYNC is particularly ironic -- ever see their new videos where they're being help up by strings like marionettes?
Puppets indeed.
J
Judging from informal polling of some acquaintances of mine, I'd say only 50% of those who start a 300 page Steven King novel bother to read past page 100, and only 25% bother to read past page 200.